2010-8-19

I understand without asking why D left the legal profession and chose a position as the head of North American operations for a major Japanese corporation—a corporation that must strive every day for advances in research and technology or else decline.

The turntable of civilization turned toward Japan… As I have said many times, because the country had been reduced to scorched earth, because those four million people died for us, and as a result of the miraculous reconstruction achieved through hard work…
When Japan became the champion of prosperity, it began investing in the United States in various ways.

At the famous law firm where he worked, his position must often have required him to handle matters involving Japan.
At first, that work must have filled him with energy as a Japanese person.

But what was it like at the time of our unbelievable chance reunion in Kitashinchi, which I described earlier?

Just as his wife sensed what was happening from the sound of my voice, he too must have been spending his days doing nothing but dealing with the aftermath of defeats suffered by Japanese companies…
Nothing eats away at the human spirit more than dispiriting work that looks only backward.

For example, I imagine that the past twenty years have not been enjoyable for people who chose a life in banking without seeking a place among the elite on the executive track…
Of course, I think most of them realized at that point that, as members of the working class, they were entitled to think only of their own happiness and their families’ happiness, and went on to find happiness of a different kind.

The sins of today’s elite run very deep, and even after twenty years, our country has still not escaped its crisis…
Why?
Because those very people remain in the ruling class—the elite—and continue to put out idiotic information and idiotic programs every day.

I truly think this now: you will not go to heaven.

The opening through which you must pass is narrower than the eye of a needle through which a camel must pass.

Why?
Because, while the country and its regions have been exhausted and driven into decline, while many young people continue to be exploited, and while more than 30,000 people a year—many of them engaged in primary industries, such as fishing, agriculture, and manufacturing—continue to take their own lives, you keep making programs with the mental age of a twelve-year-old, fooling around without end, acting the clown, and surrounding yourselves with beautiful young women.

And yet, when it comes to politics, you put on the face of spokespeople for justice and democracy… While six television stations are gathered in Tokyo, promoting the concentration of information in Tokyo and completing a centralized state, you put on the face of guardians of democracy…
You stir up political power struggles and steer politics in that direction, whipping up popularity on the basis of whether a politician looks good on television or speaks in short sentences—things that have nothing to do with what a politician should be… It is mob rule itself.

Since the very people responsible for creating these past twenty years still reign over the elite,
my words must cut all the more sharply.

When I call the people from the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management snot-nosed brats, it is because I think that you, too—many of you who speak so forcefully amid that media environment—were among those who joined that great chorus of righteous indignation eighteen years ago.
Because I think Renhō may have been one of them too.

You have no time to concern yourselves with the media… I know how difficult it is to be constantly exposed to the microphones and scrutiny of these fools… I believe your only path to atonement is to go on reflecting and thinking at a depth far greater than you yourselves imagine.

The truth is not as easy as you think, and it is profoundly serious…
Because this is a question connected to the whole world… I call you snot-nosed brats because you think only of yourselves and the Japan immediately around you, and because, so far, I have never sensed in you what might be called “a fragment of the world spirit”…
I have never sensed in you a gaze that is always directed toward the world…
Though I constantly sense a gaze directed toward this country’s media.

From time to time, I say something like this to people around me.
…Mr. or Ms. ○○, why do you think people of mixed parentage turn out to be beautiful women and handsome men…?
As far as I know, and among those I have met, I have never seen an unattractive person of mixed parentage…
The most striking example was a mother and daughter I saw some time ago in a shoe store at Ala Moana, Hawaii…
The mother was probably Filipino… Forgive me for saying so, but her face looked like a jagatara potato…
And yet her daughter’s beauty was extraordinary, simply magnificent… Her figure, too, was the complete opposite of her mother’s: she was a slender, extraordinarily beautiful woman…

What did Christ say two thousand years ago?
What saves humanity is not love of family, but love of one’s neighbor… Love your neighbor as yourself… That is what he said…
As Pasolini portrayed in Teorema and Medea, and as Kazumi Takahashi wrote about 王土愼 or someone else in a book that opened my eyes.

An international marriage, by that fact alone, overcomes egoism…
That is why God gives a reward…
And as a result, people of mixed parentage are all beautiful…

In Japan, too, we say, “A man from the east and a woman from Kyoto,” don’t we?
The farther apart people are from one another, the more likely they are to have not only beautiful daughters and handsome sons, but also outstanding children.
What is found in a confined place, a confined region?
Egoism. Egoism takes hold there.

That is why the people who remain in confined places and regions are no good.

The Japanese media consist of people much alike…
Graduates of Waseda’s School of Political Science and Economics and Tokyo’s six major universities gather together, become set in their ways, and say the same kinds of things, don’t they?

Bureaucrats are people much alike… University of Tokyo graduates… In recent years, there must also be more who have been raised in a single-minded way—with the University of Tokyo as their goal since elementary school…
They gather in Kasumigaseki, become set in their ways, and think alike, don’t they?

They are all caught in egoism and bound hand and foot by it.

If they do not realize this, Japan will come to an end.
The era that was supposed to have changed will stop as well.

But even if you try to stop it, I will never let you.
I will keep writing for the rest of my life, until I die.
Until not a trace of foolishness remains in our country,
I will write and write and keep on writing.

Until there is not a single fool left who thinks only of himself.