A 25-year reflection on Japan’s media and national interest, examining how press narratives have undermined Japan and why the “Turntable of Civilization” matters for the 21st century.

2013-02-14
This is something I have been thinking about for the past twenty-five years.
Which country’s newspaper are Japan’s newspapers, I have long wondered.
Japanese newspapers always publish the line that “foreigners say this” or “foreigners say that.”
The irreparable harm of this tendency always appears when it concerns Japan’s national interest.
They adopt an editorial stance that works to diminish Japan’s national interest.
Why has this sort of insincere moralizing become so pervasive?
It is a tragedy that, twenty-five years ago, we did not notice that the Turntable of Civilization had already begun to turn in Japan.
It is my personal tragedy that I could not retire then and start writing as I should have.
For twenty-five years we lived unaware that Japan — alongside the United States, the most sacred hegemonic power in human history — should have led the world.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the civilization Japan accidentally created is the only true foundation to shape the twenty-first century world.
Yet Japan’s mass media and public intellectuals did not notice this at all.
I could not retire.
I could not begin to write.
Because the world’s second great power said nothing, the rest of the world continued, calmly and unabashedly, to act to Japan’s detriment.
I suspect that one reason Europe has continued to act in this way toward Japan is that the Turntable of Civilization set Japan on the path toward a class-less society.
Those who still belong to Europe’s aristocratic, class-based societies are committing ugly deeds.
Once, André Malraux said that “immoral irresponsibility” was a cause that spread Nazism.