From amakudari funds to Asahi’s hypocrisy and Ozawa’s candidacy, a critique of those who caused Japan’s Lost 20 Years.
The concluding part of a series of essays written in late August 2010. The author harshly criticizes the government's "Project Screening" and the issue of bureaucrats finding new jobs after retirement, asserting that the media has abandoned its role. He then lambasts an Asahi Shimbun editorial on the "Kan vs. Ozawa" political situation, calling it an unjust commentary that deviates from the rules of democracy. The author continues to question who is truly responsible for Japan's 20 years of economic stagnation, sharply exposing the deception of the media and the elite class.
Postscript 2010/08/27
Regarding the "Project Screening," if there is even one bureaucrat with a post-retirement job, the entire project should be canceled or the funds returned. That money should all be redirected to domestic demand—consumption by the people—as mentioned in the previous chapter.
As for academic projects, the funds should be delivered directly to the target research without going through retired bureaucrats.
Why has our country's media never seriously investigated and pointed out that bureaucrats and officials have never once been truly scrutinized for efficiency or surplus personnel, even though the private sector has suffered unbearable hardship for 20 years, being cast out of the lifetime employment system? All while they have been lavishly guaranteed for life and even through retirement.
Who are the real criminals?
I believe it's those who constantly raise a great chorus of righteousness, like a modern-day Moon Mask Rider.
Only those in the elite class and with a "we're in charge" mentality can speak the truth. Who says that the layer of people who have to struggle constantly in the real world cannot speak the truth?
In Today's Asahi Editorial 2010/08/28
The Asahi editorial, "Kan vs. Ozawa," if it's not about competing on policy...
In short, "An attempt to change the prime minister without consulting the will of the people is absolutely not justifiable," is where you are completely wrong. The fact that the Democratic Party is holding a leadership election in September is based on their party's rules, so what you are saying is tantamount to saying that the rules of the Democratic Party are not justifiable, which is nothing but baseless criticism.
The fact that a fair and open leadership election is being held and contested is nothing but democracy itself.
What you are saying is no different from the old man—who should have retired a long time ago—who was saying, "Ozawa should run in the leadership election," but when Ozawa decided to run, he flusteredly started talking about public sentiment and so on.
By running in the Democratic Party's leadership election, Ichiro Ozawa has not broken or violated a single rule of democracy. On the contrary, aren't you, the editorial writer, the one who is violating them?
If our country continues as it is, just as it has for the last 20 years, following your editorials and depending on the bureaucracy, Japan will collapse in another 20 years. Only 500 trillion yen in private assets are left. After all, you are the ones who wasted 900 trillion yen in the last 20 years.
The politicians themselves must be the ones who feel this the most. If you were Ichiro Ozawa, and you truly felt this, and you believed that you could put the bureaucracy back in its proper place and not let them lead the country astray anymore, isn't it only natural to think that now is the only time to act? Isn't it only natural when you consider when the next leadership election will be?
I've said this to the point of being a cliché, but the only people who do not see Japan's current national crisis as a fundamental problem are you—the people whose annual income easily exceeds 10 million yen, who have no worries now or in retirement.
And you are the only ones who are not frantically mobilizing your intellect and working against the world in a competition where not a single moment of carelessness is allowed under 20th-century capitalism.
Deliberation? 2010/08/28
I saw the word "deliberation" in an Asahi editorial the other day, and I thought it was an unfamiliar word, but today I learned for the first time that it's a word commonly used by current government officials.
So, I thought, "I see, Asahi has sympathy for this government official."
However, I must ask... I saw a large headline in a weekly magazine in an ad on a subway poster and on the bottom of a newspaper, saying that this government official said, "I'll sell Ozawa out to the prosecution." I don't buy or read such weekly magazines, so I haven't read the article.
Given that the Japanese media has such strong self-regulation that they wouldn't even accept a full-page opinion ad 20 years ago for a cost of 35 million yen, the fact that an ad with a huge headline was allowed on the bottom of a newspaper and on subway posters means the article is probably not verified, so I will make the following statement without my own verification.
If this official says he did not say such a thing, he should direct that to the weekly magazine and the media outlet that allowed the ad, not to me.
...Is this something a human being should say? I'm a person who always thinks, "I'm so glad I wasn't born in Japan before 60 years ago." I feel truly sorry for those who were. Not a day goes by when I forget that.
I shudder to think of having someone like you as a classmate or neighbor in Japan from 60 years ago.
Watching "News Station" Last Night 2010/08/31
Watching "News Station" last night, didn't the bankers think something was wrong? A Taiwanese company, somewhere in Aichi Prefecture, gathered a large number of small and medium-sized Japanese business owners for an investment briefing. "Taiwanese companies make decisions quickly. When we consider China, which is expanding its economy year by year as our largest export destination, we need Japanese technology, so we will invest. Let's work together. Let's grow big together."
The program also showed a scene where Taiwanese individuals gathered at a securities company every day with their packed lunches. The securities company even had a kitchen to warm up their clients' lunches. They said in unison, "The dividends from stocks are better than the interest from banks," and "One loss is not a problem."
To Atsushi Yamada of AERA Editorial Department 2010/08/31
Atsushi Yamada of the editorial department, who wrote an article with the big headline "The era of 60 yen to the dollar is coming" at the beginning of this week's AERA, is truly an incorrigible man. This man is the very person who, in August 1992, was at the forefront of the great chorus of righteousness that began with the question, "Why should the people's tax money be put into malicious banks?" in response to Kiichi Miyazawa's obvious solution of injecting public funds into financial institutions to solve the problem that inevitably arose in his mind.
I still vividly remember thinking, "What an idiot this guy is." The frustration of having wasted 20 years of my life because of an idiot like this is beyond description. He can be called one of the key figures who brought about Japan's "lost 20 years."
As always, his arguments are filled with authoritarianism, and they can be summarized as a defense of the Bank of Japan. Against him, the truth should be immediately apparent if you put it next to the opinion of Mr. Jitsu Niimi, the head of the economic and financial division, on the front page of today's Nikkei, which is titled "Sense of crisis not conveyed to the world."
...Anxiety over "piecemeal" response. "Does Japan have the luxury to continue a piecemeal response?" A former executive of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (FRB), who has studied Japan's financial crisis and deflation in detail, is worried. The FRB's analysis is that Japan's "lost 20 years" were caused by delaying the disposal of bad loans and a delayed monetary easing response. Europe and China are also using Japan as a cautionary tale for their policy management. However, Japan itself is not learning from its failures. ...[abridged]... But Japan is still the world's third-largest economic power. Hiroshi Watanabe, a former Vice Minister of Finance, says that foreign dignitaries he meets recently are "starting to feel terror rather than frustration" about Japan's current situation. ...[abridged]...
The conclusion is exactly right, so please read the front page of this morning's Nikkei. To top it off, Yamada is comparing the current currency depreciation race to the pre-war era. Yamada, if you are going to bring up the pre-war era, then the Asahi Shimbun should also talk about how it leaked government-issued information, failed to tell the public the truth, and drove them to the battlefield with a single conscription notice. That is all you should be talking about regarding the pre-war era. You probably don't even realize that you are doing the same thing to form public opinion today.
