Also, if two things can be true then two things can also be untrue.

Also #16

Yesterday, August 6th, 2025 marked two decidedly different anniversaries: the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima 80 years ago and, uhm, my debut on the world stage a mere 50 years ago. It is an odd thing, to be an American, having lived most of my adult life in Japan, and to share this particular day with one steeped in such tragic history.

I’ve never been to Hiroshima, but I have been to Nagasaki. It’s a beautiful city with a very deep history of change and resilience against overwhelming forces. If you’re planning a trip to Japan, consider Nagasaki.

On the one hand, I want to celebrate my birthday¹. But I feel the need to maintain an awareness of how it looks, how it might be perceived for me to be celebrating when so many are remembering and memorializing a tragedy. Yet, in recent years, we’ve seen the idea that two things can be true take hold and become a tidy bit of armchair philosophy firmly ensconced into the zeitgeist.

So, on the one hand, it’s my birthday! On the other, thousands of people died horribly on this day 80 years ago. These are both true things. Everything in between gets a little fuzzy.

What I mean is, sure, it’s my birthday. But when, exactly? A lot of my friends and family do not live near me and time zones are a thing (two true things) and that means that, according to the well wishes I get, my birthday starts sometime around noon on the 5th and ends usually when I get a card from my grandmother a week or two later. But really, as much as I wish it were, my birthday isn’t all that consequential. The bombing of Hiroshima was. That’s where the grey area starts.

Right now, there’s a certain anti-immigrant, “Japan First” party that has just gained several seats in the Japanese government. Long-term immigrants to Japan, like myself, have been discussing this with a mixture of disgust, caution, and even fear. The plans laid out by this group are nonsensical at best and deliberately obtuse at worst. They call for loyalty oaths and disallowing non-Japanese to own property in Japan among other extremist policies. But the most disturbing, from a macro level view is that they seem to want to revise certain history books. Like the ones that discuss the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Obviously, I spend a lot of time thinking about language. Two words that are commonly used to talk about Japan and the second world war are victim and aggressor. And, like the difference between terrorist and freedom fighter², how you define the terms says more about who you are than it does about the issue being discussed.

I grew up learning in my history classes that the bombs were necessary to get the Japanese leadership to stop fighting. If a massive, overwhelming strike was not undertaken, the leadership would pressure the citizenry to fight until the very last man resulting in even more devastation. When I came to Japan and I looked at a few of the textbooks I saw being offered, their take on things was different. They painted Japan as a desperate nation who had to expand their borders lest they be preyed upon by stronger powers. The bombings were an over-reaction on the part of the U.S. and they destroyed a part of the Japanese character as much as they did the land. If two things can be true, then the reverse is also true: two things can be untrue.

One popular lament among people who live in Japan is that it is both living far in the future but is also stuck deep in the past. And again, I’ll say that neither of these things is true so much as neither of them is untrue. Another example, Japan is unfailingly polite but Japan is also cold and aloof. Neither of those things is completely true nor untrue. In both of these examples, nuance and grey zones are everything.

What I’m trying to get at here is that when we reduce everything down to these kind of maxims, we lose sight of the big picture. We lose necessary context and we lose that most humbling of all things, counterexamples. Because for every single generalization you can make (including this one) there is at least one “yeah well, not in this one case from a small Flemish town in the year 1632” as if that one case negates the entirety of the argument. Newsflash, it doesn’t. Something can be generally true but also untrue on a case by case basis. Welcome to the muddy grey zone of life, kids.

Today’s topic is a bit heavier than I normally get into, especially in these Also pieces, so here’s a dragonfly to help ease your transition back into the real world.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you’re a little confused, don’t be. This particular newsletter is part of Learned, only this is the Also subsection where I talk about all the other things I think about that don’t quite fit into the main newsletter. Right now, while Learned is on summer break, I’ll be posting one of these Also issues every week instead. Again, thank you for reading.

And, just to close things out on a much lighter note, yes, it really was my 50th birthday yesterday. My coworkers tell me I don’t look anywhere close to 50 and yet, given the state of my knees, it must be because I’m one step closer to 80. Two things CAN be true I guess.

1. For the record, my family took me out for steak and beer and it was good, thanks.

2. Or part-timer vs. freelancer.