2023-6-29

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column that closes the issue of Shukan Shincho released today.
This essay, too, proves that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
Quite some time ago, an elderly female professor at the Royal Ballet School of Monaco, who commands tremendous respect from prima ballerinas around the world, visited Japan.
The following are the words she spoke on that occasion about the significance of artists’ existence.
“Artists are important because they are the only people capable of shedding light on truths that have been concealed or lie hidden, and giving expression to them.”
Surely no one would object to her words.
It is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that Masayuki Takayama is not only a journalist without equal in the postwar world, but also an artist without equal in the postwar world.
On the other hand, Ōe… I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but (to follow Takayama’s manner of expression below), many of those who call themselves writers, such as Murakami, and who imagine themselves to be artists, are not even worthy of the name.
This is because, far from shedding light on truths that have been concealed or lie hidden and giving expression to them, they have merely given expression to lies fabricated by the Asahi Shimbun and others.
The same must be true of people like them not only in Japan, but in countries throughout the world.
In other words, only a very small number of true artists exist.
This essay, too, splendidly demonstrates the correctness of my assertion that, in the world today, no one is more deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature than Masayuki Takayama.
Essential reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people throughout the world.
The Wisdom of Our Predecessors
The folklorist Kunio Yanagita was once approached by Shinobu Orikuchi for advice.
Orikuchi was also well versed in waka poetry and used the pen name Shaku Chōkū.
Orikuchi and Harumi Fujii, his disciple in poetry, had at some point fallen in love and were also living together.
However, Harumi received a conscription notice and, after joining the Kanazawa Regiment, had just recently been sent to Iwo Jima.
If Harumi were to die in battle, he would legally be nothing more than someone who shared Orikuchi’s home.
In other words, Orikuchi would neither be able to claim his remains nor be buried in the same grave.
“Is there anything that can be done?” was the question Orikuchi brought to him.
Yanagita replied, “Then you should adopt Harumi and make him your son.”
Indeed, if he were an adopted son, the father could claim his remains.
If Harumi returned alive, they could live as father and son without having to feel constrained by anyone, and Orikuchi could leave him his name and all the family property.
Orikuchi thanked Yanagita and immediately filed the adoption papers.
The papers were accepted on July 21, 1944, shortly after Harumi arrived on Iwo Jima.
Six months later, the American landing operation on Iwo Jima began, and Mount Suribachi, where Harumi had been assigned, was subjected to shelling and bombing so intense that the shape of the mountain changed; news that all had perished in battle also reached Orikuchi.
There is no record of Harumi’s final moments, and of course his remains never returned, but his spirit rests alongside Shinobu Orikuchi in a cemetery in his hometown of Hakui, Ishikawa Prefecture.
The gravestone reads, “The grave of Army First Lieutenant Harumi Orikuchi, who suffered most and died in the most agonizing battle, and of his father, Shinobu.”
Today, there are people who seek legally recognized same-sex marriage.
There are questions of property and inheritance, but some also speak of concerns about what happens after death separates them, just as Orikuchi did.
As long as eighty years ago, Kunio Yanagita resolved such concerns by entirely legal means.
Legally, the two become parent and child, but there is no problem at all with telling the neighbors that they are a married couple.
Unless the purpose is to wave straw-mat protest banners in front of the Supreme Court and make a commotion about “protesting an unjust ruling,” they would do well to follow the wisdom of their predecessors.
To put it in the style of the Koran, “Truly, great are the teachings of the predecessors of Japanese society.”
The same applies to the LGBT issue.
While Christian countries were burning homosexuals at the stake, fifty-seven male-prostitution teahouses were thriving in Edo, and Gennai Hiraga even published a ranking of “okama.”
Xavier and the Korean diplomatic envoys could only marvel at Japan’s culture of shudō, but were instead admonished that “women are no match for male prostitutes.”
It took them another four hundred years to understand this, and only now are they bestowing their blessings on LGB.
Does that rankle?
The American ambassador to Japan, Emanuel, picked a quarrel, saying, “Japan still does not permit T (transgender).”
Has this man never been to the Kansai region?
For example, he should take a look at an event venue in Osaka during an intermission.
While a long queue forms outside the women’s restroom, the stalls for “number two” in the men’s restroom remain unoccupied.
Before long, middle-aged women enter the men’s restroom, saying things like, “We’re men just for now,” and avalanche into the stalls.
The men welcome the transgender women with smiles.
At the same time, however, an unwritten rule has been established that this kind of inverted perception of sex is “permitted only to women.”
It is a restraint befitting Japan as a sexually advanced country, but Emanuel cannot understand it.
He condescendingly says, “Allow both men and women,” whether in toilets or bathing facilities.
What a shameless ambassador.
Incidentally, this Osaka-style transgender practice is said to have reached Nagoya as well.
In that Nagoya, there is now an uproar over whether an elevator for people with physical disabilities should be installed as part of the restoration of Nagoya Castle.
Those representing people with physical disabilities demand “an administration oriented toward the vulnerable.”
In response, the majority push back, saying, “They do not understand what restoration means,” and “They are confusing equality with selfishness.”
The plea, “My legs and back are weak, but I want to go somewhere high up too,” has existed since long ago.
Take, for example, Konpira Shrine in Sanuki.
Even after making the journey there, visitors face 365 stone steps to the Great Gate and twice that number to the main shrine.
For such situations, our predecessors devised palanquins for stone stairways.
Once Nagoya Castle is restored, it should follow that example.
The beneficiaries should bear the cost.
The palanquin fare can be set as high as one likes.