Ahead of the G7 Ise–Shima summit, this essay attacks Germany’s insistence on “structural reform,” arguing it is largely a fiction and that Germany’s prosperity rests on EU integration and cheap labor flows. It condemns Germany’s contradictions on nuclear power, its China-focused export diplomacy, and the formation of anti-Japan public opinion, while accusing Kang Sang-jung and the Asahi Shimbun of weaponizing “learn from Germany” rhetoric to smear the Abe administration and Abenomics.

2016-05-22

As already stated, since then I have not had a very good impression of Germans.
Last night, ahead of the start of the G7 in Ise–Shima, NHK’s Burata Mori was set in Ise–Shima. Those who watched it may have wanted to go to Ise–Shima. I remember seeing the home of Kōkichi Mikimoto, but I could not recall when that was.
Now then, the G7. Even an American Nobel Prize laureate, and both Japan and the United States, say that fiscal stimulus is necessary in order to overcome the unstable global economy, and France, Italy, and the United Kingdom also agree, and at such a time—
Germany, the Germany that Kang Sang-jung and the Asahi Shimbun have told us to learn from,
I learned for the first time, after I began subscribing to monthly magazines since August two years ago, that several Tokyo correspondents of major German newspapers—who probably read the Asahi Shimbun for free—are definitive anti-Japan ideologues.
Evil always exerts greater power than true good.
Apparent good—apparent moralism—exerts an equal degree of power.
This proves that an apparent moralist is, in other words, evil.
I was truly astonished when I learned the fact that these several people shape German public opinion and that, according to opinion polls, about half of the German people hold anti-Japan ideas.
As already stated, since then I have not had a very good impression of Germans.
Germany’s finance minister said that fiscal stimulus is not necessary and that structural reform is necessary.
I have referred several times to what I call “the lies of common sense,” and this “structural reform” is one representative example.
Put simply, it is no exaggeration to say that structural reform is not an important economic issue but a fiction.
The reason the German economy is strong is that it is the country that benefits most from EU integration—beginning with cheap labor from Eastern and Central Europe.
When the EU began to wobble, what did Germany do?
I infer that because Merkel grew up in East Germany she feels no discomfort at all with a Communist Party one-party dictatorship, but although she came to Japan—where there are quite a few fools who, whenever they open their mouths, say “Benz, Benz”—only twice (and one of those times was merely because she came last year as the chair country of the G7), she has gone to China as many as eight times.
Moreover, it was an automobile—or machinery export diplomacy in which she brought along more than one hundred leading figures from the business world, beyond even what was once mocked as “transistor diplomacy” when Hayato Ikeda toured Europe together with Keidanren.
It is a country that, while saying it opposes nuclear power plants, calmly imports electricity generated by nuclear power from its neighboring country France.
The “structural reform” that Germany’s finance minister speaks of is this: even if the counterpart is China, the world’s largest and worst state suppressing human rights and freedom of speech, and a state that suppresses other ethnicities—or whatever it may be—meaning, even if the counterpart is a country of evil, if it is for the purpose of selling automobiles, their nation’s core industry, to the market of 1.3 billion people, they will listen to anything the other side says; that is their structural reform.
The evil of Kang Sang-jung and the Asahi Shimbun, who have continued to say “learn from such a country,” has reached its extreme.
As if to prove that they and Germany understand each other, they say “structural reform” as though they had coordinated their lines.
People should realize that this is equivalent to slander against the Abe cabinet, and an attack on the Abe cabinet.
In other words, this collusion of true villains who say, “Abenomics was a failure. What is necessary is structural reform.”
Truly, the specter of an axis of evil has long been formed by Kang Sang-jung (a spokesman for South Korea, that is, a spokesman for China) and the Asahi Shimbun.
And now it is appearing in Germany’s words and actions. Germany is, unmistakably, an anti-Japan country, and Japanese people should, from here on, pay attention to this country. This country is not one that makes peace. On the contrary, it is likely a country that always creates something that brings threats to peace.