August 1, 2010

Around 2009–2010, this was some time after the Japanese National Railways Settlement Corporation, which was in effect an organization managing the people’s assets, had begun selling its real estate to reduce the ¥30 trillion deficit arising from the privatization of the former Japanese National Railways.
In Tokyo’s Shiodome district, fair and open bidding was held after changes had been made to the urban plan, including an increase in the floor-area ratio.
Each parcel was sold for more than ¥100 million per tsubo.
Dentsu and companies including one owned by Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, one of the world’s leading real estate magnates, won the bids and built their own headquarters buildings and high-rise office towers incorporating five-star hotels.
Tokyo was becoming ever more truly “Tokyo,” a world city.
Nevertheless, Osaka presented what could be called a disastrous picture, the result of the harmful effects of Japanese politics at the time and of a Japan dominated by the Asahi Shimbun.
There were forces seeking to derail a splendid development plan that had finally been completed after more than twenty years of work drawing together the wisdom of Osaka’s public and private sectors.
That was because the development plan for Umeda North Yard overlapped with the Asahi Shimbun’s plan for two high-rise buildings in Nakanoshima, including the rebuilding of Festival Hall, on which the newspaper had staked its future in an effort to overcome the growing challenge from the internet.
Compared with Tokyo, Osaka has a smaller area of flat land, which, paradoxically, makes transportation highly convenient.
As commercial locations, Umeda and Nakanoshima are, to put it bluntly, worlds apart.
For the Asahi Shimbun, concerned then as now only with its own interests and the realization of its own ideology, nothing could have been more welcome than a stalled Umeda North Yard project, delays in constructing its buildings, and major setbacks to plans for recruiting tenants.
Those who subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun in Osaka at the time should all remember.
They should remember the full-page articles proclaiming “North Yard Project in Turmoil.”
Next, Hiroshi Shimozuma, chairman of Sumitomo Metal Industries, who had then become chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation, suggested stopping the second phase of development at North Yard, one of Japan’s finest commercial districts alongside Ginza, and turning it into a green park.
In other words, he began saying something outrageous, tantamount to proposing that the corner of Ginza 4-chome be turned into a green park.
As readers know, I spent three months fighting alone against three parties involved in the North Yard project: Osaka City Hall, the Kansai Economic Federation, and the Association of Corporate Executives.
Articles from that period, too, had disappeared from search results as a result of the criminal act of search interference by the man readers know well.
That is why I am publishing them again.

The following is an article I published under the title “On a Culture and Mass Media with a Mental Age of Thirteen” around the time I began writing The Turntable of Civilization under my original pen name, Kenji Akutagawa, for reasons readers know.

More than twenty years ago, a Dentsu employee with whom I was very close told me, “There is a famous tofu restaurant in Yushima Tenjin,” so I said, “Let’s go.”
Joining us were a woman who was the daughter of a well-known comedian and an employee of Dentsu, and her close friend, an elite employee of TBS.
Here is what the TBS employee said.
“I agree with you, Kisara-san… I’ve heard that commercials and television dramas are actually made with the mental age of a thirteen-year-old in mind, and that television stations cannot produce a single program without Dentsu…”
I once spent several million yen to place an opinion advertisement about Osaka, the city I had chosen, as a newspaper insert delivered to every household in Osaka Prefecture that subscribed to the Nikkei. It began as follows—the rest appears in another chapter. I believe, if I may say so myself, that the advertisement was superbly written, reached the heart of Osaka, and changed the minds of its elite…
There is an occasional American television program in which the finest actors and directors of the day speak before students and teachers at one of America’s foremost drama schools—an episode might be called “Robin Williams Talks About Himself,” for example.
This is a program that neither we Japanese nor people in any region outside Europe could ever produce, no matter how hard we tried.
There lies the essence of America, and the source of the strength that gives it an absolute advantage over other countries.
The rest is omitted here.
From that program, I will write down the words spoken by Tom Cruise when he appeared, which I have saved permanently on my PC.
“I want to applaud your efforts. Because there is conviction behind them. That is why I respect you and cheer you on.”
I will omit the rest for now as well.