2024/04/29

What follows is still very much a rough draft, but it is an important essay for the Conservative Party of Japan and for Japan itself.
Yesterday was sunny and, on top of that, unusually warm.
I thought from the outset that this could be bad for us.
As I do every year, I headed to Kyoto to photograph flowers and butterflies.
[Passage omitted.]
In effect, it was a victory.
The reason the Conservative Party of Japan lost is clear, too.
The turnout was astonishingly low.
One reason for that, in my view, was the appalling coverage by TV Asahi, which I saw for myself when I watched its 9 p.m. news program for the first time last night.
The message they had been sending all along was that this election was of little consequence.
The result was an unbelievably low turnout.
They had completely ignored Akari Iiyama’s remarkable campaign.
It is hardly surprising that young people chose to go out and enjoy a sunny Sunday.
In Tokyo’s 15th district, what the Japanese mass media did throughout this campaign amounted, in my view, to election interference on the largest scale.
The record-low turnout in Tokyo’s 15th district struck me as nothing short of a breakdown of democracy, and I have no doubt that the established media helped bring it about.
Why?
Because the Conservative Party of Japan had not spent a single yen placing opinion advertisements with them and had kept attacking them outright on YouTube and elsewhere.
With their own survival at stake, they simply shut the party out of their coverage.
To protect themselves, they brazenly continued doing what I regard as a clear violation of the Broadcasting Act.
Even on election day, TV Asahi’s 9 p.m. news program did not so much as mention Akari Iiyama by name.
At the final street rallies on April 27, it was plainly Akari Iiyama and the Conservative Party of Japan who drew the biggest crowd.
Yet TV Asahi ignored that entirely and went so far as to claim, falsely in my view, that the biggest turnout had been at a rally for Ototake or the Constitutional Democratic Party candidate.
The footage showed an overwhelming number of police officers and others gathered around what appeared to be a small audience.
Seeing it for myself for the first time, I was stunned by how brazenly Japanese television news could present what I took to be one falsehood after another.
They had made it plain for all the world to see that they regarded Akari Iiyama and the Conservative Party of Japan as their enemies.
To jump straight to my conclusion, I believe the Japanese mass media have been completely won over by China.
For the first time, as a viewer, I felt I was seeing what I took to be the result of Chinese efforts to influence how television news is produced at each station: those efforts had succeeded completely, and the work was already done.
And that was not all.
Under the guise of a street interview, they put what looked like a young married couple on screen, people who struck me as possibly connected to Soka Gakkai.
They had them say things as absurd as, “We want to take voting seriously and make the right choice, but as things stand, there isn’t a single candidate we want to vote for.”
If television stations are allowed to carry on like this, Japan has no future.
From the moment I saw it, and for some time afterward, I sank into a gloom unlike anything I had felt before.
Japan is finished.
What am I supposed to do now?
What is the point of writing this blog?
Should I spend the rest of my life living only for myself?
That was how I felt because even the results from Tokyo’s 15th district, in an election that truly mattered to Japan, were nowhere to be found in the news.
Even on YouTube, it was the same story.
Only the channel run by the monthly magazine Hanada was broadcasting live.
There were two women on the program whom I did not recognize, and for a moment I could not make sense of what I was seeing.
Then it came back to me that I had seen one of them somewhere before.
Why, it was Kanna Fuji!
So she had been supporting the Conservative Party of Japan, too.
Still, I could not get reliable information on how the count was going or how many votes each candidate had received.
It was late at night before the vote totals finally appeared on YouTube.
The despair I had felt about Japan vanished in an instant.
The figures told me that, in substance, Akari Iiyama had won a victory.
What should the Conservative Party of Japan do from here?
The first point assumes that street campaigning will remain at the heart of its strategy.
There are, after all, some capable members of the Diet.
The party must bring in a few people with sound political convictions and establish itself as a formally recognized political party as soon as possible.
Otherwise, it will go on facing needless disadvantages, such as being lumped in with miscellaneous political groups by the media or being permitted to use only one campaign vehicle.
Its lack of formal party status also leaves it vulnerable to outrageous disruption by people such as those in the Tsubasa Party, whose behavior I liken to that of the yakuza.
Even if the party goes to the police, it can scarcely expect a proper response while it lacks that status.
Their real target, as I saw it, was plainly the Conservative Party of Japan.
The attacks on other candidates were merely a cover.
Was it China that orchestrated this, or was it a camp of left-wing activists linked to what I call the “Constitutional Communist Party”?
Either way, unless the party gains formal recognition, it will remain a target for similarly crippling interference in future elections.
As for the interference in this election by people who behaved, in my view, like gangsters, we must act decisively and file criminal complaints for the sake of Japan.
We must immediately raise the money needed through crowdfunding.
We must hire the best law firm, put together a legal team that can win, and see to it that those responsible are punished.
Japan’s courts are beginning to fall under the sway of what I regard as an infantile leftism, marked by a self-denigrating view of Japanese history and hostility toward Japan.
The situation is so serious that we are hardly in a position to laugh at what I see as the farcical state of affairs in South Korea.
To hold Japan’s judiciary to account as well, we must put together the best legal team in the country, seek the prosecution of everyone involved from the Tsubasa Party, and secure convictions and, if possible, prison sentences.
We must also uncover who was behind them.
The individuals and organizations funding them must be exposed for all to see.
In one sense, that is the quickest way to begin setting things right.
It was late at night when the vote totals became clear.
This blog, which I regard as one of a kind in the postwar world, saw in those figures that Akari Iiyama was, in effect, the winner.
For now, I want to tell Japan and the rest of the world what I saw in those results.
At the same time, the Conservative Party of Japan cannot carry on with its current tactics.
In my view, China has thoroughly compromised the established newspaper and television media.
Last night, all I could think of was the rather feeble idea that Kaori Arimoto and Naoki Hyakuta should appear on television more often.
Now I will say it plainly.
From now on, the party should raise funds vigorously through crowdfunding, both before and during election campaigns!
Come to think of it, this has long been standard practice in the United States.
Raise as much money as possible and take out full-page opinion advertisements in newspapers frequently.
That would kill two birds with one stone.
Newspapers, in particular, are unlikely to snub a major customer who repeatedly pays substantial advertising fees by ignoring them or refusing even to cover them.
We cannot make the established media disappear overnight.
That is why we must put into practice the solution that flashed into my head, the work, if I may say so, of a genuine genius.
If all we do is criticize the established media and the Liberal Democratic Party on YouTube and elsewhere, we will only help an even worse political force, what I call the “Constitutional Communist Party.”
One thing this election coverage made clear to me was how many people who produce news in the established media sympathize with that camp.
The result also exposed the limits of relying entirely on Takashi Kawamura’s political strength.
From now on, the party must put even more effort into the following than it puts into street campaigning.
It must keep asking the Japanese people to contribute through crowdfunding and keep placing advertisements on television and in newspapers.
I see no other way to win the media over or, at the very least, to prevent them from shutting us out of their coverage, which is the most damaging form of interference they can inflict on us.
To be continued.