Cross-cultural communication （88）　

88) It all started with the “Prague Spring
It seems that Mr. Akira Ikegami is really into the ‘Prague Spring’ in 2019. Around spring, he was broadcasting a one-hour program on TV, mixing on-the-spot reporting and news footage from the time, and he was also writing articles for the Nikkei morning edition during the rainy season. Actually, I had been quite interested in the Prague Spring even before that. I have also recently come to understand that this incident was the catalyst for a major change in the world system.

Speaking of the Prague Spring, we cannot talk about it without mentioning gymnast Vlasta ?aslavska. She represented the Czech Republic at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, but it was at the 1968 Mexico Olympics that she came to the attention of the world. At that time, her rival for the gold medal was her arch-enemy, Soviet athlete Galina Kuchinskaya. I was in my second year of high school in 1968, and I had no idea that Chaslavska was a fighter for the Spring of Prague, an athlete who was fighting against the Soviet Union to liberate her homeland of Czechoslovakia, and that she was trying to draw the world's attention to the need for Czechoslovakian freedom by winning the gold medal. Even my classmates at high school, with the exception of a few politically-awake students (even then, left-wing thought was still dominant, even if it wasn't called pro-Soviet), regarded it as just another women's sport. During a rather laid-back class on ethics and society, we even held a popularity vote for Chazlavska and Kuchinskaya, passing around a memo pad. The result was that the young and fresh-faced Soviet Kuchinskaya won by a landslide. Looking back now, it would have been impossible for a 17-year-old greenhorn to tell Chaslavska to choose between her mature, adult sex appeal and her appeal as a freedom fighter, two conflicting elements.

It was a novel called “The Prague Spring” that changed my igrorance of Czech’s history. I read it when I was in my early 30s, and it was written by Kazuya Harue, a former diplomat who had lived in the Czech Republic during this period. It is a love story between a Japanese diplomat named Horie, who seems to be the author's alter ego, and a Czech woman named Katerina, who is an anti-establishment activist, but the authenticity of the historical background and the incidents that take place are beyond doubt, as the author is a former diplomat who has worked in the region. The romantic drama that takes place there is also a love story that takes place under seemingly insurmountable odds, and it is quite a compelling read. As proof of this, “The Prague Spring” became a considerable bestseller, and a sequel, “The Autumn of Berlin”, was also published and was also well received. Thanks to these works, we were able to understand the situation in the former Eastern European countries that had been overrun by the Soviet Union, and we began to realize, albeit belatedly, the contradictions of the Soviet Union and other communist countries. As the contradictions of communism were revealed in Japan through various media, including this novel, in 1991 an event occurred that no one had ever imagined. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in December.

In light of the collapse of the most powerful communist country that had competed with the United States for hegemony during the Cold War, in 1992 the Japanese-American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote “The End of History”. In a nutshell, he argued that world history would end with the victory of democracy and free economies. However, looking at the subsequent political and economic developments in the world, it seems that the conclusion of “The End of History” was rather premature. We are living in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, but at the same time, we are living in a contradictory situation where individual countries are taking populist policies that are centered on their own countries. At the very least, I hope that our government will take the helm of foreign policy so that Japan does not go bankrupt by the time my grandchildren are born.

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