Using AERA’s apology as a springboard, this piece indicts politics and media over Fukushima’s initial response, invoking Chion-in’s “plain-wood coffins” as a call to accountability.

A blog post written on March 26, 2011, that harshly criticizes the response of politicians and the media to the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. The author specifically condemns former Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s initial mismanagement and defends Ichiro Ozawa. The post references the story of the master carpenter couple of Chion-in Temple’s “Plain Wood Coffin” to demand “integrity” and a sense of responsibility from politicians and journalists.

One of the Seven Wonders of Chion-in, the plain-wood coffins—quoted from Chion-in’s website.
March 26, 2011.

(Honorifics omitted in the text.)
I subscribe to Weekly Asahi, Newsweek Japan, and AERA, but I had almost stopped reading AERA out of exasperation with its reporting on Ichiro Ozawa.
Today, in Sunday Mainichi or Asahi I saw a note that AERA’s editor-in-chief had apologized over an article on radiation, so I pulled it out and read it.
I became truly enraged.
What would unmistakably have been kept from worsening if the initial response had been handled correctly—the very thing I denounced as an obviously wrongheaded “inspection”—was reported by yesterday’s Weekly Asahi as pure, textbook journalism.
Before it came to this, there had been a high likelihood the situation could have been contained at the initial stage, yet it was driven in a worse direction—
Naoto Kan, a scoundrel so outrageous that even calling him a colossal fool is not enough, was the one AERA favored,
While they kept treating Ichiro Ozawa as the villain.
What about your responsibility for that?
The more I read the papers, the more unforgivable it all becomes.

Sorrow does not vanish easily—indeed, it will likely never disappear—
But I believe the time for immersing ourselves in grief has passed.
Given the fatal mistakes at the outset and the bad faith in reporting afterward,
This utter fool should be dismissed at once, and a “strongest-ever public works–rebuilding cabinet” with Ichiro Ozawa as premier should be formed immediately.
As a Democratic Party lawmaker said, Naoto Kan’s crimes merit death a thousand times.

What follows is one of Chion-in’s Seven Wonders, the plain-wood coffins—quoted from Chion-in’s website.
In the upper story of the Sanmon gate, two plain-wood coffins are enshrined.
Inside are self-carved wooden statues of the master carpenter Gomi Kin-emon—who received the order from the shogunal house to build the Sanmon—and his wife.
He resolved to create something magnificent, carved their images, and built the gate at the risk of his life.
When the Sanmon was finally completed, the budget had been exceeded, and it is said that the couple took responsibility by committing suicide.
To console their spirits, their statues were placed in plain coffins and set where they are now, drawing tears from those who see them.
On March 21, the final day of special viewing, I saw them as well.
What pristine resolve—no one can look at this way of being human in that era without feeling something.
I believe politicians and people of letters are not even worth talking about unless they possess that kind of spirit.
If you want to grasp my true intent, please read the special bulletin of my newsletter issued today at 5 p.m.

Everyone involved in these matters, without exception, should chew over the story of Gomi Kin-emon and his wife.
Those in the commentariat who, from Tachibana onward, kept flogging the fiction of “money and politics.”
Yamada and others who, in 1992, led the chorus of righteous indignation about “the people’s tax money,”
Those who finally expanded the Democratic Party into a force capable of seizing power and—
Despite the antidemocratic arrogance of power that assaulted Ichiro Ozawa, then party leader,
Should never have joined in—but did.
That very posture was a remnant of the detestable mode that led Japan, more than sixty years ago, into the worst war in its history—
And anyone who calls himself a person of letters or a democrat had no business supporting it.

They were ignorant of the essential truth that the Meiji Restoration, in its essence, did something unnecessary—
Especially of why, since early modern times, Japan had been a rare case of a strong state in world history—
Because the foundation of the nation, its domains (its many “countries”), was rock solid.
Unaware of the dark side of sonnō jōi and the Meiji Restoration, they trot out the word “Restoration” at the drop of a hat—
Even now, 143 years later.
The end point of that low-mindedness, and what it produced, is the present cabinet and ruling power.
As if to cap all the clumsiness up to March 11, they created the current state of the Fukushima nuclear issue—
A situation that very likely could have been prevented from expanding this far.
Everyone involved in these matters, without exception, should chew over the story of Gomi Kin-emon and his wife.