Combined with air pollution, it fouls the noses, throats, and even the deepest parts of the lungs of the Chinese. That is why they spit phlegm wherever they please.

November 5, 2025

This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column “Farewell, Kurds,” published in the January 18, 2024 issue of Shukan Shincho.
The author sharply criticizes China’s severe air pollution and cultural decay while recounting the story of Shinji Tanimura’s journey to China in search of the original landscape behind his famous song “Subaru.”
He declares that “you cannot see the stars in China,” and argues that the place where one should truly experience the world of “Subaru” is the grasslands of the Anatolian Plateau in Turkey.
He further addresses the contemporary Kurdish problem, warning of the deterioration of public safety caused by immigrant gangs and their influx into Japan.
Blending a sweeping critique of civilization with a warning to contemporary society, this is a piece that demonstrates Takayama’s true worth as “the one and only journalist in the postwar world,” seen through his unique perspective.

Combined with air pollution, it fouls the noses, throats, and even the deepest parts of the lungs of the Chinese. That is why they spit phlegm wherever they please.
January 18, 2024

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column that brings to a close the issue of Shukan Shincho released today.
This article, too, proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.

Farewell, Kurds

“A vast grassland stretching all the way to the horizon beneath a sky filled with stars.”
“It is said that the scenery that had long floated before his mind’s eye was entrusted to the lyrics of ‘Subaru’—”
This is a transcription of the opening passage of the Sankei Sh抄 mourning Shinji Tanimura.
“And twenty years later,” the column continues.
A television station planned a journey to search for the “original landscape” of the famous song, and Tanimura believed that it was in China.
He flew to Xi’an, and from there rode on a bus for eight hours.
The place he finally reached was Wuzhang Plains, where “the dead Kongming made the living Zhongda flee.”
Tanimura got off the bus, looked beyond the “way leading toward the wilderness” and up at the magnificent sky, and said one word: “No.”
You can almost see everyone around him collapsing in disappointment.
But if you think about it for a moment, perhaps the mistake began with trying to find that original landscape “in China.”

Speaking of China, that one country accounts for 32 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Cities and scenery alike are covered in dense smog, which has also produced a new kind of pollution called “PM2.5.”
On top of that, yellow sand blows through the air.
Combined with air pollution, it fouls the noses, throats, and even the deepest parts of the lungs of the Chinese.
That is why they spit phlegm wherever they please.

Keiji Hayashi, a former Taipei bureau chief of the Sankei Shimbun, was born in Tianjin and remembers how the trunks of poplar trees along the main streets gleamed even in the middle of winter.
He also remembers how his mother, wondering why, went closer and nearly fainted when she realized that the shine came from nasal mucus that people had wiped onto the trunks.
It is strange to think that in such a country one could see stars glittering in a crystal-clear night sky.

In the first place, Subaru is a group of third-magnitude stars around the shoulder of Taurus. It is also called Mutsuraboshi, the Six Stars.
They are not stars that can be seen if the sky is even slightly clouded.
If I had known that Tanimura wanted so badly to find the original landscape of “Subaru,” I would without hesitation have recommended that he go to Turkey.

Westward from the Iranian border.
Four hundred kilometers from Lake Van.
While traveling across the high-altitude Anatolian Plateau, I came upon a plateau where green grasslands stretched endlessly.
The green continued all the way to the horizon without mountains to interrupt it, and a blue sky with scattered clouds enveloped the entire landscape.

Let us drive through it.
For six months we had traveled the Asian Highway from Vietnam, covering various countries while continuing a newspaper series.
Now we had finally reached Turkey, the end of the journey.
It would make a magnificent photograph worthy of bringing the journey to a close.

When I read the Sankei Sh抄, I immediately remembered those Anatolian grasslands.
All one would have to do is lower the curtain of night over that place.
Looking up into the southeastern sky, Orion’s three stars would line up, and beyond them Aldebaran in Taurus would shine.
Just behind it, the Pleiades star cluster, Subaru, would twinkle.
Shinji Tanimura surely would have had no regrets.

There is just one thing to be careful about.
As we were deciding on an angle and shooting good images, we were surrounded by a group dressed strangely in black.
They asked who we were.
When we explained our purpose, a young man who was the chief of the Tart that controlled the area responded.
“Your purpose is fine. But this is not grassland. It is our barley field,” he said, pointing with his chin toward the field that had been mercilessly trampled.
His anger was burning.

I thought we might be killed, but by chance we were carrying a personal letter from President Ozatoru, and by another coincidence the president was this young man’s circumcision sponsor, his kirve.
The fact that we came back alive was almost a miracle.
One must be very careful about whether something is grassland or cultivated land.

Now those frightening Kurds are spreading throughout the world.
In Sweden, refugee gangs controlled by Kurdish bosses are disrupting public order to such an extent that the military has been mobilized.
They have also slipped into Japan while pretending to be good Turks, and 2,000 of them congregate in Kawaguchi City.

Among the great Kurds is Saladin, whose name represents nobility.
He was the Islamic hero who defeated the Third Crusade.
But his descendants in Kawaguchi have forgotten the teachings of Allah, gulp down shochu, harass women passing by, and when they tire of fighting among themselves, race around in modified cars.
From my own experience, they are truly frightening.

And the grasslands suit them.
I would recommend that they go over there and look at Subaru.