The following is from Masayuki Takayama's serialized column that marks the end of Weekly Shincho, released Thursday.
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 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, 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.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people worldwide.
Constitutional Review Board
CDP's Hiroyuki Konishi ridiculed the weekly meeting of the House of Representatives Constitutional Review Board, calling it "ape-like.
A piece on what kind of discussions take place there appeared in the Sankei Shimbun the other day.
A Liberal Democratic Party member said to a Communist Party member, "The Communist Party opposed the current Constitution with the whole party when it was passed. So why did the Communist Party turn to constitutionalism?"
The Communist Party member was said to have said something stupid like, "Because the Liberal Democratic Party was wrong," while stammering.
I have never heard such a serious discussion at a nationally televised Budget Committee meeting.
It was far more intelligent and enjoyable than the usual rambling discourse of Kiyomi Tsujimoto.
Shouldn't this one be televised nationwide?
Incidentally, it was Sanzo Nosaka who spoke against the Constitution on behalf of the Communist Party.
In August 1946, at a plenary session of the House of Representatives, Nosaka said of the GHQ draft of the Constitution: "Article 9 of the Constitution is an empty sentence. If we give up the right of self-defense, it will endanger our nation's independence."
"Therefore, my party opposes this Constitution for national independence."
Very decent indeed.
Nosaka, who the Security Law had hunted down, was hiding in Yan'an, China, under the protection of the Chinese Communist Party at the end of the war.
He was motivated to return to Japan only after GHQ abolished the Security Law on its own initiative and released Tokuda Kyuichi and others who were in prison.
So, he hurriedly returned to Japan from Shina at the beginning of 1946.
It is understandable, but how did he become a member of the House of Representatives?
If we only follow the surface, we can see that MacArthur had the cabinet of Shidehara Kijuro accept the draft of the Constitution he had written in February of the same year and ordered a general election in April of the same year.
He said this was to ensure that elected officials would pass the new Constitution free of the "stain of the prewar era.
Even so, it is unlikely that the Japanese people cast a clean vote for Nosaka, a member of the Communist Party, whom they loathed.
In fact, GHQ is doing various things to ensure that Nosaka will be accepted.
One of them is the banning of many people from public office.
The majority of politicians who were capable of making sound judgments and 200,000 intellectuals were socially buried.
In other words, GHQ deprived them of their right to vote.
Instead, they allowed Nosaka and other members of the Communist Party and Shizue Kato of the Socialist Party to run for office.
Even so, Nosaka was unlikely to be elected.
Therefore, GHQ abolished the conventional electoral system allowing for the election of 3 to 5 candidates from a single district and created a maximum of 14 large constituencies for the 22nd general election.
For example, the first ward of Tokyo, where Nosaka stood, had a total of 10 candidates.
Naturally, such a large number of candidates would not be able to run for office.
Nosaka was elected almost without any competition.
Shizue Kato, who advocated forced sterilization of children with intellectual retardation, ran in Tokyo's second ward.
The number of candidates was limited to 12.
The number of candidates who finished below the 12th place did not reach the legally required number of votes, and she was automatically elected.
Thus, the GHQ's selection of all candidates to run for office resulted in a wondrous miracle: all of them were elected.
However, GHQ was not without fault.
One of them was Ichiro Hatoyama of the Liberal Party, who was elected.
Before GHQ began censoring newspapers, Hatoyama had published an article in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper denouncing the U.S. atomic bombings as "a vicious violation of international law that killed non-combatants.
Hatoyama was on the verge of becoming prime minister as president of the Liberal Party.
That was a bad idea.
GHQ ordered the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to "call him up at a luncheon and hang him, giving them an excuse to ban him from public office" (Mark Gain, "Nippon Nikki").
After a series of such maneuvers, MacArthur's draft of the Constitution was discussed by the people he wanted it to be.
The proposed amendment to the Constitution, which the Emperor did not even present, was clearly illegal, but for some reason, it was not discussed.
Thus, the elected officials passed the new Constitution except for the decent members of the Communist Party.
The preamble of the new Constitution states, "The people of Japan shall act through their duly elected representatives in the Diet.
However, the legal basis for the draft was never discussed, GHQ changed the candidates and district boundaries, and even the winners were removed on their own.
What is a legitimate election?
I hope the Constitutional Review Commission will shed light on this darkness, even if it has to meet every day without worrying about what Konishi said.
