Quoting Nobuyuki Kaji’s column in the monthly magazine WiLL, this article discusses the confusion of Japanese media after President Trump took office. It criticizes the contradiction of dismissing Trump as uncultured while expecting American protection in the event of military tension with China, exposing the opportunism of leftist media that oscillates between anti-Americanism and dependence on America.

April 11, 2020
Sometimes they say, “America, go home.”
Sometimes they say, “America, stay here.”
Changing one’s position again and again according to one’s own circumstances, while not regarding it as a contradiction, is the dialectical attitude of the leftist line.
What exists there is the absence of thought called limitless opportunism.
I am republishing the chapter I sent out on April 10, 2019, under the title: To put it in order, the media speak from a self-righteous world in which they believe that they themselves are an elite intellectual group and therefore great, while judging Trump to be an uncultured fool.
I am also republishing the chapter I sent out on March 7, 2017, under the title: His essay in the latest issue is truly splendid, and I laughed heartily.
Those who subscribe to the monthly magazine WiLL will know this well, but the opening serial column is written by Nobuyuki Kaji, professor emeritus of Osaka University.
His essay in the latest issue was truly splendid, and I laughed heartily.
Perhaps Professor Kaji, too, sometimes reads my essays and laughs heartily.
The emphasis in the text is mine.
Now that the unexpected development of President Trump taking office has occurred, the media are running about in confusion.
To put it plainly, there are two types.
One is making a fool of him.
The other is frightened of him.
To give one example of the former, there is the denunciation that Trump is a person who has spent his life as a businessman and understands nothing about politics.
Are they saying this seriously?
If this statement were valid, then no one except someone born a politician could become a politician.
It would go like this.
He has spent his life in research, so he is incompetent in politics.
She was a housewife, so she has no political sense.
That person was a doctor, so he is ignorant of politics.
In other words, the argument becomes that no one except someone born a politician is acceptable.
But does such a race of people as those born politicians exist in this world?
No such thing exists.
Every person first works in society in order to live.
In most cases, because of some circumstance or the person’s own will, he or she later becomes a politician.
Even if, hypothetically, one aspired to become a politician in one’s teens, there is the barrier of elections, and one cannot become a politician so easily.
One would probably begin as a secretary to a politician.
However, a political secretary is not a politician.
It is one occupation, and starting from there does not necessarily mean one can become a politician.
Next is the second type.
That is, the media are in a mood of fearing Trump.
Although political criticism is the media’s signboard, they are afraid of changes in the current political situation.
The extreme form of that fear is, first of all, the fear of war.
However, they pay no attention to disturbances in the Middle East; their concern is solely Northeast Asia.
Specifically, it is military tension with China.
Of course, North Korea’s nuclear missiles are also one source of fear, but they gloss over that matter with the hopeful expectation that it can be contained.
They arbitrarily decide that South Korea will not invade Japan.
In the end, there is fear of military conflict with China.
If that fear becomes reality, the media have a mood of fear of Trump, because it is unclear whether Trump would take Japan’s side.
How pathetic.
There are few media outlets that understand the basic principle of a nation: one’s own country is defended by oneself.
If Chinese aggression against our country occurs, most media outlets will say nothing about Japan’s counterattack, but will simply write appeals for the application of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, in other words, pleas to President Trump.
This is what I, an old man, have perceived from the media’s statements over the past month.
To put it in order, the media speak from a self-righteous world in which they believe that they themselves are an elite intellectual group and therefore great, while judging Trump to be an uncultured fool.
Perhaps because of that arrogance, they do not notice the contradictions in their own opinions.
Those contradictions overlap beautifully with the statements of Japan’s leftist line.
For example, it is as follows.
Most of the media are basically anti-American.
This is not anti-Americanism based on nationalism.
It is the current of opposition to American imperialism, to which their already collapsed motherland, the former Soviet Union and the like, attached sophistry.
In other words, it is, “America, go home.”
However, when they saw that Trump’s policy was setting forth a posture in which America would stop being the world’s policeman and return to the prosperity of the American homeland, they began saying, unbelievably, that America turning inward, centering on the American homeland, is unacceptable, and that America must become more international.
This is a case of saying, “America, please stay here.”
Sometimes they say, “America, go home.”
Sometimes they say, “America, stay here.”
Changing one’s position again and again according to one’s own circumstances, while not regarding it as a contradiction, is the dialectical attitude of the leftist line.
What exists there is the absence of thought called limitless opportunism.
As the ancients said: if the extremity, the treetop, becomes abnormally large, the tree will surely break; if an animal’s tail becomes large, it cannot wag it freely.