The following is from a column in today's Sankei Shimbun by Nobuhiko Sakai, a former professor at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Archives.
Nobuhiko Sakai is a national treasure as defined by Saicho.
I used to watch TV Tokyo's terrestrial and satellite nightly news programs, thinking that they were still better than the ones I had been criticizing. Still, after seeing that they started using a female college student named Naomi Trauden, a student at Keio University whose parents are professors, to talk about the SDGs and decarbonization frequently, I almost stopped watching them.
It is no exaggeration to say that TV Tokyo and the Nikkei are media outlets under China's thumb.
They should be ashamed to read this article by Mr. Sakai.
It is an excellent article.
Pursuing the source of the "SDGs" issue
In the "I know" column of the Sankei Shimbun's lifestyle section, the "used clothing business" was featured.
According to the second article on May 12, "Since 2008, the Sankei Shimbun has been working on the 'Fukunowa Project' to support sports for the disabled by donating used clothing to achieve the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)." Regarding the used clothing, it explains that "70% of unused clothing in Japan is thrown away as combustible waste, and the low reuse rate has been pointed out.
According to the trade statistics of the Ministry of Finance, the annual export of used clothing from Japan is about 241,000 tons and about 9.645 billion yen (the latest five-year average). The quality is good because they are used with care, but also because they are quickly thrown away.
In the "Let's Learn Sankei Shimbun" column of the same Sankei on the 23rd, the issue of "food mouthwash" is discussed, and the estimated figure for FY 2018 is 6 million tons, which is also mentioned here as a problem for SDGs.
In other words, shouldn't the case of clothing be accurately recognized as "waste" and referred to as "clothing waste" in the same way as food?
Today, Japan is rich in food and clothing but not in housing.
However, the more abundant they become, the less happy we feel.
It is because our daily lives have become too plentiful, but the quality is never high.
For example, in clothing, the producers who can sell well produce too much, and the consumers who can buy cheaply consume too much.
It is a vicious cycle of overproduction and overconsumption.
The true ideal is to produce good quality products in moderation and use them with care.
Recently, newspapers and other media have been chanting about the SDGs every day.
However, there is no way we can achieve the goals by collecting and exporting used clothes.
Recently, there has been a lot of facile criticism of capitalism, but there is no doubt that capitalism is ailing.
Moreover, it is an indisputable fact that "communist" China is deeply involved in the corruption of capitalism, as is evident from the Xinjiang cotton issue.
We await further reports in the newspapers on what is happening with this issue and other large Japanese corporations that have been criticized for their cozy relationship with China.
The newspapers keen on reporting on the SDGs should criticize and pursue China, which is the biggest violator of the SDGs in every respect.
Nobuhiko Sakai was born in Kawasaki City in 1943. He graduated from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Humanities. Worked at the University of Tokyo's Historiographical Institute, compiling the "Dai Nihon Shiryo."
