An essay arguing that industrial strength and technological excellence alone cannot protect a nation. Using the TRON suppression, the timing of BIS capital rules, and the Toyota sudden-acceleration controversy as case studies, it contends that Japan must also become a financial superpower whose markets and capital command global respect. It frames this as Japan’s historic responsibility as a nation where the “Turntable of Civilization” has come to revolve, and calls for mobilizing capital at scale to defend key industries, shape international behavior, and sustain long-term global contribution.
Industrial nationhood and technological supremacy alone cannot defend a country.
Through the realities revealed by the crushing of TRON, the implementation of the BIS regulations, and the Toyota sudden-acceleration affair, this essay argues why Japan must stand as a financial superpower.
It is a piece that points to the mission of Japan, a nation where the Turntable of Civilization has come to revolve.

When I watched an older woman from the Midwest testify before Congress on television, I thought so immediately.
2017-05-08

Why is it so important to become a financial superpower?
2010-07-24
Because it is dangerous if we are only an industrial nation and a technological power.
At the time when Mr. Ken Sakamura, then a Keio University professor, discovered and developed a concept that everyone acknowledged to be superior to Microsoft’s Windows, and it had been decided for adoption in PC education in Japan’s elementary and junior high schools, the following – is from Wikipedia.
TRON is the collective name for a grand project proposed more than 25 years ago in anticipation of a future computerized society.
Its proponent is Mr. Ken Sakamura, who is currently a professor at the University of Tokyo.
Within this TRON project, what became world-famous is ITRON, and what was developed far beyond the concepts of today’s Windows is BTRON.
At the time it was proposed, it swept the field; BTRON was on the verge of being adopted as Japan’s educational OS, but it was abandoned after being placed in an unfortunate adversity.
After more than ten years of lying low, TRON was still alive.
Like a mammal surviving in the dinosaur age of Windows, it endured and finally began to see the light of day.
It is currently sold under the product name “Cho-Kanji” (from Cho-Kanji 4 to Cho-Kanji 5), and in Yahoo Japan’s weekly sales rankings it even showed a strong performance at times by breaking into the top five. (“What is TRON?”)

Bill Gates, who aimed to conquer the world with Windows and make it the global standard (and, needless to say, the U.S. government as well), exerted intense pressure on the Japanese government with the resolve that he would not yield on this one point.
There were also people who carried Bill Gates’s water at that time and have now built themselves into major business magnates.
Japan capitulated because it was hinted that if we did not comply, high tariffs would be imposed on automobiles and the like—the very heart of Japan’s economy, which had advanced as an industrial nation.

Or even if one takes the position that, when the “Turntable of Civilization” came to revolve toward Japan and Japan became an overwhelmingly great economic power second only to the United States in GDP—at that time, the U.S. at 750 trillion yen and Japan at 550 trillion yen—there was in Europe and America no intention whatsoever to prevent Japan from growing any larger…
According to Wikipedia, the timing of the enforcement of the BIS regulations—said to have been triggered by the collapse of the Illinois bank in the United States—overlapped with the period when, due to what our country’s mass media named “the end of the bubble,” and due to errors in the method used, Japan was burdened with massive disposal of non-performing loans.
In circumstances like that, if Japan had been a great financial superpower standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, and the world had been moving while watching the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Osaka Securities Exchange, along with the NYSE and Nasdaq, then it would have been possible to make them understand Japan’s situation.

Even in the field of sports, which has nothing to do with economics, when Japan had risen into the world’s top class in ski jumping, and when Japan monopolized the podium at the Sapporo Olympics, Europe—proud of being the home of skiing—hurriedly decided on a rule change that, in physical terms, would make it impossible for Japan to become champion again.
It was a rule change that determined ski length based on height.
At that time, Japan’s opinion must have been worth less than nothing.

But if Japan’s stock market had been seeing 10 trillion yen move every day, and 100 trillion yen had been flowing toward the acquisition of shares in Japan’s excellent companies; if Japan had become an overwhelmingly great power of market capitalization comparable to the United States; and if Japan had possessed many massive global corporations through acquisitions and partnerships across sectors—then I am convinced this kind of thing would not have happened.

In terms of presence in equipment and presence in advertising as well, Europe would not have been able to defy Japan, and would have had no choice but to hone its jump technique.

Because of the memory of the worst war in human history, experienced by the world in the mid-20th century—the century of fascism—an absolute intellectual consensus was formed across the world that such a war must never happen again.
But in arenas such as economic competition, every country other than Japan will always prioritize its own national interest.
And at such times, what ultimately carries weight is only when these three are all in place: an overwhelming financial superpower, an overwhelming market-capitalization superpower, and a technological superpower.

Military power is the hegemonic state; its currency also circulates throughout the world; but it is something maintained for the sake of a contingency, and in reality I think that people and countries move with economics and obey the dictates of a large economy.
…Needless to say, compared with what I believed at that time, I now believe far more strongly that military power—deterrence—nuclear deterrence—is crucial…

There are countless examples close at hand.
SoftBank, for instance, once stood alongside Orix and others as a leading champion of deregulation and liberalization; but after the huge success of the iPhone and similar developments, it made a great leap forward, and once it became a major corporation beyond dispute, it opposed the liberalization of SIM card regulations this time.
Yet not a single media company would accuse it by saying, “Your stance has shifted, hasn’t it?”
Those who enrich companies—expanding employment—and those who enrich a nation on a massive scale—expanding domestic demand, expanding employment both at home and abroad—are not the ones people complain about.

In this world, it is precisely those who have piled lie upon lie who are prone to utter phrases like “I have been consistent throughout.”

The pitfall of the mass media, as I have said above, lies in an incorrigible mindset: while tossing aside like nothing the daily, lifelong intellectual discipline that elites ought to practice, they nevertheless delude themselves into thinking, “We are consistently correct.”

With minds that have become so dull they cannot even grasp the obvious truth—that anyone who chases only individual phenomena and looks only at the present will inevitably contradict himself—they still say they are right and that they do not waver.
The world of stocks is not just about wavering; it is a gathering of people who waver wildly.
Yet Japan’s mass media, complacently believing that a market dominated by today’s greed-driven short selling is “correct,” worships a market fundamentalism that declares, “The market is right.”

True market fundamentalism means returning the money born from the market back to the market; enlarging the market stably; and letting money flow like water even to the poorer half of the world—so that what begins as a small stream becomes a great current after a hundred years.

The more stable it is, the better—that is only natural.
Therefore, as a nation where the Turntable of Civilization has come to revolve, and as a country that still holds the world’s greatest private assets, Japan should build, as quickly as possible, a uniquely Japanese form of capitalism.

Japan must realize this as soon as possible, promptly become a financial superpower, and spend the next 170 years continuing to let water flow to the world.

And at the same time—America is not 100 percent, either…
Regarding the recent Toyota affair, I thought, “What is this? It’s the same as McCarthy’s Red Scare.”
When I watched an older woman from the Midwest testify before Congress on television, I thought so immediately.
And I also thought: there are plenty of politicians in America who chase votes.
How shabby the faces of those politicians were…

Toyota, which has driven Japan’s postwar sixty years and is now a global giant, is a company whose cars anyone who has ever driven can immediately recognize as among the finest.
Even Germany—home of Mercedes and BMW—was astonished by Japanese cars that neglect nothing in the details, and above all by the astonishing narrowness of the gaps around the doors, and even imitated it.

To expose the president of such a global corporation—one that has represented Japan—to such a vulgar spectacle, to what is in effect a public “shirasu,” must never be done again.

Am I the only one who sensed, in the attitude of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation when he visited Japan, a whiff of the attitude toward Japan sixty years ago?

If one were to view the state of our country—especially the mass media and politics—from the outside, it would be no surprise if, at a deeper level, it appeared that nothing had changed.

The missing puzzle piece.
If we achieve, as quickly as possible, the realization of Japan as a financial superpower, the world’s attitude will change at once.
That is the attitude the mass media has taken all along—from long ago right up to these recent years—so it should be obvious in an instant.

They strike the small.
They do not strike the huge.
No—they submit to it.
Just as they listen with deference to scholars, and revere notables.

If my writing were read by as many capable people across Japan as possible, I am convinced that Japan could, as early as tomorrow, assume the position it ought to hold: as a world hegemonic power in economics—or in civilization—standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States (more precisely, complementing it), and contribute to the world for the next 170 years.

Until the Turntable of Civilization comes to revolve next to Brazil, and then soon after—or perhaps the time after that—to Africa, there will be no true peace on earth.

This is no time to squander time on empty pretense.
First, channel 10 trillion yen into the market each day, and at the same time channel 100 trillion yen into acquiring shares of many major companies that possess the excellent technologies Japan boasts to the world.

Support and repay the great companies that created this wealth—the 10 percent who are the rightful elite (the basis of intellect is learning from the past; they have worked day and night on research and technological innovation), and the 90 percent who form the so-called laboring population, diligent, attentive even to the smallest details, and possessed of one of the world’s foremost aesthetic sensibilities—and protect them from futile greed and from unreasonable attacks driven by other countries’ prioritization of their own national interests.

That is what Japan must do now.
In the language politicians and bureaucrats like to use, this is precisely the urgent task.

Have children in abundance, become a consumer superpower in population comparable to the United States, and at last silence complaints.
The rise of regional cities will also accelerate at tremendous speed.
Capitalism, as the word suggests, is not a system in which human beings are central; it is a system without human beings.
Where are we, then?
We are here—in democracy, as the word suggests.

There is no need to remain captive forever to twentieth-century capitalism; even if a twenty-first-century capitalism is built by the country that holds the world’s greatest private assets, no one will complain.
On the contrary, as I have already said, that should be precisely what Japan, a nation where the Turntable of Civilization has come to revolve, ought to do.

The United States, too, will welcome it this time, and will not complain.
And even if it does complain, this time we need not listen.
Because we will, together, save the world with the only economy capable of saving it.

Omitted.
From the time I first became aware of things, I could already see this country’s fundamental malady.
Given the mission of writing a book in order to rectify it, I felt—as though I had never met him—that a best friend had suddenly appeared.
Even at this age… as if I possessed nothing… far removed from the promised life of an elite… marrying a well-bred young lady and living happily as a family of four… and as I was close to breaking under the trials that had continued to be imposed on me, it was an event that gave me energy once again.
Omitted.