After targeting Japan’s major electronics manufacturers, Son Masayoshi turned his attack on the electric power industry—one of Japan’s most advanced and reliable sectors. By forcing a nationwide nuclear shutdown and imposing exorbitant solar power buyouts, Japan was placed at a fatal cost disadvantage, while South Korea moved ahead with plans to build 19 new nuclear reactors. This essay exposes how “power liberalization” became a tool of national self-destruction.

Having grown tired of attacking Japan’s electronics manufacturers alone, Son Masayoshi next turned his assault on the electric power companies—enterprises that had supplied the world with the highest-quality electricity that Japan could boast of.

Electric power companies, too, each employ enormous numbers of workers, and beneath them lie vast networks of related industries.
Now, it was the electric utilities that were driven into hardship.
It goes without saying that the same thing that had happened to the electronics manufacturers also occurred here.

Between Japanese companies and, for example, Korean companies, a massive original-cost gap once again emerged.
After Son Masayoshi induced Naoto Kan to carry out a complete shutdown of Japan’s nuclear power plants and to enforce absurdly high government buyouts of solar power—burdens placed on both corporations and the public—Japan was crippled.
Meanwhile, while he declared that Japanese nuclear power was “bad” and Korean nuclear power was “good,” South Korea had its government decide to newly construct nineteen nuclear reactors.

Between the Korean conglomerates that had been chasing Japan and the group of Japanese companies, yet another major cost gap was created.

Even the fact that Japanese electric power companies’ capabilities and quality rank at the very top of the world is something that the mere exam-smart students—those who would have ranked in the lower middle of my own classmates—who entered Asahi Shimbun do not even know.

Those who became intoxicated with Marxism after entering university, or who were easily talked into joining the Democratic Youth League (Minsei), are that level of unintelligence—utterly foolish people.

For what possible reason should Japan, which has continued to supply the world’s highest-quality electricity, imitate the illusion called “power liberalization,” as practiced by countries that provide low-quality power, suffer frequent large-scale blackouts, or, like Germany, proclaim “we will stop nuclear power” while at the same time purchasing nuclear-generated electricity from neighboring France?

For what purpose, exactly?

Son Masayoshi brought a Geiger counter into the Tōhoku region and staged his intrusion there only after he had already quietly bought up shares in major renewable energy companies—while imposing a strict gag order to ensure that nothing of it would ever surface publicly.
It was only after this that, in 2011, he carried out those actions.

As readers know well, I severely criticized the lawmakers and governors who gathered to lend their support at that time.

And it was TV Asahi—openly broadcasting advertisements that said, “Son Masayoshi’s company is starting an electricity sales business”—that finally proved what kind of company it truly was: a company where traitors had gathered.

This column continues.