Using Japanese media reactions to President Trump’s inauguration as a point of departure, this essay criticizes their arrogance, their contradiction between anti-Americanism and dependence on the United States, and what may be called the infinite opportunism of the left.
Through their coverage of tensions with China and the U.S.-Japan security framework, it sharply exposes the mindlessness of a postwar media culture that has forgotten the basic principle that a nation must defend itself.

2019-04-10
What exists there is mindlessness in the form of infinite opportunism.
As the ancients said, when the branches become excessively large, the tree will surely break, and when an animal’s tail becomes too large, it cannot swing it freely.
I am republishing the chapter I posted on 2017-03-07 under the title, His latest essay in the newest issue was truly splendid, and I laughed out loud.
Those who subscribe to the monthly magazine WiLL probably know this well, but the opening serialized column is written by Nobuyuki Kaji, Professor Emeritus of Osaka University.
His latest essay in the newest issue was truly splendid, and I laughed out loud.
There may also be times when Professor Kaji reads my own essays and laughs heartily.
All emphasis in the text is mine.

Now that the unexpected development of President Trump’s inauguration has taken place, the media are running about in confusion.
Broadly speaking, there are two patterns.
One is to mock him.
The other is to fear him.
To give an example of the former, they condemn Trump by saying that he spent his life as a businessman and knows nothing about politics.
Are they saying this seriously.
If that statement were valid, then no one except a “born politician” could become a politician.
That is what the logic amounts to.
He spent his life as a researcher, therefore he is incompetent in politics.
She was a housewife, therefore she is politically tone-deaf.
That person was a doctor, therefore he is ignorant of politics.
In other words, it comes down to saying that no one except a “born politician” will do.
But does such a species as a “born politician” even exist in this world.
No such thing exists.
Every person, in order to live, first works in society in one way or another.
Then, because of some circumstance or by his or her own will, most people become politicians.
Even if someone aspires to be a politician in his or her teens, there is the barrier of elections, and one cannot become a politician so easily.
Most likely one begins as something like a political secretary.
But a political secretary is not a politician.
It is one occupation, and it does not necessarily lead from there to becoming a politician.

Next, there is the second pattern.
That is, the media are in a mood of fearing Trump.
Even though criticism of politics is their banner, they fear changes in the current political situation.
The ultimate form of that fear is, first of all, fear of war.
Yet while they are utterly indifferent to turmoil in the Middle East, their concern is fixed entirely on Northeast Asia.
Specifically, it is military tension with China.
Of course, North Korea’s nuclear missiles are also one object of fear, but they obscure that by means of a “hopeful expectation” that they can somehow be contained.
They simply assume on their own that South Korea will not invade Japan.
In the end, what remains is fear of a military conflict with China.
If that fear were to become reality, the media are seized by a mood of “fearing Trump,” meaning uncertainty as to whether Trump would stand on Japan’s side.
How pathetic.
Few in the media understand the basic principle of a state, namely that one’s own country must defend itself.
If China were to invade our country, most of the media would not speak of Japan’s counterattack at all, but would do nothing but write endless pleas for the application of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, that is, appeals to President Trump.

These are the things I, an old man, have gathered from the statements of the media over the past month.
To put them in order, the media speak from a self-satisfied world in which they regard themselves as a noble intellectual elite and Trump as an uncultured fool.
It must come from that arrogance that they are unaware of the contradictions in their own opinions.
Those contradictions overlap splendidly with the rhetoric of Japan’s left wing.
For example, this is how it goes.
Most of the media are basically anti-American.
This is not anti-Americanism arising from nationalism.
Rather, it is the anti-American-imperialism line that their former homeland, now collapsed, the old Soviet Union and the like, used to advance with sophistry.
In other words, “America, go home.”
All of this, even now, may be seen living vividly in the political world of Okinawa.
Yet the moment Trump’s policies began to show that America would stop being the world’s policeman and instead seek to return to the prosperity of the American mainland, they suddenly began saying that America’s inward turn, that is, a mainland-centered America, is no good, and that America should be more international.
This means, “America, please stay.”
At one time, “America, go home.”
At another, “America, please stay.”
The attitude that shifts position again and again according to one’s own convenience, without recognizing any contradiction in it, is the dialectical posture of the left.
What exists there is mindlessness in the form of infinite opportunism.
As the ancients said, when the branches become excessively large, the tree will surely break, and when an animal’s tail becomes too large, it cannot swing it freely.