Published on August 7, 2019.
This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s famous Henken Jizai column, published in Shukan Shincho under the title “Taro Ran Away.”
It recounts Takayama’s personal exchanges with actor Masahiko Tsugawa, the joint farewell gathering for Tsugawa and his wife Yukiji Asaoka, the kidnapping of their daughter Mayuko Kato as an infant, and the farewell speech in which she recalled her father’s words during the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident: “Die like a Japanese.”
The article contrasts those who fled during the national crisis, including GE employees and Yamamoto Taro, with the Japanese spirit of standing firm and helping one another.

August 7, 2019.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s famous column Henken Jizai, which adorns the final pages of Shukan Shincho, published today under the title “Taro Ran Away.”
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s famous column Henken Jizai, which adorns the final pages of Shukan Shincho, published today under the title “Taro Ran Away.”
I received a phone call from Mr. Masahiko Tsugawa.
It was when I was writing a column for the Sankei Shimbun, and we had never met.
I thought perhaps he was inviting me to become an actor, but it was completely different.
It was about the Middle East, perhaps; he wanted me to teach him something.
The place was Kagurazaka.
We spent some time at a stylish little restaurant, but to my surprise, he did not drink even a drop of alcohol.
He was unable to drink.
And yet he prepared a drinking occasion.
His thoughtfulness made me bow my head.
He was also a man who knew no reluctance.
When I said at another gathering that the cedar grove of Yakushima had been good for my body, the very next week he had already visited Yakushima.
He reported that he had even touched the Jomon Sugi, which I had been unable to reach, and that his poor condition had also improved.
Because of such a relationship, at the very end, I received notice of the joint farewell gathering for him and his wife Yukiji Asaoka, who had passed away before him.
It was in November of last year.
At the venue, actors and actresses I had seen before were lined up like glittering stars.
The Aibou pair, Yutaka Mizutani and Takashi Sorimachi, were in the front row, Shima Iwashita was next to them, and Takaya Kamikawa was a little behind.
Shinzo Abe gave a greeting.
He spoke of his relationship with the deceased, who had laughed at the tendency to think that film people must be left-wing.
Each person spoke words of farewell that made the participants murmur, but none of them could match the words of his only daughter, Mayuko Kato, the chief mourner.
She was kidnapped when she was five months old.
At the time, I was a roving reporter in the city news department, so I remember the incident well.
The criminal was a man from Chiba, and he demanded that “five million yen in ransom be transferred” to his account at Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank.
At the time, an account could be opened under a false name.
Moreover, the system had not yet been made online in a way that could identify terminals.
The criminal could withdraw the ransom money as he pleased.
However, the systems engineers at Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank were Japanese.
They worked through the night to connect the terminals to the parent computer, and made it in time for the opening of business the next day.
Wherever the criminal tried to withdraw the money, the location could be identified immediately.
And at noon the next day, the criminal, who tried to withdraw the money at Tokyo Station, was arrested, and she was safely rescued.
That baby from that time was now standing in front of the microphone.
She first spoke of her memories of her mother.
When the two of them went to the rooftop of Mitsukoshi, her mother said to a vending machine, “I am Asaoka.”
“Please give me two juices.”
Even when her six-year-old daughter advised her that she should put in money, she repeated, “It’s all right,” and “I am Asaoka.”
“She was my lovely mother, natural to the very end.”
This story was also broadcast on television, but for some reason no station broadcast the story about her father, Masahiko, that she told next.
Amid the confusion of March 11, the explosion of Unit 1 at TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear power plant was reported.
While rumors were flying around that deadly ash would fall on Tokyo, her father called her.
There had also been the kidnapping incident.
She had always been cherished and spoiled.
So she thought he must be worried about her in such a dangerous situation, but she was completely wrong.
“Everyone is fleeing Tokyo.
But you are Japanese.
Do not even think of running away.
Stay there and die like a Japanese.”
It was an unprecedented disaster.
Even so, TEPCO employees and firefighters were risking their lives to prevent the disaster from expanding.
No matter what natural calamities came, the Japanese did not run away.
They had lived by helping and supporting one another.
Her father told her to “behave” like such a Japanese.
At that time, the first to flee the scene were the employees of America’s GE, the very company that had made the defective reactor.
They headed straight for Osaka, jumped on a plane, and fled all the way back to the United States.
There was also a Japanese person who fled.
It was Taro Yamamoto.
He too fled to Osaka.
Not satisfied even with that, he tweeted that he was “making arrangements to flee to the Philippines.”
When the uproar settled down, the unsold actor shouted anti-nuclear slogans and entered politics.
Now he pledges to realize a good Japan with zero consumption tax.
But did he not once simply abandon that Japan and run away?
I forgot to mention it, but Mr. Masahiko Tsugawa hated most of all those who flee before anyone else.