A reprint of an article first issued on November 3, 2016, with a more accurate English translation. Drawing from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column “Records of Each Moment” in Sound Argument, this piece examines Japan’s rejection of ambiguity, the issue of nationality and allegiance, and the media’s silence surrounding influence operations. Dated December 4, 2016.

The following is a reprint of an article issued on 2016-11-03, with a more accurate English translation.
2016-12-04

The Japanese Refusal of Ambiguity
— An Excerpt from Masayuki Takayama’s “Records of Each Moment” and the Question of Allegiance —
The following is a reprint of an article issued on 2016-11-03, with a more accurate English translation.
At the front of the monthly magazine Seiron, there is a serialized column titled “Records of Each Moment” written by Masayuki Takayama, a journalist who is truly unique in the postwar world and who could without exaggeration be called another myself.
Each time, he proves that my assessment of him is entirely correct.
The following is an excerpt.
If you read the opening of this essay and that of the essay by Miroslav Marinov, a Bulgarian journalist like Irina Bokova introduced in the previous chapter, you will immediately feel compelled to go to a bookstore and purchase the December issue of Seiron (780 yen).
Omitted introduction.
Japanese people settle matters properly.
Therefore, Japanese people do not like “ambiguity,” in which matters are left unsettled.
This word originates in China, and one can see an image that is very characteristic of the Chinese mindset.
However, for some reason, this ambiguity has recently become rampant in Japanese society.
It may be because Japanese people have become Sinicized, and one example of this is the nationality issue of Renho, who is the closest to being Chinese.
Renho holds Taiwanese nationality.
Therefore, until just recently, when she applied to remove it, Renho had continued to possess a Taiwanese passport.
That means that in earlier times, when that was the only option, it is conceivable that, like Teresa Teng, she first traveled to Hong Kong using a Taiwanese passport and then went abroad by purchasing a fake passport from places such as Indonesia. Even when she acquired Japanese nationality at the age of seventeen, she did not relinquish her Taiwanese nationality.
As Renho herself has said, this was likely because she followed the way of life of her “China-born father.”
The family lived off banana-related interests.
Rather than being the simple Taiwanese people we imagine, they are closer to overseas Chinese.
Therefore, she likely had no intention of living solely with Japanese nationality.
The character kyo in the term kakyo means a rootless drifter.
Lee Kuan Yew, who built the Singapore empire, flowed from French Indochina’s Ben Hai, then to British Malaya, and finally to Singapore, possessing a disposition to flow anywhere.
Therefore, she did not abandon her Taiwanese nationality until the nationality issue came to light.
She says she is Japanese.
As Kunihiko Miyake has written somewhere, the problem now is not procedural mistakes or legal violations, but rather “to which country Renho is truly loyal.”
While she claims to be Japanese, there is not a shred of Japaneseness in her conduct.
She openly calls Katsuya Okada “a boring man” and insults him as “a man one would not want to marry.”
There is not a trace of humility in her tone, nor any sense that she even tries to possess it.
Rather, she does not hide her admiration for “China, where her father was born.”
She gives her children Chinese names.
In a certain magazine, she says, “I want to make Japan a little better.”
She mocks not only Okada but Japan itself.
Renho’s study abroad at Peking University is also troubling.
She studied there while retaining Taiwanese nationality.
When one hears Peking University, one recalls Kazuo Asami of the Mainichi Shimbun, who wrote the lie of the “hundred-man killing contest.”
After the war, due to Asami’s false articles, Second Lieutenants Noda and Mukai were executed at Yuhuatai.
Liao Chengzhi regarded the “hundred-man killing contest” as “the only Japanese-made product” among the lies portraying “brutal Japan.”
Therefore, fearing that Asami might stumble and tell the truth, he relocated the Asami family to Beijing.
At that time, the institution that accepted his daughter was Peking University.
There was also talk of appointing Yoichi Funabashi of the Asahi Shimbun, who had continued to fawn over China, as a professor at this university.
The university division of China’s operations against Japan has long used this place.
It is therefore understandable that Renho, holding Taiwanese nationality, was smoothly able to enter together with her husband.
Even though such a suspicious person has approached the prime minister’s seat, nowhere except the Sankei Shimbun writes about it. It is being left ambiguous.
Speaking of matters related to the former Democratic Party, Naoto Kan received money from foreigners and exercised national politics at will.
Among these were policies that benefited those foreign countries.
The donation of the Joseon royal protocols was one such example.
Even crimes of a prime minister more evident than those of Kakuei have been swept into the turmoil of 3.11, and since then, without settling the matter, they have been left ambiguous.
To be continued.