Based on a chapter published on October 24, 2015, this passage uses Britain’s warm welcome of the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as a starting point to argue that international politics is driven above all by national interest and calculation.
The author draws a line back to prewar history, suggesting that just as Britain once maneuvered the United States into war against Japan, it now again reveals the same essential nature by taking a conciliatory stance toward a dictatorship for the sake of money and strategic advantage.
The passage also harshly criticizes the Asahi Shimbun and its affiliated television outlet for belittling the legitimate anger of Japanese citizens as “childish,” even while Japan continues to suffer humiliating attacks from China in arenas such as the United Nations and UNESCO.
It concludes by extending the reflection to the author’s personal feelings toward British rock and the Beatles, expressing deep disappointment and disillusionment at the sight of Britain eagerly welcoming Xi Jinping.

2019-04-22
A country that welcomes in that way
the dictator of a one-party Communist state…
Is it not beneath even a child?

This is a chapter published on October 24, 2015.
A friend said to me.
Did you watch the NHK morning news?
When I answered no…
He said,
“At the United Nations, some Chinese ambassador or other, with a face like that of evil itself, has now begun saying that Japan’s poison gas is causing them trouble.”
“What a vicious country it is.
Immediately after providing Britain with an enormous sum of money…
It is once again trying to extort money from, and sponge off,
weak Japan…
A country with no nuclear weapons,
a country that was made by GHQ to renounce war.”
Even while saying this in indignation…
My friend also penetrated to the point that,
just as Britain seems to be financially pressed…
China too must in fact be running short of money.
What it meant when Queen Elizabeth
welcomed Xi Jinping,
the leader of Communist one-party China,
and the very image of a modern Mao,
meaning the successor to Mao in his evil aspects,
to the point of seating him in a royal carriage for the sake of money…
Was that this is the reality,
or truth,
of international politics unchanged since before the war.
In the century of war,
they acted in the same way appropriate to the century of war.
At that time,
Britain prodded the United States into imposing an oil embargo on Japan.
In other words,
the United States,
then basking in prosperity as the richest country in the world…
Remained in an elegant isolationism…
And had absolutely no intention of entering the war even while Hitler was ravaging Europe.
Far from that,
people such as Lindbergh
openly espoused anti-Semitism.
The voices of such people were the louder ones.
So the United States had no reason to enter the war against Hitler.
Britain, which had no prospect of defeating Hitler on its own…
Needed to bring the United States onto its own side and into the war,
and this was a strategy on which the fate of the state depended.
In order to bring the United States into the war…
It was necessary to have the United States impose an economic blockade on Japan,
drive Japan into a corner,
and induce Japan to begin war against the United States.
Driven to the brink by the oil embargo…
Japanese newspapers and radio, led by the Asahi Shimbun…
Cried “Brutal America and Britain”…
Begin the war at once…
Defeat America and Britain…
And inflamed the people…
Until even the military had no road left but war…
Yet Japan, lacking oil, could only win through a short decisive war…
And thus came Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor…
Moreover, its results were marvelously and thoroughly successful.
On top of that,
a strange time gap arose before the declaration of war was conveyed to the United States…
So that it came to be perceived as an attack without a declaration of war…
And the feelings of the American people turned all at once toward entering the war.
If Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor had not happened…
Would the United States have entered the Second World War?
Hitler had no intention whatsoever of taking on the United States.
The Soviet Union was a communist state detested by the United States.
No matter how hard Hitler struck it,
the United States would not have moved.
International politics moves only by national interest and stratagem.
And the age was the century of war.
Moreover, it was the first half of the twentieth century,
the century of war begun by Europe.
Japan began the war in self-defense,
and did not begin the war for the purpose of massacring Jews,
as Nazi Germany did.

Japan,
which had continued paying the world’s largest enormous contributions to the United Nations,
was once again subjected to the utmost insolence
through the stratagem of an evil country whose essence is
“bottomless evil”
and
“plausible lies.”
In response to this,
voices surged throughout Japan
that contributions to UNESCO should be stopped at once.
For any adult,
that is only natural.
My friend, for one,
said in real anger that even payments to the United Nations itself should be stopped.
And in response to this…
The Asahi Shimbun,
a newspaper company like outright traitors to the nation unlike anything else anywhere in the world…
Through its subsidiary television station Hōdō Station,
once again carried out reporting like that of traitors to the nation.
The British reporter whom Asahi brought on the other day…
Exactly in line with Asahi’s intention…
Criticized our entirely natural adult way of thinking as
“childish.”
A country that, for nothing more than money…
Bustles about placing a dictator of historic proportions in the Queen’s carriage…
With what face does it say
“childish”?
A country that in no time at all
arrests and throws more than two hundred perfectly ordinary lawyers into prison…
That carries out such thorough oppression against the Uyghurs
that they have been driven to the point where suicide terrorism appears to be their only recourse…
That now in the South China Sea
is doing what one can no longer dismiss as childish behavior,
but must call open aggression against other countries…
A country that welcomes in that way
the dictator of a one-party Communist state…
Is it not beneath even a child?
I was reminded that Britain, too,
was at first conciliatory toward Hitler.

I have lived my life…
Not in the form of a promised life…
And have lived together with the Beatles,
especially John Lennon,
and in the latter half George Harrison as well…
But now I feel that my feelings toward the Beatles…
Or perhaps toward British rock itself…
Have truly and suddenly gone cold.
So that is it…
British rock…
In the end…
Was only a safety valve
for the working class
of Britain,
that very embodiment of a class society…
That is what I think.
John Lennon, who sang,
“If you talk about Chairman Mao,
you can count me out,”
What would he think…
Seeing Britain eagerly welcoming
the modern Chairman Mao himself?