July 27, 2010
The twentieth century began when women, who had been oppressed for a very long time—it would be no exaggeration to say for 1,900 years—finally…
seized the natural freedom and rights that came from recognizing that they were completely equal human beings, no different from men in ability, differing only in that their physical structure placed them at a disadvantage in running speed and physically demanding work.
The middle of the century was engulfed by the madness of that abhorrent fascism, which completely covered Japan and Europe and caused the worst great war in human history…
I am one of those who believe that the reason this worst catastrophe in human history came about was that almost all the hegemonic nations up to that time—before the United States became the hegemonic nation—used their hegemony solely for their own countries, doing the exact opposite of what the United States does today, rather than making poor countries and regions prosperous.
It was a century in which the countries that had fallen behind in the plunder of wealth from other countries—the poor countries—erupted violently, proclaiming their own peoples to be the finest in the world when that distortion reached its maximum.
As one of the artists who most powerfully expressed the sorrow of that century, I would name the Italian film director Roberto Benigni, who made “Life Is Beautiful.”
He falls in love at first sight and marries, but his family, which embodied happiness itself, is taken to a Nazi concentration camp because his wife is Jewish.
He follows them into the camp and, in order to find his wife and child, slips into the administration building on a night filled with dense fog and plays throughout the camp the classical music loved by his wife, who was a pianist.
The dense fog must surely represent the fog of fascism that completely covered Europe.
The music represents the indescribable sorrow of the people of that age, who were completely at the mercy of humanity at its lowest possible level.
The end of the century was the period in which communism collapsed historically.
When Lenin established the first communist state in human history in Russia in 1917, declaring, “In a capitalist society, man is a wolf to man, but under communism, he is a tovarishch—a friend,” genuine intellectuals throughout the world experienced a different kind of shock…Now that a workers’ state had been created, the value of their own existence had ended.
The century ended with the historical demise of communism, whose principles should have been correct but which, in reality, proved to be the worst form of centralized state: a dictatorship of the Communist Party without freedom of speech, which, as a result, could become virtually nothing other than a poor country.
I am convinced that the recent great financial upheaval at the beginning of the twenty-first century will be recorded in history as marking the collapse of twentieth-century capitalism.
However, that will happen only if our country, toward which the Turntable of Civilization has revolved, fulfills its role—if people recognize the truth in my proposal—and creates an extremely stable twenty-first-century market free from cunning and greed.
The stock market will be transformed into one in which the entire population receives stable dividends, generates enormous consumption, and brings substantial benefits to foreign countries as well…
Naturally, in a manner incomparably stricter than today, corporate scandals and dividend reductions would result not only in substantial salary cuts for management but also in their immediate resignation.
Retirement allowances would also be substantially reduced, creating a society far more severe toward its elites than it is today.
After all, even if the situation confronting the Latin countries of Europe was karmic retribution for the scale of their underground economies in the first place, those countries also implemented fiscal measures that rescued securities companies and others.
Can it be considered proper for those companies to seize upon that very moment, target those countries, and make money by launching massive short-selling attacks?
If capitalism that relies on such cunning people is twentieth-century capitalism, it is only natural that it should be changed.
Intellect that must rely on such greed and cunning is not intellect at all.
The rest is up to all of you who are politicians.
If you possess intellect, you must think with the utmost extent of that intellect and accomplish this.
You have no other role or reason to exist.
Striking grand poses and putting on performances in front of the mass media—which have reached the ultimate extreme of feeble-mindedness and are totalitarian in their essence—or thinking only about securing the votes of your local constituents is not the work of a politician.
Finally, my readers, please also recognize that whether a country is prosperous or poor is determined by whether it discriminates against women, whose abilities may surpass those of men but are never inferior to them.
That, too, becomes immediately apparent simply by looking at the world.