When the Japanese mass media break into a chorus of “justice,” the nation enters its most dangerous phase. Reflecting on the life and warnings of former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who advocated early public funding to resolve bad loans after the bubble collapse but was crushed by unified opposition from bureaucrats, media, business groups, and banks, the author argues that this suppression gave birth to Japan’s “lost 20 years.” This essay condemns the false elite and the media’s authoritarian nature, insisting that true elites must devote their lives to learning, integrity, and national interest—qualities systematically destroyed by Japan’s postwar media culture.

When the Mass Media of This Nation Burst into a Great Chorus of Justice, It Is Dangerous, Extremely Dangerous, and It Is Wrong
2010-07-23

“There is no end to a true life, and there is no end to a true book.” (J. M. G. Le Clézio)

From evening onward, the image of a single genuine elite who had once stood in the world of politics twenty years ago kept rising in my mind.
To graduate with outstanding results from the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Law and enter the Ministry of Finance meant, for him, to never forget throughout his life that his mission was to devote himself constantly to the nation and to the nation’s course, to continue studying unceasingly so that his mind would remain sharp and that the country would not go astray.

For the sake of certainty, I searched Wikipedia and was astonished.
Everything I had repeatedly written—that the responsibility lay with the mass media, and that their guilt was profound—was stated there plainly as fact.
His name was Kiichi Miyazawa, the Prime Minister at the time.

Amid the financial instability that followed the collapse of the bubble economy, at the LDP’s Karuizawa seminar in August 1992 (Heisei 4), he made a statement advocating public assistance to financial institutions.
He argued that the sharp decline in land and stock prices was of a different nature from previous recessions and that public funds had to be injected to dispose of non-performing loans at an early stage.

However, he encountered fierce opposition from government ministries, the mass media, business organizations, and even the financial institutions themselves, and the policy was never carried out.
As a result, Kiichi Miyazawa was forced to withdraw that decision, and from then on the injection of public funds into banks for bad-loan disposal became taboo, so that for many years thereafter not a single Japanese politician could so much as utter this issue.

It was not only the mass media—almost everyone was complicit.
Living within their essential disease and their own egoism, they were false elites.
And the result of this was precisely what came to be called “Japan’s Lost 20 Years.”
Shimozuma, who now rules freely in the role of Chairman of Kansai Economic Federation, engrave these facts deeply into your mind.

In addition to the books that must be read, Newsweek, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—probably also The Economist and The Guardian as well.
With fluent and accurate English that astonished every American dignitary he met, and with encyclopedic erudition, Kiichi Miyazawa most likely scanned all of these every single morning.
I am convinced that there is not even one such politician left today.
This was how I had originally intended to begin writing.
The mass media made light of this genuine elite whose lifelong struggle—constantly awake and asleep—was for Japan and the world, especially for relations with the United States, which occupied so central a place.
That was the battle of his entire life.
It is easily verified, if one investigates, that he devoted half his life to protecting Japan’s national interest as a defeated nation to the utmost degree.
Neglecting this is what created “Japan’s Lost 20 Years” and produced the unbelievable stupidity that now runs rampant.

I have long been a reader of Asahi, so of course I knew this, though it must have been the same at other newspapers.
Within the LDP his factional power was weak, and therefore political reporters always paid attention not to him but to those with greater power.
At every political upheaval he was often treated lightly.
As a result, this peerless genius who devoted his entire life to national interest only became Prime Minister at the age of seventy-five.

Twenty years ago, the media looked down on those with weak factional power.
Today, after the “Lost 20 Years,” they attack those with strong factional power.
In what sense, then, do you claim that you have never wavered?
Especially in the face of the shocking facts that even astonished me, all mass media should remain silent for at least three days in self-reflection, repentance, and restraint.

Above all, you, a certain Mr. Yamada of Asahi’s economic desk, who once led the charge crying out, “Why must the people’s tax money be poured into these cruel and immoral banks?”—
your guilt in today’s Japan, where one in seven people lives in poverty, is profound indeed.
Yet I have never once seen or read that you have taken up a similar line of argument against the present absurdities—the unbelievable crimes that exceed one trillion yen in stolen tax money and threaten to kill Osaka entirely.
You have long since surpassed an annual income of ten million yen and now steep yourself comfortably in your own egoism, savoring your own happiness, no doubt.

I have always told those around me this.
A genius is a person whose blackboard of the heart is perfectly white; therefore the entire world becomes visible, and knowledge can be absorbed instantly like water.
A mediocre person is one whose heart’s blackboard is pitch-black with his own words; therefore, if something deviates even slightly, he cannot accept it, and knowledge becomes nothing more than a shallow ornament.

Over the past twenty years, politicians who boast that they studied how to become politicians at places like the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management have multiplied in great numbers.
What they share in common is that on the mass media—especially on television—they display an extraordinary brashness, barking as they speak like dogs in heat.
Among them there is not a single person who, like Kiichi Miyazawa, possesses the volume of reading and daily discipline of reading those newspapers in their original languages.

If Obama were to visit Japan and speak to us in Japanese that was not merely equal to ours but more flawless, fluent, and beautiful than the everyday language we ourselves use—would we not deepen our interest and admiration for him still more?
Kiichi Miyazawa was precisely such a person.
On two occasions, I passed before his house, set in a tranquil spot just off Omotesando, a place so quiet it scarcely seemed part of the metropolis, a residence like a sage’s retreat.
It was a house of serenity befitting one of Japan’s foremost scholars in the world of politics.

What readers must engrave in their hearts from this chapter is this:
when the mass media of this nation burst into a great chorus of justice, it is dangerous—extremely dangerous.
They are wrong.
You must never forget, even for a moment, that this is the very moment when a nation is led astray.
It is exactly the same as sixty years ago: they are not democrats.
They are yokels in spirit, belonging to some authority, dreadful authoritarians whose true nature is that of foolish fascists.
And, as is manifest in the recent case of North Yard and the Soccer Association, they are also the lowest kind of “danna-shu” politicians.

To think that the very people who have caused four million lives to be wasted like dogs will again, all at once, begin their annual chorus about the anniversary of the end of the war—fills me with disgust.

(274) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube