Through relentless devotion to facts alone, Masayuki Takayama has produced work that reshapes readers’ understanding.
This essay argues why his writings represent a profound intellectual achievement deserving of global recognition.

2016-08-25
Because he has pursued his work with devotion so intense that “demonic” would not be an exaggeration, his essays do so in nearly every chapter.
Masayuki Takayama chose journalism as his profession and has carried out everything that a journalist ought to do.
He holds no distorted ideology and relentlessly pursues facts alone.
Because of this almost ferocious discipline, his writings cause scales to fall from the eyes of readers in nearly every chapter.
Readers endowed with true discernment will have noticed that his work at times feels like a perfect empirical validation of my own arguments.
Often, his essays emerge almost like a prearranged signal.
This impression is strengthened because a close friend of mine—one of Japan’s most voracious readers—hands them to me saying, “Read this.”
In the truest sense, and for the realization of genuine world peace, I am convinced that his body of work and complete writings, together with my Turntable of Civilization, deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature or even the Peace Prize.
Needless to say, both of us are the furthest possible from writing anything with the aim of receiving such honors.
What follows is taken from his book Lincoln, the Great Man Who Loved Slavery, published on April 1, 2016.
It is a superb work that brilliantly reveals just how foolish Nicholas Kristof, a former Tokyo bureau chief of The New York Times several generations ago, truly was.