It’s Not Always What You Say

I once set myself a delicate task. I live in Japan, and was considering giving a Toastmasters speech about the recurring controversy of Japanese history textbooks. The textbooks for schoolchildren here tend to either gloss over or completely ignore the less savory aspects of Japan’s involvement in World War II, particularly with regard to the sometimes brutal behavior of Japanese soldiers in China and Korea.

There’s nothing unusual about this. Most countries, including the USA, tend to airbrush their pasts. In fact, I was shocked to realize how much of the history in my own school books was either carefully shaped by omission, or even blatantly inaccurate.

Not wanting to be the ugly, hypocritical American, I didn’t see the benefit in tackling the issue of the Japanese textbooks head on. So I made the choice to never explicitly state my message, that the Japanese themselves are the poorer for ignoring the darker aspects of their history.

I chose to make the analogous case about how American history is whitewashed in school textbooks. Some would bellow that I am “blaming America first”, but I agree with the Bible. I think it’s best to first remove the plank from my own eye, before pointing out the speck in another’s.

In recounting both the trivial, and the more sinister and consequential, of the lies that I was taught as a child, as well as the uncomfortable facts that were ignored, I made the point that, as George Santayana famously said, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”, and then tied that to very recent events in which the American government and electorate have clearly ignored important lessons of history, to our national detriment.

I never mentioned the Japanese textbook controversy, never even said the word Japan, yet five different people, all Japanese, came up to me later and independently brought the issue up, expressing their own discomfort with the way the issue was handled by their government and culture.

Would they have been as forthright and open, had I just finished haranguing them? Perhaps, but I doubt it. The point certainly wouldn’t have had the same impact and resonance, if they hadn’t reached their own conclusions about how it related to Japanese history.

Often, it’s not what we say, that sticks in the audience’s minds. It’s the conclusions they reach on their own that affect their thoughts and behavior, long after they have forgotten our words. And that’s the goal of every speech and presentation, isn’t it?