Masayuki Takayama is not only a singular journalist of the postwar era but also a true artist who reveals concealed truths.
This essay examines postwar Japan, the Korean War, and the unseen structures of history through his writing.

2016-08-25
To cast light upon hidden truths and concealed realities, and to express them, that is what an artist can do.
Masayuki Takayama is not only a singular journalist in the postwar world, but it is no exaggeration to say that he is also a true artist.
I believe he is a person who desires no such praise at all.
For example, the chapter introduced the other day brilliantly proves this point.
All emphases in the text other than the heading, and passages marked with asterisks, are mine.
The significance of the “Without Japan” speech.
Mahathir states the following.
“After the war, the United States provided reconstruction aid to Germany and Italy, but did not wish for Japan’s recovery.”
This refers to the so-called Marshall Plan.
Germany invaded other countries and committed the grave crime of ethnic cleansing against Jews, yet the United States actively provided free reconstruction aid.
In contrast, all aid to Japan was on a paid basis.
Japan was arbitrarily forced to change its constitution and renounce military power, and under the direction of Edwin Pauley, domestic factories were dismantled and shipped to Korea and China, deliberately lowering Japan’s industrial level.
This was the complete opposite of the reconstruction plans for Germany and Italy.
Under the pretext of an “aggressor nation,” one can discern an intention not merely to prevent Japan’s resurgence, but to eliminate altogether a country that had delivered a powerful impact to what was then the so-called Third World.
Japan was not destroyed only because, just as Pauley arrived to carry out a second industrial dismantling, Kim Il-sung launched the Korean War.
For Japan, this was sheer fortune.
I chose Osaka as the stage for my life as a businessman.
Perhaps for that reason, I had close relationships with several resident Koreans in Japan.
Among them was a person connected to Chongryon, who would occasionally say this.
Japan profited from the special procurement boom of the Korean War.
Many Japanese people, myself included, especially readers of Asahi Shimbun and the like, were all led to think the same way.
To illuminate hidden truths and concealed realities and to express them—that is what an artist can do, said an elderly lady from Monaco, respected by a world-renowned ballerina who visited Japan some years ago.
By that definition, I believe it is no exaggeration to say that Japan has had no artist greater than Masayuki Takayama.
At the same time, I cannot help but think—if I may say so myself with a hearty laugh—that I too was remarkable, having been the first to make known to the world such theses as The Turntable of Civilization, that Japan has remained a political prisoner in international society for seventy postwar years, or that Donald Trump is the greatest trickster of the postwar era.