Italian writer visits Hokkaido to restore honor of youth accused of spying in WWII (Pt. 3)

SAPPORO — After visiting the temple in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, where she and her family took refuge when the area was carpet bombed by the United States in 1945, Italian writer Dacia Maraini traveled to Sapporo — the first location she and her family, including her cultural anthropologist father Fosco (1912-2004), lived in Japan in 1938.

This is the third part of a Mainichi Shimbun series about now 87-year-old Maraini, who spent years of her childhood in an internment camp in Japan during World War II. Upon her recent visit to the country, she looked back on the friendship with a young Japanese man whose life was turned upside down due to false spying accusations.

Remembering Hiroyuki Miyazawa

Hiroyuki Miyazawa, then an engineering student at Hokkaido Imperial University (now Hokkaido University), was arrested on Dec. 8, 1941, over espionage charges and subsequently detained. He died in 1947, two years after his release, at age 27.

Miyazawa met Maraini’s father when the latter was researching cultural anthropology at the university. The two became acquainted through the “Societe du Coeur” (society of the heart), a club founded by Miyazawa and other students in June 1939 to have multilingual discussions with foreign teachers at the university. With American English teacher Harold Lane and his wife, Pauline, leading the gathering, the members met about once a week at the foreign teachers’ dorm, and among them was Fosco.

Maraini’s family learned of Miyazawa’s shocking fate in Kyoto, after they left Hokkaido for Fosco’s teaching job at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University). On Dec. 8, 1941, at the start of the Pacific War, Japan’s security authorities mobilized the Special Higher Police to carry out a nationwide mass arrest of suspected spies under the name of “wartime special measures.” Their club became a target, and Miyazawa was arrested on suspicion of violating the now defunct Military Secrets Protection Law by leaking information about a naval air station in Hokkaido to the Lanes, who were also arrested. This later became known as the “Miyazawa-Lane incident” where innocent civilians were falsely accused of espionage.

Anger over injustice

Maraini’s latest visit to Hokkaido was realized after a Sapporo-based citizens’ group studying the incident invited her. Wanting to restore Miyazawa’s honor, she pushed her ailing body to travel all the way to Japan’s northernmost prefecture.

“Militaristic politics maintains its system by creating an enemy,” said Maraini, about the background to the wrongful arrests, in a talk she held at Hokkaido University, her first time back since 1941. She continued, “My anger is directed at injustice. I go anywhere where there’s injustice.”

Suspected of spying for just talking with Americans

The Marainis reunited with Miyazawa in Tokyo following the end of the war. The family returned to Italy in February 1946, and a year later, on Feb. 22, 1947, Miyazawa passed away from tuberculosis he contracted while in prison.

In Miyazawa’s photo album kept in the Hokkaido University Archives is a picture of him and the Maraini family on a skiing trip. In a blank space of an album page, Miyazawa wrote a poem for Maraini, describing the young Italian girl fondly calling his name “like a younger sister.” Maraini explained that Miyazawa was a good friend who was kind to her family. But she said the Japanese government made him an enemy of the state.

Keeping memories for the future

Two days after her talk at the campus, Maraini met with Hokkaido University Vice President Fumihiko Yamamoto, asking him to build a monument at the site where the foreign teachers’ dorm used to stand to pass down the historical facts behind the Miyazawa-Lane incident. Yamamoto responded, “To learn history is to build a better future and better society. I understand (Maraini’s wish).”

Seventy-nine years after the war’s end, Maraini’s visit to Japan reflected her strong sense of urgency that people’s memories of war are fading, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasing conflict in the Middle East.

Maraini emphasized that societies must keep the memories of the past, however ugly it may be, to build a future and not repeat the same mistakes.

(Japanese original by Hiroyuki Katano, Hokkaido News Department)

Profile: Dacia Maraini

Dacia Maraini was born in Florence, Italy, in 1936, and made her literary debut in 1962 with her novel “La vacanza” (The Vacation). She won the Formentor Prize in 1963 for “L’eta del malessere” (The Age of Malaise) and the Premio Campiello literary prize in 1990 for “La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria” (The Silent Duchess). With her works having been translated overseas, she is an international writer. In November last year, she published her autobiography “Vita mia” (My Life), which recounts her childhood internment in Japan. It has not yet been translated into Japanese.

Profile: Fosco Maraini (1912 – 2004)

Fosco Maraini, a cultural anthropologist and photographer, was born in Florence, Italy. He came to Japan in 1938 and engaged in research on the Ainu people at Hokkaido Imperial University (now Hokkaido University). Following Italy’s surrender in World War II, while he was teaching Italian at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University), he was sent to Nagoya where he was interned as an enemy alien with his family. After the war, Fosco returned to Italy. He came back to Japan in 1953, traveling the country and producing documentary films. He taught Japanese literature at the University of Florence and served as a visiting professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto.

(This is part 3 of a series. Click/tap here for part 1 and here for part 2.)