Published on August 18, 2019. Continuing from the chapter published on August 18, 2018, this article discusses former House of Representatives Speaker Yohei Kono’s handling of the comfort women issue, his accommodation of China and Korea, the leftward drift of postwar LDP politics, and Japan’s need for a firm diplomatic stance toward the mainland and the peninsula steeped in Sinocentric ideology.

August 18, 2019.
It is difficult to build a true friendship with the mainland and the peninsula, which remain deeply steeped in a Sinocentric ideology that regards Japan as “inferior,” and toward them Japan must abandon naïveté and behave resolutely.
This is the chapter published on August 18, 2018, under the title: The foolish act of submitting to China and Korea is unforgivable, and one cannot help but conclude that his sin, which deeply wounded Japanese politics and society, is grave.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Yes-men to China and Korea who know nothing of Japanese history.
The third villain is Yohei Kono, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who also served as president of the Liberal Democratic Party.
He was precisely the successor to the pro-China and pro-Korea line left behind by Mr. Tanaka.
What makes him particularly bad is that, although he knew there was no evidence, he recognized the “forcible recruitment” of comfort women when he was Chief Cabinet Secretary.
He is free to have a personal sense of atonement that “Japan once did terrible things to them,” but while being in a position to lead the government, he ignored the facts and submitted to China and Korea; that foolish act is unforgivable, and one cannot help but conclude that his sin, which deeply wounded Japanese politics and society, is grave.
The fact that it is difficult to build a true friendship with the mainland and the peninsula, which remain deeply steeped in a Sinocentric ideology that regards Japan as “inferior,” and that toward them Japan must abandon naïveté and behave resolutely, is something taught to us long ago by our predecessors, including Prince Shōtoku.
Former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro had a family-level relationship with former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, but he explained that the reason he refrained from an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine was that the position of Hu Yaobang, who was “pro-Japanese,” had become precarious in China.
In short, China consists of people who use friendship and personal connections as “tools of intimidation,” and in this respect their view of friendship differs greatly from that of the Japanese; negotiations with them must be conducted with the utmost caution.
Perhaps because Mr. Kono belongs to the generation that studied from the “blackened textbooks” immediately after the war, which denied Japan, I feel that he does not understand such common sense regarding China and Korea.
In this age when lifelong learning is so loudly advocated, I recommend that he study Japanese history again.
This is a digression, but fortunately his son, Foreign Minister Taro Kono, appears not to have inherited his father’s negative legacy.
On the North Korean issue, he resolutely asserts the position of the Abe administration, which refuses to accept easy compromises, and he is truly reassuring.
Perhaps while studying in the United States, away from his parents, he developed deep exchanges with exceptionally fine friends and professors.
He may be a real find.
Having read this far, I believe you now understand that what pushed Japan’s leftward drift forward was postwar LDP politics.
It is no exaggeration to say that both Ms. Doi and Mr. Kono were produced by Mr. Tanaka.
In a certain sense, it was inevitable that I lost interest in political reporting at the same time as the rise of Mr. Tanaka and others.