The following is from Professor Emeritus Sukehiro Hirakawa of the University of Tokyo, that appeared in the Sankei Shimbun on February 16.
It is a must-read for the Japanese people and people around the world.
Shintaro Ishihara, who faced reality and spoke directly
I want to talk about two leading writers of post-war Japan who acted differently.　
Ishihara Shintaro (1932-2022) won the Akutagawa Prize for “Season of the Sun” in 1955 while he was a student at Hitotsubashi University, and Oe Kenzaburo (1935-) won the Akutagawa Prize for “Raising” in 1958 while he was a student of French literature at the University of Tokyo. It was a time when the Akutagawa Prize shone brightly.
The two writers, who started as students, were very outspoken and attracted the public’s attention.　
Shintaro Ishihara, a sovereign independence advocate　
However, their political positions are the exact opposite.
Ishihara, a nationalist, ran for the Liberal Democratic Party in 1968 and was elected to the House of Councillors as the top candidate.
In 1975, he fought for the governor of Tokyo against Ryokichi Minobe, who was promoted by the Socialist Party and the Communist Party and lost.
During the election, when I said, “If Japan is a republic, either of these two will be the president,” the new left-wing activist student said, “The emperor is better than that.” So there was a natural feeling in the remarks he answered.
When Ishihara became governor of Tokyo, he requested the cooperation of the Self-Defense Forces in a disaster drill on September 3, 2000.　
Then, there was a noise: “the tank corps was dispatched to Ginza,” and “Asahi Shimbun” also sneered Governor Ishihara.
However, many people remember that during the Great Hanshin Earthquake, Prime Minister Murayama of the Socialist Party hesitated to dispatch the Self-Defense Forces and caused significant damage, and began to dislike the pseudo-pacifism of the media.
People’s support for Governor Ishihara, who faced reality at home and abroad and spoke directly to the people, increased.
In 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, Governor Ishihara expressed his gratitude with tears in his voice when the hyper-rescuers who risked their lives to spray water into the damaged containment vessel at the Fukushima nuclear power plant returned to Tokyo.
In the dignified expressions of the firefighters, I saw the faces of the Japanese heroes of the past.
It was the image of the Secretary of State for National Defense and his subordinates that I had long forgotten.　
Kenzaburo Oe, a staunch defender of the Constitution　
Kenzaburo Oe grew up under the U.S. military occupation. He is a champion of postwar ideology.
He presented a vivid image of the democratic generation and reacted sensitively to current trends.
He told female students not to marry members of the Self-Defense Forces, supported the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, supported rebellious students during university conflicts, and wrote Japanese in a translatable style that earned him a Nobel Prize. However, he refused to accept Japan’s Order of Culture.
In 2015, he repeatedly shouted “Protect the Peace Constitution” and “Oppose the War Bill,” as he had done half a century earlier, and led demonstrations around the National Diet. Still, his supporters plummeted, and he faded into obscurity as a writer.
Here, I would like to take a macroscopic look back at the spiritual history of modern Japan.
In the Meiji and Taisho eras, the two towering figures were Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki.
I have collected the complete works of Ogai and Soseki.
However, Shintaro and Kenzaburo are not necessary.
Compared to Ogai and Soseki, who have a strong presence as outstanding writers, the postwar generation lacks dignity and learning.　
However, Oe had a big face because the mainstream of the postwar literary world was anti-establishment.
He was also backed by French literature scholars such as Kazuo Watanabe, whom Oe looked up to as his mentor.
When Ishihara became governor of Tokyo, he reorganized Tokyo Metropolitan University into Metropolitan University and abolished the French literature department.
I received inquiries from foreign scholars who wondered if Ishihara was trying to get back at them.
In France, Sartre, known for his anti-establishment views, died, and the French literature department fell out of favor in Japan,  but I thought it would be okay if it were not abolished. 
So, was Kazuo Watanabe, whom Oe studied under, a great thinker?
Watanabe’s diary, which he wrote in French during the war, is a splendid example of sober-eyed observation.
However, his eldest son, Tadashi Watanabe, questioned his father’s pro-communist views.
I mentioned this in my book “Postwar Spiritual History: Kazuo Watanabe, Michio Takeyama, and E.H. Norman” (Kawade Shobo Shinsha).
Then, one reader lent me a copy of “Dialogue with Thought 12: Kazuo Watanabe, Man, and Machine, etc.” (Kodansha, 1968), which includes the dialogue between Watanabe and Oe, “Human Madness and History.　
Kazuo Watanabe defended the “Ideal”.　
There he explained the frequent and severe purges of the new Calvinists and their dogged and fierce defense of the Soviet Union, which he further described as the result of pressure from fanatical old Christians who wanted to overthrow Geneva, the headquarters of the new Christians (according to one guru).
“One historian said that it was Stalin’s character that the Soviet Russia became like the incarnation of the McCavelism before and after World War II, and especially after the war, when the blood purge was overlaid with the blood purge. However, other than that, it did not try to understand the “ideal” of Soviet Russia, had no intention to digest it as a thing of the human world, and was only afraid of Soviet Russia and lived only by its thorough eradication. He is saying that some points may result from the pressure of the surrounding countries who have refined their skills and techniques … ” ” A historian, “is Norman?
I was disappointed with the lenient when I thought that Kazuo Watanabe and his disciples defended the “ideal” of the Soviet Union with such a theory.
Watanabe is haloed as an excellent Renaissance researcher, but his pacifism was about this level if you read it carefully.
But reasoning and plasters are everywhere.
Sooner or later, Japanese thinkers and people will make the Constitution’s protection a business that defends Xi Jinping’s “ideal” with a logic similar to this.