This essay, dated November 20, 2019, introduces an article by Yoshiko Sakurai published in Shukan Shincho.
It criticizes opposition politicians and NHK for obsessing over the “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party” issue while Japan faces severe international challenges involving the Korean Peninsula, China, and U.S. demands.

November 20, 2019.
Without understanding the severe international situation, presenting solutions, and defending the national interest to the end, there is no meaning in being a politician.
And yet, what on earth are they doing?
A friend of mine, who is one of the most avid readers I know, also buys Shukan Shincho every week when it goes on sale in order to read the two columns.
He always says that Masayuki Takayama and I, and Yoshiko Sakurai and I, are in resonance.
After reading Yoshiko Sakurai’s column in this week’s issue, I thought so too.
The opposition political operators and NHK, which acts in concert with them, have created a commotion over the “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party,” which is nothing other than a yakuza-style false accusation.
In response to what I wrote intuitively, Ms. Sakurai, as a genuine journalist, verifies the facts and exposes their evil.
She is displaying the true essence of what Saichō called a national treasure.
NHK, for some reason, does not question but reports in agreement with the fact that people lower than yakuza are making false accusations, saying it is strange that the standing buffet party at the hotel where everyone stayed cost 5,000 yen.
Among the people of insight who saw the reported footage, all those who are gourmets must instantly have seen through the fact that 5,000 yen was quite sufficient for that.
Incidentally, the other day, when I went to Tokyo on business, I reserved and stayed in a room for 8,500 yen that had cost 45,000 yen per night until the day before I stayed there.
In this internet age, there must be countless readers who have experienced using so-called luxury hotels at bargain prices on weekdays, Sundays, and so forth.
Under the present world situation, the opposition political operators who attack the prime minister, who is staking his life for Japan and continuing to carry out the greatest work in postwar Japanese political history, by making false accusations lower than those of yakuza, are precisely the people misusing taxes and the tax thieves.
NHK, which is acting in concert with them, is in reality made up of national public servants, but it is no exaggeration at all to say that they too are tax thieves.
I will write about NHK at a later date.
The parts marked with ＊～＊ are mine.
The following is Yoshiko Sakurai’s essay, published in today’s issue of Shukan Shincho, under the title “The Political Degradation Shown by the Battle over the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.”
The Korean Peninsula is full of problems, the United States is making demands, and China is expanding while hiding the eeriness of its one-party dictatorship behind a false smile.
Japan is facing these difficult issues.
None of them is easy to solve.
Therefore, the people who must work hardest now are politicians.
Without understanding the severe international situation, presenting solutions, and defending the national interest to the end, there is no meaning in being a politician.
And yet, what on earth are they doing?
Tomoko Tamura of the Japanese Communist Party took up the prime minister-sponsored “Cherry Blossom Viewing Party” at the House of Councillors Budget Committee on November 8.
Since then, many opposition parties have begun attacking the administration as if this were Japan’s most important issue.
Jun Azumi, chairman of the Diet Affairs Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party, and others say they will pursue it “thoroughly.”
On the 13th, the prime minister announced that next spring’s party would be cancelled and that the standards for invitations and other matters would be reviewed.
Certainly, the number of invitees to the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party has increased year by year, and it would be the right decision to suspend it once and review it.
Jin Matsubara, a former Democratic Party member of the House of Representatives who now belongs to the Constitutional Democratic Party, Democratic Party for the People, Social Security, and Independents Forum, criticized it.
“We too were given quotas and invited people, but in Prime Minister Abe’s case, the large number of people stands out.
The way it appears that his office mobilized people is, no matter how you look at it, excessive.”
Akihisa Nagashima, a member of the House of Representatives who moved from the Democratic Party to the Liberal Democratic Party, sees it this way.
“When it was the Democratic Party, we did exactly the same thing.
Each lawmaker had an invitation quota, and we invited people from our support groups.
The Constitutional Democratic Party is demanding that the prime minister make clear what achievement each and every invitee has, but we too invited many people who were working hard in their local communities, even if they were not people of special merit.
In the sense that they were people who had helped us on a daily basis, they were our supporters.
Surely this is the same for everyone.”
To be continued.