July 23, 2010
“A true life has no end, and a true book has no end.” (J. M. G. Le Clézio)
Ever since early evening, a genuine member of the elite who had also been involved in the political world twenty years ago had remained constantly in my thoughts.
He was a man who never forgot throughout his life that graduating from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo with outstanding grades and entering the Ministry of Finance meant that his mission was always to think about the country, to ensure that the country did not take the wrong course, to continue studying ceaselessly, and to keep his mind clear.
Just to make certain, I looked him up on Wikipedia and was astonished.
That was because what I had repeatedly written—that the responsibility lay with the mass media and that the sins of the mass media were profound—was concisely recorded there as fact.
His name was Kiichi Miyazawa, who was prime minister at the time.
…Amid the financial instability that followed the collapse of the bubble economy, he also spoke in favor of public assistance for financial institutions at the Liberal Democratic Party’s Karuizawa Seminar in August 1992.
He stated that the substantial decline in asset prices, including land and stock prices, made this recession qualitatively different from previous economic downturns and that it was necessary to dispose of nonperforming loans at an early stage, even if that required the injection of public funds.
However, he encountered strong opposition from government ministries, the mass media, business organizations, and the financial institutions themselves, and the proposal was not implemented.
Consequently, Kiichi Miyazawa was forced to withdraw the decision.
As a result, the disposal of nonperforming loans through the injection of public funds into banks became taboo, and for many years afterward, not a single Japanese politician was able to speak of it again.…
So it was not only the mass media; it was almost everyone.
They were the false elites, trapped within a fundamental sickness or within their own egotism.
The result was “Japan’s Lost Two Decades.”
Shimozuma, who occupies the position of chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation as though it were entirely yours:
Take the facts stated above deeply to heart.
In addition to the books that had to be read, there were Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and probably The Economist and The Guardian as well.
Kiichi Miyazawa was probably reading all of them every morning, with the fluent and precise command of English that amazed every American dignitary he met—as naturally as reading Japanese—and with encyclopedic knowledge like a living dictionary.
I am convinced that there is not a single politician like that today.
I had intended to begin writing in this way…the mass media slighted this genuine member of the elite, a man who, whether asleep or awake, thought about Japan and the world, with relations with the United States probably occupying an especially large place…that was the struggle of his entire life.
A little research immediately reveals that he devoted half his life to protecting Japan’s national interests to the greatest extent possible as a defeated nation…yet the mass media slighted him.
That created “Japan’s Lost Two Decades” and produced the present age, in which an almost unbelievable degree of feeble-mindedness runs rampant.
I have always been a reader of the Asahi Shimbun, so naturally I know this, but the other newspapers were probably the same.
Within the Liberal Democratic Party, his faction was weak in terms of power.
Consequently, political reporters always paid attention not to him but to those who possessed greater power, and he was frequently treated lightly whenever political maneuvering arose.
As a result, this extraordinarily brilliant man, who devoted his entire life to serving the national interest, did not finally become prime minister until he was seventy-five years old.
Twenty years ago, the mass media slighted those whose factions were weak; now, after the “Lost Two Decades,” it attacks those whose factions are powerful.
In what respect can you claim that your position has remained consistent?
Especially in the face of facts that astonished even me, every mass-media organization should remain silent for at least three days, examine itself, reflect upon its conduct, and refrain from further activity.
In particular, to a certain Yamada, an economic reporter for the Asahi Shimbun who led the charge by demanding, “Why must the people’s hard-earned tax money be injected for the sake of these vicious and inhumane banks?”
Your responsibility for today’s Japan, where one person in seven lives in poverty, is profound.
I have neither seen nor read of you advancing the same kind of argument you made then against the unbelievably foolish acts now being committed—the evil that amounts to the theft of more than one trillion yen in tax money and could completely kill Osaka.
Your annual income has probably long since exceeded ten million yen, and you are presumably immersed in egotism within your own security, savoring your personal happiness.
I have continued to tell the people around me:
A genius is a person whose inner blackboard is completely white…that is why he can see an infinite world and absorb knowledge instantly, like water…
A person of mediocre ability is someone whose inner blackboard has been blackened completely by his own words and other such things…that is why he cannot accept even the slightest difference, and why his knowledge can never become anything more than superficial.
Over these past twenty years, there has been an extraordinary increase in people who say that they studied how to become politicians at institutions such as the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management.
What they share is that, particularly when appearing in the mass media or on television, they are extremely aggressive and often speak as though they were dogs in heat barking.
Among them, there cannot be a single person with Kiichi Miyazawa’s volume of reading or anyone who reads all the newspapers listed above every day in their original languages.
What would we think if Obama, visiting Japan, addressed us not merely in Japanese indistinguishable from our own, but in Japanese that was more perfect, fluent, and beautiful than ours, which has become considerably corrupted in everyday speech?
There can be no doubt that our interest in and admiration for Obama would deepen still further.
That was the kind of person Kiichi Miyazawa was.
On two occasions, I passed in front of his home, located a short distance from Omotesando in a tranquil place that scarcely seemed to be in the center of the city, with the appearance of a wise man’s secluded retreat.
It was a serene residence befitting one of Japan’s foremost scholarly figures in the political world.
What readers must understand and take deeply to heart from this chapter is that when this country’s mass media joins in a great chorus of righteousness, it is dangerous—extremely dangerous.
You must never forget, even for a moment, that they are wrong.
That is precisely when they lead the country astray.
Just as they were sixty years ago, they are not democrats.
We should regard them as boorish peasants beholden to someone, appalling authoritarians, and, in reality, foolish fascists.
Moreover, as vividly demonstrated by the present matters involving the North Yard and the Football Association, they are members of the lowest form of politics conducted by local grandees.
The thought that they—the very people responsible for turning the deaths of four million people into deaths in vain—will once again, all together, begin talking about the anniversary of the end of the war and so forth makes me sick.