October 1, 2011
Responding to the Nikkei’s publication of written answers from Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and its discussion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the column “Underlying Current,” MIKIO KISARA argues that Japan is not a nation destined to follow decisions made by the United States.
Japan possesses both the resources and the power to determine its own course, and The Turntable of Civilization presents a clear answer founded on independent thought and an original body of scholarship.
This morning’s Nikkei carries written answers from Lee Hsien Loong and also discusses the TPP in its column “Underlying Current.”
I would like to ask all of you a question.
Do you know Japan’s position in the world, and how much wealth and how many assets this country possesses?
Until I appeared, Japan had continued to indulge in an inward-looking fiction.
In that sense, perhaps it could not be helped that people were unable to recognize Japan as the country in which “the turntable of civilization” had already begun to revolve.
I wish to address all of you, and in particular those thirty thousand people.
Have you ever thought about these matters for yourselves?
Have you ever constructed an original body of scholarship through your own thinking?
The answer I set forth in The Turntable of Civilization demonstrates just how extraordinary this book is.
The answer is simple and self-evident.
Japan can determine its own course at any time, immediately and by its own sovereign will.
Japan is a nation that must stand upright, on an equal footing with the other major powers, and lead the world in the twenty-first century.
Japan’s proper course is not to follow whatever the United States has thought of or is preparing to decide.
That is the concise and unmistakably clear answer I have presented.
For that reason, even the remaining two months now seem like an extraordinary waste of time.
Every person in Japan who thinks about something beyond his or her own immediate interests—every person who asks what Japan ought to be—should read my book, The Turntable of Civilization, when it is published two months from now.
It contains truths that anyone can understand by thinking with his or her own mind.
It contains an original body of scholarship created by MIKIO KISARA, a gifted thinker comparable to great intellectual figures such as Umesao, who fulfilled what he had understood to be his mission ever since he first became conscious of the world.
MIKIO KISARA