Originally published on April 22, 2019.
This essay criticizes Japan’s mass media, especially Asahi Shimbun, together with the so-called cultural figures who have echoed them, for fundamentally misunderstanding the meaning of intelligence and failing in the most essential duty of all: to convey facts truthfully.
It argues that those who brand the Abe administration as “anti-intellectual” are themselves the true anti-intellectuals—self-deluded scholastic opportunists who have lost sight of reality, misled the nation, and corrupted Japan’s postwar discourse.

2019-04-22
They sit at their little anti-intellectual desks, unaware even that they have fallen into the ranks of scholastic opportunists who delude themselves and lead the nation astray… .
They speak without even realizing how foolish they are.
When I speak of minds inferior even to those of kindergarten children, it is they whom I mean.

What follows is from a chapter I published on October 26, 2015.

This morning, as I looked at the column in the Nikkei newspaper carrying advertisements for books and the like, I thought to myself.
The mass media such as Asahi, and the so-called cultural figures who have marched in step with them, fundamentally misunderstand the word intelligence.
They do not even know that intelligence can only begin, first and foremost, from conveying facts properly.

That is why I have long said that they are second-rate people in Japan, men who, to put it plainly, are merely the sort who were somewhat good at entrance-exam study.

Now, they… .
While I state without hesitation that Abe is a realist of the rarest kind… .
And while he leads the present cabinet as the finest politician of recent years… .
Spend their days brainwashing foolish students by calling that government an anti-intellectual group… .
All the while sitting at their little anti-intellectual desks, unaware even that they themselves have fallen into the ranks of scholastic opportunists who delude themselves and lead the nation astray… .
And they speak without even realizing how utterly foolish they are.

When I speak of minds inferior even to those of kindergarten children, it is they whom I mean.

Since I am the one saying this, readers would do well to be certain that it is 100 percent correct.
If readers look at the facts, one after another, proving that everything I have pointed out has been correct, then they may trust my words 100 percent.