Firstly, look at the cap shown in the following picture. It was delivered to me from a friend who had attended the exercises of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, which was open to the public. Civilians who had been luckily selected in a draw were invited onto the military vessels. He got on board the destroyer DD-114 Suzunami, the name of which is printed on the front of the cap. I had stepped on board a destroyer DD-228 Yuubetsu once, but it was moored. In his case, Suzunami was deployed along with other military vessels. It would have been a spectacular scene.
After the Greater East Asian War, we Japanese have been educated by the rule written by Allied Forces. We were infused with Western-oriented ways of looking at history. It was favorable to the U.S. Despite lots of the Allied Forces' breaches of international law such as indiscriminate bombings - more than 100,000 civilians were killed in one night in Tokyo in March 1945, more than 300,000 in Hiroshima by a single atomic bomb -, law-abiding Japan has been accused. Lots of young Japanese people have been educated to believe the evil of Japan and programmed to hate Japan. However, thanks to the recent violence of China and South Korea, ordinary people in Japan began to notice the distorted history. The activity of Japan's Self-defence Force started to attract people's attention. Japan is considerably changing now.
(Vocabulary)
in a draw くじで
Western-oriented ways of looking at history 欧米中心史観
breachs [C,U] (法律・規則・約束などの) 違反, 不履行, 侵害
Destroyer DD-114 Suzunami
DD-228 Yuubetsu
http://kumo.typepad.jp/weblog/2006/08/japan-self-defe.html
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