Published on January 4, 2020. This article introduces comments by Rui Sasaki and Masako Nagato from the Sankei Shimbun’s “A Word from the Editorial Writer.” It criticizes the authoritarianism and personality cults of Russia and China in response to President Putin’s statement that liberalism is obsolete, warning that Japan must recognize the crisis approaching amid internal and external troubles. It also contrasts German reunification with the Korean Peninsula, pointing to the presence of China as a neighboring authoritarian power.

2020-01-04
It is Russia and China, which feel no shame over authoritarianism and personality cults, that are monsters revived from the Middle Ages.
The following is from the Sankei Shimbun’s “A Word from the Editorial Writer” on January 3.
Rui Sasaki
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with a British newspaper that “liberalism is obsolete.”
It is Russia and China, which feel no shame over authoritarianism and personality cults, that are monsters revived from the Middle Ages.
However, the speed of decision-making in dictatorial states far surpasses that of free and democratic states.
They must not be underestimated.
Can we sense the crisis approaching Japan, beset by troubles both at home and abroad?
We should recall that Noah built the ark “before the rain fell.”
Masako Nagato
Thirty years have already passed since German reunification.
The strain of a divided nation becoming one still remains, but when we turn our eyes to the Korean Peninsula, there is not even a hint of German-style unification.
One thing that Germany had and the Korean Peninsula lacks was continuous exchange and information between the people of the two countries at the private level.
However, here it may be more important to consider what the Korean Peninsula has that Germany did not have.
Germany did not have a war between peoples of the same nation.
Above all, it did not have a neighboring authoritarian state like China.