October 11, 2011
Republished on July 25, 2026, under a revised title.

Written as one part of a trilogy that took shape in the author’s mind before dawn, this essay addresses Mr. Uchida and argues that the distinction between major newspapers and the internet—their prestige, circulation, or public recognition—is irrelevant.
The only essential question is whether an article or commentary contains the real truth.
It also criticizes media figures who supported antidemocratic forces, misled the public without reflection, and tolerated an inward-looking political game conducted under the banner of “politics and money.”

Perhaps because I had gone to bed extremely early the previous night, I awoke extremely early.
It was two o’clock.
Even by any standard, that was far too early.
I decided to go back to sleep, but when I awoke again, something came to me that continued the concise passage I had written earlier, in which I stated, “Mr. Uchida, you have taken the wrong road.”
I do not know how commentators and scholars behave in this respect, but there are no dilettantes among genuine artists.
Nor are there people who make a principle of wandering without direction.
For reasons unknown to me, you are wandering.
I cannot believe that the great Umesao, whom you revere as your teacher, would approve of that.
There is no significance in saying that major newspapers are correct, that major newspapers are necessary for one reason or another, or that the internet is not correct.
What I wish to say is simply that, in little more than a year after I began writing, I became profoundly aware of the appalling condition of our mass media, naturally including the editorial writers of the major newspapers.
Something that must never be done, not only as a journalist but as a human being, is to side with antidemocratic forces.
Yet those who not only sided with such forces but continued misleading the people have shown no reflection whatsoever.
By accepting that state of affairs, you are effectively saying that there is nothing wrong with it.
Perhaps this is because you, too, were part of it, but no such logic can be justified.
Whether words appear in a major newspaper or on the internet is irrelevant.
The only question is whether the real truth was present in those words and whether the writer continued writing the real truth.
The fact that major newspapers possess established prestige, large circulations, and famous names, while internet writers may possess no title and remain unknown, has nothing whatsoever to do with the truth.
The only question concerning an article or an editorial is whether the real truth is there.
There is no such thing as truth founded upon self-serving pretence disguised as benevolence, Mr. Uchida.
In other words, the sense of solidarity with classmates and peers toward the mass media, represented by people such as you, can also be said to have permitted more than twenty years of what I call “mindless television” and more than thirty-five years of the inward-looking game of fiction called “politics and money”—which, as I have repeatedly stated, was in reality an attack upon the Tanaka faction.
MIKIO KISARA