Notes from T'shango Mbilishaka!

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Habari Zako Afrikan Family, "We must move beyond the hero worship approach to history and look at it analytically for the lessons it teaches us. We must look at our heroes critically and analytically so that we gain critical answers to solving our problems. It not nearly enough to feel good. Feeling good is not going to save your African lives. Look at our heroes in terms of their culture, the mistakes they have made, how the solved problems, and what they planned for the advancement of their people." - Dr. Amos Wilson Quotes from Carter G. Woodson, 2nd Black man to Graduate from Harvard. In his auotbiography he said it took him the twenty years to get the Harvard brainwashing out of his head. He wrote in 1933 the Mis-education of the Negro. His most famous quote: "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary." Like many of our people in history we don't really study what they said and did. We get the comercialized version of Black History Month from the white owned and controlled media which is neither correct in facts nor interpretation. Dr. Carter G. Woodson had different intentions for us when he created Negro History Week which became Black History Month. "Enemies don't share heroes"- Irritated Genie Dr. Carter G. Woodson: As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. Here we find that the Negro has failed to re- cover from his slavish habit of berating his own and worshipping others as perfect beings. If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto. If the white man wants to hold on to it, let him do so; but the Negro, so far as he is able, should develop and carry out a program of his own. Blacks are the only group of people who take their most precious possessions, their children, and ask their oppressors to educate them and mold and shape their minds. In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money. In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them. Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority. Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. The mere imparting of information is not education. The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there. The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.Carter G. Woodson Please check out the work of Dr. Valethia Watkins Beatty to understand the impact of the Feminism, Womanism, and Black Feminism. http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/offices/afamstudies/Supports/Social/Af_Studies_gender.pdf "Ted Turner Wants You Dead To Save The Planet": "Back in 1996, Turner stated in an interview with Audubon Magazine that a 95% population reduction would be ideal. Below is his quote. “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." Turner has also donated $1 billion to an organization known as the United Nations Foundation. The organization created by Turner is dedicated to the goals of population control, condom distribution, promotion of abortion and other methods to promote the stealth eugenics agenda. Turner and others like Bill and Melinda Gates have donated large amounts of money to so called charitable organizations which really serve to promote the eugenics movement. The public thinks they are doing a good thing with their money, when in fact they are contributing their wealth behind a much more evil and sinister agenda. Amazingly, Turner was also given an award from the UN for his work in sustainable development which is really nothing more than code for population reduction." Mwalimu Baruti's Revolutionary thought of the day attached please join. A major topic amongst us is always getting burnt out doing what we do. Check this out. Mwalimu Baruti and other warrior scholars continue to make it clear what must be done. "Spring water flowing to the desert, where you flow there is no regeneration. The desert takes. The desert knows of no generation. To the giving water of your flowing it is not in the nature of the desert to return anything but destruction." ØAyi Kwei Armah Two Thousand Seasons Don't get mad at me I didn't write it. Check quote below it just shows how Dr. King said a lot more then "I have a dream..." Check attachment from Micheal Moore I didn't write that either. I just read it and sent it to you. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.” – Dr. Martin Luther King 1967 Speech entitled: King's Challenge to the Nation's Social Scientists -T'Shango Mbilishaka

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Jambo Afrikan Family,

A lot going on this Month.. Please check events attached and I look forward to seeing yall at different conferences.

One of the Most Important Books To Read : Chancellor Williams' Destruction of Black Civilization

"Culture is the totality of values, beliefs, and actions that characterize a people. Culture consists of the behavioral patterns, symbols, institutions, and values of a society, and it is unique to that society. It is the spiritual, ideational, and material composite that distinguishes one society from another . It shapes and is in turn shaped by the events in a realm of the spiritual, ideational and material. All inquiry and solution, truth and beauty, tradition and purity, meaning and reality are culturally relative. There are no culture-free or values-free human endeavors. Culture is not static phenomenon. Culture continually evolves as a society evolves and develops. Culture is that composite of socially and historically determined behaviors that nourishes and thereby defines the intellectual and spiritual parameters within which the human individual develops and exists."
- K.A Akoto (p.13 Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education)

“Color me human do not separate me’ is the shallow cry of those bent on perpetuating a mythical “colorless” yet firmly European orientation; as if to suggest that claiming, respecting, and using one’s indigenous traditions is anti-human.” Dr. Asa Hilliard. African Power p.5

“Our strategy should be not only to confront the empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness –and our ability to tell our own stories.. Stories that are different from the one’s we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Confronting Empire

Arundhati Roy

Porto Alegre , Brazil

What would happen if we taught our children one Afrikan Folktale a day and turned off the television: The creation of Afrikan morals, values, and a return to our traditions.
African Folktales
http://www..canteach.ca/elementary/africa.html
African Folk Tales, Introduction
Folktales - Folk Tales from West Africa

Check out this website: The American Agenda: Global Racism/White Supremacy and World Domination.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/

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Jambo Afrikan family,
Important Read: Ndugu Kmt's latest article is attached which adds great clarity for the masses on African centered education.

For another article by Kmt that explains what Afrikan centered institutions must have check: Literatures and Definitions: Toward Understanding Africentric Education | Journal of Negro Education, The | Find Articles at BNET

• We are what we are taught;
• We are what we see and;
• We are what we consume.

We must explain each of these points in detail, otherwise we will miss the deepest meaning of this work. Parents, communities, cities, organizations, corporations, and governments should not complain of what is happening in families, communities, cities, organizations, corporations, and governments because we are harvesting what we are taught, displayed or done. No one can truly defend Democracy while fostering dictatorship and tyranny throughout the world. No judiciary system can fight against crime if the system itself is an umbrella to crime related activities.
- Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Self-Healing Power and Therapy: Old Teachings From Africa . p. 73



The instillation of “raw fear and awe of the white ‘power’, the “unconditional submission,” the conceptions of personal and racial inferiority, and the personal identification of self with the persona of the white masters were essential elements of the process of making slaves of Afrikans. Those elements have yet to be completely exorcised from our collective psyche. They manifest themselves in our family dynamics, in the interaction of Afrikan men and women, in our manner (or lack) of child rearing, in our concept of appropriate education, in our choice of religious imagery, in our definitions of physical beauty, in the manner of our philosophical inquiry, and in our political and economic choices..
K.A Akoto (p. 5) Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education


Smith Leadership Students to Go to Africa
http://www.baystatebanner.com/issues/2008/05/08/news/local05080817.htm

While we have engaged in material excess, our children have fluttered away like moths blinded by the midday sun. We have lost them to drugs and mindless materialism, and we have lost them because of our own cultural ambiguity in the face of a relentless and spell-binding Eurocentrism, and its nefarious partner, racism/ white supremacy. K.A Akoto Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education p. 73 )

Without our goodness (our built-in hope), our beautiful humanity, our belief in justice for all people, we fall into their traps…Because we have not learned to practice, figuratively speaking, the essential selfishness of survival, we should give no piece of the pie…When we began to lose these nation lessons we began to move deeper and deeper into a trap, into a trap of dependency. – John Henrik Clarke, African World Revolution: Africans at the Crossroads p.15

"In the years since our forced exile from Africa we have been in one crisis after another over leadership. We stand at the crossroads of history engaged in a sad debate over the direction and definition in political leadership…The one thing oppression does to a people is to kill in them the mind and will to assume responsibility. When you get on the edge of power you experience a critical moment of self-discovery and that is the tragic separation from having lost power, and this is part of what our conflict is about.” – John Henrik Clarke

"Both on the continent and in the diaspora, our people’s sense of value is directly determined by the Eurocentric agencies of certification and validation. Our leaders cannot lead unless they have been validated by the white-dominated popular media. Our systems of governing are judged primitive unless they are properly validated replicas of the white western governments. Our sense of physical beauty frequently amounts to no more than a slavish imitation of caucasized department store mannequins, that have little or no precedent or relation to Afrikan culture or physiology. We have an abundance of bleaching creams and hair relaxers in villages where there is no running water or electricity." (K.A Akoto p. 43 Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education)

In Chancellor William’s words, we either accomplish this mission as a people, as a generation, or be forgotten and despised by every generation that follows us. (p. 70)

Too many Afrikans still labor under the popular myth of universal culture or cultural neutrality that is heavily promoted by the media and major educational institutions. There is no universal culture, because there is no universal history beyond the generality of the human condition; food, clothing, housing, and procreation, and everybody does even those things differently. The myth of universality as popularly defied is an increasingly porous cloak for Eurocentric (Caucasian/ white) hegemony. DuBois noted at the turn of the century, that the history of the world is the history of the races. It should be clear to any student of history, that Euro-America’s time in the spotlight is over. K.A Akoto Nationbuilding: Theory and Practice in Afrikan Centered Education p.72

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Jambo Afrikan Family,

Asante sana maumbu (brothers and sisters) for sending me this information everything here is given by other people to spread amongst Afrikan people. Please continue to hit me with info to spread info.

Asante Ndugu Obadele:
Learn our world view by learning our languages. [url=http://abibitumikasa.com]Abibitumi Kasa Afrikan Liberation Institutes and Community Networks[/media]

Asante Ndugu Eroupa:
Dravidians to Untouchable to Dalits Africans in India who are forced to eat rats, eat on broken plates, and collect excrement for a living. Their women are raped and the law does nothing about it. Their children are treated like garbage in school and forced to drop out sound familiar. The Caste system was set up by Aryans (White Europeans). Global White Supremacy. As Malcolm X said the same dog that bit you bit me. The Afrikans in India are organizing under the name Black Panthers. This video clip has them begging for acceptance from the rest of society and they use the Civil Rights movement as an example. They too are going down the wrong path. They may be socially integrated but they will become more economically dependent, culturally stripped and exploited like us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQ12...&feature=email

LIFE Camp 08

View full size

Part II of Summer Fun
7 weeks of cooperative learning and collective fun.
African dance, drum, and weekly field trips
Children ages 3-7
Contact Mama Nkenge for more information
luvdance24368@aol.com (301) 875-9441

See attachment for brochure

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts their hands on you, send them to the cemetery. -Malcolm X


Asante ndugu Jared:
SUPPORT WPFW AND JAZZ & JUSTICE! OUR SPRING PLEDGE DRIVE BEGINS THIS WEEK! Over the next few weeks please call in and pledge whatever support you can to Jazz and Justice with Jared Ball on WPFW 89.3 FM ([url=http://wpfw.org].:: WPFW.ORG ::.[/media] online!) so that we can continue the kind of programming you hear below. Call 202-588-9739 or 1-800-222-9739 Mondays 1-3p (EST) to support the show or anytime to support the station! Thank you gifts will be announced during the broadcast. Thank you for your support of this very liberated masses medium!
Also check out the latest at voxunion.com where the latest can be found:


Uhuru for Marshall “Eddie” Conway and Jack Johnson
Voices United


The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement held an event in Baltimore, MD. To educate about, commemorate and fund raise for Marshall Eddie Conway and Jack Johnson two former members of the Black Panther Party currently imprisoned in the Maryland prison system. Click below to hear audio form the event and listen for ways to show your support..




Good Radio Can Get You Killed!
FreeMix Radio


As our good friend often reminds us, “doing good radio can get you killed.” It happened of course with the Haitian hero Jean Leopold Dominique and continues with the recent killings of our sister broadcasters in Oaxaca, Mexico. We do take our radio seriously and is why we continue to advocate as many different forms as possible from LPFM to mixtape radio. Media are far more dangerous than the technologies with which they are often associated (tv, radio, film, newspapers, etc.). Media are weaponry in a continuing struggle over freedom and domination.




The MC - Wannabes and the Legacy of Slavery
Roots Revolution


Barak Obama - voxunion.comA year ago ‘progressive’ American media decided that Barak Obama by virture of his white mother and foreign father did not suffer from the legacy of slavery. But it didn’t stop there. One discussion I heard on our local NPR station asserted that since he had somehow dodged that bullet, he would make a great candidate for president. Yes, I was like, WTF? Are these people really saying that ‘suffering from the legacy of slavery’ makes a black person incapable of being a national leader? And what about white people? Don’t they suffer from the legacy of slavery? We took up the question.




Asante dada yangu Aja

BookWebsites to Check Out
http://www.africaaccessreview.org/caba.cfm?menuitem=3
http://www.africanbookscollective.com/

Not to know Is bad.
Not to want to know is worse.
Knowing facts is important.
It becomes more important when one can tie personalities, events and time together.
It is only then that one can have a more cohesive and comprehensive sense of history and it's meaning.
The past cannot be changed.
The past, however, does have impact on our lives in the present
-West African Saying

An Article: Looking for a White Savior: the Hollywood/Eminem Syndrome of Black self-hatred and white adoration. Something to think about.
Asante dada yangu Nyjah
[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24570980/from/ET/]A different kind of 'Morehouse Man' - Race & ethnicity - MSNBC.com[/media]

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Important Article at the Bottom

Must Read book: Black on Black Violence: The Psychodymamics of Self-Anhilation in Service of White Domination by Amos Wilson


Article How the Chinese feel about Black People : Remember the Chinese are taking over the markets in Africa and competing for global domination.
Racism in China | The China Expat

Asante Ndugu Brandon
How to keep the wealth in our communities: Afrikan Currency
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

Check this same website for these other videos
1. Xenophobia in South Africa - See attachment Xenophobia is not our culture.
2. UK Approves Hybrid Embros
3. Somalia Today

South Africa never redistrubuted the wealth of the wealthy Dutch/Afrikaner exploiters. The same racist/white supremacists who ran the country before Apartheid still run it today and they continue to divide and conquer Africans over the small table scraps they allow Africans to have sound familiar: Xenophobia in South Africa

UK Approves Hybrid Embros - The Euro- God complex a desire to create more Yurugu
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney
Somalia Today

Negroes gone wild - How the Media loves to Portray Us. It's so sad it will make you laugh.

YouTube - Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama

An interview with Condalooser white Rice ( The example of what your children will become when subjected to the best the Amerikkkan mis-education system has to offer)
Being Condoleezza : Essence.com

Asante Mama Aja
Article: African Comics
http://www.nytimes..com/2006/11/24/arts/design/24comi.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1


Transformation Network, LLC.
Presents

An Evening of Nationbuilding & ReAfrikanization

"How do "WE" attain True Sovereignty in the 21st Century"

Featuring
Renowned Authors:

Kwame Agyei & Akua Nson Akoto (D.C.)
Nationbuilding
The Sankofa Movement

Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti (Atlanta)
Homosexuality & the Effeminization of Afrikan Males
Eureason
Kebuka
Asafo: A Warrior's Guide to Manhood

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Sankofa Theater
2901 Druid Park Drive
Baltimore, Maryland 21215

6:30 p.m. To 10:30 p.m.

General Admission $20
Advance Ticket Purchase $15
Students w/ID $10
Children (2-12yrs old) FREE

Tickets of Vending call:
Brother Haki - (410) 209-9687
Afua Serwaa - (202) 213-3141

Very Important Article: Chinweizu
Ancestral Culture and Modern Survival:
The Example of Meiji Japan


by Chinweizu

Culture as society’s immune system

The primary function of the body’s immune system is to identify and protect what is self and destroy what is not-self. What the immune system learned while the fetus was still in the womb was that anything it came into contact with during that time must be regarded as self. A society’s ancestral culture is the social analogue of the body’s immune system. It identifies what is socially self, i.e. Whatever displays the ancestral culture, and protects it from the intrusive and alien. When it is functioning properly, the immune system will repel invaders. One of the ways in which an immune system can go wrong is to assault cells that it is supposed to protect. When a culture is functioning properly, it will react to invaders by mobilizing its society for resistance. Likewise, when a culture goes faulty, it may not only (like an AIDS-afflicted immune system) fail to protect against the alien invasion; it can even (as in auto-immune disease) attack its own society.

The notion that culture is the ultimate backbone of a people, the immune system of a society, is alien to the niggerized consciousness of the populations of PanAfrica. Many of their comprador elite now see African culture as nothing more than a source of fossilized arts and museum pieces to be sold to earn foreign exchange! Others view it as a disgraceful, primitive paganism that should be smashed and consigned to the bonfire. That is a most dangerous situation and needs to be urgently ended if the peoples of PanAfrica intend to survive. To help bring home to Africans the true nature and vital function of culture, there is probably no better example than Meiji Japan .

Meiji Japan : ancestral culture in the modernization process

How and why did Japan survive the Pan European attempt to colonize and destroy it and, within 50 years, 1868-1904, convert itself into a world power? How and why did a Japan that was overawed by Commodore Perry and his few gunboats in 1853 turn itself into a power that defeated Imperial Russia in 1904? To see the Meiji spirit and Japanese culture in action, the book to read is Lafcadio Hearn, Writings from Japan, ed by Francis King, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984; especially the essays “The Japanese Family”, “A Conservative”, “Christian Converts” and “A Glimpse of Tendencies”. But the whole book needs to be read to get a feel for Japanese culture and how it came to the rescue of the Japanese people and saved them from the White Peril that overwhelmed the rest of the non-European world.
By way of introduction to the Meiji example, here are some excerpts from Lafcadio Hearn:

1. In many ways a human society may be compared biologically with an individual organism. Foreign elements introduced forcibly into the system of either, and impossible to assimilate, set up irritations and partial disintegration, until eliminated naturally or removed artificially. Japan is strengthening herself through elimination of disturbing elements; and this natural process is symbolized in the resolve to . . . Leave nothing under foreign control within the empire. It is also manifested in the dismissal of foreign employees, in the resistance offered by Japanese congregations to the authority of foreign missionaries, and in the resolute boycotting of foreign merchants. (p. 268)

2.. On "the queer superstitions of the pre-Meiji era concerning" Occidentals

Although recognized as intelligent and formidable creatures, Occidentals were thought of as more closely allied to animals than to mankind. They had hairy bodies of queer shape; their teeth were different from those of men; their internal organs were also peculiar; and their moral ideas those of goblins. –(p. 296)

3. On Foreigners and foreign help

What is worse for the alien than miscomprehension is the simple fact that he is in the position of an invader. (p. 263)
There is also the definite conviction that foreign help is proof of national feebleness (p. 268)

4. On the family as social unit

Though the individual is now registered, and made directly accountable to the law, while the household has been relieved from its ancient responsibility for the acts of its members, still the family practically remains the social unit, retaining its patriarchal organization and its particular cult. (p. 221)

4. The law of duty

From servant to master – up through all degrees of the household hierarchy – the law of duty was the same: obedience absolute to custom and tradition. The ancestral cult permitted no individual freedom: nobody could live according to his or her pleasure; everyone had to live according to rule. The individual did not even have a legal existence; the family was the unit of society. Even its patriarch existed in law as representative only, responsible both to the living and the dead. (p. 287)

5. Ancestor Worship

A samurai boy . . . Was educated to revere the ancient gods and the spirits of his ancestors; he was well schooled in the Chinese ethics; and he was taught something of Buddhist philosophy and faith. But he was likewise taught that hope of heaven and fear of hell were for the ignorant only; and the superior man should be influenced in his conduct by nothing more selfish than love of right for its own sake, and the recognition of duty as a universal law. . . . [Accordingly] the young samurai [grew up] fearless, courteous, self-denying, despising pleasure, and ready at an instant’s notice to give his life for love, loyalty, or honor. (p. 293)

6. National motivation and solidarity

[To] a people of forty millions, uniting all their energies to achieve absolute national independence, . . . The existence of foreign settlements in Japan, under consular jurisdiction, was in itself a constant exasperation to national pride, an indication of national weakness. (p.265)
The average Japanese would prefer to work fifteen hours a day for one of his own countrymen than eight hours a day for a foreigner paying higher wages. (p. 265)

7. The Japanese soul and the English language

. . . The idea of making English the language, or at least one of the languages of the country, and the idea of changing ancestral modes of feeling and thinking . . Were wild extravagances. Japan must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow another. A dear friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the students of Japan : ‘Why, the English language itself has been a demoralizing influence!’ There was much depth in that observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study English (the language of a people who are being forever preached to about their ‘rights,’ and never about their ‘duties’) was almost an imprudence. The policy . . . Helped to sap ethical sentiment. (pp. 271-272)

The above are from Lafcadio Hearn’s observations on the Meiji Japanese of the 1890s, in the decade when they were furiously preparing to burst forth as a world power.
The spirit of Meiji was expressed in slogans, such as: Sonno-joi (Revere the Emperor! Expel the barbarians!); fukoku-kyohei (rich country, strong arms!) and fukko (Return to Antiquity). Such slogans were actually implemented. In keeping with fukko, for example, Shinto (the way of kami), the ancient indigenous religious beliefs and practices of Japan, with it multitude of kami (sacred powers: ancestor spirits and nature spirits), was strengthened and institutionalized as the state religion, State Shinto. Shinto festivals and ceremonies became integrated into the affairs of government. Shinto moral teaching was made compulsory in schools, the doctrine of the divinity of the Emperor was inculcated, and the government took up the administration of the country’s more than 100,000 shinto shrines. Everybody (whether Buddhist, Christian or Shintoist) was required, as a patriotic duty, to make obeisance at Shinto shrines. The effectiveness of this anchoring of modernization on the ancestral religion and culture was demonstrated by the fervent national spirit which enabled Japan to become a world power within 50 years. The cultural source of that effectiveness was recognized by the Americans when they attempted to smash the cultural foundations of Japanese power. In 1945, after Japan ’s defeat in WWII, despite their democratic propaganda for religious freedom, the American conquerors decreed the abolition of State Shinto, forbade the government to support Shinto shrines, and suppressed the doctrine of the emperor’s divinity.

Lest we think the Japanese thereafter lost their cultural anchor, here is an observation of the Japanese in the 1990s by Graham Hancock:

For no matter how modern, rational and scientific Japan has become, it is still a land in which powerful and ineffable spiritual forces are perceived to move in secret behind all things, to pervade all things, and to underlie the very fabric of reality. . . .
-- Hancock, Graham Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age, London: Michael Joseph, 2002, pp. 567-568

In other words, despite pulling off two miracles -- industrial modernization in the 19th century, and spectacular economic recovery in the 20th century – the Japanese still remain animists!

How, you may ask, did Japan contain the 'demoralizing influence' of the English language? According to Professor Kinichiro Toba of Waseda University :

My grandfather graduated from the University of Tokyo at the beginning of the 1880s. His notebooks were full of English. My father graduated from the same university in 1920 and half of his notes were filled with English. When I graduated a generation later my notes were all in Japanese. So … it took three generations for us to consume western civilization totally via the means of our own language.
--quoted in Chinua Achebe, “What has Literature