An elderly professor from the Royal Ballet School of Monaco once said that artists are “the only ones who can shine light upon hidden truths.” Masayuki Takayama embodies this definition more than any contemporary figure. His August 22 WiLL essay “The Weekly Shincho That Yielded to a Female Writer” exposes the dangers of tsūmei (assumed names), the flaws of Japan’s naturalization process, and the Asahi Shimbun’s manipulation of public perception. Essential reading for Japan and the world.

The Weekly Shincho That Yielded to a Female Writer

A long time ago, an elderly female professor from the Royal Ballet School of Monaco—deeply respected by prima ballerinas around the world—visited Japan.
She spoke of the meaning of an artist’s existence.
“Artists matter because they are the only ones who can shine light upon hidden truths and express them.”
There is likely no one who would object to her words.
Masayuki Takayama is not only the one and only journalist of the postwar world, but also, without exaggeration, the one and only artist of the postwar era.
The following is from the essay “The Weekly Shincho That Yielded to a Female Writer,” published in the August 22 issue of the monthly magazine WiLL delivered to my home.
This essay once again proves the correctness of my longstanding assertion that Takayama is the most deserving candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the contemporary world.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for readers across the globe.

The Weekly Shincho That Yielded to a Female Writer

Why should we bother with the careless historical awareness of newspapers?
The Aftermath of “Sōshi-Kaimei 2.0.”
Takayama’s column “Henken Jizai,” published in the July 31 issue of Weekly Shincho, stirred quite a reaction.
The title was “Sōshi-Kaimei 2.0.”
Its outline was as follows.
In the recent House of Councillors election, Sekihei, who won a seat, pointed out the looseness and ambiguity of Japan’s naturalization process.
When one goes to the Legal Affairs Bureau, one is only asked about criminal history and economic stability; no one asks whether the applicant pledges loyalty to Japan.
In contrast, the United States requires a five-year waiting period, a difficult exam on American history and politics, and only after overcoming many hurdles does one pledge allegiance to the Stars and Stripes as a new American citizen.
But in Japan, “we cannot prevent foreigners who seek to acquire Japanese nationality with malicious intent” (Sekihei).
Indeed, Xu Haoyu, a former Chinese national who naturalized in Japan, ran for mayor of Atami and publicly declared he would shut down Yasukuni Shrine.
But despite having lived in Japan for ten years, this man still speaks only broken Japanese.
And because Japanese naturalization does not require knowledge of Japanese history, he knows nothing.
Just like many Koreans, he proclaims, “The Rising Sun flag is a criminal flag.”
It was the Rising Sun flag that drove the Western powers—Britain, the United States, and others—out of Asia.
He knows nothing of the humiliating history in which they could not defend themselves and became mercenaries for the United States.
To prevent the increase of such naturalized individuals, proper knowledge of Japanese history should be a mandatory requirement for naturalization.
Even so, there are foreigners who disguise themselves as Japanese—using tsūmei, assumed Japanese names—to disparage Japan.
And encouraging such behavior is none other than the Asahi Shimbun.
Some time ago, Kim Po, a pastor of the Holy God Central Church in Kyoto, who raped seven girls including believers and fled to South Korea, was arrested.
Using the same method as Sun Myung Moon, who raped numerous Japanese women under the guise of “spiritual flesh blessings,” he was sentenced to a long prison term.
At that time, the chief editorial writer of Asahi was Wakamiya Yoshibumi, who had studied in South Korea.
Out of consideration for Korea, he had the perpetrator listed under his tsūmei “Nagata Tamotsu,” concealing the fact that it was a Korean crime.
Asahi also panders to China.
To cover for China’s hypocrisy—being the world’s largest emitter of CO₂ yet acting self-righteously about global warming—Asahi used Asuka Jusen, a professor at Tohoku University, to claim that “China is actually an honor student in global warming measures,” and that “Japan is the true villain,” allocating its entire opinion page to this narrative.
But Asuka, too, was using a tsūmei; his origins were that of a resident Chinese, his family running a Chinese restaurant.
Asahi knew this well, yet used his Japanese-sounding tsūmei to make readers assume he was a Japanese scholar, causing many Japanese to “reevaluate” China in confusion.
It was extraordinarily malicious.
There are many such examples.
Asahi had the female writer Fukazawa Ushio criticize Japanese discrimination.
Yet Fukazawa, who naturalized in 1994, was actually a Korean resident of Japan.
However, in her interview for the Shincho Women’s Literary Prize (2012), she said things like: “I studied at Sophia University and worked as a Japanese-language instructor, giving me contact with foreigners. Among them were Zainichi Koreans, whose hardships I came to understand. That became the basis for this work.”
Asahi only recently revealed her origins.
Likewise, Mizuhara Kiko, who accused Japanese film producers of excessive sexual harassment against actresses, was born to an American and a Korean and has no connection to Japanese ethnicity.
Writing as though she were a Japanese whistleblower is dangerous.
If Asahi wants to publish such opinions, it should have them speak under their actual foreign names.
To this point, the column argued precisely that.
To be continued.