The first-rate recognize the first-rate.
Geniuses recognize geniuses.
My closest friend has heard these words from me many times.
The confusion surrounding the Umeda North Yard project was what prompted my emergence as the author of this column.
At that time, the late Hiroshi Shimozuma, who had assumed the presidency of the Kansai Economic Federation, may not have been a genius, but he was a genuinely brilliant man produced by Sapporo.
Precisely because he was my senior, I—a genius produced by Sendai—corrected his great mistake.
I also wrote about those circumstances when I first appeared as the author of this column.
Recently, I had an opportunity to hold a full and meaningful conversation with an outstanding young university student.
When I asked him, the answer was exactly as I had expected.
He had never once taken, within the school education system, an intelligence test that would enable him to understand his intellectual abilities objectively and comprehensively.
Japan’s National Assessment of Academic Ability is still conducted today.
But that alone could never identify the intelligence, originality, insight, and creativity of a human being.
That is because, in a world where hypocrisy and political correctness run rampant, people have brandished phrases such as “That is discrimination,” and even attempts to measure human qualities and abilities accurately have come to be shunned.
As a result, many people have become unable even to distinguish whether they are genuine geniuses or merely high-achieving test takers.
Taking advantage of this situation, an endless succession of dullards and mediocrities—including Shinichi Kitaoka and Haruki Wada—have treated graduation from the University of Tokyo as their sole merit, flaunted it arrogantly, and uttered statements that lead the nation astray.
More recently, there has even appeared a man such as Yoichi Shimada, whose only merit may have been graduating from Kyoto University and who must be described as a failure as a scholar.
Those around him also conveniently forget their true abilities and positions and speak of themselves as though they were far greater figures than they actually are.
My closest friend, who heard that statement and told me about it, is unmistakably a genius.
He has been such an extraordinary reader since childhood that even I am astonished by him, and he is truly a genius of the most formidable order.
Masayuki Takayama taught me that GHQ lay at the source of the policies and ideas that brought Japan its declining birthrate; that one of its advance agents was Shizue Kato of the Socialist Party, who was involved in the enactment of the Eugenic Protection Law; and that the Asahi Shimbun and other media organizations further promoted that tide.
This structure closely resembles the process by which Ken Sakamura’s TRON revolution was obstructed.
It was the process through which Bill Gates is said ultimately to have mobilized even the United States government to impede the progress of TRON.
As I have written many times, this led to the severe difficulties faced by nine electronics manufacturers of which Japan had been proud before the world.
Among those raised on a close reading of the Asahi Shimbun, women emerged who viewed the very choice of marriage negatively, regardless of whether they were geniuses or ordinary people.
In other words, throughout the postwar period, the Asahi Shimbun has consistently been one of the principal causes of the ideological climate that has encouraged Japan’s declining birthrate.
It is beyond dispute that, in my view, one of the influential figures who led that climate was Chizuko Ueno, who was nothing more than a high-achieving test taker.
I have already written about the circumstances in which the path I should have followed was taken away from me.
It happened at the very beginning of my third year of high school.
I have also already written that, from then on, I spent my days listening to classical music on NHK-FM.
The genius within me passed each day finding peace in the music performed by the geniuses of the musical world—in the resonance that only geniuses can produce.
Through Natsuho Murata, an unmistakable genius of the most extraordinary magnitude, I came to know Yukine Kuroki, a pianist of exceptional gifts—in other words, another genius.
Whenever possible, I hasten to attend her concerts.
On the night of November 29, 2024, in keeping with the program of Yukine Kuroki’s concert, I delivered to the world the photographs I had taken that same day—the photographs of myself as a genius.
Perhaps that was the reason.
On the following morning, November 30, I had an exceedingly precious dream.
In that dream, an unmistakable genius had been born into a family connected to me and, despite still being a young child, was holding a full and meaningful conversation with me.
A system capable of comprehensively discovering human qualities, including intelligence testing, is necessary.
Japan’s National Assessment of Academic Ability must also be redesigned so that it does more than measure attainment in school subjects and can identify logical thinking, insight, and creativity.
It is absolutely indispensable if every field and every level of Japanese society is to advance through those who are genuinely first-rate, genuinely intelligent, and genuinely gifted.
The deflation that Western countries detest as they would snakes and scorpions continues in Japan even now.
Amid that deflation, Japan’s magnificent apparel industry—an industry of which the nation should be proud—has fallen into severe difficulty.
A company that once sold products which quickly became fuzzy and were hardly suitable for wearing outside became a global corporation through Heattech, the crystallization of Toray’s technology embodying Japan’s traditional technological excellence.
That is all there was to it.
Nevertheless, having misunderstood something completely, the founder of UNIQLO declared that Japan must promote immigration and that, unless it did so, Japan would become a second-rate nation.
One of the few acts he performed that deserves praise was probably his donation of 10 billion yen to the research group led by Professor Yamanaka at Kyoto University.
But success in one field does not mean that a person can make correct judgments about every issue affecting the future of the nation.
To prevent the country from being led astray by such absurd pronouncements, Japan must reconstruct intelligence testing that accurately and multidimensionally measures human abilities, together with nationwide academic assessments.
For knowing the enemy and knowing oneself is the essential condition for victory in battle.
Who are you, what can you do, and what can you not do?
Unless these things are understood, no individual, corporation, or nation can make sound judgments.
A society in which mere high-achieving test takers and people without sufficient discernment, ignorant of their proper place, swagger about and shout at the top of their voices has no path before it other than decline and extinction.
The most recent proof is the result of the House of Representatives election, in which the Conservative Party of Japan, founded by two boorish fools, in fact drove Japan to the very brink of death, brought about the birth of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and once again created the possibility of a nightmarish Constitutional Democratic Party government.
Makoto Yamane, the outstanding editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine WiLL, informed the Japanese people through a YouTube program that there had been a University of Tokyo professor who made the unbelievable claim that relations between Japan and the United States would collapse if Sanae Takaichi became prime minister.
The harm caused when a mere high-achieving test taker such as Shinichi Kitaoka—a graduate of Todaiji Gakuen in Nara—interferes in Japanese politics is directly connected to a crisis that threatens the nation’s very survival.
He probably accepted ideas fed to him by people around Ambassador Emanuel without seeing through their true nature.
I cannot help but think so.
In other words, he is a mediocrity who lacks the intelligence and insight needed to perceive the future of the nation.
It is even more outrageous for people without sufficient discernment or ability, or those suspected of acting according to someone else’s intentions, to speak about politics and attempt to influence the direction of the nation without knowing their proper place.
The first-rate recognize the first-rate.
Geniuses recognize geniuses.
For Japan to become a nation that once again leads the world, it must look beyond titles and academic credentials and recognize the true abilities of human beings.
Japan must restore a system that discovers those who are genuinely first-rate, genuinely intelligent, and genuinely gifted, and enables their abilities to be used for the nation.