Originally published on February 17, 2020.
This article introduces an essay titled “A Proposal to Foolish Lawmakers” from Nobuyuki Kaji’s Sankei Shimbun column, Classical Solo Exhibition.
It criticizes the opposition parties for obsessing over the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party while urgent national issues such as Chinese vessels around the Senkaku Islands, a possible Taiwan contingency, refugees from the Korean Peninsula, massive deficit-covering bonds, and the explosive growth of social-security costs remain insufficiently discussed in the Diet.

February 17, 2020
Surely the Diet should give priority to discussing urgent and important issues that cause anxiety in the lives of the people.
For example, is it not the case that the issue of how to respond to Chinese vessels that continue appearing around the Senkaku Islands is not being discussed at all?
Professor Emeritus Nobuyuki Kaji of Osaka University writes a regular column in the Sankei Shimbun under the title Classical Solo Exhibition.
The following is from an essay published today under the title “A Proposal to Foolish Lawmakers.”
The current state of the Diet is abnormal.
Since last autumn, the opposition parties have continued endlessly to ask questions about whether government officials sought their own benefit and abused their authority in deciding who would be invited to the government-sponsored Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.
The privatization of the public sphere—if one limits the issue to that alone—is indeed an important political problem.
However, politics is not concerned with that issue alone.
Surely the Diet should give priority to discussing urgent and important issues that cause anxiety in the lives of the people.
For example, as I have stated in this column before, is it not the case that the issue of how to respond to Chinese vessels that continue appearing around the Senkaku Islands is not being discussed at all?
Are there any opposition questions pressing the government to raise this matter with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is soon to visit Japan as a state guest?
Or, for example, if China and Taiwan were suddenly to enter a state of war, the U.S. military would naturally launch from Okinawa to assist Taiwan.
At that time, what position would Japan take?
Has the Diet ever discussed this even once?
National problems are piling up.
If an emergency were to occur, there would be the problem of hundreds of thousands of refugees rushing in from the Korean Peninsula.
There are also the enormous deficit-covering government bonds, the hopeless expansion of social-security costs, and many other difficult problems.
Is it not the duty of Diet members to make at least some effort toward solving these problems?
If they cannot meet such demands, then why not at least propose forward-looking reform of the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party?
In other words, the greatest problem with the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party appears to be that the criteria for selecting invitees are unclear, so they should move in the direction of correcting that.
The purpose of the invitation is said to be to honor achievements that have contributed to the nation and society.
If that is so, are there not countless people without titles who work hard and contribute to society?
For example, there is a disabled man who regularly gets on and off the municipal bus that I always use.
Both of his legs are prosthetic, and he commutes while using assistive crutches.
His daily work, getting on and off at fixed times, is admirable.
Or, for example, I contact a certain woman and give her the old newspapers and magazines that have accumulated at my home.
She loads the old paper and other items onto a rear cart and transports them by pedaling the bicycle connected to that cart.
She is admirable.
It is precisely such people who should be invited to the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.
In the Edo period, various domains publicly honored people who worked hard for their families.
The factual records of such acts were published in large numbers as books titled something like “Biographies of Filial Children of Such-and-Such” or “Records of Filial Piety and Righteousness of So-and-So.”
It seems that this also continued into the early Meiji period.
It is regrettable that such public commendation is now hardly carried out at all.
Would it not be possible for the national government and local public bodies to invite and honor, at the Cherry Blossom Viewing Party, many people who work hard for their families despite hardship?
Even if one proposes the best policy, foolish lawmakers will surely not understand it.
As the Yang Huo chapter of The Analects says, “Only the highest wisdom and the lowest stupidity do not change.”
Kaji Nobuyuki