Drawing on a HANADA article by Tadashi Ushio, this piece identifies the publication and setting of Akira Asada’s “dojin” sneer toward ordinary citizens as the “Special Dialogue 1” in Bungakukai (February, Heisei 1). It quotes the dialogue with Yukito Karatani, notes Kenzaburo Oe’s later praise, and cites Eiichi Tanizawa’s condemnation to expose the contemptuous posture of media and cultural elites.

The January issue of the monthly magazine HANADA (840 yen) is also packed with articles that you should go to a bookstore and buy immediately.
2016-11-28.
The January issue of the monthly magazine HANADA (840 yen) is also packed with articles that you should go to a bookstore and buy immediately.
Above all, those who have spent their lives subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun and the like, and watching the television broadcasts of their subsidiaries, should absolutely subscribe to this monthly magazine.
Because articles like the one below will absolutely never be published in Asahi or the like, nor broadcast.
All in-text emphasis other than the headline, and the … marks, are mine.
The Media and Cultural Figures Swarming Around “Dojin.”
Commentator, Visiting Professor at Takushoku University, Tadashi Ushio.
Thinking, “What kind of ‘dojin’ country am I living in,” makes me shudder—In 1988 (Showa 63), Akira Asada, then an assistant professor at Kyoto University, mocked and slandered his fellow citizens (Japanese) who were praying for the Emperor’s recovery, saying the following.
The place where the remark was made was “Special Dialogue 1” in Bungakukai (February issue, Heisei 1), Bungeishunju’s flagship literary magazine.
The dialogue partner in this conversation, titled “Examining the Intellectual History of the Showa Era,” was Yukito Karatani (literary critic).
At the beginning of the dialogue, following the lead that “intellectuals could not resist the existence of the ‘biological’ Emperor,” Asada said the following.
“To tell the truth, I do not feel like talking about the Showa era at all.
Ever since last September, I have been made to watch, day after day on the news, the people prostrating themselves in front of the Imperial Palace, and all I can do is shudder, thinking, ‘What kind of ‘dojin’ country am I living in.’
Even so, when I try to think about it anyway, I can’t help but be bothered by what Karatani once wrote in Kaien (omitted), and that makes it impossible to think objectively again (laugh).” (The parenthetical at the end is also as in the original.).
As you can see, this is a statement in which “intellectuals” mocked ordinary citizens from a superior position.
Asada concluded the first installment of the “Special Dialogue” with the following outrageous remark.
“Well, as a republican, I suppose one would coolly watch the commotion over imperial succession, and wait somewhere for them to slip up.”
It is truly an irreverent and insolent dialogue.
In 1992, Kenzaburo Oe praised Asada and Karatani as “Japan’s two genius cultural heroes” in a lecture titled “A New Cultural Relationship Between Japan and the United States” delivered at the University of Chicago.
Wouldn’t anyone think that the phrase “Japan’s two genius cultural heroes” is exactly like the praise offered by, for example, North Korea or the Chinese Communist Party.
The circumstances in which Oe, while rejecting the Order of Culture by saying, “I am a postwar democrat, and a state-linked Order of Culture does not suit me” (Asahi morning edition, “Tensei Jingo,” October 17, Heisei 6), nevertheless gladly accepted the Nobel Prize are explained in detail in Eiichi Tanizawa’s Who Made Japan Like This—An Indictment of Kenzaburo Oe, the Representative of Postwar Democracy (Crest-sha).
In that book, Tanizawa denounced him as follows.
“There is no shortage of history in which Japan’s cultural figures have insulted their own people.
However, it is Asada Akira who, for the first time in history, went so far as to insult them as ‘dojin.’
Of course, I too respect freedom of speech.
So, whatever he says, if he truly believes it, that is fine as that.
But if so, then he should stop living on the Kyoto University salary that is paid for by the taxes offered by those ‘dojin.’
/ Kyoto University is run on money taken by the tax office from the income earned through the sweat and toil of those base and foolish ‘dojin.’
Asada is an assistant professor at its Institute of Economic Research.
Surely, if he were to eat meals bought with the filthy money of ‘dojin,’ his very organs would rot and he would die.
If he wishes to prolong his life, he should resign from his post as an assistant professor at Kyoto University at once.
And then, standing on his own two feet, he should live independently, without being cared for by ‘dojin’……”
Omitted.