The following is from Masayuki Takayama's serial column that brings the Weekly Shincho, released today, to a successful conclusion.
A long time ago, an elderly female professor of the Royal Ballet School of Monaco, highly respected by prima ballerinas worldwide, visited Japan.
At that time, she spoke about the significance of an artist's existence.
She said, "Artists are important because they are the only ones who can shed light on hidden, concealed truths and express them."
No one would dispute her words.
It is no exaggeration to say that Masayuki Takayama is not only the one and only journalist in the postwar world but also the one and only artist in the postwar world.
On the other hand, Ōe, I don't want to speak ill of the deceased, but (to follow Masayuki Takayama's example below), Murakami and many others who call themselves writers or think of themselves as artists are not even worthy of the name of artists.
They have only expressed the lies the Asahi Shimbun and others created rather than shedding light on hidden truths and telling them.
Their existence is not limited to Japan but is the same in other countries worldwide.
In other words, there are only a few true artists.
This paper is another excellent proof that I am right when I say that no one in the world today deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature more than Masayuki Takayama.
It is a must-read not only for the people of Japan but for people all over the world.
The Guy Who Brought Down Toshiba
There was an accident in which a former Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office special investigator drove his car out of control and hit a person, killing him.
The court ruled that the former Special Investigator had misstepped on the brake and accelerator pedal and that there were traces of his misstep.
However, the former special investigator was dissatisfied with the verdict, saying, "The Toyota ran out of control on its own. I want 50 million yen in compensation.
I was stunned.
The district attorney's office had been the one that had done the dirty work on the Lockheed executives.
He thinks he can get away with anything.
There is an example of such a forceful case.
But not in Japan.
It was in the United States, the self-proclaimed holy land of democracy.
The accident that gave rise to the lawsuit occurred in the state of Georgia.
An American in a Corolla was injured in a rear-end collision.
He sued Toyota under the Product Liability Law, claiming that the cause of the rear-end collision was the failure of the brakes.
The accident vehicle was inspected, and the brakes were found to be normal.
The plaintiff changed the cause of action to "the accelerator did not return.
Another inspection was conducted, and it, too, was found to be normal.
Then, the plaintiff changed the cause of action again, saying that the broken mat prevented the accelerator from returning.
Toyota's engineers could not even make a prima facie case of how the ragged mat broke.
The judge happily ordered Toyota to pay $2 million in damages.
The courts of the United States are for the American people.
The U.S. courts are there for the American people, and they have won every case they have tried and taken money from Japanese companies.
Sometimes, even the president is involved.
Clinton, a professional lawyer, had government agencies sue Japanese companies and used the media to boost anti-Japanese sentiment.
Mitsubishi Motors Corporation is a good example.
The company made the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EAC) pay 4.9 billion yen for a lawsuit that jokingly claimed that Mitsubishi encouraged sexual harassment among its male workers and introduced the Japanese tradition of disrespect for women.
Anything was allowed as long as the opponent was a Japanese company.
The Toshiba computer lawsuit is a typical example.
In the lawsuit filed in Texas, the plaintiffs claimed that the floppy disk controllers (FDCs) of Toshiba P.C.s were modulated, and data was damaged when multiple tasks were performed on them.
But there has not been a single case of actual damage.
But there is concern.
The basis for this concern is that NEC's product, which came out around the same time, was "equipped with an improved FDC that safely protects data even when the P.C. is overloaded.
Toshiba's FDC, however, is a conventional type that has yet to be improved.
In other words, data destruction is a possibility.
If that is the case, then so is Dell, which is made in the U.S., but there is no money to be made by suing them.
If it were a Japanese company, it would be a different story.
All jurors hate Japan.
The newspapers reported that Toshiba could get 1 trillion yen if it were a well-known company.
Toshiba had no choice but to fight and get 1 trillion yen or settle for a hefty sum.
Toshiba paid the 110 billion yen settlement, and that year, Toshiba posted a 60 billion yen loss.
Toshiba was a sitting duck.
The sucker had Westinghouse (W.H.), a long-established nuclear power plant manufacturer, as its subsidiary.
The people who wanted to make money, including W.H., flocked to the company, and when they realized it, the parent company, Toshiba, was forced to bear a planned loss of 700 billion yen.
Toshiba, being a decent company, rushed to make up the deficit.
When it raised funds from the market, it found "activist shareholders" posing as foreign investors among them.
They stormed out at the shareholders' meeting and even replaced the president's head.
They wanted to suck him to the bone.
Toshiba came to a decision.
Toshiba decided to make a takeover bid (TOB) for its shares, delisted them, and kicked the activist shareholder out of the company.
YKK, a fastener company that dominates the global market with its superior products, has never been listed on the stock exchange.
Kongo Gumi, a shrine carpenter who was a close friend of Prince Shotoku, remained unlisted for 1,400 years until the Heisei era.
I hope Toshiba will follow suit and look back at these companies with a new, old-fashioned Japanese-style management style.
