Picture of the Day - Miscellaneous (1 Viewer)

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Tying up with the Japanese authority, Yakuza like Hajime Satomi and Yoshio Kodama built a huge fortune in Manchuria and China through the opium trade. In the postwar, they supported Japanese nationalists like Nobusuke Kishi to restore the Japanese regime with the fund.
 
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Total amount of the opium trade by Yakuza in Manchuria/China is estimated 3K billion dollars in today's value. Satomi also had strong connection with the ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek. This is thought why he was found not guilty.

Satomi (in the white Chinese costume on the left) with Chiang (2nd from the right) circa 1928.
 
A Chinese boss of an opium den told a Japanese official who disguised as a journalist to research the Chinese society in Manchuria "Japanese may be good merchants but they have no mercy. We don't mind whoever our ruler may be but can't follow the Japanese."

Source:
国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション - 大観園の解剖

Satomi was a very expert of China and Chinese. He could have known the above well.
 
This is what I have been feeling strange as a Japanese for a couple of years.

The flag on the left in the picture is a symbol of historical disgrace for the Japanese people since 1853 like a member of the Japanese delegation on the day pointed it out as "looked bad joke for us." After 72 years, I hear the same flag replica is displayed in a waiting room of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and, if true, I am obliged to wonder how long the two peoples' minds should go parallel not understanding each other better. If Japanese government should advise nothing about it, that would only be convenient for the nationalists to remind the people of disgraceful past forever. Besides, the U.S. troops emblems in Japan also look strange because such symbols like Mt Fuji, swords, trii-gate and rising-sun are sacred ones for the people. They are ones which should not be shared with the heathens.

 
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