August 21, 2010
Does the mass media now believe that it brought about the change…the first change of government through an election in the sixty years since the war?
Needless to say, the mass media had nothing to do with this; indeed, the opposite is probably true.
As I have already written, this change of government raises the question: “Might the decline of the Liberal Democratic Party stem from the fact that, by eighteen years ago, it had entirely run out of people possessing those qualities and qualifications to be prime minister?”
The eighteen years that followed have brought us to where we are now, and surely there is no need to explain what that means…
Put simply, the destruction of the social foundations that were Japan’s strength…Was the principle of lifetime employment really something we no longer needed?…
Public servants remain under a system of lifetime employment…That alone should be enough to say that there was no need to destroy the lifetime employment system in the private sector…
There can be no sound logic in saying YES to the private sector and NO to public servants…
Market fundamentalism…If the argument is that the twentieth-century market said NO to lifetime employment, then the same must apply equally to public servants, and their employment must be changed to the so-called merit-based system.
Otherwise, such reasoning is utterly absurd, irresponsible, and designed to serve someone’s interests.
The exhaustion of the regions…Shopping streets with their shutters down in towns throughout Japan…11.6 million citizens with annual incomes of two million yen or less…
Young people cannot find regular employment or marry even when they turn thirty…The inevitable consequence is a declining birthrate and an aging population…The pension system, too, is on the verge of collapse.
The truth is that the Liberal Democratic Party, which had lost the stature required of a prime minister eighteen years earlier, collapsed from within.
If we liken the country to a private company, the prime minister chosen by the party that takes power is the company president, and the ministries and agencies are, in practical terms, its employees.
Management begins with identifying which employees are capable.
One could also say that the person who can do this best, without making mistakes, becomes president.
Having thus established control within the company, that person announces and implements a grand design to overcome the circumstances confronting it or to develop it further.
That is what a company president does.
Who in the Democratic Party can now reverse these twenty years in one stroke?
That alone is what they should compete over, yet instead we hear talk of public sentiment concerning “politics and money”…
I believe we can declare that this is exactly the same thing as the great chorus of righteous indignation eighteen years ago.
With what face can the mass media, which danced alongside the Liberal Democratic Party for sixty years, say that money did not accompany those sixty years of LDP politics?
Who can speak of “politics and money” while acting as though their own hands alone were spotless?…
After such folly and such calamity—four million civilians, combatants…though even in calling them combatants, you in the mass media did a great deal to fan the flames, turning people into combatants with a single red draft notice, or putting students into aircraft and torpedoes and sending them on ramming attacks—who among you can speak of such things with the air of a righteous judge, when you not only failed, even over sixty years, to bring to completion what was gained after that catastrophe, but have remained at the mental age of thirteen, the very height of foolishness?
To take just the issue of Umeda’s North Yard, not one of you mentioned it until I had written this much about it, and you remain perfectly untroubled about inflicting a loss of nearly one trillion yen on the people—which of you has what qualification to behave like a judge?
Having completed “The Turntable of Civilization,” I thought I should first send it to Prime Minister Kan, and I was astonished when I looked at his official website…
Because he had written incomprehensible things about physics and whatnot…I thought, “Come on, now”…You are, of course, no first-rate physicist…If you were one of the very best in that field, someone who had to pursue physics to its utmost, you would simply have become a physicist without saying a word…
That is not what you should be talking about, I thought.
Those around you who heap flattery upon you say, “Because you have a scientific background…”…I am sorry, but among my classmates alone, there are at least fifty people who were clearly more capable than you in the sciences.
What you should be applying yourself to is political science…As prime minister, your task is to make the country prosper.
That is not the issue at all.
We are now facing a genuine national crisis, and those who do not think so are the people who have belonged to this country’s elite since twenty years ago, led by the mass media—people immersed in ugly selfishness who feel no anxiety about their own livelihoods, despite being the very ones responsible for creating these past twenty years.
They must be found across every field.
Even someone who did not originally possess the qualities required of a prime minister can save the country.
That means understanding the causes and consequences of these twenty years with a truly selfless heart…
If any of the very best players remain among the bureaucrats, have them produce proposals better than mine.
Determine who is best suited to that task.
Or who intends to continue conducting politics in its present form…remaining obedient to the bureaucrats who created these past twenty years?
First, compile a White Paper on the Bureaucracy and a White Paper on the Bank of Japan, establish whether any of the very best players remain, and, if none do, decide what to do—start there…
Declare to Japan and to the world that Japan will be restored…that it will prosper and fulfill its role in the world.
I categorically reject any ridiculous chorus of righteous indignation like the one eighteen years ago.
The question is who can return the country to the path of prosperity.
There is no other issue, and there is no time left for anything else.
When things change fundamentally, everything changes.
Over twenty years, the growth that failed to materialize amounts to 500 trillion yen, and the deficit-financing government bonds issued amount to 450 trillion yen.
Now that losses on this scale have been inflicted on the country, Japan cannot be saved by superficial measures.
There must be fundamental change…Just as, now that you have accomplished the first change of government through an election in the sixty years since the war—even if, as I have already described, it was the inevitable internal collapse of the Liberal Democratic Party—there can never again be a return to the LDP politics of the past.
There must be fundamental change.
Raising the consumption tax will only lead the country down the path of decline…That must be the thinking of the Ministry of Finance, of today’s bureaucrats…
Moreover, it is the thinking of the bureaucrats who created these past twenty years…Is the central figure behind this argument truly an ace at the Ministry of Finance?
Might the real ace have resigned and left long ago?
Instead of spending time saying incomprehensible things about physics and whatnot, you should begin by looking directly at the bureaucrats and investigating whether the Ministry of Finance really still has people who, from the moment they entered the ministry, were expected to have the caliber to become director-general of the Budget Bureau.
If all the aces have remained in the ministries and agencies, have them humbly acknowledge the policy failures of these twenty years and exercise their abilities to the fullest to devise ways to make the country prosper…If they are aces, they should understand that this is no time to be talking about their own ministries’ interests…
This time, with truly selfless hearts and a commitment to serving the people, have them find only the path that will save the country and make it flourish.
That is the task now imposed on whoever becomes prime minister—the head of government.
Only someone capable of doing that should take the position.
This is different from the past.