The following is from Masayuki Takayama's serialized column that marks the end of Weekly Shincho, which was released today.
A long time ago, an elderly female professor of the Royal Ballet School of Monaco, who prima ballerinas around the world highly respect, visited Japan.
She spoke at that time 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, many of those who call themselves artists, such as Oe, Murakami, and Hirano, do not even deserve the artist's name.
They have only expressed the lies created by the Asahi Shimbun and others 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, only a minimal number of actual artists exist.
This paper also keenly proves that I am right when I say that no one in the world today deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature more than Masayuki Takayama.
Justification for Empress Dowager Cixi
Xi Jinping began cursing Japan as soon as he became president.
Not only in Beijing but also in the U.K., he went around blasting, "Japan was atrocious.
He even tripled down on his lie about the Nanjing Massacre. He went to the trouble of holding a ceremony commemorating the Sino-Japanese War as "the day Japan began its invasion of China."
That is too much of a lie.
At the time, China had the largest fleet in the East, equipped with two state-of-the-art battleships, and was contemplating a reverse invasion of Japan.
In contrast, Japan had only a few cruisers.
The Shina is to be arrogant against a weak opponent.
They imitated Perry and took their fleet deep into Tokyo Bay and through the Seto Inland Sea, even though the Japanese told them they were not allowed to do so.
The Japanese hated rudeness.
Thus, the meager Japanese fleet challenged the Chinese fleet, three times the size of the Japanese fleet, and fought in swarms of Chinese soldiers in land battles.
The world did not doubt Japan's defeat, but the result was a crushing defeat for China.
However, Xi Jinping pretends that China was defeated as if it were a "raped virgin."
But, perhaps feeling the need for an excuse for the pathetic defeat, he explained that it was due to the corruption and incompetence of the Manchu dynasty of the time, the Qing Dynasty.
He blatantly implied that it was the fault of Empress Dowager Cixi, who had spent precious war funds on restoring the Summer Palace.
That is also too much of a lie.
The Qing arranged a large fleet and trained the officers to run it regardless of price.
It sent many Chinese nationals to study at the Royal Naval College and invited many military advisors.
They should not have lost the naval battle, but why did they fail?
Take, for example, a high-ranking officer, Fang Boqian.
He had studied at the Royal Naval College and returned to be appointed captain of the cruiser Jiyuan.
His first battle was the Battle of Teshima at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, where he clashed with the Japanese cruiser Naniwa.
The captain was Heihachiro Togo.
When the "Jiyuan" was hit in a firefight, he raised the white flag and stopped his ship.
It was an official surrender.
As Togo's ship approached for a capture, Fang Boqian suddenly fired a torpedo and ran away.
Togo narrowly avoided dodging the torpedo, but the world was stunned by his despicable act.
The "Jiyuan" also came out brazenly in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, but in the heat of battle, it ran away with its bow around.
His companion, the corvette Kwan Chia, followed suit and ran away.
If two significant vessels ran away, even the largest fleet in the Orient would collapse.
The Chinese were crushing defeat.
Pillsbury of the U.S. State Department thought that if the Chinese (Han Chinese) were given a good education, they would become decent.
But after 30 years, he found out that he was wrong.
The Manchurian Empress Dowager Cixi must have felt the same way.
She captured Fang Boqian, who had fled before the enemy, and beheaded him in Lushun.
The "corruption and incompetence" were on the Chinese generals' part.
However, the Chinese still insist that Fang Boqian's beheading was a false accusation.
Why is it wrong to catch an opponent off guard with a white flag?
If there is no advantage at the time, they will try to regain their strength.
Emperor Gaozu of Han did the same thing.
In any case, it says that Empress Dowager Cixi is to blame.
Why do they hate her so much?
In general, Chinese people have been ruled and enslaved by foreign tribes that came over the Great Wall for a long time.
In particular, the Qing Dynasty discriminated against them severely, forbidding intermarriage with Manchu people and not allowing Chinese women to enter the imperial palace.
The barbaric culture of the Chinese people remained intact, but Empress Dowager Cixi, reflecting on her defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, made the first efforts to improve the Han Chinese.
First, she abolished foot binding and Lingchi.
She also abolished the Imperial examination system and made studying in Japan a gateway to success.
She let the defeated countries learn from her. It shows the extent of her generosity, but to the Han Chinese, she may have seemed like a Manchu woman who was destroying their customs and traditions.
Thanks to her, after the 1911 Revolution, they even held a general election in which 40 million people voted, but that was also a mere illusion.
The Han people gradually returned to their original faces.
Typical is Sun Dianying of Chiang Kai-shek's army.
He razed the East Mausoleum, where Empress Dowager Cixi was laid to rest under the guise of an exercise.
The coffin was uncovered, and the soldiers did necrophilia Empress Dowager Cixi and stole the Night-luminescent Pearl that was in her mouth.
Chiang Kai-shek found out and demanded to take a percentage, and Soong Mei-ling took advantage of the situation by taking the Night-luminescent Pearl and using it to decorate her slippers.
It was the Han Chinese's way of repaying Empress Dowager Cixi for her efforts to improve the Han Chinese.
I hope that Xi Jinping will also face up to history and give a fair evaluation of Empress Dowager Cixi and Japan.
2023/1/19, at Osaka
