On February 26, 2004, the author spent his own fortune to distribute a manifesto to all Nikkei newspaper subscribers in Osaka. This essay traces its impact on Osaka’s political transformation and its intellectual resonance with Yang Haiying’s scholarly rejection of the myth of “4,000 years of Chinese history.”

2016-09-12
I devoted what was, in effect, my personal fortune, and on February 26, 2004, in the form of an insert advertisement, distributed a manifesto to every household in Osaka Prefecture that subscribed to the Nikkei newspaper, in order to sum up Osaka, the city I had chosen as the stage of my life.
That essay delivered an unparalleled shock to politicians and business leaders throughout Osaka.
As you know, I believe that this manifesto prompted the formation of the Osaka Restoration Association.
What I wrote at that time, and have mentioned here several times, was my assertion that the notion of “three thousand or four thousand years of China” may exist in Chinese cuisine, but is not a correct understanding, and a book has now been published in which an author, who is also a regular contributor to Newsweek, demonstrates this academically.
These days, I almost never read newspaper book reviews carefully.
In particular, I have no inclination to read the book reviews in the Asahi Shimbun.
The reason hardly needs to be stated.
However, yesterday, a close friend pointed out to me a passage in a book review published in the Nikkei Shimbun that described an exchange between the author and Umesao Tadao.
First, I will introduce my own essay.
“From Osaka to Osaka”
[Preface omitted]
At the end of the year, I happened to see, by chance, the extraordinarily striking beauty of Zhang Ziyi.
In terms of talent, she is China’s Shinobu Otake, and in appearance, Kumiko Goto.
It is also said that beauty exists only within a single instant.
The many words she uttered were themselves extraordinarily beautiful, and surged forth with unusual intensity.
The morning after that powerful stimulation, I realized something.
That she was a “new person.”
A new person was born in a wilderness that had become rough and frayed.
That is why she is so extraordinarily beautiful.
You might ask whether there is tradition within her dancing.
Such a misunderstanding causes one to lose sight of everything.
What we see there is not tradition, but the result of dances produced by communism, which smashed tradition to pieces.
At most, it is merely that Chinese blood flows within her.
The temperament of the Chinese people, whose history has been repeatedly severed through domination by foreign ethnic groups or advanced nations, is one of “a single favorable wind” (when the wind begins to blow, hoist the sails to their fullest), and therefore they can rush forward even in grotesque forms where the head and torso seem split apart.
Within the unbroken history of a single people, our country rewrote this as “smooth sailing.”
It took fifteen years before a favorable wind finally began to blow over Osaka.
[Omitted]
“Reversing the Great Chinese History” by Yang Haiying
It is a provocative book.
The author is a scholar from Ordos in Inner Mongolia who has been naturalized as a Japanese citizen.
This book is filled with the author’s passionate feelings toward the current state of his homeland and toward his ancestors.
According to the author’s view, both “four thousand years of Chinese history” and “Zhonghua” are in fact delusions.
From ancient times, the nomadic horse-riding peoples who lived in the grasslands and desert regions at the center of Eurasia—Scythians, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Mongols, and Manchus alike—have possessed open values that do not cling to race or origin.
Seen from the perspective of nomadic civilization, “Chinese civilization” is nothing more than a local regional civilization.
In fact, from the narrow viewpoint of the Han Chinese “Zhonghua ideology,” no vision of a world system capable of attracting people around the globe, nor any innovative theories, have ever been produced.
Historically, the periods in which “China” prospered were those ruled through internationalism by non-Han peoples.
The Tang dynasty of Xianbei lineage, the Yuan dynasty that was part of the Mongol Empire, and the Qing dynasty ruled by Manchus and Mongols alike were tolerant of other peoples and religions, allowing rich cultures to flourish.
Unfortunately, present-day China is, in substance, a narrow-minded Han-ethnic-centered state.
Japanese people, having become overly accustomed to Chinese-character culture, also view history only through a China-centered lens.
Such claims, which may strike some as extreme, are developed by the author through citations of earlier scholarship and archaeological findings.
The author’s own experiences are also intriguing.
What Chinese and Japanese people refer to with the grand name “the Great Wall,” Mongolians call a “white earthen wall.”
When the author was five or six years old, he went to see the Wall near his family home.
His horse easily leapt over the Wall.
It is a symbolic anecdote, like the folktale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
[Omitted].