This essay announces a planned global crowdfunding campaign to sustain the blog The Turntable of Civilization for the next 170 years and to fight back against years of alleged online harassment, search manipulation, and reverse-SEO attacks.
The author recounts how, after announcing his book while hospitalized with leukemia, a perpetrator began embezzlement-linked cyber attacks and created fake blogs and search pages to bury the blog’s genuine multilingual content.
Arguing that only top-tier law firms can realistically win such cases in Japan, the author proposes suing both the perpetrator and Google—not for large damages, but to force structural changes such as live phone support for victims—and pledges to return any recovered legal costs to supporters.
Framing the internet as “the greatest library in human history,” the essay calls for strict punishment of bad actors so that this shared library can be defended and preserved.

This project remained unfinished because I am not well-versed in PCs or the internet.
However, its content hits the mark.
May 30, 2024

“The Turntable of Civilization,” the only blog of its kind in the postwar world, is launching a crowdfunding campaign.
April 7, 2021

This project remained unfinished because I am not well-versed in PCs or the internet.
However, its content hits the mark.
Now, Yusaku Maezawa, who amassed a huge fortune through ZOZO TOWN, has finally undertaken something equivalent to what I wanted to do, by filing a lawsuit against Meta.
The damages he is seeking from Meta are 1 yen, and the spirit behind this is exactly the same as that of this column.
I hope he wins a complete victory.
Japan’s judiciary must bring the hammer of justice down on these companies, who have utterly looked down on ordinary Japanese lawyers and on Japan’s administrative and judicial systems themselves.
It is precisely because Maezawa, who built a hugely successful online apparel business, understands the internet that he felt he had to punish the vile criminals who pollute it and the company Meta, which has blithely allowed this to continue.

Just as Masayuki Takayama is the only journalist of his kind in the postwar world, “The Turntable of Civilization” is the only blog of its kind in the postwar world.
With this crowdfunding campaign, I wish to receive unlimited support from around the globe so that the work of “The Turntable of Civilization” can continue for another 170 years.

Since it suddenly appeared in July 2010, this blog has, almost every single day, been clarifying the true nature of events for the sake of Japan and the world, and has continued to broadcast in an average of forty languages.

In May 2011, I was struck by a serious illness, acute myeloid leukemia, and was told by doctors that my chance of survival was twenty-five percent.
While enduring eight months of hospitalization at Kitano Hospital, I announced from my hospital room on June 1 that “The Turntable of Civilization” would be published on December 1, and asked readers to please purchase the book.
The moment I did so, the criminal who had embezzled an amount in excess of hundreds of millions of yen from my company began committing crimes against “The Turntable of Civilization” on the internet.
Because I had not only been robbed of a large sum of money but also had to bear heavy hospitalization costs, the lawyer I was consulting recommended that I go to the police and file a criminal complaint by myself, with the law firm only drafting the complaint document for a fee.
The subsequent course of events is, as my readers know, a matter of record.

The internet is the greatest library in human history.
And yet, why is it that relentless criminal acts like those of this perpetrator continue unabated?
There are two reasons.
Unlike in the United States, where lawyers’ fees are based on contingency, Japan requires payment up front.
Victims who have had large sums of money stolen from them do not have the financial leeway to do this.
As my own 2012 example of filing a complaint alone shows all too clearly, if you go to the police by yourself, or entrust the case to an ordinary law firm, it takes about three years just to reach the public prosecutor’s office.
On top of that, the chances of an indictment are almost zero.
However, if I were a super-celebrity and entrusted my case to one of Japan’s top law firms, paying substantial fees, the outcome would be the reverse.
At that time, ultra-famous actresses like Masami Nagasawa and Keiko Kitagawa fell victim to crimes such as having their passwords stolen.
In that case, the twenty-eight-year-old man in Osaka who committed the offenses received a guilty verdict in about a year and a half.

Unless you entrust your case to one of Japan’s leading prestigious law firms, you cannot win in cases like this, deliver criminal penalties to the villains who continue to commit crimes on the internet, or eradicate their evil.
It is widely known that at least one million yen in costs is required.
That is why many victims simply give up and remain silent, and why the villains continue to commit crimes.

Their criminal acts include carrying out reverse-SEO attacks on Google search to disrupt their victim’s business, hijacking Twitter accounts and causing enormous damage to their targets, and creating countless fake accounts on Facebook to send unspeakably vulgar pornographic images as “friend requests” to their victims.
They repeatedly engage in these extremely malicious acts with relentless persistence.

Why do their crimes not stop?
Because there is a fundamental problem in how Google, Twitter, and Facebook respond.
The three companies mentioned above do not even list a consultation telephone number anywhere online.
Moreover, although their Japanese subsidiaries are headquartered in top-class buildings in Tokyo and Osaka, they have effectively constructed a sort of extraterritorial zone, and outsiders cannot even visit them.
For victims, there is virtually no means to ask these companies to correct anything.
In this case, I used the only mechanism that Google provides—its feedback form—and, each time, I sent messages in both Japanese and English.
The number of such submissions has exceeded one hundred, but not a single thing has been corrected.

Since 2018, this criminal has repeatedly committed offenses via Hatena and Nifty, but both companies have proper email addresses through which one can contact them about cases of this kind.
Each time, they have deleted the offender’s violating blogs, and by now, there are no longer any crimes being committed through Hatena.
Nifty has also deleted the offending content immediately every time.
Even so, the number of deletions has already exceeded one hundred, and yet the criminal acts continue.

The main focus of this perpetrator’s crimes is the falsification of Google’s search results.
On June 1, 2011, when I announced the publication of the book from my hospital room, the number of search hits for “the turntable of civilization” exceeded twenty million.
As one would expect, the search results consisted solely of the chapters I had issued in various languages.
From page 1 to beyond page 70.
The perpetrator has driven that total down to less than one hundredth of what it was and has also created countless worthless blogs, on which he has posted one chapter of “The Turntable of Civilization” without permission, thereby causing them to appear by the hundreds on the first few pages of search results.
On the internet, this is described as the crime of creating fake search pages.
I have sent Google feedback about this, too, more times than I can count, asking them to correct it, but the response has been complete silence.

This time, I will also file suit against Google.
For this as well, I must entrust the case to one of Japan’s prestigious law firms.
In this lawsuit, I will demand that Google hire staff to answer phone calls, create a system to handle consultations from victims, and publish the telephone number of this consultation desk on the internet.
As for the enormous damage I have personally suffered, I will limit my claim to the payment of attorneys’ fees and transportation costs incurred in the suit.

On March 25, I went to consult Google’s Japan subsidiary, which is located on the sixth floor of the Shibuya Stream Building—(incredibly, it is a limited liability company)—but I was unable even to visit or consult them.
I will also claim the transportation costs for that attempt.
Needless to say, all the litigation costs recovered through a successful suit will be returned in full to those who supported this effort.

Since February 19, this criminal has finally begun to carry out criminal acts designed to prevent all chapters of my “The Turntable of Civilization,” in all languages, from showing up in searches.

Since July 2010, we have, almost every day up to the present, continued to broadcast genuine essays that convey the true nature of things to Japan and to the world.
This criminal has, in a single stroke, stolen that vast labor and the immense time that we have devoted to it.
In the real world, this is a crime equivalent to murder.

We can no longer allow this perpetrator to go on defiling cyberspace and continuing his crimes.
We must impose a severe punishment, firmly establish the internet—as the greatest library in human history—as a true library, and permanently banish such criminals.
To be continued.