The following is from the serial column of Ms. Sakurai Yoshiko, who brings the weekly Shincho released today to a successful conclusion.
This paper also proves that she is a national treasure, a supreme national treasure defined by Saicho.
It is a must-read for the Japanese people and the rest of the world.
Information and the State, a warning book for Japan
Japan has long been regarded as a spy paradise.
The situation has gradually improved, but it is still the case today.
For years, the United States, Japan's ally, has been wary that any information passed to Japan would be leaked to China and Russia.
And spies and operatives from various countries, including China, are Japan is easy to work with to deal with, so they still love Japan.
Yang Haiying, a native of southern Mongolia who came to Japan the year the Tiananmen Square protests broke out and became a Japanese citizen 21 years ago, recalls when an exile group of south Mongolia moved its headquarters from Germany to Japan in 2008, the year the Beijing Olympics were held.
"The Chinese Communist Party agents in Tokyo were happy, saying, 'Finally, they have come to our territory. In Germany, which has a soft spot for China, the authorities are strict about intelligence activities. They would not allow Chinese agents to get their hands on exiled Mongolian organizations."
In fact, from the time it moved the headquarters of the South Mongolian organization to Japan, veteran agents began to investigate every member of the organization, intervene, and cause internal divisions, which eventually led to the organization's dysfunction.
The failure to protect the unity of the Southern Mongolians was a bitter experience for Yang.
However, this is the fault of the Japanese authorities, who have failed to deal with the reality that members of the Chinese Communist Party are violating Article 223 of the Japanese Penal Code (coercion).
The ex-Chinese living in Japan realize the "laxity" of Japanese society and warn that Japanese people are not aware of the fear of foreign agents.
Yang Yi, who was born in Harbin, China, and won the Akutagawa Prize for "The Morning When Time Blurs" (Bungeishunju), a book about the Tiananmen Square incident written in Japanese, a foreign language, declared that Japan and New Zealand are the countries most favored by the second and third generations of Chinese Communist Party officials.
Incidentally, Chinese manipulation has infiltrated New Zealand so much that China has almost completely taken it over.
Japan as an information vulnerable person
Why do second-and third-generation Chinese Communist Party officials prefer Japan and have lived here for decades?
They say it is because "it is safe and the whole country is pro-China."
First of all, once you become a Japanese citizen, there is very little chance of having your money flow checked or your activities monitored.
In addition, the entire country is so pro-China that being Chinese is a status symbol, and it is easy to build a network in the political and business world.
It is not only the political and business circles that are too pro-China and have a lax attitude. The media and academia are the same. They do not see the threats and dangers that they should.
As a result, no matter how hard the public security and police officials on the ground try, Japan's national interest and people are rarely adequately protected.
The reason why we allow spies and agents to overrun our country as they please is not only because we are pro-China, but also because we do not have strong enough laws and organizations to enforce them.
With our defeat in the war, our way of being as a nation has been fundamentally changed.
The intelligence agencies were also destroyed from the ground up by the occupying forces.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attempted to change that.
In "Intelligence and the State: The Origins of the Intelligence that Sustained the Longest Regime in Constitutional History" (Chuokoron Shinsha), Kitamura Shigeru, who served Prime Minister Abe for a long time, sharply summarizes the postwar history of how Japan's intelligence capabilities were stripped away and destroyed by the occupation forces.
Information is the key to the fate of a nation.
With concrete examples, Mr. Kitamura shows how easy it has been for information to be stolen from Japan over the long postwar period and how this has led to a massive drain on national wealth.
Mr. Kitamura began working as a cabinet intelligence officer at the center of the government when the Democratic Party of Japan's Yoshihiko Noda administration was in power.
He became acutely aware of the weaknesses of Japan's intelligence function after a severe incident that occurred just before the administration.
On December 19, 2011, Prime Minister Noda was not informed of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
The North Korean media announced three times that a "special broadcast" would be made at noon that day.
The backgrounds and music of the announcements were dark.
North Korea, which continues to pose a grave threat to our country, had conducted a nuclear test five years earlier.
It had continued to provide false information about its abductees.
In Japan, which should be deeply interested in North Korean trends, the official residence did not inform the possibility that the "special broadcast" of the North Korean media was an announcement of serious matters, including Kim Jong Il's death.
The world would have been surprised at the appearance of Japan as an information vulnerable person.
On that day, Prime Minister Noda left the official residence at noon for a tour at Shimbashi scheduled from 0:10 pm and learned of Kim Jong Il's death on NHK news.
Mr. Kitamura said he was deeply moved by the failure of the Noda administration, which had turned back to the prime minister's office after learning of the news from the Japanese media.
Approaches to Economic Security
The Noda administration must be aware of the danger that unless it makes fundamental changes in the way it communicates information to policymakers, it will defeat Japan in every challenge it faces as a nation.
With the inauguration of the second Abe administration, Prime Minister Abe has been working to strengthen the intelligence function.
The Act on the Protection of Specific Secrets was passed in December 2013. It was followed by the launch of the National Security Agency in January 2014.
When Kitamura became Director-General of the National Security Bureau in 2019, he established an economic unit in the bureau in April of the following year.
It can no longer view security only from a military perspective.
China accelerated its "military-civilian fusion development strategy" at the 19th Communist Party Congress in the fall of 2017.
While the Chinese Communist Party administration sees the military and civilians as one and strengthens control toward the absolute strengthening of China's security, the liberal camps of Japan, the United States, and Europe must put in place a system that China will not rob.
The strengthening of the national intelligence function under the Abe administration was precisely along those lines.
Mr. Kitamura emphasizes that Japan must adopt economic security, and the public and private sectors must work together.
The era of investing in companies and research institutes and protecting advanced technology within the scope of economic activity is over.
Research issues at universities and international students do not end with the beautiful story of intellectual exchange and strengthening mutual relations.
As evidenced by China's Thousand Person Plan, this is the core of the intellectual theft and military-civilian fusion that the Chinese Communist Party is promoting as its grand strategy.
As advocated by Mr. Kitamura, the importance of economic security and reconstructing almost everything in economic and academic research concerning security issues has only just begun to be recognized in Japan.
In my opinion, Mr. Kitamura's repeated emphasis on the need to strengthen Japan's intelligence function is the correct argument that Japan needs today.
