Based on an exclusive 2019 interview with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga published in the August issue of Hanada, this essay presents the reforms achieved under the Abe administration, including agricultural restructuring, the doubling of agricultural exports, major improvements in employment, the opening of the State Guest Houses to the public, and longer opening hours at Shinjuku Gyoen and Japan’s national museums. It also criticizes the political hostility of the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and other media, the influence of counterfeit moralism, and information warfare directed at Japan, calling on the Japanese people to confront facts and recognize the results of political leadership.

July 10, 2019
The following is taken from an interview with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga published in the August issue of Hanada under the title “Exclusive Interview: Japan Cannot Be Entrusted to the Opposition Alliance.”
It must be read not only by every Japanese citizen, but also by people throughout the world.
As I read this interview, in which Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga calmly presents the facts, I found myself thinking, by contrast, of the manner in which Japanese media organizations such as the Asahi Shimbun and NHK attack bureaucrats with near hysteria, or seize upon a fragment of a politician’s words and unleash a torrent of denunciation.
“They truly are media organizations leading the nation toward ruin.”
The time has long since come for every Japanese citizen to recognize that fact.
While they continue to act as media organizations of national ruin, China and the Korean Peninsula exploit the opening and seek opportunities to attack and encroach upon Japan.
What the intelligence services of states hostile to Japan seek to achieve, particularly the intelligence apparatus of China’s one-party Communist dictatorship, is the division of Japanese public opinion.
Their purpose is to induce the media to attack the government and alienate the people from it.
There is no longer a moment to lose.
The Japanese people must turn away from the Asahi Shimbun and NHK and say “No” to them.
As the number of people who, like me, recognize their true character and seek to correct it increases, China mobilizes those media organizations, the so-called human-rights lawyers who support them, and anti-Japanese activists.
It then uses figures such as David Kaye to submit reports to the United Nations claiming that freedom of the press is being violated in Japan.
As I have repeatedly written, the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, human-rights lawyers, so-called civic organizations, and others who make their living from anti-Japanese activism support these claims.
Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami are representative figures among them.
The time has long since come for the Japanese people to recognize that these are among the most contemptible and grotesque people in history.
It is not merely any country that makes such accusations.
It is China, a country with neither freedom of speech nor genuine civil liberty, the greatest state of human-rights repression in human history, and the country that has finally brought into reality the surveillance society foretold by Orwell.
South Korea, which supports these claims, has remained a totalitarian state that has continued a form of fascism known as anti-Japanese education throughout the postwar era.
North Korea scarcely merits serious discussion.
It is a cartoon state of the modern age and, in reality, nothing more than an ancient despotism.
Yet merely because such a state possesses a single nuclear weapon, the media treat it as though it were some kind of great power.
These states possess nuclear weapons, repeatedly attack Japan and violate Japanese territory, and seek the military seizure of Taiwan.
The Japanese people can no longer permit themselves to be misled by their propaganda and turn away from those facts.
President Trump exposed this foolishness among the Japanese people.
Contrary to media portrayals, Trump consistently speaks the truth.
The time has also long since come for the Japanese people to recognize that Trump stands at the exact opposite pole from the counterfeit moralism of those media organizations.
What was mistaken was not Trump, but the counterfeit moralism that had been corroding the advanced nations.
Counterfeit moralism is among the greatest evils and must be destroyed.
Opening the State Guest Houses to the Public
One of the reforms we have pursued with a clear objective is agricultural reform.
The prime minister declared in his policy speech that Japan needed an aggressive agricultural policy, and we carried out the first fundamental reform of the agricultural cooperative system in sixty years.
At the same time, we placed great importance on agricultural exports.
Before the administration took office, annual exports stood at approximately 450 billion yen.
Last year, they had doubled to 906.8 billion yen, and we set the target of exceeding the one-trillion-yen mark during 2019.
The Abe administration has pursued tourism and agricultural policies with the explicit objective of raising regional incomes and expanding consumption in local communities.
It is precisely because the results of these policies have begun to become visible to the public that we have received the support of the Japanese people and maintained a stable administration.
By clearly stating what must be done and working in that direction to restore the economy, the ratio of job openings to applicants improved from 0.83 before the administration took office to 1.63, its highest level in forty-five years.
For the first time since statistics began to be collected, the ratio exceeded 1.0 in all forty-seven prefectures.
We created an environment in which people who wished to work could find employment.
I believe that the employment situation improved so dramatically precisely because we steadily implemented our economic policies.
It was the result of the entire government advancing Abenomics under political leadership.
When political leaders clearly establish a direction and proceed with determination, bureaucrats will work even harder toward that goal.
One example is the opening of the State Guest Houses in Akasaka and Kyoto to the general public.
I had always wondered why such valuable national assets were not open to the people.
For many years, however, resistance at various levels of the bureaucracy, including those working at the operational level, prevented it from happening.
Under firm political leadership, we overcame each obstacle one by one.
Today, both State Guest Houses are open for approximately 250 days a year.
More than 500,000 people visit the Akasaka Palace annually, while more than 100,000 visit the Kyoto State Guest House.
At Shinjuku Gyoen, closing time, which had previously been 4:30 p.m., was extended to 6:00 p.m., and to 7:00 p.m. during the summer.
National art galleries and museums throughout the country also began remaining open until 8:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
There were irrational practices everywhere, obvious to anyone who looked.
Things that should have been done as a matter of course were not being done.
Now, one by one, political leadership has corrected them.
As a result, we have been able to provide many international visitors with opportunities to experience the attractions of Japan.
To be continued.