Contrasting Ozawa’s timing with Kan’s delays, this piece critiques governance and asks what true “know your enemy and yourself” leadership requires.

A blog post written on March 27, 2011, reflecting on a column by Chizuko Ogura about former Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s state of mind just before the Great East Japan Earthquake. The author discusses the qualities of a leader in a crisis, contrasting Kan’s delayed judgment with Ichiro Ozawa’s timely resignation. The post calls for true leadership that looks to the future of the country, not personal gain. It also questions the suitability of then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku for his position.

In response to Chikako Ogura’s serial column in Weekly Asahi.
March 27, 2011.

(Honorifics omitted in the text.)
Regarding Naoto Kan’s state of mind before March 11, I felt the same way as in Chikako Ogura’s column in Weekly Asahi quoted below.
Emphasis within the text is mine.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan may have decided to resign just before the Great East Japan Earthquake.
From the start of March, the expression on the prime minister’s face had changed to something like relief, as if a weight had been lifted.
There were even moves suggesting Mabuchi Sumio as his successor.
But when the massive quake and tsunami struck and the first explosion occurred at Fukushima Daiichi, Naoto Kan was still in the prime minister’s chair.
I think it was not that he was clinging to the position, but merely choosing the timing to announce his resignation.
Prime Minister Kan candidly told the public that Fukushima Daiichi was in an “alarming situation,” and afterward said that data would be disclosed.
Even so, many citizens remain frightened, not only because he has lost centripetal force within the party but also because he is not a leader whom the public can trust.
Already many people have begun evacuating from the Tokyo metropolitan area to Kansai and Kyushu.
…(rest omitted).

Where lies the difference between those who can decide when to step up or step down, and those who cannot?
March 27, 2011.

Two years earlier, the anticipated persecution finally became reality—
As virtually all media except Weekly Asahi sided with anti-democratic forces and the chorus calling for resignation swelled,
Ichiro Ozawa chose the exquisite timing to resign.
However persecuted or falsely accused he may have been, he could still read and see the right moment—
As a result, the DPJ repelled the arbitrariness of the power of the day, won a landslide in the Lower House election according to its strength,
And led Japan to its first-ever change of government through an election.

There are people who always look ahead rather than at themselves, who see the whole picture, who look to the course of politics and the nation’s future.
Those who live by self-interest see only the now.
Between those who always dwell in the spirit of “know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril,”
And those who see only their own desire—the present—
The difference is as great as heaven and earth.

Naoto Kan even missed the timing when he should have stepped aside, and ended up inflicting serious harm on the nation and its people.
And now, Nikkei reported yesterday and today, he is effectively in a shut-in state at the Kantei.
I will go on indicting those who backed him and his faction and chose them to govern—
Until they reflect and vanish from the public stage of the commentariat.

At this point it is already effectively the Sengoku administration.
So blatantly siding with anti-democratic practice while rattling off legalisms—
Mr. “Inakabito,” whose sole selling point seems to be that he is a University of Tokyo–educated lawyer—
People in Kansai all feel that in his home region there are many stingy, overbearing types who don’t even know who they are.
Even Sengoku’s violation of the Political Funds Control Act reveals that stinginess and overweening arrogance, does it not?
That news about diverting political funds for his own son.
I believe that is the essence.
Can you truly entrust the helm of the great ship Japan—standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States—to a man who, at his zenith, said of himself, “I’m good at power struggles, but I’ve never actually governed”?