This chapter is both a record and an indictment: it reveals the existence of criminals who defile the Internet—the “greatest library in human history”—and at the same time, it is a profoundly important essay that reinterprets Kūkai’s teaching, “Seal off evil through good deeds,” within the context of the modern age.

The author describes the Internet as “the greatest library in human history,” yet exposes the criminals who pollute it. Through firsthand accounts of deception, civil court failures, and cyber harassment related to the Umeda Kita Yard redevelopment project, he condemns Japan’s weak legal protections and media hypocrisy. Guided by the words of Kūkai — “Fill every gap with good deeds so that evil cannot escape” — the author continues to write despite illness and sabotage, seeing his mission as a modern echo of the monk’s call to confront evil through persistent truth.

July 25, 2016

I have long referred to the Internet as the greatest library in human history.
But it is also a well-known fact that criminals exist who defile that world.

When I continued to write, resisting the countless acts of sabotage from such criminals, asking myself who it was that had thrown into confusion the Umeda Kita Yard development project in Osaka—a plan created through the combined wisdom of both the public and private sectors, taking more than twenty years to complete—I came across an essay by Kenichi Ōmae in the monthly magazine SAPIO, and suddenly understood everything.

The so-called “Personal Information Protection Law,” like the “Hate Speech Bill,” was, I am convinced, plotted by so-called civic groups (which must have included Korean residents in Japan) and supported and promoted by The Asahi Shimbun.
The reason is simple: honest people have nothing whatsoever to hide.

Countless victims of criminal schemes must be gnashing their teeth, realizing that this law exists as if it were designed to protect the wicked.

A lawsuit to recover enormous sums of money swindled by criminals must be filed in civil court.
The lawyer our company hired was a former public prosecutor.

“It is meaningless to bring a civil suit against criminals,” he said.
“We know we can win the case, but in nearly every instance, the money never comes back.”
(That is the reality of civil litigation in our country when citizens are robbed by villains.)
And indeed, the outcome was exactly as he said.

He explained that even a lawyer cannot obtain the criminal’s address.
(Because of the Personal Information Protection Law.)
Naturally, the police and prosecutors must know it, yet when asked, they will never tell.
(Because of the Personal Information Protection Law.)

Then what are we to do?

[omitted section]

On July 19, I finally learned the full scope of the case.

It is no exaggeration to say that everything I have continued to write has been based on the words of Kūkai.

To halt the second-phase subdivision of Umeda Kita Yard and turn it into a park—such an outrageous idea!
(And yet, in this matter too, the underlying evil of The Asahi Shimbun’s pseudo-moralism, the real cause of the confusion, manifested itself vividly.
Elites raised on Asahi repeated the word midori—“green”—as in green forest, green park, and then again in their foolish scheme to build a soccer stadium and lure the World Cup.
So-called intellectuals followed Asahi, and their stupidity and deceit reached their limit.)

After fighting the Kita Yard issue alone for three months, I was utterly stunned to see it transformed into a plan to build a soccer stadium.

When I was exhausted and thought, “Enough is enough,” Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Kenji Miyazawa seemed to merge within me.

The pen name I needed was instantly born: Akutagawa Kenji.

Because I wanted to convey the truth to as many Japanese people as possible, I published my essays on three platforms—Goo, Ameba, and FC2.

People from every field and class who lead Japan—those at the nation’s very core—were reading them.

An essay that reaches not only Japan but the very center of the world is, so to speak, the voice of God.

It is written as the word of God, as a selfless expression.
It would not be an exaggeration to call it a pure word.
What resides in it is absolute truth.

However, to criminals such as those mentioned above, a person who writes such words appears to be someone they can deceive with absolute certainty.

That criminal had already been arrested for embezzling large sums of money from a financial institution.

He lived near the modest but beautiful building our company owned at the time.
He must have known that I was its president.

During his release on bail for the crime mentioned above, he appeared with two others—a man and a woman—and asked to rent a twenty-tsubo room.

[omitted section]

A certain developer who had long regarded me as a model and had become a member of a company that regularly built condominium towers suddenly called me for the first time in six years and said,
“I could understand if it were someone else, but you, being deceived—that I cannot believe.”

It was no wonder; he knew nothing of the circumstances surrounding the period when I appeared on the Internet as Akutagawa Kenji and continued writing under that name.

[omitted section]

Because I thought it was for the greater good, I reluctantly published my essays online.
Yet as a result, I was targeted by criminals and even suffered a life-threatening illness.
I thought then that I should withdraw from the Internet altogether (for I had originally been a person far removed from it).
At that same time, however, I rediscovered Kyoto, and for some reason, I often visited Tō-ji Temple.

Even during the seven months I spent in the hospital, each time I was granted a one-month temporary discharge for rest, I visited the temple again.

In the Mieidō hall dedicated to Kūkai, a saying of his is displayed each month.

As my readers know, I have sometimes referred to myself as a modern-day Kūkai.

The coincidence was astonishing even to me.
That month, Kūkai’s words were:
“Evil exists in this world. Evil cannot be erased. Then what should we do? Shall we leave it be, pretend not to see it? No. We must strike back with good deeds. We must fill every gap with goodness so that no sliver remains through which evil can crawl.”

That is what Kūkai said.
I thought to myself, Indeed, that is Kūkai.
And that is why I have continued to write.

But this time, even I felt deeply disheartened.

As was his custom, this criminal defrauded others besides our company and was sued again.

Goo, operated by an NTT subsidiary—NTT being, as I have often noted, one of Japan’s truly great corporations.

This criminal, however, shamelessly wrote on his fraudulent “business-material” blogs on Goo, “I’ve been traveling overseas constantly lately,”—words that, if known to those suing him, would have led in Oda Nobunaga’s time to his immediate execution.
He created multiple blogs of identical content under numerous usernames, repeating them persistently.

It is clear that these blogs were made solely to inflict stress on me, knowing that I was watching my real-time analytics screen.
Those who watched NHK’s recent two-night special “Killer Stress” will understand what it means to inflict psychological stress on someone.

Those blogs are typical examples of fraudulent commercial content.

Anyone with common sense can see that such blogs should be deleted by any responsible operator.

Yet no one within that NTT subsidiary seems to possess such awareness in their work.

In other words, they are, whether consciously or not, enabling the evil that festers in the online world.

This man, on Goo, created and left traces from seven or eight different usernames at times, all with identical fraudulent blog content—likely as part of his harassment campaign against me through the real-time access system.

To say that such conduct promotes the spread of evil on the Internet would be no exaggeration whatsoever.

(To be continued.)