On October 14, 2025, Hideaki Ota, Representative Director of Japan Forward and adviser to The Sankei Shimbun, delivered a speech titled “On Japan and the Japanese People” at Shimizugaoka High School in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture. The audience included about 600 students, including visitors from its sister school, Aoyama Junior and Senior High School.
The speech followed a capping ceremony for first-year nursing students at Shimizugaoka High School, marking the start of their clinical training. Because time constraints required portions to be cut on the day, the full text is published here with the school’s permission.
First in a Three-Part Series
Nursing students at Hideaki Ota at Shimizugaoka High School. (©Japan Forward)
On Japan and the Japanese People
Thank you for your kind introduction. It was my first time attending a capping ceremony, and I was deeply moved to see aspiring nurses express their commitment and take their oath before beginning clinical training. It’s easy to say we should live for others, but much harder to truly put that into practice.
As I watched, I found myself recalling something a teacher said to me long ago, when I was a high school student: Are your actions contributing to society? Are you doing anything that truly serves others?
The ceremony also became, for me, an occasion to ask myself that question once again, and to do so with some rigor.
Now, I have a question for all of you. When you are sitting on a train or a bus, and an elderly person, someone with a disability, or an expectant mother is standing nearby, how many of you offer your seat without hesitation?
Please raise your hand.
It makes me very happy to see that so many students from Shimizugaoka High School, as well as Aoyama Junior High and High School, are the sort of young people who stand up and offer their seats in such moments.
And for the rest of you as well, if you make a genuine habit of doing so, people in Kure will begin to notice. They will see your school uniforms and say, “Students from that school always give up their seats for others.”
Such a reputation would spread to other schools in Kure, perhaps even to neighboring Hiroshima City. Before long, young people across Hiroshima Prefecture might begin to follow suit. I think that would be a very good thing indeed.
Capping ceremony at Shimizugaoka High School. (©Japan Forward)
Small Acts, Larger Culture
For many years, I often visited Kyoto for work, and sometimes for sightseeing as well. But two or three days is hardly enough to get a real feel for the city.
For a long time, I had hoped to spend an extended period in Kyoto to get to know the city better. About three years ago, I was fortunate enough to have that opportunity and lived there for around a month.
Kyoto is a city with many tourists, and its bus network is very convenient, so I used it often. Time and again, even on crowded buses, I saw young people promptly stand up and offer their seats to elderly passengers or those with disabilities.
I observed this so often that I began paying closer attention. And when I did, I realized that most of those young people were travelers from South Korea.
In South Korea, the influence of Confucianism remains strong. And there remains a deeply rooted culture of showing proper respect to elders and seniors.
Even so, I could not help but be impressed. Why? Because when I ride trains and subways in Tokyo, I often see young people sitting even in the priority seats.
Many of them are absorbed in comics or games on their smartphones. Others are fast asleep. Perhaps they are simply tired.
But to return to the capping ceremony I mentioned earlier, I believe it matters very much to ask, in our ordinary daily lives, what we can do for others, and then to begin with whatever small act is within our reach.
That, I think, is how things ought to be.
A Life That Began in Karafuto
Now then, I will turn 79 this December [2025]. From your perspective, I belong to the grandparent generation.
Today, I ask you to indulge an old man’s story for a little while. I was born on an island called Karafuto.
If you have heard of Karafuto, please raise your hand.
Today, it’s Russian territory and is known as Sakhalin. But 120 years ago, during the Meiji era, Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War and annexed the southern half of Karafuto as part of its territory.
After that, Japanese settlers moved there in great numbers, and at one point, it seems as many as 400,000 people were living across Karafuto as a whole.
It was in one of the towns on that island that I was born, in the year after Japan lost the Pacific War [in 1945]. In those days, Japan and the Japanese referred to it as the Greater East Asia War. When I was just six months old, my mother carried me on her back as my family fled for their lives and returned to Japan.
My family ran a bakery and confectionery business, and I was told we lived comfortably. But after Japan’s defeat, the Soviet Union, now Russia, took everything. We lost our home, our land, and all our property. We later crossed to Hokkaido on a repatriation ship.
Returning to a Lost Home
At Japan’s northernmost tip in Hokkaido lies Cape Soya in Wakkanai. On a clear day, you can actually see the southern edge of Karafuto, today’s Sakhalin, from there. It is that close. I have stood at Cape Soya myself. And for many years, I hoped that one day I might return to the town where I was born.
That wish finally came true six years ago.
It was only a two-hour flight from Narita Airport. Strangely enough, it felt almost too close, disappointingly close for a place that had seemed so distant for so long.
Using old maps and with the help of a guide, I searched for the house where my parents and grandparents had lived. Karafuto was rich in forests and pulp, and Oji Paper operated six factories there, producing paper and shipping it to mainland Japan.
I am told it produced 80% of Japan’s entire paper back then.
The shopping street that had once stood nearby was overgrown with weeds. Even so, by tracing the river and the old roads marked on the map, we were able to identify the place that was most likely my old home.
“So this is where I was born,” I thought.
I took out the ancestral tablets of my grandparents and parents and stood there quietly for a while. Before long, tears began to fall.
As I mentioned earlier, my family made it to Hokkaido, moving from place to place while relying on relatives. Eventually, they settled in Chitose, now home to a major airport.
There, they started over with the family trade, bread and sweets, and I spent my years up through high school in Chitose, helping with the family business.
From Student to TV Producer
I moved to Tokyo to attend university, and this year marks my 60th year living there. Around my third year in college, I decided I wanted to work in either newspapers or television, and I studied as hard as I could.
By good fortune, I found my way into Fuji Television.
During my senior year, living on money from home alone was not enough to cover either tuition or daily expenses. Physical labor paid the best, so I took the hardest jobs I could find, digging up roads for waterworks construction, and in the dead of night hauling freight at train stations and shifting cargo from one freight car to another.
My apartment was a single tiny room, just three tatami mats in size. It was a wooden building that creaked and swayed whenever a typhoon came through. The rent was ¥4,500 (about $13). The toilet and kitchen were shared. I had no television in my room.
My small pleasure was listening to late-night radio on a transistor radio.
Back then, radio stations often held ticket lotteries for preview screenings of films, so I would regularly send in postcards to enter. One day, I won for the first time and went to see my first screening. It was at a large theater in Shibuya, lined with a red carpet. I remember how excited and nervous I was as I stepped into that world for the first time.
A Time of Expectation
This was the late 1960s, when Japan was charging headlong into its era of high-speed economic growth. The country was growing richer every year with seemingly endless momentum.
It was a time when many Japanese people believed in the future—I was one of them.
It was around that time in 1969 that I joined Fuji TV. That was more than half a century ago.
To thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak about that era, I have sent your school some books. These include five copies of a book I published four years ago about my time working as a Fuji Television Producer.
The book draws on my years producing television programs at Fuji TV, and I would be very pleased if you could give it a read.
I also included biographies and stories of people from generations well before mine—men and women who lived remarkable lives and accomplished truly outstanding work.
If any of you happen to read them, I’m sure your school board chair or principal would be delighted to receive your thoughts in writing.
A Life in Media
At Fuji TV, I spent many years making programs as a director and producer. I worked on a wide range of shows, including Mezamashi TV and the documentary series The Nonfiction.
Later, I was entrusted with management responsibilities. After that, I also worked for The Sankei Shimbun, part of the same media group. Today, I run an English-language news site called Japan Forward.
At Japan Forward, our goal is to present the real face of Japan to the world. Every day, we publish news in English spanning culture, entertainment, advanced technology, and national security.
I launched it nine years ago after raising the necessary funds, driven by the belief that people around the world should better understand Japan and the Japanese people.
Mr Yamamoto, who also serves as chairman of your school board, has been a generous supporter of Japan Forward, and it is through that connection that I am here with you.
Visiting Kure
The last time I came to Kure was about 20 years ago, when the Yamato Museum first opened here.
When I think of Kure, I also think of director and cinematographer Naoko Nobutomo.
Ms Nobutomo made and released the documentary film I Go Gaga, My Dear which chronicles the story of her parents. That was some seven or eight years ago now. The film was highly acclaimed, and to this day, she is invited to speak all over Japan and is constantly on the move.
She and I worked together for many years. I was the producer, and she was the director. We were close colleagues. We still keep in touch from time to time. She is a graduate of Katayama Junior High School here in Kure.
And of course, Kure also brings to mind nearby Etajima, where the old Imperial Japanese Naval Academy once stood. Today, it is home to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Officer Candidate School.
Above all, though, what is deeply etched into my mind as part of Japanese history is the battleship Yamato. The vessel departed from Kure, once known as the greatest naval port in the East, on March 28, 1945, on its kamikaze-style mission toward Okinawa.
By then, Japan was already running desperately short of oil. Yamato was loaded with fuel for a one-way trip. It was, by definition, a suicide mission bound for Okinawa.
‘Requiem for Battleship Yamato’
After leaving Kure, Yamato was bombarded by fierce American air attacks and sank before reaching its destination. There were 3,332 men aboard, from senior officers down to ordinary crewmen. Of those, 3,056 were killed in action.
Out of 3,332, only 276 survived. One of those survivors, Mitsuru Yoshida, left behind an account titled Requiem for Battleship Yamato. I would like to share part of it with you.
The ensigns, lieutenants, and captains were all in their twenties. After departing Kure, night after night, once their duties were done, they gathered in their quarters and held earnest debates.
They knew they were going to die. Yet they argued intensely over why they were pressing forward toward that death, and what it meant.
The substance of those debates is recorded in Requiem for Battleship Yamato.
Let me quote from it.
The young officers who had graduated from the Naval Academy said in one voice: “We die for our country and for our Emperor. Is that not enough? What more is needed? Should we not die content? [unofficial translation]”
Those who had come from the universities, young men conscripted into military service, fired back in agitation:
“Yes, I understand dying for one’s country. But what, in the end, is that connected to? I want to connect my death, my life, and Japan’s defeat to some broader, more universal value. What is the meaning of all this? What is it for?”
“That is a mere excuse. Useless theory. Worse, a harmful one. You wear the Kikusui insignia of the tokkotai [Japanese Special Attack Unit] on your chest and can die shouting, ‘Long live His Majesty the Emperor.’ Is that not enough to make you proud?”
“No, that is not enough. Something more is needed.”
Captain Usubuchi’s Quiet Verdict
At last, a chaotic brawl ensued as an officer shouted, “Fine then, we’ll beat that rotten attitude out of you.”
As the debate raged on, arguments over life and death, over defeat and death, one man, Captain [Iwao] Usubuchi, who I believe was only 21 at the time, looked out over the darkening sea and said quietly, almost in a whisper:
“Those who do not progress can never win. To awaken through defeat is the best path. Japan has thought too little of progress. It became too obsessed with personal purity and virtue, and forgot true progress. To be broken and awaken—there is no other way for Japan to be saved. If we do not awaken now, when will Japan ever be saved? We will be the vanguard of that awakening. We will fall before the rest, paving the way for Japan’s rebirth. Is that not the very fulfillment of our wish?”
Those were the words uttered by Captain Usubuchi. According to the account, those words brought a quiet end to the debates that had gone on day after day, circling life, death, and what it all meant.
No one openly refuted him after that.
Has Japan Awakened?
I have read this book many times. It has now been 80 years since those young men died in the earlier war.
Have the Japanese truly awakened? Has Japan awakened at all?
Those words remain with me, always somewhere in the back of my mind.
There is one more thing Kure brings to mind. It’s the animated film In This Corner of the World, set here in Kure, which met with tremendous acclaim some years ago.
I am very fond of its heroine, Ms Suzu. She is honest, earnest, thoughtful toward others, and she keeps moving forward without giving up.
She reflects on herself and always carries a gentle attentiveness toward others. I have rarely encountered such a person, even in fiction.
If I were born again, I think Ms. Suzu is the sort of heroine I would want to live with, perhaps even marry. I remember her making her way through those war years, moving from youth to marriage, living alongside all sorts of people, doing her utmost simply to keep going.
I also remember the scene in which she is in Kure, living her life there. On the day the atomic bomb falls on Hiroshima, she sees that mushroom cloud rising in the distance.
And one line spoken by Ms Suzu’s mother-in-law has stayed with me ever since.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could just live their lives smiling?”
The war ended 80 years ago. Has Japan, and has the world today, really become that kind of place?
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