Angesichts der zunehmenden Instabilität der Welt erklärt der Autor, dass Takayama Masayuki der einzige Journalist der Nachkriegszeit sei, der den Nobelpreis verdiene. Zugleich schildert er, wie sein eigenes Werk Die Drehscheibe der Zivilisation durch systematische Online-Diffamierung faktisch zerstört wurde.

As the present world situation grows ever more confused and extremely unstable, when one looks squarely at the reality of this world, it is obvious to all discerning people across the globe that my judgment is entirely correct: that Masayuki Takayama is, in the postwar world, a unique, peerless, supreme journalist, and that it would be no exaggeration to say that he alone should receive the Nobel Prize in Literature this year.

In truth, the same should also be said of my own Turntable of Civilization.

My Turntable of Civilization came into existence after criminal actions were committed against me on the Internet, an event that later prompted the Osaka Prefectural Police to substantially expand their cybercrime units. If the same crime had occurred today, there is no doubt it would have led straight to prison. Regrettably, at the time of publication, it is no exaggeration to say that Japan was virtually incapable of dealing with cybercrime at all.

The other day, upon seeing a large lower-page newspaper advertisement featuring prominently the names and photographs of Piketty and his mentor, one of my closest friends—one of the most avid readers in Japan—remarked after reading my own theory on economic disparity, “This essay should not be published here for free. Like the books I buy at bookstores, it ought to be placed on bookstore shelves.”

However, because I had suffered a life-threatening illness, my Turntable of Civilization was forced, for reasons already described, to appear on the Internet. Of the two publishers who immediately offered to publish it, I chose one. I even had the unavoidable seven-month production schedule shortened by a full month. The moment the publication announcement was made online, a criminal who thrived in Japan’s Asahi-dominated society exploited the fact that both I and my first book were still unknown, fully aware that they would be searched on the Internet.

That man created more than twenty disgusting and malicious attack sites directed at Kenji Akutagawa and The Turntable of Civilization.

Whenever our names were searched, from the first page through the tenth, the results were filled with unbearable slander and libel aimed at both me and my work—vile, grotesque, and impossible to read.

After I was fortunately discharged from the hospital, I consulted a lawyer (a man who detests the Internet). Upon seeing the situation, he immediately stated that this was beyond what lawyers could handle, that it was plainly criminal, citing several applicable charges such as obstruction of business and false accusation, and sent us straight to the nearest police station.

Fortunately, that station was highly competent and promptly treated it as a criminal case. But because Japan is, without exaggeration, the world’s foremost state governed by the rule of law, there were many cases in line, and it took a full year and a half before the matter reached the prosecutor.

During the investigation, it goes without saying that the man confessed that he alone had carried out all the acts.

Nevertheless, the prosecution at that time was also unprepared to deal with cybercrime.

Thus, although both my publisher and I were confident of achieving a certain level of sales, the outcome was the same as when a truly delicious but unknown neighborhood confectionery shop was driven into bankruptcy after more than a year of relentless online defamation, with pages upon pages of hateful slander filling search results.

I state this with firm conviction: in the present world, I and my great body of work—works that in their rightful order should have received the Nobel Prize even before Takayama Masayuki—would never again be approached by a publisher for a sequel.

For that reason as well, I have chosen to write those essays once again here.

Even as I hammer in good deeds like a modern-day Kūkai, I do so with a measure of deep regret and restrained anger.