2024/03/13

Repost! October 24, 2010—Otherwise, When You Die, It Is Hell: Certainly Boiled in Hell’s Cauldron, with No Chance of Heaven.
May 14, 2023
Thoughts after reading.
October 24, 2010
The magnificent egoism of television stations, among Japan’s highest-paid institutions; politicians, likewise among the highest paid, though in their case not for life; people who knew contentment; and people who cherished the mirage of knowing contentment overlapped, mingled, and melted together, ultimately reducing Japan’s value as a presence in the world to almost zero over these twenty years.
As a result, Japan’s value as a presence in the world has fallen to almost zero over these twenty years.
Looking at the state of commercial television programming, this is a natural outcome.
Without even realizing that they themselves had fallen into the bottom ninety percent.
For those who continued watching it, perhaps it was an inevitable result.
NHK news personnel, most commercial broadcasters’ executives and program makers, almost everyone else involved, most editorial writers at the major newspapers, and the politicians who were adept at exploiting them……these people, too, were “the unforgiven”……
I have repeatedly written about the nine hundred trillion yen in economic losses suffered by the Japanese people, who may have become the most foolish people of any country in existence……the people who participated in “Politics and Money,” the worst and most laughable comedy in human history, performed for more than twenty years by the criminals called Japan’s mass media and the fools called politicians on the privileged stage of the “press clubs.”
I was rereading the September 8, 2010 issue of Newsweek that I had left at work.
Above all, this article should be read by editorial writers at the major newspapers, those at the center of television stations and those responsible for making programs, and politicians.
The following article does not mention the word “Japan” even once.
In other words, consider what you have been doing through the press clubs for these twenty years and how much you have damaged Japan’s national strength.
Until just now, I had been watching 2012 on Star Channel, directed by R. Emmerich and starring John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Thandiwe Newton, and others.
I had been watching 2012 on Star Channel, starring John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Thandiwe Newton, and others.
A factory building modern-day Noah’s Arks was being constructed in the Tibetan highlands, and the dialogue about completing them on schedule revealed something of Hollywood’s opportunism, or a glimpse of America’s present outlook.
Something only China could do, is that it?
I thought I saw something of Hollywood’s opportunism, or a glimpse of America’s present outlook, in that.
Perhaps they believe that it is no longer Japan.
While endlessly continuing the inward-looking preoccupation with “Politics and Money,” which has nothing to do with the realities of the world, Japan may have become the world’s orphan.
Watching COOL JAPAN on NHK BS1 from six in the evening made it clear what Japan’s commercial broadcasters are doing now.
They are using the public airwaves to make programs for talent agencies.
They are completely disregarding the public.
I have had enough.
Before continuing their “Politics and Money” game dating back to the Lockheed scandal, editorial writers at major newspapers should reflect on the enormous crimes their subsidiaries have committed against the nation.
Making a living by finding fault with politicians elected by the public while using the public airwaves to make programs that disregard and deceive that same public is madness.
Are you truly the elite?
Did you know, as I did, that in the Kabutoyama case the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution ruled that non-prosecution was improper, and that it took twenty-one years for the woman’s innocence to be recognized?
It is time to fundamentally reform this “Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution,” created amid the postwar turmoil as a bargaining chip with GHQ.
The headline by Mr. Mitsuhashi of AERA was “The Greatest Downfall in Japanese History.”
Was it from the Matsukawa incident, or the Lockheed scandal—when on earth did our country’s mass media become like this?
If we citizens consider ourselves sensible citizens of a democratic nation, I believe it is time to act correctly.
I went for a walk with my iPod touch.
I wanted to walk while listening to Arcade Fire.
I began listening to their latest album from ♪Sprawl II♪, and the moment I put the device into my breast pocket, the jolt from dropping it changed the song……a deep, resonant introduction like a wonderful jazz piece began to play……good music……I looked to see who it was.
The next song, by Death Cab for Cutie, was also very good.
When I checked, it was the Flaming Lips.
Sitting amid the greenery around a building, I listened to another wonderful song.
When I checked, the song that particularly captured my heart among all these wonderful bands was a truly splendid piece called “Lover’s Spit” by Broken Social Scene.
The guilt of Japan’s television stations is extraordinarily grave.
A nation’s true strength is its economic and military power.
As I have written repeatedly, a nation’s true strength lies not in economic or military power but in the power of the arts—genuine intelligence—particularly music and film.
That is the essence of America’s power.
Soft power determines the ultimate winner.
For these twenty years, Japan’s television stations have pampered childish groups such as SMAP, Arashi, and GLAY, yet there is little difference among them.
The fact that Fuji Television, the most culpable of them all, pays the highest salaries symbolizes our country’s……tragic……not even worthy of being called a drama……“Japan’s Lost Twenty Years.”
This guilt is far too profound and irreversible.
[The metaphor connecting spitting on a mountaintop with being deeper than the sea is unclear in the English text.]
I present the events of this weekend to you, my readers, as a fact.
You will immediately understand how enormous the loss has been.
Ah, if only I had been able to write this twenty years ago.
But……
The fact that I have written it means that we can recover it over the next one hundred and seventy years.
October 22, 2010
I once worked so hard that a close friend at Dentsu in Tokyo told me, “Mr. XX, you are Japan’s finest one-man business……”
Working until three in the morning was far from a rare occurrence.
I made it a principle never to go to Southeast Asia.
Why?
For example, a wealthy, good-natured, carefree man with whom I was close at the time said this to me.
[This person’s title cannot be determined from the English text.]
“President, Korea is good. Line up six girls behind a partition with six holes in it……”
One of the major travel agencies once became the subject of a public controversy for its involvement in such sightseeing trips.
At that time, ten thousand yen in Japan was a large sum in Southeast Asia.
As I have already mentioned, my first visit to Thailand, and to Southeast Asia, was to build a golf resort.
Later that year, thinking I might as well go at least once, I visited Pattaya Beach.
It was the sort of place where generally unattractive men belonging to the working class in Europe, particularly Germany, which remains a class society, gathered.
In Thailand, their money becomes a substantial sum.
In Thailand, they use that money to take young, pretty girls, who would be of high-school or junior-high-school age in Japan, around with them as substitute wives throughout their stay.
Le Clézio once condemned this as an evil commercialism created by white people.
What Japan’s television stations are doing resembles this commercialism.
And I say this to you, my readers.
Let me be the first to say that people in Japan today, particularly those working at commercial television stations, are criminals.
Amid their highly paid lives, daily elegance, and peace of mind, all five stations have continued broadcasting the worst programs in history, twenty-four hours a day, for more than twenty years.
They have irreparably ruined the Japanese people, originally industrious and excellent to a degree rarely seen in the world, turned them into a foolish people, and created the “Lost Twenty Years.”
As perpetrators of the crime that inflicted nine hundred trillion yen in losses on the nation, every one of them, from top to bottom, qualifies for first-class boiling in hell’s cauldron.
As has long been the case, there are aspects of America that must not be imitated.
Who imitated the kind of conduct represented by the television reporter being punched by the wife at the end of Die Hard, within commercialism as a force of capital?
Previously, they concealed it while targeting a mental age of about twelve.
Now they do it openly.
We should urgently investigate when, and which fool, began this unbelievably vile practice.
The other day, my friend Mr. T bought and brought me a book that was attracting attention.
I was astonished when I saw it.
It was far too thin in substance.
What on earth was this?
It could be read in five minutes, yet cost around fifteen hundred yen.
“Are you an idiot?” I said without thinking.
What television is doing goes beyond this and is unforgivable.
In the program mentioned at the beginning,
although it should progress perfectly naturally if they simply continue broadcasting,
they show close-ups of the faces of celebrities sitting in tiers, who are not merely silly but foolish, and then run an announcement.
They drag out something utterly unimportant and then go straight into commercials.
When the commercials end, they rewind and repeat that same unimportant material for another few seconds.
Who on earth, what sort of fool, started making programs like this?
The awfulness of this television station is beyond words.
One or two of my classmates must be at its center.
Please tell me.
When did they start making programs like this?
Television stations that have continued making such programs for twenty years……people who earn Japan’s highest salaries and visit the world’s most luxurious resorts on their holidays.
At their center are people who read the works of today’s most famous writer.
All that exists there is egoism.
It is only natural that someone whose essential foundation has been translating trivial, pretentious detective novels should inhabit a mirage.
There are always many people in the world who think only of their own happiness.
I do not believe he deserves the Nobel Prize simply because he has read many books by such people.
Otherwise, Japan would not be in the condition it is in today.
It is his readers who have made Japan what it is today.
Japan is full of hypocrisy, deception, and foolishness.
Japan’s newspapers and television stations all pretend not to see facts that are obvious to anyone who is not a fool.
They have merely created these emperors with no clothes.
Rather than exposing the fundamental sickness, they chose their own livelihoods and peace of mind.
I am certain that my words will remain alive two thousand years from now.
The words of those alive today are adorned with the wealth of a sham mirage, while they themselves travel the world as wealthy people.
[The subject and modifying relationships in this sentence are unclear in the supplied English text.]
Readers who live only for the present, mistakenly believing that they know and understand the world, are fitting readers for them.
That is why I do not regard them as artists.
I went for a walk with my iPod touch.
At my usual Starbucks, I listened to music while enjoying the breeze.
I wanted to hear a song by Arcade Fire.
Yes, that was what I wanted to hear, but the next song was by another band.
It was a good song, so that was fine……
The next song was Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose.”
I finished my coffee and continued walking.
My steps became light, like those of a Marine, and before long the next song began.
I thought this introduction was T. Rex, but it was a song called “Magic Touch” by a singer named Patrick Wolf.
I had not listened to it for a long time and had forgotten the singer’s name.
Because it is an artificial-sounding song, it does not fit the mood (laughs).
It is the kind of song a Japanese person could make.
A certain Ishii probably became a star by making many such artificial-sounding songs.
When I reached the office, the Beach Boys began playing, but since I was not about to go to the seaside, that was the end.
Last night, when I opened my email, there were seven hundred and seventy promotional messages sorted into the junk folder.
Among them was something unfamiliar called “Door Communication.”
When I opened it, I found “income disparities,” something that is never reported.
[The passage rendered as “number one in the tea ceremony industry” in the English text is unclear.]
Led by Fuji Television, the average annual salaries at television stations exceed fourteen million yen, and even the average across television stations as a whole is slightly above ten million yen.
Meanwhile, in manufacturing and other industries that brought prosperity to Japan, even NTT is in the eight-million-yen range, Toyota around 7.8 million yen, and Fujiya around 4.8 million yen.
People at television companies, this will not do.
If you receive Japan’s highest salaries, you must make more decent programs.
Otherwise, when you die, it is hell.
Certainly boiled in hell’s cauldron, with no chance of heaven.