Sugihara Chiune: Why The Japanese Consulate In Lithuania?

 

 Fig. Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania 

Lietuvių: Azijos studijų centras, Kaunas.

Date  22 April 2008 (original upload date)

Source        Transferred from lt.wikipedia to Commons by Hugo.arg using CommonsHelper.

Author  Zykasaa at Lithuanian Wikipedia

In public domain

 

Fig. Sugihara Chiune

This is a schematic picture. The interested reader can visit the following site for real image:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/japans-schindler-a-genuine-hero-tangled-in-a-web-of-myth/

Sugihara Chiune was a Japanese diplomat who saved 6000 Jewish people from Nazi persecution in 1940. In his memoir [2] Sugihara writes (translation by the author);

“Why a consulate is necessary in Kaunas? There has been no Japanese in Lithuania, no direct trades between the two countries. Wouldn’t the consulate in Latvia suffice to take care of Lithuania also? Even though I am the head of this consulate, there is no one under me. It is my understanding that many people questioned the existence of this Kaunas consulate.”

“Many of the residents are not Germanic nor Slavic. They are those who were rejected from middle Europe and came North with some German influences. One aspect of those people is that majority are Jewish. “

“A reason for this is that the Romanov Dynasty did not allow the Jewish people to reside in the Dynasty and confined to within Lithuania and Poland among others. The number of Jewish people in the Romanov Dynasty was 3 million who were mainly concentrated in big cities. Those Jewish people  undertook leadership roles in most of the aspects of the society so that the Romanov government always suppressed the Jewish population. 

For instance, at St. Petersburg University, Jewish students dominated. The government, then, set a rule to the effect that only 30 Jewish students be admitted. It turned out that the top 30 students were all Jewish.

Regardless of Lithuania's national characteristics or whether Kaunas was the capital, let me be candid: when it comes to Japanese individuals in this place, it's just me and my family. Apart from that, there are no so-called resident Japanese, and any trade relations were non-existent. So, it's not unreasonable that many skeptical Japanese heard about the establishment of the consulate, or rather, had already heard about it, and harbored doubts.”

[1] Youtube site: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Chiune+Sugihara+Doc.+1

[2] Watanabe, K., “Ketsudan, Visas for Life”, Taisho Shuppan, Tokyo, 2001, third printing