2011/7/2
What made me happiest today was not only that the number of readers on Ameba, goo, and FC2 had grown considerably, but also the following fact.
Yesterday, on Ameba, I received 934 visits from 589 people,
and I was surprised when I clicked, for the first time, on an item I had never noticed before…“Page-by-page access figures.”
The chapter that had been accessed by 112 people and ranked third
was a piece I had emailed to the then-president of Yale University, titled “Unread letter to Mr.Levin in 2006/1/12 …to USA.”
As I reread this piece, I felt the screen growing blurred with tears.
I want this piece to reach the entire world as a Big Echo.
Why? Because that is my deepest wish.
I was born in Japan with a natural gift, and I was born to write an outstanding book that would stand at the pinnacle of thought since the Second World War.
I have questions about the article you contributed to Newsweek, “Why China Is Not a New Japan.”
You wrote that Japan failed to navigate the IT revolution of the 1990s, and that the United States overwhelmingly dominated Japan through more advanced software and high-tech communications.
Japan fell behind in technological innovation and slipped into a fifteen-year recession, you said.
This has become the accepted explanation throughout the world, even within Japan.
Before showing why that explanation is incorrect, I would like to introduce myself in a dozen or so sentences.
I was on Japan’s elite educational track, but God never made me an insider.
Had I become an insider, I would probably never have had the time to write a book.
My teacher told me that I would have to shoulder the responsibility of Kyoto University.
My classmates expected me to become a great writer someday.
First, God gave me an unhappy home.
I was deeply sensitive from an early age, so I spent my childhood and youth in unhappiness.
As Friedrich Engels said, he learned his philosophy through his home rather than at school.
I learned the truth about my country through my home.
I punched my father in the face three times.
It was an incident, but it was also inevitable.
My father offered no resistance at the time and said to me:
“This is my house, so you must leave.”
He was unqualified both as a father and as the head of a household, but those words were right.
So I left home and set out on the life of an outsider, far removed from the insider’s life that had been promised to me as an elite.
After that, unexpectedly, I ran one of Osaka’s largest real estate brokerage firms and spent thirty years in the real estate business.
That is why I know the true causes of Japan’s fifteen-year recession.
Now,
the recession was caused by two misguided interventions.
One was the government’s misguided intervention on April 1, 1990.
At the beginning of that year, property prices had already begun to fall.
In other words, the bubble had ended.
Nevertheless, through a directive to every bank, the government stopped the flow of funds to real estate and construction companies, and before long, companies of all sizes, including major corporations, began to collapse.
The other was the misguided intervention of Japanese journalism in 1991 or 1992.
I define this journalism as peasant journalism.
At the time, ten trillion yen had to be injected to resolve the problems of the housing loan companies.
Of course, Prime Minister Miyazawa knew this very well.
But they began a great chorus: Do not squander our hard-earned tax money on banks and real estate companies.
As a result, only eight trillion yen was committed to resolving the problem.
Over these fifteen years, the government has injected one trillion yen of our tax money into banks and major corporations.
Yet, to this day, they have said nothing about this.
It is exactly as it was sixty years ago.
Although they misguided the Japanese people into war, they have never formally apologized.
I will expose this fully in my book.
They cannot recognize their own mistakes.
But even if they feel that way from a mistaken perspective, there is no point in telling them.
I know the true causes, so I must tell you.
You wrote that Japan failed to navigate the IT revolution of the 1990s.
That is not true.
The truth is as follows.
In 1984, Professor Ken Sakamura, a graduate of Keio University, invented TRON (The Real-time Operating System Nucleus).
Japan’s Ministry of Education decided to adopt TRON for the personal computers used in elementary and junior high schools.
Mr. Levin, your government stood in the way of Japan’s entirely new path.
Your government exerted extremely strong pressure on the Japanese government to abandon TRON as the standard for personal computers in those schools.
At the time, Japan was sweeping through your country’s market with video recorders and automobiles, leaving the United States with an enormous trade deficit.
Your government hinted at imposing import restrictions.
As a result, Japanese companies had to withdraw, one by one, from bringing TRON personal computers to market.
Before long, Windows conquered the world market.
Japanese manufacturers that did not possess the software at the heart of the personal computer faced declining profits year after year.
Throughout these fifteen years, they have keenly felt the weakness of lacking core software.
Mr. Levin, these are the true causes of the fifteen-year recession.
I deeply respect the United States, a country of complete freedom where everyone is a protagonist and a king.
But this conduct by your country has left me disappointed in its glory.
I understand that the United States has both good money and bad money.
Good money means complete democracy, while bad money means capitalism taken too far, creating extreme imbalances between the rich and the poor.
This imbalance goes beyond the bounds of the “American Dream.”
Twenty years ago, I visited Rome to meet a painter who had been my classmate.
He had graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts.
At that moment, I suddenly discovered a theory of civilization.
I named this theory “The Turntable of Civilization.”
I saw a current running from Rome to Lisbon, from Madrid to Paris, and from London to New York, and then to Tokyo.
In the history of this current, your country was the first to begin coughing only fifty years after becoming the hegemonic power.
If the United States were to fall, the world would head toward catastrophe.
Where was the next country on the turntable, possessing enormous economic power and a new culture?
It was Japan.
That is because Japan had nurtured a new culture without class relations, religion, or ideology, an experience unprecedented in human history.
After the most brutal war in human history, Japan was occupied by a country of democracy and freedom.
Combined with the industrious and capable Japanese people, this gave birth to a new democratic culture.
This turntable moves to a country that has nurtured an economy and an entirely new culture capable of leading the world.
That is why I will write the truth in response to the accepted view that China or India will be next on the turntable.
Because these two countries have large populations, they will come to possess enormous purchasing power.
But apart from poor people or those who think only in economic terms, no one wants to spend their lives in these countries.
Ordinary people do not want to spend their lives in a communist country or in a country governed by the fiction of caste.
That is why the turntable will never move to these countries.
Over these ten years, China has had no prospect of successfully making the transition from communism to democracy.
India will need an astronomical amount of time to overcome the fiction of caste.
If Mr. Hu Jintao had read and understood my first book, titled “××××,” which begins as a letter to him, he might have awakened, as one of China’s outstanding elites, to the need to change the fiction of communism and enabled China to reach the next turntable.
Of course, I hope China will reach the turntable.
But that is extremely difficult.
That is because communism thoroughly destroys human personality and natural thought, leaving people unable to recover.
The next turntable will move to Brazil.
That is because poverty is the only problem Brazil faces, and it will be overcome through economic growth.
They have no taboo other than poverty.
They have demonstrated extraordinary imagination in football.
They possess both the qualifications and the population to become the leading power of the next century.
I would add that the turntable moves to a country only once in that country’s lifetime.
China and India had already had their turn on the turntable in the distant past.
It is a fact that the turntable moved to Japan twenty-five years ago, and this century is an age in which the United States and Japan must lead the world.
But your country and our journalism prevented us from raising an entirely new voice that should have echoed throughout the world.
A voice declaring: no class, no religion, and no ideology.
These are the best things for humanity.
These mistakes have destabilized today’s world and brought about 9/11.
Peasants placed under something cannot become adults or true human beings.
Your country bears responsibility in this regard.
That is why I strongly demand that your country declare that Japan has fulfilled its responsibility for the brutal war.
You killed 3.5 million people in an extremely short period at the end of the war.
All the major cities except Kyoto and Nara were destroyed by incendiary bombs, and finally the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed.
Innocent people, children, little girls, and ordinary citizens lost their lives in an instant.
Even their physical forms vanished from this earth.
If we have not fulfilled our responsibility for that insane war, what were their deaths for?
No one on this earth can say that they died for nothing.
Of course, I want to begin writing the book myself right now.
But I have endured hardships over these fifteen years, and last summer I fractured my left heel, which will require two years to heal completely.
Even if I can begin rebuilding my company within two years, the time has come, both for me and for Japan, to write the book right now.
At first, I titled this book “General MacArthur’s Hesitation.”
I had decided on that title when I was young.
But the main title needed to be revised, because it had been General MacArthur’s clear intention.
I changed the title to something extremely concise.
It is very fitting for this book.
During my recovery, while waiting to be able to walk again, I completed this book in my mind in three months.
This book begins with a letter to Mr. Hu Jintao.
It is important not only for Japan, but also for China, South Korea, and indeed the world.
I need no prize of any kind.
And I will translate this book into English immediately.
I will write this book without using any pedantic language.
I will use plain words in beautiful prose so that everyone can read it.
Through my style and a form that no one else could conceive, I will move readers deeply.
This book will be one of the finest books written by a Japanese author, with beautiful prose and an entirely new style.
Perhaps I should leave this unsaid, but I have already paid more than 147,826,086 dollars in taxes to Japan.
I have fulfilled my role in business.
Twenty years ago, while staying in Rome for eight days, I discovered why there is always a hegemonic power in the world.
Half the world is always living in poverty, and people can neither earn adequate wages nor eat enough.
The world needs a hegemonic power that has reached the height of prosperity and channels its money into poor regions, helping poor people obtain enough food.
Without a hegemonic power, brutal wars would continue endlessly throughout the world.
About six hundred years ago, Zeami, a pioneer of Noh, said that the flower of the moment is not the true flower, and that the true flower does not fall until death.
I will write this book in beautiful prose and a style that will endure for more than fifty-five years.
By doing so, I will demonstrate that truth to foolish television and others that chase only the flowers of the moment.