Historic performances are taking place night after night in Japan’s world-class concert halls. Yet although many of them are presumably recorded in audio and video, most are never made public, leaving both the Japanese people and the world with far too few opportunities to experience them. Inspired by the Osaka Philharmonic’s remarkable performance, this essay argues that Japan must preserve and transmit its musical culture as a heritage of humanity.

As I have stated many times, historic performances are taking place night after night in world-class concert halls throughout Japan.
Yet the opportunities for the Japanese people to see and hear them are far too few.
For the most part, only concerts by the NHK Symphony Orchestra and a limited number of recitals are broadcast on NHK channels, and even then at times when most citizens are not watching.
Even performances by the NHK Symphony Orchestra are released on YouTube only in extremely limited numbers.
Historic performances such as the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra’s 599th Subscription Concert, held at Festival Hall on June 20, should be recorded in audio and video with the full power of Japan’s world-class sound and imaging technology, and preserved permanently as a heritage of humanity.
Needless to say, they should also be made available to as many Japanese citizens and people around the world as possible.
The foolish pseudo-moralism of those who make their living in the old media produces, to put it bluntly, nothing but harm.
By contrast, historic musical performances can contribute greatly to the progress of humanity, and even to the realization of true peace.
The other day, while searching on YouTube for complete performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, I found a video of Martha Argerich performing with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
My connection with Singapore is already known to my readers.
At first glance, I immediately had a clear view that the annual income of musicians in the Singapore Symphony Orchestra must be considerably higher than that of orchestral musicians in Japan.
When I had the excellent AI service to which I subscribe confirm this, it was indeed exactly so.
It is reasonable to see the difference as nearly twofold.
I will write here my own view of the background to this matter.
I once enjoyed a very close friendship with one of Singapore’s highest-ranking business figures, a man who appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
Partly because of that connection, I visited Singapore more than ten times.
My regular hotel was the Shangri-La.
It is a hotel where meetings of national leaders and other such events are held.
I loved its swimming pool and sauna.
I also stayed twice at Raffles Hotel, for the purpose of exploring the hotel itself.
Singapore is, together with Japan and Hong Kong, one of the cities where one can eat the finest Chinese cuisine in the world.
It is one of the cities I like.
However, speaking frankly, Singapore has no deep tradition of culture.
It is not a city that carries the fragrance of culture.
The Singaporeans themselves surely know this better than anyone.
That is precisely why they cherish the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.
The respect shown toward Argerich was also extraordinary.
Japan, on the other hand, is a country of culture and civilization that may rightly be called one of the finest in the world.
It is no exaggeration to say that this has been Japan’s nature and tradition since the beginning of recorded history.
One manifestation of this is that Japan has been the country where women have been cherished more than anywhere else in the world.
That is why the depth of Japan’s female classical musicians is almost unbelievable.
Yet because Japan is a country where the fragrance of culture exists everywhere, it may have become all the more insensitive to the value of its own culture.
The annual income of musicians in orchestras that perform at the very highest level in the world remains close to the average annual income of workers employed by small and medium-sized companies in Japan.
Meanwhile, for example, women who have graduated from Keio University and whose appearance is at least respectable, or above that level, seek employment at institutions such as NHK.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that all of them aspire to become glamorous star anchors.
But what, then, is their work?
Although they are involved in journalism, it is no exaggeration to say that not one of them continues day and night to do what any person acting as an intellectual should naturally do: verify things for themselves and confirm the truth.
What they do in the name of work is merely read scripts written by those who dominate the news departments.
Those people can hardly be called journalists.
It would be more accurate to call them activists.
They are people shaped by the self-deprecating view of history implanted by GHQ, by anti-Japanese thinking, by a pro-China stance, and by submission to propaganda from the Korean Peninsula.
And yet their average annual income is among the highest in Japan.
It is more than twice the average annual income of orchestral musicians throughout Japan.
This absurd state of affairs is one of the greatest causes that has weakened Japan’s national strength.
As a continuation of this essay, in the following chapters I will speak directly about the university professors whom these people use as if they were first-rate experts on each issue, while in reality making them serve as mouthpieces for the views of the activists who dominate the news departments.