Reacting to a feature in AERA on Osaka University professor Ryuichi Morishita, this essay firmly rejects his pessimistic remark that Japan will become a Chinese autonomous region, calling for scholars and innovators to confront national decline with intellectual responsibility grounded in “The Turntable of Civilization.”

As already stated, until August of the year before last I had been subscribing to both AERA and Weekly Asahi. I had been an AERA subscriber since its inaugural issue. While checking on a certain matter, I came across the following article. That perceptive minds around the world were astonished by the emergence of “The Turntable of Civilization” goes without saying. What follows is a declaration I released on November 9, 2010. In the same AERA “People” series, a feature titled “Japan’s Miracle Drug: The First University-Origin Venture to Go Public” introduced Dr. Ryuichi Morishita, a professor at the Osaka University Faculty of Medicine, written by AERA reporter Yasuaki Oshika. He appears to be a person who has achieved commendable research and discoveries and serves as a standard-bearer for industry–academia collaboration. The boldface portions are my own words. What caught my attention was the final part: For physicians, there is no greater joy than creating with their own hands the medicines that cure patients. For that purpose, bio-ventures are essential, and in Europe and the United States, their role as bridges supplying new drugs to pharmaceutical companies has been firmly established. In contrast, Japan is a country that cuts bio-development budgets through fiscal screening instead of increasing them to strengthen competitiveness. Under such conditions, innovation can never arise. “In our children’s time, Japan will surely become a Chinese autonomous region,” Morishita has recently been saying with such pessimism. Foreseeing the plight of AnGes, Chinese funds are already secretly proposing buyouts. The Osaka University Faculty of Medicine traces its origins to Ogata Koan’s Tekijuku. Osamu Tezuka portrayed an ancestor who studied at Tekijuku as the protagonist in his work Hidamari no Ki. The title derives from the image of a great tree, grown in an age of peace (the Tokugawa shogunate), becoming infested with termites and wood-boring insects and standing on the verge of collapse. That is precisely today’s Japan. In September, Morishita contributed an article to Nature titled “Shadows of a Rising Sun,” which translates as “The Decline of the Land of the Rising Sun.” Dr. Morishita… “In our children’s time, Japan will surely become a Chinese autonomous region.” These words—“Morishita has recently been saying such pessimistic things”—are statements that you should never utter again, no matter how distorted your mouth becomes. Please read my “Turntable of Civilization.” To everyone, God gives trials. Even to someone like you, who has followed an elite path, He gives trials that make you ask “Why?” I believe that life is precisely such a thing. This manuscript continues.