This piece, based on a chapter posted on May 7, 2018, examines the distinction proposed by Susumu Nishibe between “seyoron” and “yoron,” using an essay by Yoshiro Ueshima published in the monthly magazine Voice as its point of departure.
Through the framework in which “yoron,” meaning the common-sense judgment of ordinary people, is overwhelmed by massified “seyoron,” and in which that movement is directed by the media, it sharply depicts the deterioration of parliamentary politics and public discourse in postwar Japan.
It offers an extremely important perspective for thinking about democracy, mass society, and media domination.

2019-04-19
Ordinary people have turned into the masses, have obtained money and education, and have come out to the forefront of society, and in the end they are manipulating or even collapsing parliament through public opinion.
And of course it is the mass media that directs that movement.
This is from an essay by Yoshiro Ueshima titled, There Is No Time to Indulge in Beating Abe Without Distinguishing the Weight of Matters, or in Barren Debate Without Examination.
This is the chapter I posted on 2018-05-07.
I had told a friend that the May issue of the monthly magazine Voice, released on 4/10, was filled with essays one must read, but I realized that I had left many of them unread.
The following is from Yoshiro Ueshima’s essay titled, There Is No Time to Indulge in Beating Abe Without Distinguishing the Weight of Matters, or in Barren Debate Without Examination.
And yet, despite being filled with such essays, the monthly magazine Voice costs only 780 yen.
Every Japanese citizen who can read print ought to dash to the nearest bookstore on 5/10 and buy it.
If not, you will never know the truth of things.
Yoshiro Ueshima.
Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1958.
Joined Sankei Shimbun in 1991.
After working in the organizing section of the Sankei Sports editorial bureau and serving as founding editor-in-chief of Monthly Japan, he joined the editorial staff of Seiron in 1998 and became editor-in-chief in 2006.
He left Sankei Shimbun in July 2014.
His books include Learning from Superior Thinking: The “Essence of Failure” in the Greater East Asia War.
Co-authored, PHP Institute.
And Let Us Say Clearly What Must Be Said to South Korea!
Wanibooks PLUS Shinsho.
Emphasis in the text other than the heading is mine.
The difference between “seyoron” and “yoron.”
Susumu Nishibe, who took his own life this January, distinguished “seyoron” and “yoron” in the following way.
<In a mass society, seyoron means “temporary opinions currently in fashion in the world,” and because they are newly reduced to simple models, they possess stimulating force, and because they are subjected to simple quantification, they possess circulatory force.
By contrast, though the word appears already to have fallen out of use, yoron may be interpreted as “the common-sense judgment of the ordinary people seated upon the carriage platform,” carrying the tradition called history.
The seyoron of the masses talks loudly about whether the “numbers, deadlines, and procedures of policy,” what in recent years has been called the manifesto, are good or bad, despite in fact knowing not a single character about them.
The yoron of ordinary people, on the other hand, does not greatly miss the mark in “judging the character of politicians,” and for policy it leaves matters, provisionally, to deliberation in parliament.
In that sense, that it does not let go of such sound judgment, the civic character of ordinary people may be said to be strong.
But when those ordinary people turn into the masses, obtain money and education, and come out to the forefront of society, in the end they manipulate or collapse parliament through seyoron.
And it is of course the mass media that directs that movement.>
“Strike at Democracy, the Enemy of Civilization!” Seiron, July 2010 issue.
To be continued.