An essay intertwining Japan’s floral aesthetics and cultural tradition with a sharp critique of air pollution, media silence, and foreign influence, exposing threats to public health and national interest.

2017-05-31
This year, for the first time in several years, I have been photographing every day the Japanese irises (Iris ensata var. ensata) that even Edo-period samurai once admired as part of their cultural refinement and cultivated in their own homes.
Before the irises bloomed, I had the opportunity to dine with a woman from Finland, a quintessential Nordic beauty who was visiting Japan. She loved plants so deeply that she abandoned the path of becoming a physician and instead chose to become a landscape gardener and garden designer.
Among plants, she was especially fond of wisteria and irises, and she told me she had gone to Ikoma to see wisteria. At exactly that time, I had already gone to Kinkaku-ji four times to photograph kakitsubata irises, so I strongly recommended that she go there as well, but it was her last day in Kyoto and her schedule was already full.
This year, I myself visited four times from the very beginning of peak bloom until the very end in order to photograph what I consider to be Japan’s finest wisteria, for I too have a special fondness for wisteria and irises.
If, for example, I had been Japan’s Picasso—someone whose name resounded throughout the world as a master—I would have made this incomparable Nordic beauty my wife without hesitation, and that alone I regret deeply.
To change the subject,
NHK’s News Watch 9 spoke only of yesterday’s heat, yet for some reason made no mention whatsoever of PM2.5.
Masayuki Takayama has taught us that China Central Television (CCTV) maintains a Japan bureau within NHK itself.
That is why NHK is likely asked not to report anything inconvenient for China, or anything that would spread negative perceptions of China.
Yesterday was not merely hot; I sensed something extremely unhealthy in the air, stopped my photography immediately, and returned home early. When I checked the smartphone I had forgotten at home, I found, just as expected, that Japan was covered in red due to PM2.5.
Next, I opened PM information on my computer, which I had checked frequently the previous year.
Even so, thinking that conditions like this could not possibly be caused within Japan itself, I decided to look at the Chinese mainland, only to find that this year China’s conditions were no longer displayed.
So I searched for “China PM2.5,” and found that the Chinese mainland was not merely red but a dark, almost blackish red; clicking on it revealed values unimaginable in Japan, marked as “dangerous.”
Until the Communist Party Congress, economic priority must have taken precedence, and no improvement in air pollution has been achieved at all.
Because China wishes to conceal this fact—for example, because it does not want me to transmit it to the world—it likely had China removed from “PM2.5 summaries.”
Asahi Shimbun and others completely avoid reporting this severity, and as the hidden force behind the anti-nuclear movement that only serves China’s interests, it would be extremely inconvenient for them to have it pointed out that this air pollution is a consequence of shutting down nuclear power plants.
Here again, Asahi Shimbun and those aligned with it prove that they are acting to realize their distorted ideology, or in reality that they are agents of Chinese or South Korean intelligence—modern-day Ozaki Hotsumi. (A certain man said to be a former Ministry of Education official is a textbook example, needless to say; he is the very model of someone who has fallen completely for the most basic honey trap used by intelligence agencies.)
They prove themselves to be true villains who give no thought whatsoever to Japan’s national interest or the health of the Japanese people.
To be continued.