2017-07-25
This chapter analyzes generational voting patterns in Japan, revealing a deep divide between internet-native youth and older generations dependent on newspapers and television. It argues that reliance on Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and similar media has led to political manipulation, exemplified by local elections such as the Sendai mayoral race.

2017-07-25
They hardly read any of the monthly magazines that ought to be read. In other words, their sources of information are newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun.
With that in mind, I searched for voting rates by generation.
At the same time as being reminded of something I already knew, I thought of a certain senior colleague.
Voting rates by generation are probably figures common to all cities in Japan today.
In other words, support for the Liberal Democratic Party among young people is overwhelming, while the older age groups—those over fifty, and especially those over sixty-five—supported the winner this time.
The world shifted into the age of the internet about thirty years ago.
Today’s young people can be called the internet generation.
By contrast, people in their fifties and above can, without exaggeration, be described as a fossilized generation when it comes to IT.
Young people read news online and obtain a wide variety of information. They can accurately learn even the background of the news and the realities that newspapers do not report.
By contrast, people over fifty read newspapers. As already noted, the number of households subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun is three times that of the Sankei Shimbun. In their living rooms, they watch news programs and wide shows on TBS and TV Asahi.
They hardly read any of the monthly magazines that should be read. In other words, their sources of information are the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun.
In addition, they watch NHK news, which since the change of its president in January this year has come to be dominated by people who share the same ideology as figures such as Ikeda Eriko and Nagai Akira, individuals with ties to Chongryon and to China and South Korea, who have come to control NHK’s news division. As a result, they are made to believe—and are manipulated into thinking—that the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen issues are suspicious and that the LDP is outrageous.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that they are brainwashed by pseudo-moralism and Marxism, and in reality are being manipulated by China and South Korea.
Even in the streets of Osaka, the vast majority of participants in anti-nuclear and anti-base demonstrations—movements that echo the Asahi Shimbun—are invariably elderly men and women.
I love Sendai in part because my alma mater, Sendai Second High School, was truly an outstanding school.
As I was thinking this, a senior journalist came to mind—someone I had not known at all until August three years ago.
Takashi Tsutsumi… Sendai Second High School → University of Tokyo Faculty of Law → joined Bungeishunju, served as editor-in-chief of various Bungeishunju magazines, editor-in-chief of Shukan Bunshun, and in the publishing division, before retiring after serving as managing director and standing advisor. He currently serializes a dialogue column titled “Konnyaku Mondō” with Kubo Kōshi in the monthly magazine WiLL (now HANADA). (Wikipedia)
As I have already written, because I appeared on the internet out of necessity as an unknown figure, I suffered unbelievable treatment at the hands of villains living in Osaka, including having search pages tampered with.
As a result, there are almost no people in Sendai who read my commentaries.
However, Tsutsumi is a person whose career commands universal respect.
When it comes to an eye for seeing through the truth, it would not be an exaggeration to say that he is the same as I am.
I did not even know about the Sendai mayoral election, but my senior colleague, who is still an active journalist, must have known the schedule.
Given the outcome, I suddenly thought that if, for example, my senior had held a lecture in Sendai, the result might have been different.
Considering the age groups that voted for the winner, if Tsutsumi had informed them of what the Asahi Shimbun is actually doing, the margin of a little over ten thousand votes would surely have been overturned.
To be continued.