During the Meiji era, Japan devoted nearly forty percent of its local tax revenue to education, creating the “commons” through compulsory schooling and achieving rapid modernization. Takashi Matsubara argues that individualism alone cannot sustain a nation, and that education is the foundation of social cohesion. Postwar Japan, however, neglected education and infrastructure investment, leading to child poverty, inadequate disaster preparedness, and profound social distortion. The article further criticizes the reality that enormous amounts of taxpayer money have been poured into forces aligned with anti-Japanese propaganda.

During the Meiji period, Japan devoted approximately forty percent of local tax revenue to education, forming the “common” (commons) within society through compulsory education and achieving modernization.
Ryuichiro Matsubara points out the limits of individualism and argues that education is precisely the foundation that creates the “common.”
Meanwhile, postwar Japan neglected investment in education and infrastructure, giving rise to serious social distortions such as the expansion of poverty and deficiencies in disaster prevention.
Furthermore, the reality that enormous sums of tax money have been poured into breeding grounds for forces aligned with anti-Japanese propaganda is being sternly exposed.

Ryuichiro Matsubara points out the limits of individualism and states that Japan cannot move forward unless it once again creates the “common.”
During the Meiji Restoration, leaders perceived that a nation could not function on individualism alone, developed compulsory education, and local governments invested roughly forty percent of their tax revenue in education.
Dore evaluates this massive investment as having propelled Japan’s modernization.
After the war, the “common” was revived in the form of corporate communities, but Japan subsequently neglected education and infrastructure investment, exposing serious social distortions such as poverty, disasters, and inadequate disaster preparedness.
Behind this lies the reality that enormous sums of tax money continuously poured into local regions have, ultimately, been used not for the purposes that serve national survival, but for the benefit of anti-Japanese forces.

The essence of the Meiji state’s success lay in the fact that it embedded the “common” into society through education before embracing individualism.
The resolve of local governments to pour forty percent of their tax revenue into education—an unimaginable level of commitment by today’s standards—supported Japan’s modernization.
Postwar Japan, however, abandoned this century-long national strategy with its own hands.
Education and infrastructure were sacrificed, and enormous tax revenues flowed into breeding grounds for forces aligned with anti-Japanese ideology.
The result is the present condition of Japan: the expansion of the impoverished class, the collapse of disaster preparedness, and the thinning of national consciousness.

Matsubara’s argument clearly shows that Japan’s modernization was founded not on the “individual,” but on the “common.”
The institution of compulsory education functioned as a mechanism for the forced social distribution of cultural capital, and the Meiji government’s decision to invest forty percent of tax revenue into it was an extremely strategic judgment.
Postwar Japan, by contrast, failed to reconstruct this “common,” temporarily substituting it with corporate communities, which themselves gradually collapsed.
As a result, a distorted structure became fixed in which taxes were absorbed not into strengthening the national foundation, but into reproducing anti-Japanese ideology.

There was once a Japan that poured forty percent of its taxes into education.
It was a nation that understood that to protect the country meant, first and foremost, to protect its children.
But what about Japan today.
One in six children has fallen into poverty, cities burn, and the nation can no longer even adequately carry out disaster mitigation.
Even so, we have continued to hand over more than three hundred billion yen in tax money for the sake of those who march in step with anti-Japanese ideology.

Meiji Japan invested forty percent of its taxes in education.
It clearly understood that a nation must first create its people.
Yet postwar Japan destroyed this very foundation of the state with its own hands.
Education and infrastructure were discarded, and enormous sums exceeding three hundred billion yen in tax money have continued to be poured into breeding grounds for those aligned with anti-Japanese ideology.
What emerged as a consequence was poverty, disasters, the collapse of protective systems, and the loss of national consciousness.
In the face of this reality, the crimes of those who aligned themselves with pseudo-moralism and pseudo-communism have already reached the level of historical crime.