Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
I disagree. There is the same tendency to pass off a set of tenuous hypotheses as tantamount to established fact.
Personally, I see no point in continuing this adversarial exchange about Manchuria. I am aware of your position and you are aware of mine.
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I perceived us as differing, not as adversarial; I take no firm position. If you read an argument spelling out factual support that exists for any given position, while acknowledging inferential gaps, as somehow seeking to establish the proposition being examined as a given, then we seriously misunderstand one another and are unfortunately talking at cross-purposes. People are also wrongly convicted on such inferences. A point that is, perhaps, from recent controversy, needlessly wider in scope than in this narrow case.
I suggest, as you say, a hypothesis with some support and some inferences that while not disallowed -- still remain to be reduced to direct evidence, one way or the other -- if that is the standard of proof. The standard of proof always depends on the purpose for any conclusion. I agree that the point can be advanced no further.
Quote:
Peter A Goldsbury wrote:
There is nothing in Kisshomaru's biography to suggest that the situation in Manchuria especially played a crucial role in Morihei's Ueshiba's decision to move to Iwama--and I suspect Kisshomaru would have known about this if he knew about the guardian deities. Kisshomaru does, however, record his father's disquiet at the failure of peace negotiations in China and the prospect of war with the US (on p.39). There is a general unease, but nothing special about Manchuria.
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A question on which I utterly defer, given your long tenure there: Is this kind of unease among Japanese of his era and habits a typical cause for the kind of social dislocation the move to Iwama seemed to represent -- objectively, from the lack of prepared lodgings -- and subjectively, as expressed by the strong impression of suddenness his son says it made upon him?
Do you agree that the move (on the well-accepted evidence) still lacks a strongly persuasive imminent cause?