August 21, 2010.
The author criticizes the media for mistakenly believing that the first change of government through an election in the sixty years since the war was “their own achievement,” and points out that the true causes of Japan’s stagnation lie in the Liberal Democratic Party’s self-destruction and dependence on the bureaucracy.
The real challenge is not “politics and money,” but identifying the people capable of leading the nation onto the path of prosperity.
The author argues that what is needed is not makeshift tax increases, but a thorough reassessment of personnel through the preparation of a White Paper on the Bureaucracy and a Bank of Japan White Paper.
This is a sharp proposal asserting that major change is indispensable for Japan, which has suffered ¥500 trillion in lost growth and carries ¥450 trillion in government bonds.
On August 21, 2010, the author strongly appeals for the necessity of “changing things in a major way.”
The author points out that Japan’s stagnation over the past twenty years was not caused by politicians, as the media claims, but was the result of outstanding bureaucrats leaving for the private sector during the bubble era and the bureaucratic system itself declining.
The author argues that breaking through the present situation requires a leader of sufficient caliber to gain an accurate grasp of the bureaucracy and resolutely carry out fundamental reform.
The author proposes that time should not be spent on makeshift policies or personal hobbies, but that the nation’s true challenges should be faced directly.
Once Again: What Matters Is Changing Things in a Major Way.
August 21, 2010
Does the media now believe that they changed things…that they brought about the first change of government through an election in the sixty years since the war…?
Needless to say, the media had nothing whatsoever to do with this, and if anything, the opposite is true.
As already stated, this change of government came about because “Was not the downfall of the Liberal Democratic Party caused by the fact that, as of eighteen years ago, people possessing the qualities and qualifications required of a Prime Minister had completely disappeared?”
The eighteen years since then have brought us to where we are now, and it goes without saying what that has meant…
To put it simply, the destruction of the social foundations that had been Japan’s strength…Was lifetime employment really unnecessary?…
Public employees remain under a lifetime employment system…That fact alone should be enough to say that there was no need for the private sector to destroy its lifetime employment system…
There is no possibility that a logic saying YES to the private sector and NO to public employees could be correct…
Market fundamentalism…If the argument is that the twentieth-century market said NO to the lifetime employment system, then it must be applied equally to public employees, and the system must be changed to so-called meritocracy.
Otherwise, such logic is utterly strange, irresponsible logic designed to serve someone’s interests.
The exhaustion of regional communities…shopping streets throughout Japan lined with closed shutters…11.6 million citizens with annual incomes of ¥2 million or less…
Even upon reaching the age of thirty, young people cannot obtain regular employment or marry…the inevitable declining birthrate and aging population…the pension system is also on the verge of collapse.
The truth is that the Liberal Democratic Party, which lost the caliber required of a Prime Minister eighteen years ago, destroyed itself.
If the nation is compared to a private company, the Prime Minister chosen by the party that takes power is the company president, and the actual employees are the various government ministries and agencies.
Management begins with distinguishing who among the employees is outstanding.
It can also be said that the person who can do that best and without making mistakes becomes the company president.
After governing the company internally in that way, the president announces and implements a grand design for overcoming the circumstances in which the company finds itself and developing it even further.
That is what a company president does.
Who within the Democratic Party can transform these twenty years all at once?
That alone is what they should compete over, yet we hear that public sentiment is this or that because of “politics and money”…
I believe it would be fair to declare that this is exactly the same thing as the grand chorus of righteous indignation eighteen years ago.
With what face can the media, which danced alongside the Liberal Democratic Party for the sixty years of its rule, claim that money did not constantly accompany LDP politics?
Who can speak of “politics and money” while wearing an expression suggesting that their own hands alone are perfectly clean?…
After all that foolishness, and four million civilians, combatants…whatever you may call them, you in the media greatly incited matters as well, turning people into combatants with a single red draft notice and, even though they were students, putting them aboard aircraft and torpedoes and making them carry out suicide attacks,
after such a catastrophe, far from bringing to completion what was gained from it even after sixty years, you have continued in what seems like the height of foolishness, remaining at the mental age of thirteen—which one of you can say such things while wearing the face of a righteous judge?
Even with the single issue of the Umeda North Yard, until I wrote this much, not a single person mentioned it, and which one of you, who remain completely unconcerned about inflicting losses approaching ¥1 trillion on the people, has the qualifications to behave like a judge?
After completing The Turntable of Civilization, I thought that I should first send it to Prime Minister Kan, and I was astonished when I looked at his official website…
It was because he had written incomprehensible things about physics and so forth…
I thought, Come on, come on…
It goes without saying that you are not a first-rate physicist…
If you were the most outstanding person in that field, someone who had to master physics, you would quietly have become a physicist…
That is not what you should be talking about, I thought.
Those around you who shower you with flattery were saying things such as, “Because you come from a scientific background…”
I am sorry, but among my classmates alone, there were at least fifty people who were clearly more accomplished in science than you.
What you should be doing is political science…
As Prime Minister, you should be making the nation prosper.
That is not the issue at all.
We are now truly facing a national crisis,
and the only people who do not think so are those who have belonged to the elite class since twenty years ago, beginning with the media, who, despite being the very people responsible for creating these past twenty years in this country, feel no anxiety whatsoever about their own lives and remain immersed in ugly egoism.
They must extend across every field.
Even someone who originally lacked the qualities required of a Prime Minister can save the nation.
That requires learning the causes and consequences of these twenty years with a truly selfless heart…and, if the most outstanding people remain among the bureaucrats, having them produce proposals that surpass even my own.
It is necessary to determine who is most suited to doing that.
Or who, while leaving the present structure unchanged…intends to continue conducting politics while remaining obedient to the bureaucrats who created these past twenty years?
First, prepare a White Paper on the Bureaucracy and a Bank of Japan White Paper, determine whether the most outstanding people are there or not, and if they are not, decide what to do—that is where it must begin…
Restore Japan…
Japan should declare to itself and to the world that it will prosper and fulfill its role toward the world.
I resolutely reject another absurd grand chorus of righteous indignation like the one eighteen years ago.
The issue is who can return Japan to the path of prosperity.
There is no other issue whatsoever,
because no such time remains.
When things change in a major way, everything changes.
Over twenty years, the amount of growth that did not occur was ¥500 trillion, and the amount of deficit-financing government bonds issued was ¥450 trillion.
Having inflicted losses of this magnitude upon the nation, Japan cannot be saved by makeshift measures.
Things must be changed in a major way…
Just as, because you achieved the first change of government through an election in the sixty years since the war—even if, as already stated, it was the inevitable self-destruction of the Liberal Democratic Party for the reasons described above—there can never again be a return to the LDP politics of the past.
Things must be changed in a major way.
Raising the consumption tax will only lead the nation down the path of decline…
That must be the thinking of the present bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance…
Moreover, it is the conception of the bureaucrats who created these past twenty years…
Is the central figure behind this argument truly the ace of the Ministry of Finance?
Has the true ace not left long ago and ceased to be there?
Instead of wasting time saying incomprehensible things about physics and so forth, you should begin by looking directly at the bureaucrats and investigating whether people who, from the time they entered the ministry, were expected to possess the caliber to become Director-General of the Budget Bureau truly remain in today’s Ministry of Finance.
If all the aces remain in the various ministries and agencies, make them humbly acknowledge the failed policies of these past twenty years and have them exercise their abilities to the fullest in devising measures to make the nation prosper…If they are aces, they should understand that this is no time to speak of ministerial interests…
This time, with a truly selfless heart, make them discover only the path of serving the people, saving the nation, and making it prosper.
That is the task now imposed upon the person who becomes Prime Minister.
Only a person capable of doing that should become Prime Minister.
Things are different now.