The 20th century was marked by women’s liberation, the madness of fascism, the collapse of communism, and ultimately the failure of 20th-century capitalism. The global financial crisis at the start of the 21st century exposed its fatal flaws. As the nation to which the “Turntable of Civilization” has turned, Japan bears the responsibility of creating a stable, ethical form of 21st-century capitalism—free from greed and cunning. By building markets based on stable dividends, strict executive accountability, and true gender equality, Japan can determine not only its own prosperity but the future balance of the world economy.

Creating “21st-Century Capitalism” Is Japan’s Role
2010-07-27

The twentieth century was the century in which women—who had been oppressed for a very long time, one might even say for 1,900 years—finally gained the freedom and rights that were naturally theirs, as beings who, in terms of ability, are no different at all from men, differing only in physical structure such as running speed and physical strength.

The middle of that century was the era in which the abhorrent madness of fascism swept across Japan and Europe and unleashed the worst war in human history.
I am one of those who believe that the cause of this greatest catastrophe in human history lay in the fact that the hegemonic powers of the time—until the United States became the hegemon—almost without exception used their dominance solely for their own nations rather than to enrich poorer countries and regions.

Nations that were left behind in the plunder of wealth from other countries—poor nations—saw that distortion grow to the extreme and exploded in the belief that their own people were the most superior in the world.

As one of the artists who most beautifully expressed the sorrow of that century, I would like to name the Italian film director Roberto Benigni, who created Life Is Beautiful.

A man falls in love at first sight and marries, building a life of pure happiness, only for his family to be sent to a Nazi concentration camp because his wife is Jewish.
He follows them into the camp, and one night, amid a deep, enveloping fog, he sneaks into the administration building in search of his wife and child and plays classical music—the music his pianist wife loved—throughout the camp.

That thick fog was the fog of fascism that covered Europe.
And the music was the unspeakable sorrow of human beings of that era, who were tossed about by life at its absolute lowest level as human existence.

The latter part of the century saw the historical collapse of communism.
When Lenin established the world’s first communist state in Russia in 1917, declaring that “in capitalist society, man is a wolf to man, but in communism, he is a comrade,” genuine intellectuals across the world were struck by a different kind of shock—the belief that, with the birth of a workers’ state, their own raison d’être had come to an end.

Communism, whose principles were supposed to be correct, in reality proved to be the worst kind of centralized state, a Communist Party dictatorship devoid of freedom of expression, and it became clear that it led, almost without exception, to poor nations.
Thus, it reached its historical end.
I am convinced that the recent great financial upheaval at the beginning of the twenty-first century will one day be recorded in history as the moment when twentieth-century capitalism itself collapsed.
But that will only be true if our nation, to which the Turntable of Civilization has turned, fulfills its role and creates a supremely stable, twenty-first-century market that is not based on cunning or greed—provided that people recognize the truth of my proposals.

The stock market should transform into a place where all citizens steadily receive dividends, generate enormous consumption, and bring vast benefits to foreign nations as well.
Of course, compared to now, it must become far more stringent toward elites: in cases of misconduct or dividend cuts, not only drastic pay cuts for management but immediate resignation and major reductions in severance pay should be mandatory.

After all, even if one were to see the collapse of securities firms—rescued by massive fiscal spending by governments everywhere—as karmic retribution for the underground economies of Latin European countries, those nations nonetheless undertook fiscal stimulus.

Is it truly acceptable that cunning speculators seized upon that moment to launch massive short-selling attacks for profit?
If capitalism that relies on such cunning and greed is what we call twentieth-century capitalism, then of course it must be changed.
An intelligence that must depend on such greed and cunning is not true intelligence.

From here on, politicians, the responsibility lies with you.
If you possess intelligence, then exhaust it fully in thought and in action to accomplish this task.
There is no other reason for your existence or for your role.
Preening before the utterly degraded, fundamentally totalitarian-minded mass media, or thinking only of a single vote in your local district, is not the work of a statesman.

Finally, readers, you must also realize that a nation’s richness or poverty is determined by whether or not it discriminates against women, whose abilities are in no way inferior to those of men and may, in fact, surpass them.
This too is something that becomes immediately clear when one looks at the world.