Since August 2014, The Turntable of Civilization has repeatedly described Masayuki Takayama as “the one and only journalist in the postwar world” while introducing his essays.
After the end of his “Henken Jizai” column in Shukan Shincho, this article returns to his “Nihon Keisei” column in the monthly magazine THEMIS and explains why Takayama’s writing should be read not only by the Japanese people but by readers throughout the world.

My devoted readers will already be well aware of this.
The expression “one and only” is one that I have repeatedly used since August 2014, when I stopped subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun and discovered the journalist Masayuki Takayama in the true sense of the word.
From that point onward, whenever I introduced one of Takayama’s essays, I almost invariably prefaced it with the words:
“Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.”
It would be no exaggeration to say that I wrote this almost every day.
When I began using the expression “one and only,” it had become almost a dead phrase.
The word “only” appeared from time to time, but opportunities to encounter the complete expression “one and only” were extremely rare.
Recently, however, as readers will also have noticed, the expression has suddenly begun appearing everywhere.
It now pours forth like a flood through newspapers, television, advertising, publishing, and writing on the Internet.
I do not regard this phenomenon as a mere coincidence.
I am convinced that it constitutes evidence that The Turntable of Civilization has in fact been read far more widely than I had imagined, and that it has been read continuously by central figures in every field and at every level of society.
In my view, the true value of Shukan Shincho lay in the columns by Masayuki Takayama and Yoshiko Sakurai that appeared at the end of the magazine.
As my readers know, I bought Shukan Shincho every week solely to read their columns, and above all Takayama’s “Henken Jizai.”
After receiving petty objections from people afflicted with left-wing infantilism, the founder’s daughter, who now runs the company and apparently shared such tendencies herself, stopped Takayama’s column as though the controversy had given her precisely the opportunity she wanted.
I have not bought Shukan Shincho at all since then, because it ceased to be worth buying.
Since that time, together with Bunshun, the magazine has degenerated into a contemptible weekly that uses hack writers—whom it would not be an exaggeration to call political racketeers—to publish one anti-Takaichi, China-appeasing article after another.
Like the rest of the old media, the time when it should have withdrawn from respectable public discourse came long ago.
As a result, for a very long time I almost completely stopped introducing worthwhile essays published in the Sankei Shimbun and the monthly magazine WiLL, both of which I subscribe to, including essays by Masayuki Takayama.
I still subscribe to the subscription-only monthly magazine THEMIS.
I do so because his regular column appears in it.
Nevertheless, for no particular reason, there have been many occasions when I did not read it.
Takayama is not merely the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
As a writer, there is no one other than him who is more deserving of the Nobel Prize.
The latest issue of THEMIS arrived at my home at the end of last month.
For the first time in some while, I read his regular column, “Nihon Keisei.”
It demonstrated that my assessment of him had been exactly right.
This is essential reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people throughout the world.
The Asahi Shimbun and China-Appeasing Politicians Should Look at President Fujimori’s Achievements
Following Yohei Kono’s Death, the Asahi Writes as Though the “Forced Abduction of Comfort Women” Were True
Masayuki Takayama
Yohei Kono, Who Refused to Set Foot in Taiwan
Yohei Kono has died.
He was, above all, a man who provoked anger.
It may sound harsh to say so, but I felt a certain sense of relief.
Then I read the Asahi Shimbun’s obituary of him, and a different anger welled up inside me.
For thirty years, the Asahi spread Seiji Yoshida’s lies about the comfort women and demeaned the Japanese people.
It finally admitted that the story was false, yet it has still never apologized.
Nevertheless, the Asahi’s article brazenly refers to the “Kono Statement.”
The statement was issued when Yohei Kono was Chief Cabinet Secretary and endorsed the falsehood that “forcible recruitment took place,” in support of the Asahi’s succession of fabricated comfort-women reports.
The statement was supposedly based on testimony from sixteen Korean women who claimed to have been made sex slaves.
When the Sankei Shimbun later obtained the testimony records, however, it found that the identities of most of the witnesses were unknown.
Those whose existence could be verified had been “Korean prostitutes who had gone to Osaka or Taiwan to earn money.”
Moreover, the contents of the statement had been coordinated in advance with the South Korean government.
In other words, it was all fabricated.
Yohei Kono deserved permanent banishment from public life.
Yet the Asahi says nothing about whether the statement was true or false.
Instead, it writes that Kono “issued a statement acknowledging coercion by the Japanese military,” as though its comfort-women reporting had been factual.
It is a thoroughly dishonest newspaper.
Kono committed other wrongs as well.
He did not merely curry favor with South Korea.
He also curried favor with China.
Two years after issuing the statement, Kono flew to an international conference in Thailand in his capacity as foreign minister.
Because of a typhoon, his aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Taipei.
Everyone else left the aircraft, but Kono remained alone on board.
It was a performance intended to show that he would not accept assistance from Taiwan, which China did not recognize.
After eventually reaching the conference venue, Kono hurried over to Qian Qichen and reported that he had not taken even a single step on Taiwanese soil.
This was the man who served as Japan’s foreign minister.
There have been other disgraceful politicians.
Take Takeo Miki, for example.
Like Kono, he was also miserly.
Through the so-called Shiina decision, he unexpectedly became prime minister just as the year-end gift season was beginning.
Mountains of year-end gifts arrived at the Miki residence from across the country.
Kakuei Tanaka distributed such gifts among the people who supported him behind the scenes and among reporters.
Miki did not.
He erected a prefabricated storehouse in his garden and put everything away inside it.
The reporters received nothing more than the usual weak tea.
Miki transformed the existing COCOM restrictions, which had excluded the communist bloc from weapons exports, into a comprehensive ban on arms exports.
He curried favor with China while presenting himself as a prime minister of peace.
It took fifty years, until Takaichi corrected the policy.
The Lockheed scandal was an American operation to destroy Kakuei Tanaka, and Miki acted as its willing instrument.
The basis for Tanaka’s conviction consisted solely of testimony by a Lockheed executive, half of which was false.
Miki therefore arranged for testimony given without cross-examination to be accepted as evidence.
That meant even lies could be treated as evidence.
Yusuke Yoshinaga of the Special Investigation Department falsely claimed, “Americans swear on the Bible, so they do not lie.”
Thus, exactly as the United States intended, the destruction of Kakuei Tanaka was carried out.
On the day of Eisaku Sato’s state funeral, Miki was struck in the face and sent flying by a right-wing man who had approached him to hand over a written remonstrance.
The man explained his motive by saying, “When I saw Miki’s face, I became furious.”
Anyone looking at Miki, who pandered to both the United States and China, might have felt the same way.
The blow was described as one that embodied the feelings of the Japanese people.
For some reason, Yohei Kono escaped such punishment.
Yet there are many politicians who appear dangerous, including Takeshi Iwaya, Shigeru Ishiba, and Junya Ogawa.
Particularly ugly are those Constitutional Democratic and centrist lawmakers who receive as much as twelve million yen a year in political research funds, yet buy nothing but a single copy of Shukan Bunshun.
Without even checking whether its contents are accurate, they devote themselves entirely to personal attacks on Takaichi.
There would be nothing surprising about divine punishment descending upon them at any time.
Are there no politicians who are truly Japanese in spirit?
Looking around, I found one.
It was Alberto Fujimori, who passed away two years ago.
To be continued.