Beginning with Tolstoy’s distinction between those who see others’ virtues and those who see only faults, this essay moves through gender relations, Japan’s status as a “cheating paradise,” and the joy of shared intellect, before turning to the core theme: the “old-man killer” in Japan’s business world and a direct call for Shimotsuma to step down. Exposing how the 1% elite and the second-rate figures who court them make catastrophic decisions—while 99% suffer through two lost decades in Kansai—the author invokes both Buddhist and Christian imagery to warn against staining one’s final years and to condemn the absurdity of building a soccer stadium in Kita-Yard.

On the “Old-Man Killer” of the Business World
2010-07-19

Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace.
“There are people who try to see the strengths in others, and people who try to see the flaws in others.”
Human beings, he said, are divided into these two types.

At a certain point in my life, I came to realize something.
There are in fact a great many men who live by defining women as a different kind of creature from men, that is, who define women as a special kind of being called “woman,” entirely separate from men.
This truly astonished me.
Because up to that point, I myself had always seen women as the same human beings.
Surely, when it comes to the relationship between men and women, there must also be these two kinds of people.

The majority of marriages are built on a relationship between a man who works and a woman who does the housework.
So to speak, a combination of a rice-cooking woman and housekeeper, and a man who earns the money.
The man comes home from work and a good meal is waiting.
In many cases, that alone is enough to make a household function.

On the other hand, there are relationships like Sartre and Beauvoir, or John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
I, for my part, have always aspired to the latter.

In the relationship between a rice-cooking woman and a working man, it may not be necessary to share the same depth or the same acutely refined intellect.
But I am convinced that true human happiness lies only in the joy of the intellect.
People who do not think that “human being = intellect,” people whose heads are made of muscle, dogmatic people, authoritarian people, people bound by old customs—these people belong from the outset to a different world.
If an intelligent woman marries such a man from a different world, it is obvious that she will experience tremendous suffering.

Readers are well aware that Japan is one of the world’s foremost adulterous nations.
Why is that so?
Because intellect = human.
One day, a man who earns money somewhere meets a woman whose intellect—whose inner sensibility—resonates with the strings of his own heart.
That is the true reason Japan has become an adulterous nation, an adultery heaven, in which figures up to and including the heads of the largest banks appear in scandals.

I believe it was Apollinaire who said, “I want to have a cat that leaps among my books, and a friend without whom I could not pass any season.”

Now, the “old-man killer of the business world” in the title is at the same time a text that serves as a recommendation that Shimotsuma step down.
“Elites” are, in extreme terms, one percent of the population.
They are the stratum that can be called the core of society.
There are people who constantly cozy up to this one percent.
Particularly in the world of business and in the world of sports.

This one percent is bound together like comrades in arms.
Through Shimotsuma’s classmates and seniors, a man whose head and body are both made of muscle appears.
A “muscle man” is someone whose outward appearance is nothing but health, who is cheerful and lively, and who is not of the complex-thinking type.
So at a first meeting, he will almost never give the other person a feeling of discomfort.

If in what he is asking there are phrases like “I want to energize the people” or “For the sake of energizing the people, I would like to ask you to…” then these elderly gentlemen—because the request comes as an introduction from someone bound by strong ties—will immediately respond, “Understood.”
But everything has two sides.
And that is why such foolish things as this case occur.

In January two years ago, shortly after becoming chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation, Shimotsuma said about Phase Two of Kita-Yard, “Why don’t we turn it into a park like Central Park in New York?”
At that time, I also fought.
There was a female secretary of the Doyukai who, in that situation, began saying almost exactly the same thing, in a way that made it impossible to know which of them was the principal advocate.
Even when I searched on the internet, I could not find detailed information about her.
All I could grasp was something vague like, “She is a manager of a small company with six employees, originally from a major Kansai corporation, and serves as a secretary of the Doyukai.”

Some time later, I had an opportunity to meet with someone from the upper ranks of the company from which this woman had come.
I asked bluntly, “Is she the founder’s daughter?”
“No.”
“Then…?”
“All I can say is that she’s an ‘old-man killer’ (爺殺し).”
I see, I thought.
The expression she wore when she appeared as a panelist at the seventeenth or so meeting—when the final outline of Phases One and Two was nearing completion—came to mind, and I understood at once.

This is sudden, but Nagashima, Oh, Ichiro, Matsui—people of this class never cozy up to this one percent.
Those who cozy up for the sake of their own associations and private interests are, needless to say, second-rate.
The truly first-rate are such that countless people come to them of their own accord.

It is well known that the results produced when second-rate people pursue their own desires have never once been to the benefit of society.

Now then, Mr. Shimotsuma, you have shown unforgivable arrogance twice in quick succession.
It is time for you to step down.

Your great senior, Hinata Katahito, valued free competition and even fought against the government.
You, his junior, after so many predecessors devoted so much time and effort to arrive at an urban plan, allowed yourself—whether it was Miyauchi of Orix or someone else from your circle (which in any case is the one percent)—to respond to whatever circumstances there were.
Even after a successful bid, you raised the floor-area ratio from 1,200 percent to 1,600 percent, and then, after that, you allowed them to say, “Please wait a year and a half for the start of construction.”
I can easily imagine that what was brought to you were remarks such as, “In today’s Osaka, there is no way we can find tenants…”—the words of fools who can see only the present—and that, as an elder statesman who has achieved success and honor, you must have thought, “Indeed…”

If so, then what should have been done?
You should have realized that tax incentives ought to be taken for companies moving in, for tenant firms.
To make up for Osaka’s catastrophic decline, there is no other way.
No, even without saying such things, you needed only to abide by the original decision that “Phase Two will be put to bid about five years after Phase One.”
You needed only to conduct an open, fair, and transparent international tender—an auction based on free competition.

You, relying on the personal ties and favoritism of your human network—even though we ought to recover as much as possible of the people’s tax money—have twice done something contrary to that duty.
For that reason alone, you ought now to step down and retire.
There is no need for you to stain your final years at such an advanced age.
Still less should you have to be dragged down on the banks of the River Sanzu by those who have lost their way amid suffering and economic desperation.
I say this in connection with the season of the Jizō Festival.

You are someone who has already fulfilled his role more than enough.
You fully discharged your responsibility in your career by managing Sumitomo Metal Industries, one of Kansai’s most excellent companies.

Even I am at an age where one might speak of “plowing in fair weather, reading in foul,” although I still work because I have not yet completed my plan for old age.
You, however, have long since passed that age.
It is written on your face that you must have exercised a powerful personality and leadership, acting as an emperor in your domain.
Yet in this case you have in rapid succession committed a grave mistake twice.

If you do not realize this and truly go through with something like this, then, according to Christ’s teaching—that merely being among the one percent does not in itself permit entry into heaven, the so-called narrow gate—you will not be saved.

From the origin story of Jizō Bodhisattva, you will find yourself having your leg grabbed on the banks of the River Sanzu by someone like me.
For during the twenty years of Kansai’s catastrophic economic decline, people other than you and your peers—the ninety-nine percent—have known nothing but suffering, losing their lives or having their paths in life cut off.

What those who govern ought to do has been simple since ancient times—govern the country, bring peace to the people, and pacify the realm.
If you can even consider bringing junk to Japan’s number one or number two diamond of a site, then it is all over.
If you believe that you are far wiser than all the many people who spent so much time on Kita-Yard, far wiser than the many intellects of Kansai, led by the president of Osaka University, and the intellects of the nation, and if you think that you alone in Kansai can make the most correct decision, then it is a story beyond salvation.

To speak of building a soccer stadium in Kita-Yard is such a foolish and idiotic notion that I grow sick of writing about it.

That the World Cup of 2022 will not come to Japan is one hundred percent certain.
If you consider that its competitors are South Korea and the United States, it is immediately obvious.

If the cost of the helicopters used for such foolishness is being paid out of tax money, it is beyond words.

The problem is that such foolishness has advanced this far—
Until I watched that NHK television program at the end of June, I had no idea that the Japan Football Association and Hiramatsu had taken it so far.
Even employees of the company that won Phase One thought, “That’s impossible,” and never considered that it could actually be realized.
It is being advanced without the citizens of Osaka ever being consulted.
And on this matter, which involves such a huge burden on tax money, the Japanese mass media has raised not a single critical voice.

(274) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube