​​​​​​​The following is a chapter published on June 30, 2012.
The original was written using Akutagawa, from my original pen name Kenji Akutagawa, as the subject, but in this text, wherever Akutagawa was the subject, I have made myself the subject.
Unlike the Japanese people, who spent these past twenty-plus, thirty-five-plus years growing dull while watching mind-numbing television, they have lived desperately, desperately trying to survive, to prevail in the struggle for survival, and, above all, to outmaneuver others.
＊By “they,” I mean the Chinese and South Koreans, whose countries are not only countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” but also countries that continue Nazism in the name of anti-Japanese education and conduct anti-Japanese propaganda throughout the international community.＊
They have thoroughly studied the fact that the essence of Europe and America is an aristocratic society, who holds power, where the crucial points lie, and matters of that kind.
That is where they launch their assault.
They continue propagating their claims.
They claim that Takeshima is their own territory, that the Japanese are an outrageous people—as the issue of the comfort women supposedly demonstrates—and that “the Japanese dislike foreigners; they hate foreigners.”
In any event, things that make Japanese people say, “What?” and things that Japanese people would regard as shameful are apparently not shameful to them.
In any event, they pursue them relentlessly.
Like the gentleman who became Bill Gates’s advance guard and crushed the TRON revolution.
They persist relentlessly until the other side gives in.
They do not give the slightest thought to the fact that this is a breeding ground for the evil of “vulgarity.”
In any event, the world has become harsh and abrasive since Japan entered its great stagnation.
That is because no other country assumed responsibility, in the manner Japan did, for the wars of the twentieth century—the century of war.
That is why we have been forced to live in a world that is unkind to others, where the struggle for survival is fully exposed and plausible lies prevail.
The cause of everything lay in Japan’s great stagnation during these past twenty-plus years.
Japan forgot that it was a world leader standing alongside the United States, indulged in the vulgar laughter of mind-numbing television, and continued tolerating Asia’s indecency, thereby allowing matters to reach the present state.
I say that it was mind-numbing television that created a coarse and unintelligent Japan bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the Japan represented by Kyoto, and that responsibility rested with the people who continued watching it without ever questioning it.
This sin is deeper than the sea, I say.
The evil that I and my company encountered was born from there.