In this continuation of his serialized essay in Sound Argument, Takeshi Nishibe dissects Japan’s shallow verbal conformism embodied in manifesto politics.
Using the 3.11 earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, he exposes the fatal confusion between prediction, anticipation, and imagination in modern Japanese thought.

2016-10-08
This was precisely about Japan’s “extremely frivolous verbal conformism.”
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Japan being drawn into that American-style fraud was enthusiastically supported by our country’s (relatively) left-leaning forces as the ideal form of society at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
—The old man was shown time and again scenes of generations from the Zengakuren and Zenkyoto movements (already entering old age) dancing with joy at the Democratic Party’s victory—.
Moreover, because this leftist flavor was so overwhelmingly strong, even the Liberal Democratic Party included, there came to be no political force left that did not utter the word “manifesto.”
What concerned the old man was precisely this Japanese “extremely frivolous verbal conformism.”
Such conformism is nothing other than the nation and its representatives stuffing themselves full with modernism (the essential nourishment of the left).
At that very moment, the March 11 Great Tohoku Earthquake occurred, along with the Fukushima nuclear disaster (with even the strong possibility of it being a man-made calamity due to Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s excessive on-site intervention).
Then the president of Tokyo Electric Power Company apologized, saying that “even what could not be anticipated should have been anticipated.”
What is all too clear is the ignorance of the Japanese people (including TEPCO) regarding the fact that presumption involves various stages depending on the degree of uncertainty.
That is, no distinction whatsoever is made among prediction (probabilistic expectations concerning “form and quantity”), anticipation (vague expectations concerning “form and quantity”), and imagination (a hazy expectation in which no certainty regarding “form and quantity” can be assumed).
This earthquake and accident were, at most, something that “should have been imagined in advance.”
Now no one speaks of manifestos anymore.
Those who once so noisily staged demonstrations known as “project screening” with regard to public works have also disappeared.
To be continued.