How did Masayuki Takayama criticize the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s reactor-restart reviews, the decommissioning of Monju, extreme counterterrorism requirements, the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the Sendai Nuclear Power Station, and the annual one-millisievert standard?
This complete republication of the August 3, 2020 article presents Takayama’s celebrated Henken Jizai column, “Wicked Princess Kaguya,” and questions Japan’s nuclear regulation and anti-nuclear reporting.

August 3, 2020
Amid blue skies, a vast sea, and green pine groves, people occupied with beta decay and the Cherenkov effect would suddenly begin thinking about Gramsci or The Clockwork of the Belly.
This led to the conclusion that nuclear power could not be entrusted to such people, and the more dependable personnel were recruited to form the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation, commonly known as PNC or Dōnen.
I am republishing the chapter first issued on June 7, 2019, under the title:
“The lie of the annual one-millisievert standard continues to prevail.
A succession of wealthy anti-nuclear campaigners has also emerged by clinging to that lie.”
The following is from “Henken Jizai,” Masayuki Takayama’s renowned column published in Shukan Shincho, which had gone on sale the previous day.
It is a magnificent essay that proves he is truly a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
It is the finest essay in the world, filled with facts that every Japanese citizen and people throughout the world should know.
Wicked Princess Kaguya
When the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute was established in Tokai Village, the first dramatic change was in the academic performance of the local elementary and junior-high-school students.
Their schools became the best in the prefecture.
That was only natural, since the children of young nuclear physicists attended them, but there was another change: the spread of the Reds.
Amid blue skies, a vast sea, and green pine groves, people occupied with beta decay and the Cherenkov effect would suddenly begin thinking about Gramsci or The Clockwork of the Belly.
This led to the conclusion that nuclear power could not be entrusted to such people, and the more dependable personnel were recruited to form the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation.
PNC was granted an abundant budget, the performance of nuclear reactors improved, and the “dream reactor,” Monju, began operating.
With the resentment of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute behind it, PNC came into full bloom.
That prosperity was darkened by the great tsunami and Naoto Kan.
The man, incompetent but fully accomplished in devious cunning, chose South Korean-made solar panels over nuclear power.
This cunning man placed people from the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, with its old grievances, on the Nuclear Regulation Authority and gave the organization sweeping powers.
Stalin placed Jewish guards in German prisoner-of-war camps and had them inflict cruelty exceeding that of Auschwitz.
The situation was similar.
As expected, the first chairman, Shunichi Tanaka, immediately stopped every nuclear power station.
Prove that the geological formations beneath the nuclear power station have not moved for 300,000 years.
Then we will allow it to operate.
That demand was even harsher than Princess Kaguya’s impossible requests.
There was no prospect of restarting most of the reactors.
Even so, Tanaka, for all his wickedness, still possessed some common sense.
When the Sendai Nuclear Power Station was finally restarted, the Asahi Shimbun reported:
“The radiation monitors in the surrounding area are not functioning.
In an accident, residents would not know where they should evacuate.”
The report was accompanied by a purported comment from a senior official of the NRA Secretariat saying that the restart had been premature.
The following day’s editorial also dismissed the situation as being so careless that it was beyond discussion.
However, the radiation monitors were functioning normally, and the alleged comment had been fabricated by the reporter.
＊Anyone would be astonished and appalled by this fact.
I said to a friend beside me, “Just how thoroughly corrupt a newspaper is the Asahi Shimbun?”＊
Tanaka severely criticized the report, saying:
“It is inflaming residents’ anxiety with lies.
It has become virtually criminal.”
The Asahi Shimbun, incidentally, offered neither an apology nor a correction.
It sneered as though anything done in the name of opposition to nuclear power were exempt from blame.
The Asahi Shimbun also created an uproar over authorization to restart the Takahama Nuclear Power Station.
“What will you do if a missile comes flying from North Korea?” it asked.
Tanaka replied:
“Rather than aiming at a small nuclear power station, it would make far more sense to drop it directly in the center of Tokyo.”
North Korea would perish the moment it fired.
It would have no reason to target an isolated coastal location.
In his own way, Tanaka tried to persuade local residents while criticizing a foolish newspaper.
His successor, Toyoshi Fuketa, however, possessed none of that common sense.
He was driven only by resentment.
His first move was to decide on the decommissioning of Monju.
This was not an elementary-school experiment, yet a trillion-yen national project was destroyed merely because sodium had leaked.
It seems that he regarded nuclear power stations as part of the hated robes of the PNC priesthood.
He raised the obstacles to reactor restarts to their absolute limit.
For example, although the scientifically calculated maximum tsunami height along the Sea of Japan coast was five meters, he demanded protection against waves more than twice that height.
An earthquake would cause soil liquefaction.
He demanded that operators “assume liquefaction on an unprecedented scale” and drive thousands of reinforced piles fifty meters underground.
He also demanded counterterrorism measures.
In the United States, each nuclear power station was required to maintain backup electricity and cooling-water pools under a scenario in which an F-4 Phantom fighter crashed into a reactor building and started a fire.
Using this as a reference, Fuketa demanded:
“In Japan, assume a terrorist attack in which a four-engine jumbo jet crashes into the plant.”
Meeting this demand would require a 50,000-ton cooling-water pool, fifty meters underground, large enough to float the battleship Yamato.
Each nuclear power station is now desperately excavating such an underground pool.
In addition, a deadline was imposed for installing emergency power supplies and an operational command center deep underground.
If the deadline could not be met, authorization would not be granted.
Thus, massive construction projects exceeding even the underground Imperial Headquarters at Matsushiro are now proceeding quietly at nuclear power stations throughout Japan.
Their cost runs into hundreds of billions of yen.
Yet a question remains.
Is the enemy al-Qaeda or North Korea?
Why should individual nuclear power stations be made responsible for defending against them?
If such dangers exist, the proper course would be for the Nuclear Regulation Authority to require the government to ensure national security.
The lie of the annual one-millisievert standard continues to prevail.
A succession of wealthy anti-nuclear campaigners has also emerged by clinging to that lie.
Correcting such wrongdoing should also be part of the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s duty, yet that matter is neglected.
An ugly Princess Kaguya is unbearable to behold.