Originally published on April 29, 2019, this chapter draws on an essay by Kent Gilbert introduced on May 9, 2018, and examines the real meaning and danger of the word “liberal,” which in Japan is often used as if it were a term of praise.
It argues that in the United States the word “liberal” has already drifted far away from freedom and tolerance, and has come instead to suggest forces that are oppressive, self-righteous, and irresponsible, warning that Japan must not follow the same path.
By discussing the background to Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the bias of the major media, and the increasingly totalitarian tendencies of modern American liberalism, it insists that Japanese readers must think for themselves about both the merits and the dangers of liberalism, and come to know the truth of things.

2019-04-29
“Dark-hearted and suspicious.”
“Oppressive, always criticizing, and irritating.”
“Arrogant, believing that only they themselves embody absolute justice.”
“Smooth-talking but irresponsible people who never admit their own faults.”

“Self-centered and selfish, and willing to trample on other people’s freedom for the sake of their own freedom.”
“People who ignore reality and speak only in pretty phrases.”
This is the chapter I published on 2018-05-09 under that title.

I told a friend that the May issue of the monthly magazine Voice, released on April 10, was filled with essays that must be read, only to realize that I myself had left many of them unread.
The following is from Kent Gilbert’s essay titled, The Melancholy of Japan and America Poisoned by Bureaucratic Toxins, and The Sin of Highly Educated Elites Who Cannot Objectively View and Correct Their Own Behavior.
Voice costs only 780 yen despite being packed with essays such as these.
Every Japanese citizen who can read print ought to dash to the nearest bookstore on May 10 and buy it.
Because otherwise you will never know the truth of things.
The emphases in the text other than the headings are mine.

The Communist Party is liberal!?

As I wrote in detail in my book published in the middle of last month, The Melancholy of Japan and America Poisoned by Liberal Toxins.
PHP Shinsho.
I cannot help finding the way the word “liberal” is used in Japan profoundly strange.

For example, in an Asahi Shimbun article.
Evening edition of October 2, 2017.
Reporting that Yukio Edano was about to launch the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan during the October 2017 House of Representatives election, the following words appeared.

“With Mr. Edano and others forming a new party, the lower house election to be announced on the 10th will become a three-way configuration of ‘LDP–Komeito,’ ‘Hope including those joining from the Democratic Party,’ and ‘Mr. Edano’s new party and the liberal forces such as the Communists cooperating with it.’”

As represented by this report, during that general election the Japanese media lumped together the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Communist Party and color-coded them as “liberal forces.”

“What!? The Communist Party is liberal?”—

For someone like me, raised in America where Communist Party activity was outlawed by federal law in 1954, this classification feels overwhelmingly strange.
In the first place, as one can see from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Soviet Union.
And the present People’s Republic of China.
Hereafter, for convenience, I may simply write China.
Systems such as communism and socialism in their actual form strongly tend toward closure and totalitarianism, where free speech and free reporting are not permitted, and censorship and oppression of speech are taken for granted.

And yet in Japan, what does it mean to call the Japanese Communist Party, whose roots lie in the Japanese branch of the Comintern.
The Communist International.
And the various leftist parties that, no matter how many times they change their party names, do nothing but oppose the ruling government for the sake of opposition, “liberal,” that is, “libertarian” or “freedom-oriented.”

As I had been carrying such doubts, I heard that in a segment titled “The Devil’s Dictionary of Politics” on TV Tokyo’s election-night program during the October 2017 lower house election, TXN House of Representatives Election Special, Akira Ikegami’s General Election Live, the following definition had been given, and I found it extremely interesting.
As of January 2018, it was also introduced on the program’s web page.
“[Liberal] A self-designation used by people who do not wish to be called left-wing.”

One might say it is wonderfully frank, or perhaps deliciously ironic.
Yet this, precisely, may well be the correct definition and the general usage of the word “liberal” in Japan.

If that is so, then I can very well understand why, for example, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, a lower house member who moved from the Democratic Party to the Constitutional Democratic Party, declared in that same general election, in a ringing voice, “I believe in the power and importance of liberalism.”

If “people who do not want to be called left-wing” use it as a self-designation, then that means the word “liberal” is understood in Japan almost entirely as something with a splendid image.
Yet even that leaves me with a sense of discomfort.
I do not know European conditions in detail, but at least in conservative states of America, many people nowadays, whatever may have been the case in the twentieth century, tend to have the following perception of the word “liberal.”

“Dark-hearted and suspicious.”
“Oppressive, always criticizing, and irritating.”
“Arrogant, believing that only they themselves embody absolute justice.”
“Smooth-talking but irresponsible people who never admit their own faults.”
“Self-centered and selfish, and willing to trample on other people’s freedom for the sake of their own freedom.”
“People who ignore reality and speak only in pretty phrases.”

Words are living things.
In America, I feel that, even if not for everyone, among people of a certain level this has become almost “common sense.”

Do not follow the same path as America.

Originally in America, ways of life that valued religious precepts were called “conservative.”
Conservative.
Whereas the speech and behavior of those who wished to insist on their own self-will came to be called “liberal.”
But now the word more often refers to a position that loudly insists on the rights of minorities and emphasizes welfare policies for them.

The activities of such people have gone so far that what once meant “liberal = freedom-oriented” has now brought about a suffocating situation in which one can scarcely avoid associating “liberal” with “totalitarian.”
As the title of the aforementioned The Melancholy of Japan and America Poisoned by Liberal Toxins suggests, Japanese people would do well to understand that in America the word “liberal” has now drifted far from its original meanings of “free,” “generous,” “open,” “broad-minded,” and “without prejudice,” and is instead now recognized as the very opposite, as “something that spreads poison through society.”

In particular, when it comes to the fact that liberals have created a “totalitarian and suffocating society” that is the very opposite of freedom, regrettably America has gone much farther than Japan.
Japanese people should think carefully, with their own heads, about both the merits and the demerits of liberalism, and they should learn from the present state of America’s failure, its causes, and the possible responses to it.
Under no circumstances must we follow the same path as America.

To put it simply, what I want to say is this.
“Do Japanese really want to turn Japan into the kind of suffocating society that America has become today?”
“Are you aware of the danger of liberalism?”

Hillary’s “dark shadow.”

When Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many Japanese seem to have wondered, “How could Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State, the obvious favorite, so strongly supported by liberals and so intelligent and politically experienced, lose to Trump, who had absolutely no political experience?”

In America, on the other hand, many people began from that election onward to have absolutely no trust in the reporting of the major media.
For good reason.
With the exception of a very few such as FOX News, the great majority of the major media were liberal, and from the beginning to the end of the election campaign they gave Hillary’s camp support that went far beyond excess.
They reported that Hillary’s victory was absolutely certain, and in the repeatedly conducted opinion polls as well they continued impression management that made it look as though Hillary were always leading.

For the record, on November 9, 2016, Japan time, the day of the voting and counting, I appeared live on a total of four programs, internet television, terrestrial broadcast, radio, and BS, from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m., and in the preliminary meetings held before each program, not a single one had anticipated a “Trump victory.”

Caught off guard by the unexpected development, NHK Radio, which places especial emphasis on its scripts, was thrown into a panic.
I myself had cast an absentee vote for Trump, and my wife and sons living in America had long been telling me, “Trump will absolutely win!”
But the truth is that I myself only began to feel, “He really might win,” on the day before the vote count.
Even now, looking back, I think that is how completely Japanese media reporting was tilted only toward being “anti-Trump.”

This may be hindsight, but despite the overwhelming majority of major media backing Hillary with “fake news” and even psychological “impression manipulation,” why was she nevertheless utterly defeated in the 2016 presidential election?
In fact, the reason also reveals something of the true character of “liberals” in contemporary America.

To give one example, the matter of Hillary using a private email address for official business while she was Secretary of State was a much bigger problem than has been reported in Japan.
Not only was there a danger of leaks of state secrets, but because she used a private email server for communications as Secretary of State, the equivalent of a foreign minister in Japan, those exchanges were not preserved as important public documents of the government, and much of her conduct while in office was left shrouded in mystery.

Needless to say, documents including emails created by the Secretary of State, cabinet members, and government officials are all treated as public documents, all of their content is automatically stored in the government archives, and after a certain period they are made public.
Hillary, fully aware of this, is thought to have deliberately avoided using an official email address precisely because she did not want third parties to know the wrongdoing she was carrying out in secret from those around her.

In fact, she destroyed tens of thousands of her own emails sent from her private server.
It is said that she did not merely delete the information, but had the data on the hard disk drive completely destroyed.

What on earth was she trying to hide to go that far.
This is why such a “dark shadow” is always trailing after her.