Higuchi’s narrative of saving Jewish refugees

Higuchi’s autobiography has been the main but not the exclusive source of this story.Footnote ⁵ During his one-year assignment in Harbin, Higuchi claimed to have encountered an unforeseen and deeply stirring incident. On 8 March 1938, according to his autobiography, he was informed of the arrival of a large group of German Jewish refugees.Footnote ⁶ The group was very large, in fact, comprising thousands of individuals, as vividly described in Higuchi’s account. As he recalled several decades later, these refugees were stranded in the freezing Soviet border town of Otpor (J. Otopōru オトポール; present-day Zabaykalsk, Russia) situated opposite the Manchukuo town of Manzhouli (in present-day Inner Mongolia, China), located 935 kilometres northeast of Harbin by train. There were ‘about 20,000 of them’, Higuchi noted, and this has remained the figure for almost all future references to the incident.Footnote ⁷ Escaping persecution by the Nazi regime, these refugees crossed Siberia by train at the peak of the winter of early 1938, seeking to enter the safe haven of Manchukuo. ‘It was clear that if these refugees were left alone,’ Higuchi recalled, ‘it would become a matter of life and death.’Footnote ⁸

Upon hearing news of the refugees’ plight, the Harbin Jewish community took action. Dr Abraham Kaufman (1885–1971), a prominent member of this community, allegedly pleaded with Higuchi to allow them to cross the border. According to this narrative, both the Soviet and the Manchukuo authorities were reluctant to permit this, fearing it would encourage more Jewish refugees. Higuchi sought information but maintained that the decision was beyond his authority. He asserted that Manchukuo was an ‘independent state’ with its own foreign office, and, therefore, it was up to that office to issue visas or safe passage, rather than up to him. The story further relates that Wakamiya Saburō, a Japanese official at the Manchukuo Foreign Office, approached Higuchi, imploring him to facilitate this action because he (Wakamiya) was committed to saving lives.Footnote ⁹ Allegedly, Higuchi, as the ultimate authority in the region, signalled to Wakamiya, and thereby to the Manchukuo government, that it was permissible to allow these desperate, freezing refugees to cross the border.

According to the now popular narrative, the entire affair, involving several governments, unfolded within just two days, though with evident repercussions. Higuchi was aware that his decision could potentially strain German-Japanese relations and might even contravene the spirit of the Anti-Comintern Pact, which had been concluded a mere 15 months earlier. Moved by a sense of urgency, Higuchi chose to proceed with his humanitarian enterprise. He discussed the situation with the chief of the Harbin delegation of the Manchukuo Foreign Affairs Office. After receiving permission on 10 March, Higuchi authorized the entry of the refugees into Manchukuo. He also arranged for them to be provided with trains and food at no cost, ensuring they arrived safely in Harbin the next day.

With the refugees permitted to enter, the German Foreign Ministry, on behalf of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), lodged a protest with the Japanese Foreign Ministry, asserting that their acceptance into Manchukuo ‘was a threat to the goodwill between Japan and Germany’.Footnote ¹⁰ Consequently, Higuchi was summoned to the headquarters of the Guandong Army in the Manchukuo capital of Xinjing (formerly and currently known as Changchun; J. Shinkyō 新京). The person who interviewed him was none other than Tōjō Hideki (1884–1948), then Chief of Staff of that army and Japan’s prime minister on the eve of the war with the United States.Footnote ¹¹ Tōjō inquired about Higuchi’s actions, which had the potential to damage relations with Germany. According to Higuchi’s own account, he averred that Japan was not a vassal state of Germany—in other versions, it is Manchukuo that is not a vassal state of Japan (or Germany, for that matter)—and that Manchukuo had to make its own decisions. Remarkably, Tōjō agreed with him.Footnote ¹²

Higuchi’s relations with the Harbin Jewish community

Higuchi’s alleged act of benevolence and his decision to open the empire’s gates to Jewish refugees did not occur in isolation. Both the official purported reluctance to allow the refugees entry and Higuchi’s personal intervention were influenced by earlier encounters with Jews in East Asia and beyond. The most important of them, the first Far Eastern Jewish National Conference (J. Kyokutō Yudaya minzoku kaigi 極東ユダヤ民族会議) (hereafter Far Eastern Conference), occurred less than three months before the ‘Otpor Incident’. Higuchi’s involvement in organizing this gathering on 26 December 1937 is indicative of his relationship with the Jewish community in Harbin and serves as an immediate context for the events associated with his assistance to the refugees. The following section explores the personal and ideological background that may have facilitated his ‘benevolent’ actions.

The Bolshevik Revolution and Japan’s participation in the Siberian Intervention of 1918–1922 significantly raised awareness of Jews and their influence, both globally and in the region.Footnote ¹³ Beginning in the early 1920s, shortly after Japan became a prominent member of the League of Nations, its Ministry of Foreign Affairs started to recognize and address the ‘Jewish Problem’ (J. Yudayajin mondai ユダヤ人問題).Footnote ¹⁴ A decade later, with the occupation of Manchuria in 1931–1932, the Imperial Japanese Army encountered several Jewish communities, the most prominent being that of Harbin. In his autobiography, Higuchi highlighted his early warm relations with this community and the respect he was granted by its members.Footnote ¹⁵ Advocates of Higuchi’s heroism highlight these connections to argue that his kindness towards the refugees was a manifestation of his enduring commitment to the Jewish people and that his deeds were acknowledged by the Jewish community in Harbin. As the ultimate evidence of the strength of these ties, they mention that Higuchi’s name was inscribed in the ‘Golden Book’ (H. Sefer ha’zahav הזהב ספר) of the Jewish National Fund (JNF; H. Keren Kayemet LeYisrael לישראל הקיימת קרן) in recognition of this benevolence.Footnote ¹⁶ In the following section, we will explore the nature of these relationships and their relevance to our story.

According to Higuchi’s own testimony, his connections with Jews traced back to his encounter with them and their literature during his participation in the Siberian intervention.Footnote ¹⁷ He claimed to have lived in the home of a wealthy Jewish family in Vladivostok in 1919, but he never provided any proof of this claim nor even the name of the family. Several years later, while serving as a military attaché in Poland, he purportedly re-established his relations with Jews. Through his experiences in Poland, he contended that he had observed outright discrimination against the Jewish population and became aware of their plight. There are other, similar stories of Higuchi’s interactions with Jews, such as his investigative trip in 1928 to the Caucasus and his meeting there with an elderly Jewish man in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia), who told Higuchi of the persecution of his brethren and his hope that the Japanese emperor would become the saviour of the Jewish people. This encounter was critical, as writer Sagara Shunsuke (1920–1979) suggested in his book on Higuchi’s alleged 1938 efforts to ‘save Jews’: ‘He [Higuchi] saw 3,000 years of suffering on this poor, old man’s face.’Footnote ¹⁸ All of these early experiences are said to have shaped his later behaviour. Those who follow this line of argument believe that these formative encounters both cemented Higuchi’s sympathies for the Jewish people in their hour of need and gave Jews hope that Japan might play the role of their redeemer.

At the same time, Higuchi’s record of his affinity for Jews is more complex than it initially appears. In Harbin, where he was stationed in 1937, his interactions with Nazi Germany were not just long-standing but had recurred earlier that year. Kawamura Aizō (1897–1978), who served under his command in Harbin and spent some time with the military police, would later recall Higuchi’s numerous right-wing German acquaintances in the Wehrmacht. Kawamura was so concerned about this aspect of Higuchi’s character that he hesitated to introduce him to the ‘warm-hearted doctor’ Abraham Kaufman, director of the Jewish hospital of Harbin and the unofficial ‘intercessor’ (Heb. shtadlanשתדלן) for the Jewish community of Harbin, whom some considered the leader of the local Jews.Footnote ¹⁹ Indeed, Kawamura published this account three times. Yet, despite his concerns, he also expressed great admiration for Higuchi, indicating his complex view of him.Footnote ²⁰

The period when Higuchi assumed his role in Harbin was particularly volatile. With the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) in full swing, Higuchi was a busy man, as highlighted numerous times in the 300-page history of the Harbin tokumu kikan by Nishihara Yukio.Footnote ²¹ One thing that Nishihara did not mention, even in passing, was any meeting between Higuchi and Kaufman. However, we do know that two met shortly before and during the first Far Eastern Conference in December 1937. At that time, the number of Jews remaining in Harbin—only a decade earlier the city with the largest community in East Asia—fell to around 2,500.Footnote ²² Since Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 and the establishment of its puppet state, Manchukuo, five months later, Japan had implemented a divide-and-rule policy among the various ethnic groups residing there. In response to their deteriorating conditions, members of the Harbin Jewish community steadily left the city, mostly heading to Shanghai.Footnote ²³ The 1935 Soviet sale of the 2,489 kilometre-long Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) to Japan, officially to the Manchukuo government, served as additional impetus for local Jews, perhaps as many as a thousand, to leave. This event coincided with a massive reduction in the Russian population, with more than 20,000 Soviet passport holders repatriated to the Soviet Union between April and June.Footnote ²⁴

By the second half of the 1930s, Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany and, after the Anschluss, in Austria had escalated substantially, leading many to seek refuge abroad. However, with the United States largely closing its doors to Jewish immigration and Britain soon after imposing new limitations on immigration to Palestine, possible destinations were narrowing. Dr Kaufman and his associates in the Harbin community correctly anticipated an influx of Jews fleeing from Central Europe eastward and hoped to secure Higuchi’s support, and thereby his superiors’ approval, to allow these potential refugees passage through the Soviet-Manchukuo border. Dr Kaufman had another agenda item to present to Higuchi. Given the desperate situation for Jews in Europe, he proposed organizing a conference for representatives of various East Asian Jewish communities to meet in Harbin. It is conceivable that Higuchi also favoured this idea, aiming to showcase to the world the safety and security of East Asian Jewish communities under Japanese protection, in stark contrast to their perilous situation in Europe. From Higuchi’s perspective, this was a prima facie case of the unofficial Japanese military doctrine of ‘using the Jews’ (J. Yudayajin riyōron). Indeed, his meeting with Dr Kaufman was facilitated by the intervention of Inuzuka Koreshige (1890–1965) and Yasue Norihiro (1886–1950), in the Japanese navy and army, respectively, who were considered ‘experts’ on Jewish matters (J. Yudaya senmonka).Footnote ²⁵

The final months of 1937 marked a challenging period for Japan’s international status. Amid its brutal invasion of the Chinese mainland, reports of Japanese atrocities, particularly the Nanjing Massacre, dominated the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Concurrently, the formation and widespread criticism of the new state of Manchukuo further tarnished Tokyo’s reputation. With Japan set to host the 1940 Olympic Games, there was a dire need to improve the country’s image abroad. At the same time, the appalling treatment of Jews in Europe and their flight overseas presented a peculiar opportunity. If Higuchi and his colleagues could successfully navigate this situation, they believed it might sway influential Jewish figures in the West, particularly in the United States, to change their views on Japan and perhaps even consider investing in the nascent state of Manchukuo. Around this time, high-level Japanese officials began to explore the idea of leveraging ‘world Jewish money’ by resettling a large number of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe in their puppet state. The initiative, dubbed the ‘Fugu Plan’, initially sought to bring 50,000 German Jews to Manchuria. However, this scheme never reached even partial realization and had dissolved by 1940.Footnote ²⁶

Regardless of Higuchi’s personal sentiments, the motives he represented—those of his government—were primarily self-serving. While some saw the proposed Jewish Conference in Harbin as a means to attract foreign capital for Manchuria, Japan’s overarching goal was to avoid a rupture with the United States. As historian Maruyama Naoki underscores, leveraging the ‘Jewish card’ was a calculated strategy to serve Japan’s broader geopolitical interests.Footnote ²⁷ In essence, the Japanese fell victim here to their own antisemitic delusions regarding the supposed power of ‘Jewish money’ and ‘Jewish influence’, especially in the United States. With Higuchi’s go-ahead, most likely after consultation with the highest levels of the Guandong Army, and possibly even the War Ministry in Tokyo, the Far Eastern Conference was set in motion. Held in Harbin on 26 December 1937, it brought together 21 delegates from Jewish communities across Tianjin, Manzhouli, Hailar, Qiqihar, Kobe, Fengtian (now Shenyang), and Harbin, with potential representatives from Shanghai and Hong Kong unable to make it. Modest estimates recorded 600–700 Jews in the audience, although some sources suggest that number may have been much higher. Higuchi welcomed the attendees and in an emotional speech reminded them of their prosperity under Japan’s leadership.Footnote ²⁸

Some sources even claim he invoked the terrible memories of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, calling for humanitarianism and the establishment of a Jewish homeland. However, this would seem to contradict accounts of how Higuchi is said to have addressed Dr Kaufman’s primary concern: refugees. Sugita Rokuichi (1897–1976), a scholar of Jewish history, stated it plainly: the first conference and the subsequent two (held in the following two years) aimed to engage the Jewish community with Japan’s Manchuria policy, to placate them, and to exert pressure on them.Footnote ²⁹ In hindsight, these three conferences had no discernible impact on Japan’s Jewish policy. Manchukuo never opened its gates to a substantial number of Jewish refugees, the Harbin community continued to dwindle under Japanese rule, and by 1943, the Japanese authorities had interned most of the Jews living in the Japanese empire until its surrender.Footnote ³⁰

The various sources from this period paint a nuanced picture of Higuchi’s attitudes towards Jews. His initial encounter with members of this minority occurred during his tenure as a junior officer in Vladivostok. It was in this context that Japanese officers were first introduced to the rampant antisemitic attitudes of White Russians, along with the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a fabricated document purporting that there was a Jewish plot for global domination.Footnote ³¹ Higuchi, like many of his contemporaries stationed in this region, was exposed to this text.Footnote ³² Some individuals, such as Lieutenant General Shiōden Nobutaka (1878–1962), became extreme antisemites, while others, like Koyama Takeo, showed a degree of philosemitism. Where did Higuchi stand on this continuum? Yasue had played a leading role in the first translation of the Protocols into Japanese in 1924, and Higuchi, his classmate from the twenty-first class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy (graduating in 1909), held onto some of his ideas about Jews based on this translation up until the time he penned his autobiography.Footnote ³³ Seemingly unaware of the text’s discredited origins, Higuchi continued to view the Protocols as evidence of Jewish resistance to their traditional exclusion and their aspiration for a sovereign state, even towards the end of his life.

Germany was another source for Higuchi’s view of Jews. As David Kranzler noted, this country ‘provided the greatest stimulus to the budding Japanese antisemites’.Footnote ³⁴ Starting in 1927, Shiōden, Inuzuka, Yasue, and Higuchi either visited or were stationed in Germany.Footnote ³⁵ The impact of the Russian and German perspectives over Higuchi’s views of Jews cannot be overlooked. Even in the autumn of his life, he penned ‘the movement of the world revolution is in accordance with this record. Communism is also a cause of this. The central actors in the Russian Revolution were Jews.’Footnote ³⁶ Nazi persecution and the gathering of Jewish refugees in China in the late 1930s did not alter the retired officer’s perception that ‘the power of the Jews in Shanghai was so great’.Footnote ³⁷ Like many of his contemporaries in Japan, his views were a complex blend of prejudice and philosemitism. ‘History has proven,’ he acknowledged, ‘that the Jews possess talent and gift unequalled by any other people in the fields of science, art, and industry.’Footnote ³⁸ Elsewhere in his autobiography, Higuchi remarked that ‘Jews have red hair, but from what I have seen, most of them have black hair. When they are old, they have what is called an eagle nose, but not so much when they are young. In general, a person with dark hair has black eyes and dark skin. Therefore, the first people to be attracted to Japanese youths who go abroad must be Jewish women.’Footnote ³⁹

Personal convictions and actual behaviour do not necessarily align, but in Higuchi’s case, his actions were primarily dictated by the directives and ethos of his superiors. Upon his arrival in Harbin, the situation seemed favourable for the Jewish community. The domestic and, more significantly, international outcry following the kidnapping and subsequent macabre murder of Jewish resident Semion Kaspé in 1933, along with the acquittal of his convicted murderers in January 1937, led the Japanese authorities in Harbin, even before Higuchi’s arrival, to adopt a somewhat more considerate approach towards the local Jewish community.Footnote ⁴⁰ The precursor of this new trend was the aforementioned Major (later Colonel) Kawamura Aizō, the head of the special high police department of the Harbin Gendarmerie. He had close contact with Kaufman and reportedly transferred antisemitic policemen elsewhere, thereby creating a more Jewish-friendly atmosphere among his subordinates.Footnote ⁴¹ With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, several weeks prior to Higuchi’s arrival, the incentives for benevolent attitudes grew even greater. Increasingly isolated, Japan was desperate for positive public relations in the West and was willing to soften its treatment of ethnic minorities within its empire.

Indeed, several indications suggest that Higuchi was favourably disposed towards the local Jewish community or, at the very least, receptive to the appeals and initiatives of its leadership. Notably, there are indications that he compelled Konstantin Rodzaevsky (1907–1946), the leader of the Russian Fascist Party (R. Российская фашистская партия; Rossiyskaya fashistskaya partiya), a prime antisemitic group in Harbin, to resign from his newly appointed position as the head of the Bureau for Russian Émigrés. Rodzaevsky had reportedly failed to comply with Higuchi’s request to dissolve the party. Following his dismissal, the publication of the party’s antisemitic daily newspaper, Nash Put’, was banned.Footnote ⁴² Despite this alleged activity, within Jewish circles, evidence of Higuchi’s benevolence is scant, with the notable exception of his registration in the Golden Book—a point further examined below.

The sole testimony in Higuchi’s favour comes more than six decades later from Theodore (‘Teddy’) Kaufman (1924–2012), the son of Dr Abraham Kaufman. In his 2004 memoir, described by a leading historian of the community as ‘a limited nostalgic account’, the 80-year-old Kaufman fils had only a vague memory of the events in early 1938, when he was just 13.Footnote ⁴³ Higuchi, he nonetheless recalled, ‘was the first general to put an end to the atmosphere of pogroms in Harbin. I consider him to be one of the righteous men of the world, a Japanese man who was a true friend to the Jewish people.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Still, Higuchi’s actions during his time in Harbin were consistent with those of his superiors. Onouchi Hiroshi (d. 1984), who was an officer in the Special Branch of military intelligence in Harbin under Higuchi in 1938 and attended the first Far Eastern Conference, supported this perspective. In a 1978 interview, Onouchi elaborated on his superior’s behaviour:

At no point in the interview did Onouchi mention the ‘Otpor Incident’ nor the actual arrival of any refugees.Footnote ⁴⁶

The problems with Higuchi’s narrative of the ‘Otpor Incident’

If accepted as truth, Higuchi’s benevolence indeed seems to merit tremendous honour, even posthumously. His alleged act of saving thousands of Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution, while risking both his position and his country’s relations with its recent ally, would be a remarkable feat. However, significant gaps and inconsistencies within the narrative undermine its credibility, casting a shadow of doubt over Higuchi’s purported actions and, by extension, his heroism. As we will discuss in what follows, these concerns include the lack of eyewitness testimonies, incongruence with immigration trends of Jewish refugees and Japanese government policy, absence of evidence for German protests, and discrepancies with the Harbin Jewish community’s expressions of gratitude towards Higuchi’s help.

Summary: What happened at the Manchurian border in March 1938?

The significant gaps found in the narrative do not necessarily suggest it is completely without a basis in truth. Historical events are rarely shown in their entirety, as reality often exceeds the imagination in complexity and unpredictability, providing the seed for invented stories. Thus, what real events might have led Higuchi to propose this rescue narrative in the post-war era? As noted earlier, several individuals or small groups of Jews did arrive at the border point between Otpor and Manzhouli throughout 1938. A handful of reliable accounts indicate their presence. If we take Shōjima Tatsuto’s obscure testimony as accurate, on 8 March 1938, 18 individuals were stranded at the border. According to the story, they were prohibited from entering, and news of their predicament reached Dr Kaufman, who knew Higuchi well from their collaboration just over two months prior at the Far Eastern Conference. Higuchi’s intervention, possibly a personal favour to Kaufman, is said to have facilitated or expedited their entry into Manchukuo territory.

However, in his detailed post-war testimony, Kaufman tells a different story. Holding Japanese visas, the refugees, fewer than 30 in total, arrived directly in Harbin. Those who decided to stay in the city settled in a local hotel but were arrested by the Japanese police within a day. Rushing to the police station, Kaufman was able to negotiate their release using his connections in the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Yet, could Higuchi have been the grey eminence behind the quick release, and perhaps the arrest as well? Kaufman, for one, does not offer us a clue. In fact, he does not mention Higuchi anywhere in this entire affair or in any other part of his extensive account, despite positively referencing other Japanese officers.Footnote ⁸⁶ This omission is quite striking. Regardless of which testimony we choose to believe, be it that of the pro-Japanese Kaufman who was present at the scene or of some questionable source cited in Japanese secondary literature, it is evident that the incident was so minor that it went unnoticed at the time. There was no recorded protest from the German embassy concerning this matter, and the Jewish community in Harbin did not deem it significant enough to warrant immediate recognition. Higuchi’s name was neither documented in writing nor registered in the JNF’s ‘Golden Book’ until 1941, despite the possibility of doing so immediately afterwards. The delay suggests the registration was not an act of appreciation for the ‘saving of Jews’, a practice that only became widespread at least a decade after the establishment of Yad Vashem in 1953.

Overall, our analysis found no evidence supporting the occurrence of the ‘Otpor Incident’ or the heroic acts attributed to Higuchi. Contrary to the popular narrative in contemporary Japan, there were not a large number of Jewish refugees—certainly not 20,000 and very likely not even a hundred—stranded on the Soviet-Manchukuo border in early 1938 or at any time before or thereafter. In fact, according to Dr Kaufman’s post-war testimony, none of the few dozen refugees arriving in Harbin in early 1938 was stranded at the border. Accordingly, Higuchi’s supposed humanitarian act, as portrayed in the media today, is either a complete fabrication or, at best, an exaggerated account of a very minor incident in which, at most, several Jewish refugees were allowed to cross the border or released from Japanese arrest. These hypothetical passengers had other options for crossing the Soviet Union and, crucially, their lives were not at immediate risk. Therefore, if Higuchi did contribute to their passage or release, his involvement was on a much smaller scale than is widely believed. His role, at most, might have been limited to granting official approval for the passage of a small group of Jews en route to Shanghai or arranging for their release from arrest in Harbin. Contrary to the post-war legend, this action was so minor and aligned with general policy that it did not attract the attention of higher authorities outside Harbin, and consequently Higuchi faced no inquiry about it. Given this limited involvement, the recent accolades bestowed upon this army officer seem utterly disproportionate. The following section will examine how this narrative developed over time and explore the motives behind its promotion.

The post-war rise of a legend

The emergence of the narrative about the rescue of thousands of Jewish refugees stranded in Otpor is not a recent development. However, Higuchi’s progression from initial anonymity to eventual fame, through exposure and recognition, spanned almost half a century in a few distinct stages.Footnote ⁸⁷ Curiously, it took 15 years for this story to gain initial attention, with the earliest recorded mention of what would later be termed the ‘Otpor Incident’ dating to 1953. That year, author Mimura Saburō (1904–1975) published his work Yudaya mondai to uragaeshite mita Nihon rekishi (Japanese History Seen through the Reversal of the Jewish Problem), in which he asserted that Higuchi saved ‘some 30,000, 40,000 Jews’ fleeing Nazi persecution.Footnote ⁸⁸ Espousing earlier ideas about the common ancestry of the Japanese and Jewish peoples, the book portrayed figures previously known for their wartime antisemitism as philosemites. In one chapter, Mimura analysed the pre-war record of three military men: Yasue, Inuzuka, and Higuchi, suggesting that their interactions showcased the Jewish community’s recognition of a profound, spiritual bond between the two groups. For Mimura, the irrefutable proof of Higuchi’s heroism lay in his inclusion in the ‘Golden Book’:

A decade later, Yoshida Toshio echoed Mimura’s claims about Higuchi’s rescue in an article for the prestigious weekly Bungei Shunjū.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, apart from these and a few other minor references, the story remained virtually unknown throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The initial broader recognition in Japan came only with Higuchi’s passing in 1970. A day after his funeral, his efforts to aid Jewish refugees made headlines in the English-language press.Footnote ⁹¹ Within a month after Higuchi’s death, Kawamura Aizō published his own version of the story, recounting the influx of 20,000 refugees into the border from Germany. However, his very brief account added no new information.Footnote ⁹² Then, the seminal and most influential source regarding Higuchi’s exploits emerged with his own autobiography, published in 1971.Footnote ⁹³ Autobiographies are generally considered problematic as a sources of historical information, and this is especially true in the case of Higuchi’s book.Footnote ⁹⁴ A quick glance at the title of the autobiography, Reminiscences of the Commander of Attu and Kiska Island, suggests that Higuchi himself did not view the 1938 episode with Jewish refugees as the focal point of his career. Written by a frail and ageing man decades after the events and heavily edited posthumously, the book details the author’s initial interactions with Jews as well as the purported story of the rescue, explicitly restating the figure of 20,000 refugees. Reissued three more times, this unreliable autobiography has become the primary source for every subsequent reference to this episode and the core of the ‘Higuchi myth’.Footnote ⁹⁵

Another key figure in promoting the Higuchi legend during that formative decade was Sagara Shunsuke, a novelist specializing in military fiction, who focused particularly on the Asia-Pacific War. In 1971, Sagara commented on this incident in the national daily Asahi Shimbun, leading the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) to report on Higuchi’s pre-war efforts on behalf of Jewish refugees. Among other details, this article highlighted that Higuchi ‘dispatched a fleet of 12 trains to Otpor, transported the [20,000] refugees to Harbin, and provided them with food and temporary housing in the Harbin military barracks. About 5,000 of the Jews stayed in Harbin, while the others went on to Shanghai and beyond.’Footnote ⁹⁶ Two years later, Sagara’s writings further solidified the vivid impression left by Higuchi’s memoir. Reissued several times, his first of two novels on this affair, Ryūhyō no umi—ano gunshireikan no ketsudan (The Sea of Drift Ice: A Military Commander’s Decision), included strong assertions about Higuchi’s deeds.Footnote ⁹⁷ Despite these references, major books published in English dealing with the state of Jewish refugees in wartime East Asia remained oblivious to the story. While focusing on the plight of Jewish communities in Manchuria and referencing Higuchi’s involvement in the Far Eastern Conference, based on interviews with individuals involved, neither David Kranzler’s pioneering Japanese, Nazis, and Jews (1976) nor Marvin Tokayer’s oft-cited The Fugu Plan (1979) mentioned the ‘Otpor Incident’, not even in passing.Footnote ⁹⁸

Higuchi and the ‘Otpor Incident’ only began to receive significant attention in the 1990s, gaining not just national but also international exposure. That decade witnessed some of the most important publications on Jewish-Japanese relations, all of which embraced Higuchi’s narrative as factual, relying on his autobiography as their principal or exclusive source on this topic. Israeli historian Ben-Ami Shillony, in his work The Jews and the Japanese (1991), stated that Higuchi, alongside Yasue, was charged with executing the policy outlined by the Five Ministers Conference, and claimed that he ‘allowed thousands of Jewish refugees to settle in Manchuria’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Shillony also noted that the rescue efforts undertaken by Higuchi and Yasue led the Jewish community in Harbin to commemorate them in the ‘Golden Book’ and incited a protest from the German ambassador in Tokyo, ‘but the Japanese government ignored his protests’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Similarly, David G. Goodman and Miyazawa Masanori, in their highly acclaimed Jews in the Japanese Mind (1995), briefly noted that Higuchi ‘made the decision to admit Jewish refugees to Manchukuo’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ They too reiterated the narrative that Nazi Germany’s protest over this decision was communicated to the Japanese Foreign Ministry and quoted Higuchi’s response to the inquiry from Tōjō directly from his 1971 autobiography.Footnote ¹⁰² A year later, Hillel Levine suggested in his bestseller In Search of Sugihara (1996) that Higuchi ‘may have been anti-Nazi’, noting that he ‘even rescued a trainload of nearly frozen Jewish refugees who had been stranded on the border in late 1938’.Footnote ¹⁰³

This widespread acceptance of Higuchi’s narrative in academic writings notwithstanding, the remarkable ascent of his legend has unfolded mostly during the last two decades. Wikipedia may provide a measurable indicator of this escalating interest. The first Wikipedia entry about Higuchi was created in March 2004 in Japanese. Initially extremely brief, this entry consisted of just two sentences, mentioning only that Higuchi ‘saved 20,000 Jews from Nazi German persecution’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Since its modest beginnings, this entry has been edited hundreds of times, becoming extremely long and elaborate.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ It has attracted significant attention and was replicated and modified in an additional 15 languages. The initial English Wikipedia entry for Higuchi was created in 2008, the same day as the German entry but a year after the Korean entry. Within its concise four-line description, it claimed that Higuchi ‘allowed approximately 20,000 Jewish refugees from Europe to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Manchuria’.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The explicit name ‘Otpor Incident’ first appeared in the Japanese and English Wikipedia entries about Higuchi in November 2006 and March 2016, respectively.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Initial scepticism about Higuchi’s testimony emerged decades after the ‘Otpor Incident’ was first reported. In 2000, writer and publisher Watanabe Katsumasa was probably the first to question the narrative, especially the alleged number of refugees arriving at Otpor in March 1938. He noted that by the end of 1938, the entire Jewish population in Manchukuo was roughly 5,400, with an additional 5,000 in Shanghai.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Three years later, Austrian-Japanese scholar Martin Kaneko offered a detailed review of the reports concerning the ‘Otpor Incident’. In two books, initially in Japanese and later revised for a German translation in 2008, Kaneko scrutinized the number of refugees purportedly saved by Higuchi. Based on JTB data, he suggested that no more than 5,000 Jews crossed the Soviet-Manchukuo border from 1938 to June 1941, a period when the German offensive against the Soviet Union closed this escape route for European Jews.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ However, he deduced that in March 1938, the number crossing did not exceed 18.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In 2008, Kaneko concluded that due to the absence of sources proving the authenticity of ‘the current versions of these events [the “Otpor Incident”] must be a fabrication by nationalistic Japanese forces’.Footnote ¹¹¹ However, he refrained from elaborating further on this possibility and the motives behind it.

Critically, neither Kaneko’s insights nor Watanabe’s scepticism has gained traction or acknowledgement in media circles or academic discourse. By the time Kaneko published his book in German, there had already been several attempts by Japanese to nominate Higuchi for Yad Vashem’s ‘The Righteous Among the Nations’ status, recognizing him as a saviour of Jews during the Holocaust. Among other efforts, the Japanese embassy in Israel has reportedly been in discussions with Yad Vashem since 2005 regarding this nomination, but without success.Footnote ¹¹² A formal request for nomination was reportedly submitted as recently as 2017. However, Yad Vashem has declined these attempts primarily due to the lack of testimony or documentation attesting to the veracity of the affair, which is a fundamental criterion for such a nomination.Footnote ¹¹³ This lack of official recognition did not prevent the Israeli embassy in Tokyo from sending olive saplings to Ogaki, Higuchi’s hometown, in 2009. This gesture was regarded by its citizens as an expression of gratitude to the army officer and a commemoration of his accomplishments.Footnote ¹¹⁴

During the 2010s, several individuals emerged as key promoters of recognizing Higuchi’s rescue story. The first key person has been the lieutenant general’s grandson, Higuchi Ryūichi (b. 1946), a conductor and music professor at a private university in Tokyo, who earned his doctorate from Tübingen University. Since 1999, Professor Higuchi has been heavily involved in each of the three reissues of his grandfather’s autobiography.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Then, following his retirement about a decade later, he intensified his efforts to promote his grandfather’s legacy, delivering lectures domestically and travelling internationally to disseminate the story and gather testimony related to the event. Among other places, Professor Higuchi visited Israel in 2018 with the support of the Foreign Ministry and delivered a public lecture at the Japanese embassy in Tel Aviv. His photos with the certificate of registration in the ‘Golden Book’ and a meeting with descendants of (presumably) refugees appeared in various media outlets.

Even more crucial for these commemoration efforts was the involvement of the late Kase Hideaki (1936–2022). A prolific writer on issues of foreign policy and one of Japan’s leading historical revisionists, Kase was interested in the story of Higuchi for many years but became involved in his commemoration only in the late 2010s.Footnote ¹¹⁶ As head of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, as well as a member of other similar ‘revisionist’ groups, he fought indefatigably to alter negative images of imperial Japan and its conduct in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Asia-Pacific War. His influence enabled him to garner numerous new supporters for the cause, significantly contributing to the growing recognition of and support for Higuchi. Meanwhile, Kase viewed himself as a ‘friend of the Jews’, having collaborated on the publication of books on Jewish topics since the 1970s.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Consequently, the ‘Otpor Incident’ presented him with a unique opportunity to leverage his understanding of the wartime Jewish experience for the advancement of his revisionist goals.

Together with Professor Higuchi, Kase established the Association in Honor of Lieutenant General Higuchi (J. ‘Higuchi Rikugun Chūjō Kenshōkai’) and brought the story to the media’s attention. The association quickly gathered many willing enthusiasts enchanted by this wartime benevolence. Kase also managed to recruit international backing from several American and Israeli Jews, including the Chabad Lubavitch rabbi in Tokyo, who were willing to lend support to the story without scrutinizing its credibility.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Another recent figure promoting the memory of the ex-lieutenant general has been the senior journalist Okabe Noburu of the conservative national newspaper Sankei Shimbun. Having previously served as the newspaper’s Moscow and London bureau chief, and more recently as a member of the Tokyo head office, Okabe possesses a strong passion for matters concerning Japan’s historical image, focusing on the Asia-Pacific War. In this capacity, he has authored a book and numerous articles in both Japanese and English, underscoring Higuchi’s wartime achievements.Footnote ¹¹⁹

In the early 2020s, Higuchi’s recognition in Japan had reached the stage of fame. His humanitarian efforts to save Jewish refugees garnered extensive coverage, with numerous articles about the ‘Otpor Incident’ appearing in the local, national, and international press.Footnote ¹²⁰ This was complemented by several documentary films and TV coverage.Footnote ¹²¹ In terms of tangible memory, the last several years have proved momentous. In September 2020, a small museum for the memory of Higuchi was inaugurated in Ishikari, Hokkaido, marking the fiftieth anniversary of his death.Footnote ¹²² The location was chosen because the retired lieutenant general had stayed in the region after the war, but also because the organizers wanted ‘people to know about how he tried to protect Hokkaido from the Soviet Union’. Nevertheless, more than half of the permanent exhibition is devoted to Higuchi’s involvement in the rescue of Jews.Footnote ¹²³ The year 2022 appeared to be the zenith of commemoration of Higuchi’s heroism and his purported rescue of the Jewish refugees. The celebrations that year culminated in October with the unveiling of a life-size statue of Higuchi at the Izanagi Shinto Shrine in his home island of Awaji.Footnote ¹²⁴ A month later, a large conference was held in Tokyo commemorating the memory of Higuchi, ‘the protector of Hokkaido, the savior of Jews’, with major domestic and foreign supporters, including the singer Ishii Merehisa (b. 1965), in attendance. In May 2023, some hundred guests attended the unveiling ceremony of the Kiichiro Higuchi Monument at the Engakuji Buddhist temple in the old capital of Kamakura, south of Tokyo.Footnote ¹²⁵

At the same time, the legend of Higuchi has recently encountered its first significant challenges. Starting in 2022, a few brief articles began expressing serious doubts about the truth of the ‘Otpor Incident’, sparking a near debate in the media.Footnote ¹²⁶ By the end of 2022, Kase Hideaki’s passing and the subsequent announcement of the dissolution of the Association in Honor of Higuchi marked a turning point.Footnote ¹²⁷ Likewise, Professor Higuchi has become more cautious, refraining from associating his grandfather with the ‘miracles’ previously attributed to him. In the 2022 edition of the autobiography, he adjusted the number of refugees ‘saved’ to ‘several thousand’ and included a detailed preface to the chapter on Jewish refugees. Moreover, in lectures held in Vienna in 2023 and Kyoto in 2024, Professor Higuchi no longer mentioned the ‘Otpor Incident’, focusing instead on his grandfather’s establishment of ‘a pro-Jewish policy first in Manchuria and then within the Japanese government’.Footnote ¹²⁸

Indeed, the current focus on Higuchi’s heroism has shifted slightly. More cautious supporters claim his main contribution was the alleged establishment of the ‘Higuchi Route’ (J. Higuchi rūto) through which 20,000 Jewish refugees supposedly escaped Europe.Footnote ¹²⁹ In other words, by allowing Jews to cross the border in March 1938 and by formulating government policy towards them later that year, Higuchi is credited with opening the gates for the large-scale flight of Jewish refugees before the Asia-Pacific War. This notion is as baseless as the earlier concepts of the ‘Otpor Incident’, as it allows Higuchi to claim credit for any Jewish refugee arriving in East Asia until 1941, whether by sea or by rail, and whether directly to Shanghai or via Vladivostok. Despite this incredible claim and Professor Higuchi’s reservations, as of early 2024, the Higuchi Kiichiro Museum’s website continues to credit him with the saving of 20,000 refugees as his principal achievement.Footnote ¹³⁰

Underlying motives behind this story and its recent success

Our conclusion that the ‘Otpor Incident’ may never have occurred, certainly not under the circumstances touted today and on a scale deserving to be referred to as an ‘incident’, necessitates an explanation. What could have been the motives for exaggerating a minor episode in which a small group of refugees was allowed to enter Manchukuo and turning it into an epic story of benevolence and heroism? The following section is dedicated to analysing these motives, which are divided into two periods: first, Higuchi’s reasons for promoting this story, and secondly, the narrative’s escalation, particularly during the last two decades.

Higuchi’s personal motives for concocting this story in the post-war era are relatively straightforward, taking into account the sociocultural context of the time and the psychological incentives involved. In the early 1950s, former officers who had past dealings with Jewish refugees and communities, many of whom harboured certain antisemitic convictions, sought to redeem themselves by adopting a positive stance towards Jews in general and the newly established Jewish state in particular. Inuzuka, previously an ardent believer in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, exemplifies this change. Charged with war crimes shortly after the war, he played the ‘Jewish card’ once more, this time for his own benefit. During his trial, he presented a silver cigarette case he had received in 1941 from the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States as proof of his wartime benevolence.Footnote ¹³¹ Inuzuka was acquitted, and in 1952 he founded the Japan-Israel Association (J. Nihon Isuraeru Kyōkai), serving as its president until his death in 1965, despite increasing opposition from within the Tokyo Jewish community.Footnote ¹³²

Mimura Saburō, the first writer to bring Higuchi’s story to public attention in 1953, exemplifies another notable shift. Once a communist who was forced to undergo ideological conversion (J. tenkō; lit. ‘changing direction’), he became the person behind the public conversion of several individuals involved in pre-war and wartime Jewish policy from outspoken antisemites to philosemites. In Mimura’s view, anyone in wartime Japan who took an interest in Jews was a philosemite, which he considered ‘the highest expression of Japanese patriotism’.Footnote ¹³³ Higuchi, with no apparent record of antisemitism and having received a token of gratitude from the Harbin Jewish community, was an ideal candidate for this portrayal. Mimura’s fascination with Jewish topics began after the war, leading to the publication of his first book on the subject in 1950.

Between the publication of his two books, the Japanese translation of Anne Frank’s A Diary of a Young Girl was released in December 1952, quickly gaining widespread acclaim.Footnote ¹³⁴ This book topped the bestseller list in 1953, and with approximately six million copies sold to date, it has become one of the most popular literary works in post-war Japan.Footnote ¹³⁵ While it was interpreted in Japan as a narrative of universal suffering and the victimhood of war—a sentiment deeply resonant with the Japanese in the early 1950s—Jewish suffering had by then emerged as a legitimate topic of interest. Eight months later, Mimura released his second book focusing on Japan’s wartime relationship with Jews, this time highlighting Higuchi’s humanitarianism. This strategically timed publication portrayed the army general as a saviour of Jews, subtly hinting to readers a heroic figure who could have saved young Anne Frank.Footnote ¹³⁶ Higuchi, his grandson contends, never spoke about his war experience and the rescue of Jews.Footnote ¹³⁷ Yet, Mimura’s book leaves no room for doubt about the origins of the story. It details a meeting with Higuchi at his Miyazaki residence, explicitly indicating that the retired lieutenant general himself was the source for the narrative Mimura crafted.Footnote ¹³⁸

In the late 1960s, as the ageing and reticent Higuchi was writing his autobiography, the story of his humanitarian assistance to thousands of refugees had already been circulating for close to two decades. Not only was there no turning back, but the incentive to repeat it was growing. By then, several years after the end of the Eichmann trial, the Holocaust and notions of Jewish tribulation had become well-known in Japan. Japanese reporters followed the trial closely and the media was very sympathetic to Jews.Footnote ¹³⁹ In addition, in 1968, the aforementioned story of Sugihara Chiune was first reported in the Japanese media.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ This brief yet impactful recognition of this wartime diplomat and the media coverage of his benevolence might have inspired Higuchi to highlight his own purported compassion for the Jews in a book of his own.

Higuchi’s autobiography marked a significant change of course, as this retired army officer had not shown any interest in Jews or curiosity in the incoming refugees since his stint in Harbin. Notably, he never visited Israel or even its embassy in Tokyo, as Sugihara did in 1969, nor did he join colleagues, such as Inuzuka, in any public activities related to this issue. For Higuchi, the 25-page chapter on his Otpor exploit was not a major episode in his autobiography, as its title suggests, especially in comparison to his role on the island of Kiska, or, in terms of space devoted, to his experiences in Siberia and Poland. Nonetheless, now, in his twilight years, he seemed intent on being remembered not merely as a military leader intricately involved in the nation’s defeat but as a humanitarian known for his profound benevolence. Boosting the popularity and sales of his book could have been another motive. In May 1970, five months before Higuchi’s death, the book Nihonjin to Yudayajin (The Japanese and the Jews) was an instant success.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Selling over a million copies, it became Japan’s bestseller that year. Suddenly, the topic of Jews, even when contrasted with Japanese as the book did, became a source of public interest and robust sales.

The figure of 20,000 refugees Higuchi mentioned in his autobiography, perhaps echoed the prevalent estimate of Jewish refugees in Shanghai at its peak, around 1941. A few writers have offered other explanations for this figure. Watanabe Katsumasa suggested that Higuchi might have been thinking of approximately 20,000 Jewish city dwellers who had settled in the Jewish Autonomous Region known as Birobidzhan. Higuchi noted that since they were unsuited for agricultural labour, these individuals decided to move en masse to nearby Manchukuo en route to Shanghai.Footnote ¹⁴² Lately, Higuchi’s grandson has argued that at the time of writing his autobiography, the elderly and confused retired officer simply made a mistake regarding the number of refugees.Footnote ¹⁴³ In the new edition of his grandfather’s autobiography, he amended the figure to ‘several thousands’. Other proponents of the story have gone so far as to suggest that the figure was made up posthumously, perhaps by the editor, since Higuchi’s manuscript, kept in the archives of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, carries the figure ‘thousands of people’ (J. nan sen’nin), or was simply change ‘due to a typo’.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ However, as Mimura’s book indicates, it was the Higuchi himself who initially spoke of even more than 20,000. Regardless of Higuchi’s motives for using this figure, and despite recent research indicating a lower actual number, this rounded figure had become the accepted approximation and was well known in his time.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

During the last decade, the drive behind Professor Higuchi and right-wing revisionist Kase Hideaki’s actions has taken on a broader scope. After his retirement, Professor Higuchi began his efforts to honour his grandfather’s memory, initially failing to fully grasp the nuanced discrepancies and complexities of the narrative. He has dedicated himself to not only bolstering his grandfather’s legacy but also to uplifting Japan’s national image. Kase, for one, saw the narrative as an opportunity to glorify the essence of imperial Japan. He challenged the widely held belief that Sugihara was dismissed due to his disobedience to the Foreign Ministry’s instructions. In contrast, Kase esteemed Higuchi as a symbol of the military’s virtues, positing that his actions cast a favourable light on other notable figures within this institution, which had faced scrutiny in the post-war era. However, the story’s significant ascension cannot be solely attributed to the dedication of a loyal family member, a fervent nationalist, and their collaborative association.Footnote ¹⁴⁶

It was the geopolitical and cultural circumstances of the 1990s, we argue, that played a pivotal role in Higuchi’s rise to fame. In that decade, the Japanese public were faced with mounting new evidence for Japanese wartime atrocities. This included revelations about the horrifying exploits of Biological Warfare Unit 731, the mass coercion of foreign women (known by the euphemism ‘comfort women’) to serve Japanese military men sexually, and further testimonies about the Nanjing Massacre.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ With prime ministers Hosokawa Morihiro and Murayama Tomiichi expressing remorse for a war of aggression in speeches given in 1993 and 1995, it seemed at first that Japan had entered a new age. As the Cold War ended, Yoshida Yutaka suggests, both ‘the Japanese government and business circles concluded that the historical consciousness problem constitutes an obstacle both to Japan’s becoming a “great power” (J. taikoku) and to the strengthening of the Japan-U.S. alliance’.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

However, right-wing circles were quick to fight back. In 1997, they founded the Society for the Production of New History Textbooks (Atarashii rekishi kyōkasho o tsukuru-kai), which denied the recent acknowledgements of wrongdoing while trying hard to improve the image of their country both domestically and internationally by rewriting its recent history. Its efforts concern particularly the nation’s conduct in Asia during the so-called Fifteen-Year War, referring to the period from the Mukden Incident of September 1931 to Japan’s surrender in August 1945. The irony is that revisionists have resorted increasingly to involving Jews in their revised histories. The domestic discourse about the help given to Jews linked the Japanese experience with the Jews and the Holocaust, echoing Pierre Nora’s statement that ‘Whoever says memory, says Shoah’ cannot be overstated. It was during the 1990s that Sugihara began to gain fame in Japan, following a book authored by his wife, the film ‘Schindler List’, and political pressure on the Foreign Ministry to issue an apology to his family.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Likewise, contemporary narratives about Higuchi’s purported rescue are tied to right-wing authors and groups, and have consistently attempted to recast the Japanese empire through Higuchi’s supposed heroism. Unlike Nazi Germany, current nationalist circles contend, Japan befriended the Jews and strived to save them.

Higuchi and the ‘Otpor Incident’ have become the epitome of these rescue efforts. For Kase, for example, Higuchi represented the virtuousness of imperial Japan itself while serving a larger cause and leaders. Kase was not interested in this general per se since he was a figure of minor importance, who was not even put on trial by the Allies. His holy grail was Tōjō Hideki, who eventually served as Japan’s wartime prime minister and soon after the war ended became the main figure among the Japanese leadership to be tried and found guilty in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. In the late 1990s, Kase was involved as a consultant in the production of the melodramatic film Puraido: unmei no shunkan プライド 運命の瞬間 (‘Pride: The Fateful Moment’; 1998) which aimed to reverse historical reputation of Tōjō during and after his trial. It is not surprising, then, that he elaborated now on Higuchi’s testimony that he did not act alone. It was Tōjō, Kase insisted in an interview not long before his death, who made the ultimate decisions: ‘Higuchi took the initiative, but Tōjō approved.’Footnote ¹⁵⁰

The ascent of ultra-nationalism into the mainstream during Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s tenure (2012–2020) played a critical role in catapulting Higuchi’s legacy from recognition to widespread fame. As the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, Abe did more than any other politician before him to redefine the modern history of Japan. As part of this mission, he took part in various events commemorating wartime figures who contributed to the national image Abe envisioned. Visiting the pre-war Japanese consulate building in Kaunas where Sugihara issued transit visas to Jewish refugees, he stated ‘I am really very proud of him as a Japanese.’ He echoed this sentiment three months later at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.Footnote ¹⁵¹ In 2021, Abe also praised Higuchi, along with Sugihara, for ‘protecting many Jews, and whose contribution to the Jewish people is honored in Israel’s Golden Book’.Footnote ¹⁵²

Like Kase, Abe was a senior member of Nippon Kaigi (lit. Japan Conference), Japan’s largest far right-wing organization. Founded in 1997 and gathering a membership exceeding 35,000, this conservative mass movement and highly influential lobbying group is keenly interested in shaping Japan’s image and its contemporary historiography.Footnote ¹⁵³ The emergence of Nippon Kaigi is linked to the concurrent declining narrative of post-war Japan as a victim. In the early 1990s, Japan was confronted with an increasing amount of new and horrific evidence of its wartime atrocities.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ The backlash that followed led to a strong movement of historical revisionism later in that decade, coinciding with a global trend of historical revisionism that emerged in the wake of the Soviet Union’s fall and the end of the Cold War.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ Nippon Kaigi was one such platform of revisionism. Since its inception, it has been deeply driven by resentment towards Japan’s post-war settlement and the portrayal of Japanese modern history, particularly its wartime chapter, both at home and abroad.Footnote ¹⁵⁶

In his capacity as a special adviser of Nippon Kaigi, Abe may illustrate some of the attraction that Higuchi and similar figures, who purportedly helped Jews, hold for contemporary Japanese. With growing public fascination with this army general, official Japan did not lag behind in capitalizing on his potential contribution to embellish the image of wartime Japan.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Even after Abe’s resignation in 2020, the Japanese government continued to take part in the dissemination and preservation of Higuchi’s memory. It has recently proffered increasing visibility, and arguably, legitimacy to narratives of Higuchi’s heroism, including sponsoring international travel and lectures for his grandson. A case in point is the invitation extended by the Embassy of Japan to the Holy See to Professor Higuchi to give a presentation in 2023. The embassy posted online that ‘General Kiichiro Higuchi has been venerated in Japan as the saviour of the Jewish refugees in Manchuria from the last war.’Footnote ¹⁵⁸ During the same trip, Higuchi gave a presentation at the University of Vienna alongside the Japanese ambassador to Austria, Mizuuchi Ryūta, who had earlier translated Medzini’s Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun into Japanese.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ In Ambassador Mizuuchi’s presentation, as shown in his slides posted by the Japanese Embassy to Austria, he suggested that Higuchi’s actions provide evidence for Japan’s official policy of racial harmony.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

In this context, Lieutenant General Higuchi, akin to the consul Sugihara before him, emerged as a boon for right-wing revisionists. Initially, his path to post-war heroism seemed less likely than Sugihara’s, as Mikio Ezaki, the director of the Kiichiro Higuchi Memorial Museum, candidly notes: ‘because Higuchi was a military man, it was historically difficult for his achievements to be honestly evaluated since soldiers were synonymous to evil’.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Yet, as the sole individual purportedly involved in a significant act of humanitarianism during that period, Higuchi holds an undeniable advantage over Sugihara precisely because of his military background and his connections with Japan’s wartime leadership. Equally significant, and unlike Sugihara, Higuchi never claimed to have defied orders while aiding Jews. On the contrary, he acted with the explicit consent of his superiors, most notably General Tōjō, with the only recorded protest to his actions allegedly coming from Nazi Germany. Furthermore, unlike other military figures associated with Jewish affairs, such as Yasue and Inuzuka, Higuchi did not leave behind a body of antisemitic publications. Thus, the current celebration of Higuchi and the enthusiasm for his story seem to be both intentional and meticulously planned, portraying his humanitarian efforts as influenced by his role within the Japanese military structure and as reflecting his entire cohort and service.Footnote ¹⁶²

All in all, the commemoration of Higuchi in contemporary Japan operates on two fronts. Domestically, it serves as a convenient diversion, enabling ordinary Japanese to identify with a wartime humanitarian compatriot and take pride in him, while engaging with the suffering of a distant Other, even as they avoided a full acknowledgment of their own historical misdeeds in Asia. Internationally, right-wing activists and, to some extent also, official Japan have increasingly leveraged Higuchi’s memory to enhance Japan’s wartime image and, by extension, its present image and soft power as well. By highlighting the benevolence that Higuchi and a few others extended to Jewish refugees, contemporary Japan can sidestep and potentially neutralize criticism from its Asian neighbours regarding colonial exploitation and wartime atrocities.