In January 2020, the author sharply criticizes NHK’s Ainu-related program and its reporting on the U.S. presidential election.
He argues that America’s social division was not created by President Trump, but by globalization and the deepening inequality it produced.

The ringleader, who to anyone’s eyes had the air of a so-called big shot who clearly lacked for nothing financially, was poking at the bonfire.
At his side were men whose demeanor made it perfectly obvious that they were this man’s sycophantic attendants.
Recently, by chance, I watched two strange programs produced by the people who dominate NHK’s news division and by those who make their living by parasitizing them—people who are masses of masochistic historical views and holders of anti-Japanese thought.
One was Nippon Gururi: Hokkaido Special, “The Ainu and GHQ—The Mystery of MacArthur’s Shinto Shelf,” which began at 12:15 a.m. on Friday, January 10, 2020.
A very small group of people calling themselves Ainu were shown outdoors, sitting in a square formation around a bonfire.
The ringleader, who to anyone’s eyes had the air of a so-called big shot who clearly lacked for nothing financially, was poking at the bonfire.
At his side were men whose demeanor made it perfectly obvious that they were this man’s sycophantic attendants.
When I saw this opening scene, this central figure overlapped in my mind with Asahara Shoko.
Just as I was thinking that I could not continue watching such a biased program, a middle-aged woman who seemed like a kind of narrator appeared, looking as though she were dancing about in some manner.
What this screen indicated was, without exaggeration, a picture-story show performed by people who had become unbelievably prosperous as a result of the Japanese government, once again under the influence of IMADR, which manages NGO activities at the United Nations, creating a mistaken bill and providing large amounts of aid.
A former Communist Party member who is now a commentator has published, in a monthly magazine that I have described as essential reading for all Japanese citizens, a painstaking work verifying that a person who presides over Ainu-related activities is a believer in North Korea’s Juche ideology.
He too is a person who illuminates one corner of the world, and he is a national treasure.
The other was the report on the U.S. presidential election in the seven o’clock news.
I was truly astonished by this as well.
I was dumbfounded by the way NHK reported on Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old former mayor of South Bend, a rural American city whose name almost no Japanese citizen knows.
It was a childish—or rather, pre-childish—dogmatic assertion, based on a gross misunderstanding of the facts, that the appearance of President Trump had divided American society.
Anyone with a normal mind above the level of an elementary school child can understand that American society began to divide because, with the advance of the global economy, the gap between rich and poor became extreme, producing cracks that could no longer be covered over even by the “American Dream.”
That is why figures who are practically socialists themselves, such as Sanders and Warren, have appeared.
Recently, one of the founders of GAFAM—if I remember correctly, Bill Gates—went so far as to say that tax rates on the wealthy should be raised.
While searching in order to verify concrete figures on American inequality, I discovered the following article.
Simply reading this article makes clear the low level of the people in NHK’s news division, whose minds have been hardened into anti-Trump ideology by reading the Asahi Shimbun and the like.
I do not think Akira Ikegami is a person worth considering at all, and I have never watched his programs.
I have never once even wanted to watch them.
However, since this is an entirely reasonable book review, I will quote it as it is.
NHK, which carried out an outrageous anti-Trump report in its January 5 feature, “U.S. Presidential Election: The Democratic Candidate Drawing Attention Is the Youngest, at 37,” ought to know shame.
The Rampage of America’s Super-Unipolar Concentration Society
Author:
Yumi Kobayashi [Author]
The reality of a country where a mere 0.1 percent of the super-rich monopolize wealth
[Reviewer] Akira Ikegami, journalist
The election of Donald Trump as President in the U.S. presidential election showed that the expansion of inequality in American society had become extraordinary.
America’s major media predicted victory for Hillary Clinton.
However, the headquarters of such major media are on the East Coast, in places like New York and Washington.
They are places with many supporters of the Democratic Party.
They were unable to grasp the thoughts of people in the American Midwest and South.
They did not notice the anger of poor white workers who were in the depths of despair, feeling “forgotten” by the nation and society.
Yet there should have been a chance to notice it.
That is because Bernie Sanders, who competed with Clinton to become the presidential candidate of the same Democratic Party, was gaining passionate support from young people.
During the presidential election, when I covered Sanders’s political rallies, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of high school and college students.
They were troubled by the abnormal rise in university tuition and were unable to envision dreams for the future.
Behind the acceptance of his claims—“make tuition at public universities free” and “introduce social welfare like that of Northern Europe”—lay the reality of America’s serious inequality.
The major media, which had unconsciously taken the side of the intellectual wealthy class, underestimated both movements.
However, whether on the left or the right, these currents were seeking “change” from an unequal society.
Yet Sanders was unable to become the Democratic presidential candidate.
Only Trump, who was able to become the Republican presidential candidate, gave citizens a chance to vote.
The expectations of poor white people that “at least he will bring about change” produced the supposedly impossible administration.
Where, then, is that America heading from now on?
The author, who is well versed in the latest circumstances, depicts an astonishing reality.
The people are fed up with the concentration of wealth and money-driven politics.
The Democratic Party, which was supposed to be on the side of workers, began from the time of the Clinton administration to take urban progressive wealthy people as its main source of funds and to speak for their interests.”
“Powerful people and money merely fly back and forth between the East Coast and the West Coast, while the central part of the continent beneath that flight path is completely ignored and looked down upon.
Workers in the Midwest and South understood the cause of their hardship in that way.”
“The Democratic Party obtains political funds from urban progressive wealthy people and the high-tech industry, and draws in minorities concentrated in urban areas.
The Republican Party obtains political funds from heavy industry, energy, and finance, and draws in poor white people concentrated in the Midwest and South.
In either case, in order to secure political funds, they must protect the interests of wealthy people and corporations, so it is only natural that the concentration of wealth advances.”
Then, how far has the concentration of wealth advanced?
Looking at average real income by class across the United States, the average for the top 0.01 percent is 29 million dollars.
In Japanese yen, that is far more than 2.9 billion yen.
Since the 1980s, the income of the top 0.1 percent has continued to rise, while the income of those below them has barely increased at all.
In America, the political slogan “We are the 99 percent” was once shouted.
It denounced the inequality by which most wealth was monopolized by the richest 1 percent.
However, now the monopoly of wealth has come to be concentrated among the 0.1 percent or even the 0.01 percent.
America is a society of educational credentials even more than Japan is.
To enter the ranks of such wealthy people, a high level of education from early childhood is required.
America has no national universities, so children from education-minded families proceed to elite private universities.
The cost of such education rises year by year, and it is not rare for four years to cost 30 million yen.
One can understand why the Sanders whirlwind arose.
On the other hand, Kobayashi reports the reality that most students who aim to take teacher certification examinations cannot even calculate fractions.
The children taught by such students after they become teachers are those in public elementary and junior high schools.
In this way, inequality is reproduced.
Is there a future for such an America?
President Trump promises the revival of American manufacturing, but in today’s American manufacturing, human beings as labor power are no longer needed.
Through the reduction of management costs, the income of those who are employed continues to decline.
The “information society,” once depicted as a bright future, is now becoming a nightmare.
What happened in America will eventually happen in Japan as well.
Taking America as a lesson, what can Japan do?
This book will serve as a clue for thinking about that question.