2010/9/1
More than twenty years ago, at a publication celebration for Tatsuya Naramoto and Chen Shun-shin that I attended at a classmate’s invitation, held in a place like the Kyoto University Hall (a space that was not large), I never once approached you, though you were only a few steps away.

To put in one line what you have done to Ichiro Ozawa, a man with whom you have probably never spoken: I felt I had nothing to gain from you…
Because you looked to me like an ambitious man in academia… someone searching for his own position.

When a female Yomiuri Shimbun reporter covering academia and Kyoto University, who was nearing retirement, brought Professor Yoshida Dai over to our table and asked, “Professor, what do you think of the JC?” the great man Yoshida said, “That will ruin Japan… After all, it is just a gathering of second-generation heirs, isn’t it…”
I burst out laughing when I heard him say it.

I read the Yomiuri Shimbun at the restaurant where I always have lunch…
Reading only the Asahi and the Nikkei is not good enough… The next day, I bought the Yomiuri Shimbun at the subway station on my way to my customary weekend hot spring.
That was when, for the first time in a very long while, I saw your name, Mr. U.

“I am appalled that Ichiro Ozawa, the former secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Japan, is running in its leadership election. The public believes that Mr. Ozawa ‘has not clearly explained the issue of politics and money.’ For such a person to run in the leadership election and seek to become prime minister is far removed from how the public feels. I have a strong interest in ‘Ichiro Ozawa-type people’ who seek power and money. Mr. Ozawa learned methods of acquiring power and money from former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and former Liberal Democratic Party Vice President Shin Kanemaru. But while those two men had human feeling, which can sometimes be inconvenient for those in power, Mr. Ozawa has none and has acted in accordance with his tremendous lust for power. Mr. Ozawa, who has created and destroyed political parties and is called the ‘destroyer,’ may have as his ultimate aim the destruction of the Democratic Party, without giving thought to the nation or its people. If such a person becomes prime minister, the worth of not only the Democratic Party but Japanese politics itself will be called into question.”

First, I think what you call “seeking power and money” is one aspect of twentieth-century capitalism itself.
If so, would you not be better off writing a substantial work on the merits and faults of twentieth-century capitalism?

Just as I have never spoken with you, I do not think you have ever spoken with Ichiro Ozawa… How can you sum up one human being in nine words?
When did you become God? With that thought in mind, I looked you up on the internet that night…
That over these twenty-odd years you have energetically written many different books.
That some of those books contain errors that are plainly errors in scholarly terms… that people fear your energy and do not criticize you openly… etc.

During these twenty years in which you have come to occupy an astonishing position in academia, Japan has continued to sustain losses of some 900 trillion yen and is now in a critical condition…
It is a fact that if things continue as they are, Japan will be in terrible trouble in another twenty years and will suddenly collapse in another thirty.

And there is something I want to say to you, and to other scholars and artists as well:
If writing is your job and you write every day, most people will become better at writing and so on… because words give rise to words…
If you keep writing for twenty years, it is only natural that you will produce a body of work like yours. I cannot understand why the literary world and scholars regard that as such energy that they are afraid of you.

In the life of an ordinary worker, whether one graduated from the University of Tokyo or Kyoto University, it takes three years to become a recognized face of one’s company… “Three years on a stone” is a saying well put.
By repeating one’s daily work, repeating the basics, one becomes a fully established company employee or businessperson.

There is no superiority or inferiority between scholars and artists on one side and company employees, businesspeople, and workers on the other.
Everyone simply works without rest and becomes a splendid butterfly.
If there is a distinction, it is only whether one has lived thinking solely of oneself, a life lived in egoism, or has not.

Mr. U, it costs money to sell things.
In the real estate brokerage business, I was the man who pioneered the practice we see today… of having mountains of flyers inserted into newspapers on Saturdays…
Real estate brokerage is not a big-money business: the commission is 3 percent… 1 percent goes to personnel costs, 1 percent to advertising, and 1 percent to other expenses… nothing remains.
That is why it is not the main business of major real estate companies; their main business is development and the sale of properties…
I declared that, because this was a low-margin, high-volume business, there was no choice but to sell in volume through mass advertising, and I kept placing advertisements.

Over ten years, I spent 1.5 billion yen on publicity and advertising.
That is how I completed more than 5,500 brokerage transactions and, in various forms, paid more than 17 billion yen in taxes.

A politician’s occupation is to sell oneself, is it not?… One cannot sell oneself for nothing… Publishers do not come to politicians saying “Professor…” as they come to you.
Even a single flyer printed on lower-quality paper costs several yen to print.
The number one can distribute oneself in a day is truly very small.
To distribute them throughout one’s entire electoral district would require a great many part-time workers.

People like you are among the few who do not have to spend their own money to sell what they have written.
Whether it is a product made by a company, a property one has been asked to sell, or a politician selling oneself, selling costs money.

But I digress.

As for the case of false entries in political funds reports under the Political Funds Control Act for which Ichiro Ozawa was attacked, Yoshito Sengoku is guilty of exactly the same thing.
Ichiro Ozawa… it was a plot of land in Setagaya of 200 tsubo, was it not?… was attacked on the grounds that 400 million yen was an enormous sum. But when he acquired that land, he paid several million yen in taxes in the form of registration and license tax, real estate acquisition tax, and stamp duty.

I imagine that a scholar in a position like yours lives in a home befitting that position. If, for example, you live in an exclusive residential neighborhood near Kamigamo Shrine, it would surely be worth no less than 100 million yen.

It is not that I cannot understand what you say… Judging matters through today’s mass media, it is an entirely natural thing to say… But I do not believe that 160 men and women, young and old, who have been active in many different fields, would gather around a person who could be summed up in just nine words.

All the more so because this is not a matter of gathering 160 students.
I do not know when you came to stand in a position like the chief judge of all humanity, but such a thing cannot be possible.
To criticize one person also means taking the side of someone else, but

Even those in Naoto Kan’s camp, who are competing against him this time, were members of the party led by Ichiro Ozawa in 2008.
I do not believe that 300 fully grown adults… members of the National Diet, at that… would gather around a man who could be summed up in just nine words.