Coverage focused on managerial ratios reflects a media culture still trapped in postwar assumptions, failing to confront reality with intellectual maturity.

2016-04-14

Last night, a television news program reported on raising the proportion of women in managerial positions.
People in the media should stop this now.
The time has long since come to break free from the indoctrination imposed by the occupation policies of GHQ—policies that portrayed Japan as an evil country and the Japanese people as wrongdoers, largely to conceal the greatest crime in human history committed by the United States.
For at least thirty years, you have continued to profane what I call the providence of history.
It is telling that Douglas MacArthur said upon landing at Atsugi Airfield that the Japanese were of “mental age twelve.”
I myself, having long subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun, have at times spoken with that same foolish mindset.
Ōe Kenzaburō is likely someone who has always thought that way; all of his remarks seem rooted there.
As for MacArthur, some senior figures in the media say that in truth he was so terrified of the courage of the Japanese—afraid he might be killed—that he wet himself when he landed.
Those who live within the media are, in the sense that they know nothing of the world’s realities, the true bearers of a mental age of twelve.
The author introduced yesterday, Tanizaki Hikaru, is a woman born in Osaka who has accomplished truly great work.
On my way to see the cherry blossoms at the Mint, a close friend—one of Japan’s foremost readers—told me about her book published by PHP Institute, and I immediately grasped several points.
Her genuine research gave me powerful inspiration.
For now, I note this: she has been involved with China since working at a Sino-Japanese trading company formed by Daiei and Chinese partners, studied at Peking University from 2001, and has lived in Beijing for fifteen years.
When I heard her remark that readers of the Asahi and members of the baby-boomer generation tend to see China as a fine country, I immediately recalled how many Japanese firms that expanded into China suffered severe losses—economic hell—because the media failed to convey China’s realities and instead fostered illusions.
She shows clearly that what was reported amounted to little more than a shallow elitism about classical Chinese literacy.
It is no exaggeration to say she stands among the foremost scholars on China in postwar Japan.
That I had not known of such a person until now is regrettable.
Meanwhile, the Asahi has been read with blind devotion, and figures like Ōe have been revered without understanding their true nature.
To be continued.