Reflecting on personal experiences and friendships from August 19, 2010, the author critically examines the differences in values between Japan and the U.S., as well as the current state of Japan’s elite class and media. The piece advocates for true happiness, a global perspective, and the necessity of escaping egoism, expressing a strong resolve to keep writing for the future of Japan.

The aforementioned close friend is now an executive at the American branch of a major Japanese corporation.
His wife, with whom I had dined several times when they lived in Japan (a true beauty), now radiates a far freer spirit than she ever did in Japan, truly savoring freedom and happiness.
Their daughter, once just a little girl, graduated from one of America’s finest women’s universities, Johns Hopkins University, and by now must be doing brilliantly in the United States.
The true gentleman from Waseda, who resides in Austin, Texas, also lives a life with a relaxed spirit and smile, something we in Japan cannot easily attain.
At Manele Bay on the island of Lanai in Hawaii, I once played rallies from full back with a former Sumitomo Corporation man, who, together with his American partner, established a company in the U.S. and has lived there for many years.
When I was with a major developer, having chosen real estate as my life’s work after venturing into the wilderness, I was virtually untraceable among my classmates.
It was then that I happened to reunite with D, who had studied law at O University and worked at a trading company, on the platform of Yodoyabashi subway station.
When I met him again in Japan, he was a lawyer in New York, and Japan was drowning in non-performing loans.
We were both alone when we suddenly crossed paths on a street in Kitashinchi.
At first, I thought I had seen a ghost.
Then came an overwhelming surge of joy.
Naturally, we went to one of Kitashinchi’s finest kappo restaurants, which I frequented at the time.
After telling his wife on his mobile phone that he had run into me and was dining with me, he passed the phone over.
Despite the long years of absence, she immediately pierced me with her words: “What’s wrong, you sound pitiful.”
Having lived in America, she said exactly what she felt, with no pretense, directly and naturally.
It must have been that my heart, pressed by the true hardships of being a manager, had begun to show in my voice.
No one I met daily had noticed, but she had.
Well then.
Fate is indeed strange.
The next day, both of us had work in Tokyo.
Moreover, our hotels were just across the slope—he at the ANA, I at the Okura.
We promised to have lunch the next day in Tokyo, ending what was a most mysterious and delightful night.
The kappo where I invited him that evening, and the bar where we went afterward at his request to hear me sing, I will describe another time.
The following day, D and I walked up the slope from the Okura toward the ANA.
“Kisara, my greatest dream was to walk arm in arm with my daughter once she entered university.
But that dream was a complete illusion.
Since high school, whenever she came home, all she talked about was her boyfriend.”
“And on top of that, the other day she begged me for a computer as a gift to celebrate her university entrance.
And it cost two thousand dollars, two thousand!”
While his happy disappointment (laughs) was evident, I thought to myself…
In how many Japanese households could a daughter come home from high school and casually talk about her new boyfriend?
Perhaps only a handful.
Japan should have imitated this aspect of America, rather than mimicking bourgeois affectations like birthday parties.
If any reader can say, “Our home is like that,” it would be truly delightful.
But I believe over 90% of households in Japan lack genuine dialogue.

My friend D quit being a lawyer and chose instead the position of head of North American operations for a major Japanese corporation, devoting himself daily to research and technological innovation—because without such effort, Japanese companies would decline.
When the Turntable of Civilization came around to Japan, when the nation rose from scorched earth—because four million had perished, because of the miraculous recovery achieved through their sacrifice—Japan became the champion of prosperity and began investing in the United States in many ways.
At the famous law firm where he belonged, he must have often handled Japan-related matters by virtue of his position.
At first, it must have felt like work infused with energy as a Japanese.
But what about at the time of that unbelievable chance reunion in Kitashinchi, as already described?
Just as his wife had sensed my condition through the sound of my voice, he too must have been living through days filled only with the “defeat management” of Japanese interests.
Few things corrode the human spirit more than backward-looking work, robbed of all vitality.
For example, I can imagine how those who chose not to become career-track bureaucrats but to live as bankers have found the past twenty years anything but joyful.
Of course, most ordinary workers during that time realized they could think only of their own happiness and that of their families, and lived a different kind of happiness.
But the sins of today’s elite class are truly grave.
Our nation, even after twenty years, still cannot break free from crisis.
Why? Because those very people remain in the ruling elite, continuing to broadcast foolish information and foolish programs every day.
Now I truly believe: you will not enter heaven.
The eye of the needle through which a camel may pass is wider than the eye through which you may pass.
Why? Because while the nation and its regions decay, while countless young people continue to be exploited, more than 30,000 people a year—many from primary industries such as fishing, farming, and manufacturing—commit suicide, while you keep producing shows of mental age thirteen, full of clowning, frolicking, and surrounding yourselves with pretty women.
And yet, in politics, you pose as the voice of justice, the representatives of democracy.
You concentrate six broadcast networks in Tokyo, push forward information centralization, complete the centralist state, while pretending to be the guardians of democracy.
You stir up power struggles, contrive them, and fan popularity with things that have nothing to do with the essence of statesmanship—good TV appearance, short sound bites.
This is the very definition of mob politics.
Because the very people who created these lost twenty years still reign among the elite, my criticism must grow all the sharper.
When I say “the snot-nosed boys of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management,” I say it because many of you who now puff and blow in the media were among those who joined in that chorus of righteous indignation eighteen years ago.
(omission)
I have no time to pay attention to the media.
It must be hard, constantly exposed to the microphones and stares of such fools.
But more than you think, you must pursue deep thought and continue reflecting—only in that way will you find a path to atonement.
The truth is not as sweet as you think.
It is very grave.
It is connected to the world.
When I call you “snot-nosed boys,” it is because you think only of yourselves and of Japan around you.
I have never once felt from you that “fragment of world spirit.”
Never have I seen in your eyes a gaze fixed upon the world.
Only the gaze toward Japan’s media do I see constantly.
(omission)
I sometimes say this to people around me.
“Why do you think half-Japanese children are so often beautiful?”
In all my encounters, I have never once seen an unattractive half.
The most striking example was years ago, at a shoe shop in Ala Moana, Hawaii, where I saw a mother and daughter.
The mother was probably Filipino, with a face like a coarse yam—excuse me for saying so.
But the daughter’s beauty was unsurpassed, a tall, slender, stunning beauty, in stark contrast to her mother.
What did Christ say two thousand years ago?
It is not family love that saves humanity, but love of neighbor.
Love thy neighbor.
That is what he said.
As Pasolini showed in Teorema and Medea, and as Kazumi Takahashi wrote so brilliantly, this is the truth.
International marriage, by itself, already overcomes egoism.
That is why God grants a reward.
That is why all people of mixed heritage are beautiful.
In Japan too we say “Eastern men and Kyoto women.”
The farther apart people are, the more beauty, the more brilliance, the more gifted children will be born.
What exists in small, narrow places?
Egoism.
Egoism rules.
That is why those trapped in narrow places and regions amount to nothing.
Japan’s mass media is made of the same kind.
Graduates of Waseda Political Science and Economics or the Tokyo Big Six Universities gather together, solidify their cliques, and repeat the same ideas.
Bureaucrats too, the same kind, all from the University of Tokyo.
In recent years, many purely cultivated types too—aiming at Todai from elementary school—have joined, and huddle together in Kasumigaseki, thinking alike.
All of them bound hand and foot by egoism.
Unless they realize this, Japan will end.
The times that should have changed will stop.
But even if you try to stop it, I will never allow it to be stopped.
For the rest of my life, until death, I will keep writing.
Until every fragment of foolishness is erased from our nation, I will write and write and keep writing.
Until there is not one single fool left who thinks only of himself.