This article was originally published on October 9, 2010.
Taxes are the crystallization of each citizen’s labor.
How should those precious taxes be used to improve people’s lives and develop the national economy…are politics and public commentary addressing this most important question?
I am republishing the original text unchanged to once again bring before the world the anger and anguish I recorded as someone who had worked and continued to pay taxes.

2010-10-9
I was going to post Yoshihiro Satō’s article…but those who do not subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun should find somewhere to read it…because you will clearly see an ordinary, decent heart and the heart of a running dog.
To add one more thing, Takashi Tachibana and yesterday’s Asahi editorial writers…the same is probably true of the other newspapers…are putting scholarship at the service of authority (I deliberately used the wrong word).
Unless there is a very compelling reason, I will never again have anything to do with their writings…because they rot the heart.
Needless to say, Yoshihiro Satō’s article is the exact opposite of theirs.
There is just one thing I can say.
If the most important role of politics is, so to speak, simply to decide how efficiently precious taxes—the crystallization of the people’s labor—in other words, the budget, can be used to develop the national economy…then it is fair to conclude that the likes of Tachibana and those editorial writers merely obstruct that role.
Yesterday and today, I became convinced that Japan’s “lost twenty years” were created by them and the idiotic politicos who have jumped on their bandwagon…I mean those who are still calling for Ichirō Ozawa to be summoned before the Diet, whether in the Budget Committee or during questions by party representatives…regardless of whether they belong to the ruling or opposition parties…by those idiotic politicos.
The anger that flared up for a moment was…out of the more than 20 million yen in annual property taxes that I continued to pay every year, even borrowing money to do so throughout these twenty years of suffering, and the more than 17 billion yen in taxes I had paid by eighteen years ago, working like a cart horse, give me back even just 100 million yen!
You buffoonish Japan!…That was the anguish I felt.
If objections to the nation were heard in order of the amount of taxes paid, I would want to make my voice resound across the skies of Japan: I did not work to turn this into a country ruled by the Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers or Takashi Tachibana…by people like these—pseudo-intellectuals.
Last night, I was overcome by anguish at having spent more than half my life for the sake of such imbeciles…truly, my heart was sullied.