The following is from Masayuki Takayama's column in the latter part of the Shukan Shincho, which was released today.
This article also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
A must-read not only for Japanese citizens but also for people worldwide.
Arson Heaven
The former Yoshida residence is located in the corner of Shiroyama Park in Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture.
From the garden, one can see Sagami Bay over the city.
When Takeo Miki visited, Yoshida was in the garden with a great view, laughing and beckoning Miki to come over.
Look, the scoundrel's house is on fire," he said, pointing toward Hiratsuka.
There was Ichiro Kono's two-story mansion, engulfed in red flames.
Not long before, Shusuke Nomura, a nationalist, had visited the Kono residence. Kono was not present, and Nomura set fire to the house after the householders had left.
Among the householders was six-month-old Taro.
After Nomura was convicted of the crime, he went to the office of the president of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. He gave a stern lecture to Toshitada Nakae, who had been telling lies about comfort women and then shot himself to death.
Nomura did not know until the end that Shigeru Yoshida was overjoyed at the arson of the Kono residence.
Nomura did not know that the arson overjoyed Shigeru Yoshida at Kono's residence until the very end.
Yoshida "hated Sukarno of Indonesia, Syngman Rhee of Korea, and Ichiro Kono as if he were a scorpion," according to Gyo Tsutsumi's "The Three Greats of the Showa Era.
All three were dirty with money, and Yoshida hated them the most.
He later said, "If you build a house with your parents' property as I did, you will not be burned even if I ask you to do so.
The "parent" was Kenzo Yoshida, a former samurai of the Fukui domain.
He started as the Yokohama branch manager of Jardine Matheson and entered the business community, where he successfully imported flannel and other products.
Shigeru Yoshida was the adopted son of Kenzo, and when he died suddenly at the age of 40, his adoptive father left him a vast mansion built in Shiroyama and a fortune of 500,000 yen in the money of the time.
The mansion was rebuilt by Shigeru Yoshida in the 1950s at his own expense in the style of a Sukiya (tea-ceremony house).
Even though Yoshida's mansion has no gullibility, it was set on fire by someone on the morning of March 22, 2009.
The fire was probably set in the right place, as the hinoki cypress mansion, which was the site of the Japan-U.S. summit meeting between Prime Minister Ohira and President Carter even after Yoshida's death, was destroyed by fire.
In fact, the arson of a valuable cultural asset had occurred a week earlier.
The former Sumitomo family's Matano villa in Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, was set on fire simultaneously and burned to the ground.
The Matano villa is a Western-style house built in the early Showa period (1926-1989), designated as an Important Cultural Property in 2004, and was being repaired in preparation for opening to the public.
A 3-meter-high fence and infrared sensors surrounded the site to prevent intruders from entering, but the perpetrators had turned them off in advance.
The reason for this precaution was that in January 2008, the previous year, the Morgan residence in Daigiri, Fujisawa City, which had been designated as an Important Cultural Property by the prefectural government and was being prepared for public access, was set on fire and burned to the ground.
Morgan was an American architect who designed the old Marunouchi and the Yusen buildings in front of Tokyo Station. The damaged building was his private residence, a Japanese-style Western-style building in which he incorporated the best of Japanese style.
Because of that precedent, infrared sensors were placed in the repair work of the Matano villa.
The arsonists knew this in advance.
The prefectural government designated the Yoshida Residence, like the Matano Villa and the Morgan Residence, as an Important Cultural Property.
It made publicly funded repairs to the Yoshida Residence to open it to the public.
In other words, all three properties had been designated as Important Cultural Properties by the national or prefectural government and were being repaired at public expense to open them to the public.
The arsonists were well versed in the inner workings of the building.
In all three cases, they committed the crimes around dawn and rode their motorcycles to the sites.
Various rumors have emerged along these lines.
For example, there was a debate behind the scenes in the prefectural government's department for the protection of cultural properties, asking, "How meaningful is a building built with money extracted from the people by a big zaibatsu?
It seems that Shigeru Yoshida's statement, "I am different from Ichiro Kono," was not mentioned at the meeting, and the Yoshida residence was burned together.
It assumed that the culprits were prefectural government officials who believed that prefectural taxpayers' money should not be used to preserve the hobbies of the rich.
The only problem was that the Kanagawa Prefectural Police did not move even though they had narrowed the list of culprits to that point.
The Kanagawa Prefectural Police had left the Aum family alone after they killed lawyer Sakamoto and his family, even leaving their badges behind.
This time, the arson case has also expired without any action being taken.
If Sanma is in Meguro, should it be said that "Kanagawa is the best place for arson killings"?
