This essay criticizes NHK’s Watch 9 for responding to the desperate appeal of Hong Kong’s youth, who shut down Hong Kong Airport to call upon the international community to defend freedom and intellect, with nothing but concern over avoiding a direct confrontation with the Chinese government.
It also questions the silence of figures such as Kenzaburō Ōe and Haruki Murakami, the unthinking attitude of those who would visit Hong Kong merely as tourists, and the absurdity of China and Russia continuing to sit as permanent members of the UN Security Council while Japan bears a disproportionately large financial burden for the United Nations.

2019-08-13
Just now, while watching Watch 9 with the sound turned off, half watching it in the background.
At a time when young people, driven to the very brink of freedom and intellect, are shutting down Hong Kong Airport and pressing the international community to defend freedom and intellect, in response to their desperate, death-defying cries—their appeal to the international community and their request for assistance,
Arima and Kuwako, completely unresponsive, say nothing except such things as that care must be taken not to lead to a direct confrontation with the Chinese government.
It goes without saying that they are inclined more toward the Chinese government than toward those young people.
Of course, Kenzaburō Ōe, Haruki Murakami, and others have not raised a single voice either.
What is shared between the carefree, unconscious attitude of those who would go to Hong Kong on a sightseeing trip and people like them is probably the collective illusion of “self-serving pseudo-moralists.”
Even so, China and Russia, leaving aside the confusion immediately after the war, still calmly sit as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
For a long time, Japan has continued to bear an extraordinarily large share of the financial contributions for maintaining the United Nations, an amount beyond the reach of those countries.
If China and Russia are supposed to be models for the world, then no such thing as a model exists in the world.
If they brandish justice, then justice does not exist in this world.