Like the pseudo-moralists of Japan led by the Asahi Shimbun, the sins of pseudo-moralists throughout the world are deeper than the ocean.
April 1, 2016
The following is an essay I wrote and published in November 2014, with a small number of additional notes added tonight.
My readers know that I have been watching figure skating for many years, and they also know why.
Naturally, I have been watching this season’s Grand Prix Series from its opening event.
When I awoke this morning, something came to mind as though a mystery had suddenly been solved—a fact that people throughout the world would do well to know.
It came to me when I awoke because something I had seen on last night’s sports news had surprised me.
At the World Women’s Curling Championship now under way, South Korea was in first place with an undefeated record.
The moment I thought, “Was South Korea always this strong?” I realized that the country had embarked on a nationwide program to train and strengthen its athletes for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
I have written that the strength and sheer number of South Korean women professional golfers are the reverse side of the discrimination against women in South Korean society.
Why does South Korea, with a population of fifty million—less than half of Japan’s population of 126 million—surpass Japan in the number of Olympic gold medals it wins?
It is because gold medalists are treated, in effect, as state amateurs.
Athletes who win gold medals are granted lifelong pensions and enormous rewards by the state.
In South Korea, an extremely difficult country in which to live, this treatment is exceptional, and its athletes stake their futures—their entire lives—on the struggle.
By contrast, in Japan, which, together with the United States, possesses one of the world’s highest levels of intellect and freedom, no such treatment exists, even for those who win gold medals.
In particular, the realization I reached is a truth that people throughout the world living in the twenty-first century should know.
The other day, I was watching the Cup of China with a friend.
When the practice session began for the group in which Hanyu would skate, I was reading a book.
The instant my friend suddenly let out an inarticulate cry, I was able to imagine immediately what had happened, even though I had not been looking at the screen.
That was because I had witnessed a strange scene during the short-program practice session the previous day.
The Chinese skater who collided with Hanyu had also come toward him the day before.
At that time, Hanyu, who was facing forward, skated to the right and avoided him, but I felt that it was extremely dangerous and unnatural.
I could see an intentional act behind it.
Then, the following day, the incident occurred.
For what purpose?
Russia, which had come under fierce attack from around the world over the Ukraine issue, drew closer to China.
If we follow the historical rule that a one-party Communist dictatorship has a lifespan of approximately seventy years, the Chinese Communist Party is also approaching its final stage.
For the Chinese Communist Party, which was plotting world domination, Russia was a guest it could not have wished for more.
Because Hanyu had made a major mistake in the short program, a virtually unknown Russian skater was in first place.
I wondered whether it had been intended to ensure that this skater finished first, but that motive seemed far too weak.
But the moment I awoke today, I realized something.
South Korea would host the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in 2018.
South Korea must also have been training a men’s figure skater as a national undertaking, aiming for a gold medal.
But as long as Yuzuru Hanyu existed, that ambition would be impossible.
It is already a historical fact that anti-Japanese groups in South Korea and China are working together and conducting campaigns throughout the world, including in the United States, to diminish Japan’s international standing.
If so, it is possible.
Some people may think, “Are they mad?”
They are mad.
That South Korea—which for seventy years since the end of the war has continued fascist education under the name of “anti-Japanese education”—has gone mad is clear from the deeds of South Korean organizations in the United States.
Like the pseudo-moralists of Japan led by the Asahi Shimbun, the sins of pseudo-moralists throughout the world are deeper than the ocean.