October 2, 2011

The TPP was a framework promoted by the United States.
This essay argues that Japan must not simply follow American initiatives but should observe the world for itself and determine its own national course.
Written on October 2, 2011, it criticizes institutional conformity, dependence on established authority, and the pursuit of passing trends, while rejecting the claim that Japan has no future unless it joins the TPP.

The TPP was proposed by the United States.
As I wrote at the beginning of my discussion of hegemonic states, when the United States emerged more than seventy years ago as what may be called the first genuine hegemonic power in history, the population of the world was, broadly speaking, probably about half what it is today.
It then rose rapidly to 6.5 billion and has now reached 7 billion.
The number of people in the world has grown beyond what the United States alone can save.
Japan is a country that should stand upright beside the United States, on an equal footing, and lead the world together with it.
Why, then, is Japan unable to determine its own path?
Put simply, the reason lies in the social environment created by more than twenty years of mindless television and more than thirty-five years of self-serving pretenses made in the name of helping others.
It also lies in the unnecessary and useless American-following mentality of a group numbering only about thirty thousand people within the entire Japanese population.
They graduated from the University of Tokyo and studied in the United States.
Their belief in the absolute supremacy of the University of Tokyo became fused with their habit of following America.
Their minds became capable only of preserving and analyzing the existing order.
They ceased to observe with their own eyes, listen with their own ears, or think with their own minds.
When I was working in the brokerage of real-estate transactions at a level that probably no other individual could now equal—and indeed, this was always the natural way for me to work—I had no interest whatsoever in things merely because they were fashionable.
There were many passing fashions in food, but I never visited places simply because they had become popular.
Motsunabe restaurants are one example, among many others.
The restaurants I continued to visit were those where genuine professional chefs and apprentices undergoing rigorous training prepared the food.
I ate Japanese, Chinese, and Italian cuisine.
I returned almost always to the same restaurants.
There can be no genuine success in the indecency of imitating what others have done or pursuing whatever happens to be fashionable.
There are no worthwhile people among those who live in such a manner.
They are people whose superficial coating soon peels away.
Today, “Come now, Mr. Hashimoto,” and Masayoshi Son and others provide examples.
I will continue this discussion later.
For the present, my conclusion is this.
It is simply not true that Japan has no path unless it joins the TPP.
Think about it with your own mind.
Then you will understand.
Those who have been so deeply poisoned by University of Tokyo supremacy and habitual obedience to the United States that they still cannot understand should buy and read my book, The Turntable of Civilization, when it is published two months from now.

MIKIO KISARA