Published on September 17, 2019.
Through Nishio Kanji’s criticism of Kato Shuichi, this essay examines the weakness of postwar liberal intellectuals’ understanding of both Western and Japanese culture, their view of socialism, and the emotional lack of judgment revealed in Kato’s political commentary in the Asahi Shimbun series Yūhi Mōgo.

September 17, 2019.
I rebuked him, saying, “Do not write such nonsense that even a junior high school student would not misunderstand.”
Shincho 45, March 1990 issue.
The following is a chapter published on August 16, 2018.
The following is a continuation of Nishio Kanji’s essay published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument, 840 yen, under the title “The Three Villains of the Postwar Liberal Fortress Whom I Choose: Hando Kazutoshi, Nakajima Kenzo, and Kato Shuichi — Weak, Far Too Weak Intellect.”
Emphasis in the text, apart from headings, is mine.
He wants to say that socialism has not perished.
Furuta Hiroshi has written a piece criticizing the distortion in Kato Shuichi’s attitude toward the West.
He says that Kato’s manner of approaching the West, born of his hatred of modern Japan as a counterfeit, is an oppressive sight full of excuses.
It is included in “Kami no Hon” wa Kaku Katariki, Chikuma Bunko.
At the beginning of every summer, Kato went to Karuizawa Oiwake and left splendid realistic prose about this small settlement, with its cultural-village atmosphere, and the nature surrounding it.
Furuta wrote that it was “like a Japanese painting drawn in imitation of a Western painting.”
For the time being, he acknowledged Kato’s “Japanese soul,” but in contrast, he denounced Kato’s “Western soul” as looking unmistakably “pseudo.”
Kato wrote that he had failed as a government-funded student abroad, yet claimed that he quickly came to use the language to the point of debating in French.
Furuta judged this to be “almost impossible” and declared it a lie.
Hitsuji no Uta.
In Zoku Hitsuji no Uta, “Kato Shuichi’s descriptions of the West are the exact opposite of his descriptions of Japan; they are like unaccustomed pastel drawings painted by a Japanese-style painter, and they are not beautiful at all.”
In short, when Kato Shuichi speaks of Japanese culture, it becomes something like a Japanese painting imitating a Western painting.
When he speaks of Western culture, he exposes the half-finished ugliness of a Japanese painter who happened to travel in the West and casually drew in a Western style.
Kato did not seriously confront Western culture, nor did he grasp its essence.
For that reason, his understanding of Japan also could not escape the realm of taste.
That is because there is no soul in either.
That is what Furuta probably wished to say.
Furuta has put his eye on a good point.
This is the true nature of the aesthetics that guided the postwar careers of French-oriented literary men such as Nakamura Shinichiro and Fukunaga Takehiko, who had secretly gathered in Karuizawa from the end of the war.
The symbol of Oiwake is Hori Tatsuo, and now it is Kaga Otohiko.
In the Asahi Shimbun evening edition series Yūhi Mōgo, Kato Shuichi exposed the ugly spectacle of his defenseless and foolish late years, like a toad opening its large mouth and showing the inside of its belly completely, through “deluded words” that openly displayed political ideology.
For example, he treated the Liberal Democratic Party of the time, which had not undergone a change of government, as being of the same nature and on the same level as China’s coercive dictatorship.
I rebuked him, saying, “Do not write such nonsense that even a junior high school student would not misunderstand.”
Shincho 45, March 1990 issue.
Because Kato wanted to say that what collapsed with the end of the Cold War was only Stalinism, and that socialism had not perished, he wanted at all costs to defend Western-style democratic socialism and the Chinese Communist Party.
If one denounces China’s coercive dictatorship, is not the Liberal Democratic Party the same?
In this way, he fell into the logical trap of mixing miso and excrement together.
The sweetness of his cherry-picking approach, which was neither Western culture nor Japanese culture and required no shedding of blood, revealed the cloven hoof of emotional lack of judgment when he spoke of politics.
This essay continues.