August 21, 2010
The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Japan as Number Three” in its August 17 edition.
It argued: “No country is born rich. Prosperity is generated year after year through sound economic policies that unlock the potential of its people.”
These are words that can be spoken by the United States, a country founded by European workers who, after enduring continual suffering under a class society, emigrated in pursuit of freedom and the dream of making it a reality…
No country is born rich…
In a class society, the overwhelming majority…99 percent against 1 percent…is the working class.
The probability of outstanding individuals emerging spontaneously, like mutations, in every field follows the same proportion.
There, too, lies the overwhelming strength of the United States, which constantly renews itself.
Over these past 20 years, how has Osaka fared—a city that should be the capital of western Japan, standing tall alongside Tokyo, which is, by rights, the capital of eastern Japan?
I believe that examining the programs produced by commercial television stations would leave us appalled.
Osaka has five commercial television stations—Mainichi TV, Asahi TV, Kansai TV, Yomiuri TV, and Television Osaka—a number comparable to Tokyo’s, but when we ask what kinds of programs they produce, their main activity is broadcasting programs supplied by their affiliated networks.
The other programs they produce on Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons are no different at all from those in Tokyo.
They offer an endless parade of bland programs that recycle the same sorts of entertainers…in Osaka’s case, overwhelmingly those from Yoshimoto, who can be hired very cheaply.
Six or seven years ago, it came to light that Osaka City Hall employees had been diverting large amounts of tax money to private use for many years, but it is hardly surprising that the television stations had failed even to notice.
A person who used to host such programs became mayor of Osaka, and what he is doing now is as I have already described.
What on earth are they, whether in Tokyo or Osaka?
The attitude they share…must be one that assumes Japan is a country born rich.
They must consider themselves an elite…after all, one of them has even become a mayor.
But what kind of elite is this?
Osaka has undergone a tremendous decline over 20 years.
Should they not have been producing a wealth of programs that raise questions about it…something that should come naturally to journalists?
What is the point of having five stations gathered there?
I think it is simply a waste of energy and intelligence.