This essay argues that if Japan simply “bought back” the roughly 88 trillion yen in Japanese stocks held by foreign investors, domestic equities would cease to be treated like wastepaper and instead become true “shelter from the storm.”
The author condemns the current pattern in which event funds short every capital increase, stock prices plunge, and foreign capital tramples Japanese firms.
He insists that Japan’s real strength lies in the ninety percent of diligent, highly educated workers, while the top ten percent of elites exist to serve these citizens, not to pursue their own vested interests.
The piece calls for ending the “cartoonish” situation where prosecutors and a handful of pundits pose as the nation’s representatives while undermining national power.
By mobilizing just 88 trillion yen from the more than 1,400 trillion yen in private assets, the author claims Japan could reverse its “lost two decades” within twenty years and pioneer a less egoistic, twenty-first-century capitalism.

The day before yesterday, for the first time in a long while, a Kyoto University graduate whom I know visited my home.
It was truly a welcome visit, like a Christmas Eve present.
In the wide-ranging conversation we had, the topic turned to how I came to publish my book.
By coincidence, one copy of my book happened to be on the bookshelf.
I had decided on the cover design while I was hospitalized at Kitano Hospital.
Kitano Hospital is a major hospital virtually equivalent to Kyoto University’s medical school hospital.
In a style reminiscent of “The Great White Tower,” the department head and five or six young doctors would make their rounds through each patient room.
While several design proposals for the book cover were arriving from the publisher, the doctors came around for their second round.
When I told them I was trying to decide which design to choose, one of the young doctors said:
“Mr. Kisara, may I take care of it for you? I’m good at this sort of thing.”
I entrusted the decision to him immediately.
That is the story of how this cover came to be, which I told to my visitor at the beginning.
This morning, reflecting on how grateful yesterday’s visit had been, I opened my book for the first time in a very long while.
Until now, I had always felt embarrassed about my own book.
That is why I had not reread it much.
I now realize that this was a great loss.
My book had been displayed for about a year on the social-economics shelf of the Umeda main store of Kinokuniya, alongside the works of prominent thinkers such as the late Taichi Sakaiya and Yoichi Takahashi.
The person in charge at Kinokuniya displayed my book because, though it would not be a bestseller, he believed it would steadily sell a certain number of copies.
One day, the book disappeared from the shelf, so I asked the staff why.
“We were confident it would consistently sell a certain number of copies, but unexpectedly, sales were poor…”
As my readers know, that outcome was inevitable.
This is because I am completely unknown in the world of public commentary.
Moreover, for reasons known to my close friends and readers, I was compelled to publish under the pen name “Kenji Akutagawa,” which made things even worse.
Had I published under my real name, many acquaintances and friends I had met through business surely would have purchased the book.
On June 1, 2011, I announced in this column that publication had been decided for December 1 and encouraged readers to purchase it.
At that time, searching “the turntable of civilization” yielded over twenty million results, and pages one through seventy were filled with chapters of this column in various languages.
Then the criminal in question created more than a hundred worthless blogs titled things like “Driving Service” and “Secretary Service” on various blog platforms, launching a reverse-SEO criminal attack on this column.
After a page of nonsensical descriptions, those blogs simply reposted my chapters without permission.
With such garbage, the criminal filled pages one through ten of the search results.
Suddenly, the number of search results for my column dropped to one-hundredth of what it had been.
The criminal then began committing further outrageous acts on Twitter, calling me “Kenji Akutagawa, the swindler writer” or “Kenji Akutagawa, the crooked real estate agent.”
To put it simply:
Imagine a small, unknown but genuine Japanese confectionery shop in a corner of a shopping street.
This is the age of the internet—everyone has a smartphone.
If a criminal writes slander such as “That store uses such-and-such ingredients,” the shop would instantly go bankrupt.
Upon rereading my book, I felt deeply.
This book is, as the Kinokuniya staff had perceived, a masterpiece.
That this masterpiece was buried by the criminal is an unforgivable crime against the world and humanity in the 21st century.

“Just Buy It and Be Done With It”
October 25, 2010
p.114

As I pointed out in “The Turntable of Civilization,” the following is written on the front page of the Nikkei Shimbun.
Out of a total market capitalization of roughly three hundred trillion yen in outstanding shares, foreign investors hold thirty percent.
To be precise, that comes to eighty-eight trillion yen.
It is only eighty-eight trillion yen.
There is no reason whatsoever to let that thirty percent be freely shorted as they please and keep stock prices depressed.
To put it in the language of a girls’ comic, “Just buy it and be done with it.”
Once the slump in share prices is over, Japanese stocks will, in complete contrast to the present, surely become a “shelter from the storm” (Shelter From The Storm by Bob Dylan).
Although they are currently treated and evaluated as if they were wastepaper, they will become platinum paper befitting the excellence of Japanese companies, especially the major corporations.
Every time there is a capital increase, event funds launch ferocious short-selling, the share price falls by as much as twenty percent in a very short time, and on top of that, the planned amount of funds to be raised is revised downward.
This foolish state of being continually trampled by foreign capital will also come to an end.
After that, as I have said many times, we must first immediately force the mass media to correct their foolish and incompetent behavior up to now.
Public and private sectors together must unleash the workers’ spirit, endowed with world-class diligence and high personal qualities.
Making use of our country’s unparalleled characteristics—world-class intellect and world-class educational standards—we must, as a super economic power that complements America, lead the world for another one hundred and seventy years.
It should be clear that people like Takashi Tachibana, Hoshi Hiroshi, or the public prosecutors are in no way representatives of our nation.
The Public Prosecutors Office is merely one organ of the administration, and we must put an immediate end to the cartoon-like situation in which a group of people who receive high salaries from our tax money continues to undermine our national strength.
We must make it clear that our country stands on the shoulders of the ninety percent—extraordinarily diligent workers with refined sensibilities and a strong desire for intellectual growth, among the finest in the world.
The top ten percent of the elite class exists to serve these wonderful citizens.
They must devote the excellence of their intellect to serving the people, sparing neither day nor night, and never thinking for themselves alone.
They must not forget that they are granted annual incomes of more than ten million yen in compensation for that labor.
Among them, those who perform outstanding work that increases our national wealth should be given an even higher salary than what prosecutors receive now and be made to serve the country for life.
We must change the mindset of bureaucrats who think about slush funds and amakudari, and who, under the name of “following precedent,” think only of their own vested interests.
(It goes without saying that prosecutors are also bureaucrats.)
I believe all these things are what Japan, the country in which “The Turntable of Civilization” spun as if to mark the finale of the twentieth century, ought to do.
I believe that is the role Japan should fulfill in the world.
By moving a mere eighty-eight trillion yen, we can build a twenty-first-century capitalism that is not the egoistic capitalism of the twentieth century but a form of capitalism that greatly reduces its conflict with democracy.
If we only accomplish this, Japan will be able to recover “the lost twenty years” within the next twenty years.
We must do it now, while five hundred trillion yen of the precious national wealth and private assets—over one thousand four hundred trillion yen in total—still remains as surplus.
Those assets are the crystallized result of the worker spirit displayed by our predecessors after the war and of the forty years during which, for example, I and all of you have worked like draft horses.
I am convinced that, aside from the frivolous television people, there is no one in our country who dislikes working up a sweat.
On the contrary, this country is overflowing with young people and citizens who are eager to work and can hardly wait to do so.
That, I believe, is the true face of Japan—the country I dearly love.