From amakudari funds to Asahi’s hypocrisy and Ozawa’s candidacy, a critique of those who caused Japan’s Lost 20 Years.

The concluding part of a series of essays written in late August 2010. The author harshly criticizes the government’s “Project Screening” and the issue of bureaucrats finding new jobs after retirement, asserting that the media has abandoned its role. He then lambasts an Asahi Shimbun editorial on the “Kan vs. Ozawa” political situation, calling it an unjust commentary that deviates from the rules of democracy. The author continues to question who is truly responsible for Japan’s 20 years of economic stagnation, sharply exposing the deception of the media and the elite class.

Postscript and Reflections on Current Affairs
August 27–31, 2010

Postscript (August 27, 2010)
All projects with even a single amakudari official should be either refunded or terminated.
Redirect all those funds into domestic demand—consumption by the people.

In academic projects, funding should bypass retired bureaucrats entirely and go directly to the research itself.

For twenty years, while only the private sector has been cast out of lifetime employment and suffered intolerable hardship through restructuring and wage cuts, bureaucrats and officials have never once been subjected to serious verification of whether they are truly efficient or free of surplus. Instead, they alone have enjoyed not only lifetime employment but also generous old-age security.

Why has our nation’s mass media never seriously examined or pointed this out?

Who are the real criminals?

I believe it is those who, wearing the mask of righteousness like “Moonlight Mask,” always raise great choruses of indignation.

The elite and the official class presume they alone speak the truth. But who says that those struggling daily in the true hardships of human life cannot?

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Asahi Editorial (August 28, 2010)
The Asahi editorial “Kan vs. Ozawa: Unless They Compete on Policy” argued:
“To attempt to replace the prime minister without asking the people cannot be called legitimate.”

But you are entirely wrong. The Democratic Party had long scheduled a leadership election in September. By your logic, you are saying the party’s own rules are illegitimate—a baseless claim.

For the party to hold its election openly is democracy itself.

What you wrote is no different from elderly figures who once said, “Ozawa should run in the election,” but as soon as he did, suddenly cried, “Public sentiment will not accept it.”

Ichirō Ozawa, in deciding to run, has broken no rules of democracy. If anyone has, it is you, the editorial writer.

If Japan continues to follow such editorials and rely on bureaucrats, then in twenty years the nation will collapse. Only 500 trillion yen in private assets remain, after you squandered 900 trillion in the past two decades.

Surely politicians themselves must feel this most keenly. If you were Ozawa, truly believed it, and thought you could rein in the bureaucracy, would you not conclude that now is the only chance?

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“Deliberation”? (August 28, 2010)
I noticed the word “deliberation” in a recent Asahi editorial. Today I learned it is a favorite term of a certain senior government official. No wonder Asahi sympathizes with him.

But I must ask—recent weekly magazines splashed headlines that this same official said, “I’ll sell Ozawa to the prosecutors.” Given Japan’s strict press self-censorship, the fact such ads were permitted in newspapers and subways means they were deemed unproblematic.

If the official denies saying it, he should speak to the magazine or the media that approved the ads.

But really—are such words what a human being ought to say? I often think how fortunate I am not to have been born in Japan sixty years ago. If people like you had been my classmates or neighbors, the thought chills me.

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Watching “News Station” (August 31, 2010)
Last night’s News Station showed Taiwanese companies holding investment meetings in Aichi for Japanese SMEs. Their message: “Decision-making is swift. With China as our largest market, we need Japanese technology. Let us invest. Let us grow together.”

It also showed Taiwanese individuals bringing lunch boxes daily to brokerage firms, where kitchens are provided to warm them. They said: “Dividends are better than bank interest. A single loss is no problem.”

And what of Japanese bankers, watching this?

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To Atsushi Yamada, AERA Editorial Department (August 31, 2010)
This week’s AERA ran a cover story: “The Era of 60 Yen to the Dollar Is Coming.”
Its author, editor Atsushi Yamada, is a truly incorrigible man.

He was among those who, in August 1992, attacked Kiichi Miyazawa’s entirely reasonable idea—that only injecting public funds into banks could resolve the crisis—by leading the chorus of “Why should taxpayers’ money bail out villainous banks?”

I remember vividly thinking then, “What a fool.” Thanks to men like him, I lost twenty years of my life. He is one of those responsible for Japan’s “Lost 20 Years.”

His arguments remain filled with authoritarianism, essentially defending the Bank of Japan.

In contrast, today’s Nikkei front page headline, “Crisis Not Conveyed to the World,” by Economics and Finance Editor Masaru Niimi, tells the truth plainly:

• “Japan has no leeway to keep making piecemeal responses.”
• Former FRB officials warn that delayed bad-loan disposal and belated monetary easing caused Japan’s “Lost 20 Years.”
• Europe and China have learned from Japan’s mistakes. Japan alone refuses to learn.
• Yet Japan is still the world’s third-largest economy.
• Former Vice Minister of Finance Hiroshi Watanabe says foreign leaders now feel not irritation but fear toward Japan’s situation.

The conclusion is entirely correct.

Meanwhile, Yamada compares today’s currency war to prewar days. If he dares mention the prewar era, he should also confess how Asahi then parroted government propaganda, failed to tell the people the truth, and drove them to war with a single draft notice.

That, Yamada, is the only prewar lesson you have the right to speak of. Even now, you are doing the same, shaping public opinion without realizing it.