母国とは何だったのかWhat Was the Motherland?

Is the motherland merely the residual image of an illusion and substance that once possessed a tactile reality? Why is it that human beings can endure living while clutching nothing but these afterimages? I have been contemplating these questions recently. I feel that this theme of the motherland is one that everyone will eventually be forced to confront in earnest; simultaneously, it is a subject that demands a renewed questioning of "what one is." In yesterday’s article, I examined Japan—my own motherland—specifically focusing on the period before and after the Second World War, and the subsequent economic reconstruction. I traced the sequence of movements that formed the root of this potent residual image, weaving it together with the history of Japanese cinema.

However, as I mentioned yesterday, whether through books, still images, or film, one may sense the wind and scent of a specific era to a certain degree, but one can never touch the heat that lies at its core. That experience is reserved absolutely for those who stood in that place, in that time. This is the fatal limit of history. Therefore, the true history that a human being can know is, in the end, only speakable through the context of their own life: in which era they were born, where they were raised, and where they currently stand.

Indeed, while I cannot verbalize the heat of the youth in the late 1930s or the late 1960s that we examined in detail yesterday, I can at least articulate the heat of the era in which I have lived. In my case, this coincided with the "Lost Decades," a time when that intense heat which once enveloped Japan had vanished, replaced by a gradual but certain chill that came to rule the atmosphere. Our predecessors, deluded into believing that economic growth was the sole future, pretended that the true issues—those of the motherland’s sovereignty and independence—did not exist. They postponed the problems, justifying their negligence with the notion that as long as there was economic prosperity, nothing else mattered. Here lies the form of the debt accumulated within the residual image of the motherland.

However, as the people of developed nations came to understand throughout the twentieth century, human beings cannot attain true tranquility through economic prosperity alone. While an economic foundation is essential for sustenance, twentieth-century prosperity was excessive, and it did not contribute to the cultivation of the individual human spirit. As I continue my personal contemplation regarding the motherland, it seems there is no lesson more precise than the trajectory of Japan from the postwar period to its present form. Or rather, compared to Europe, which, from a context of individualism, retained the possibility of questioning the meaning of human existence simultaneously with its critique of excessive economic prosperity, Japan abandoned the possibility of such questioning from the start. Consequently, a social mechanism that puts profit first advanced further in Japan than almost anywhere in the world.

I believe this is strongly related to the fact that the suzerain of postwar Japan was not Europe, but the United States. The truth of Japan’s economic prosperity contains a fatal falsehood: it was not built actively through a spirit of independence as a sovereign state. In reality, the primary factor enabling Japan to achieve such dramatic economic growth in the latter half of the twentieth century was the United States’ need—while engaged in a fierce struggle with the Soviet Union—to position Japan as the final fortress in Asia, a bastion against communism. As a result, Japan entrusted one hundred percent of its national military power to the US forces, outsourcing its defense. Under the unstable world situation, it used "peace (demilitarization)" as a façade, pouring one hundred percent of its resources into economic growth. Furthermore, this economic growth was achieved upon the foundation of the tragedy of the Korean War in a neighboring land.

The essential problem, however, lies in the power of the illusion of economic growth—the fantasy of an eternal ascent. It is self-evident to anyone that growth is inevitably followed by decline, yet Japan, blinded by the power of this illusion, allowed its desires to explode. Consequently, it became unable to step back from the fantasy of economic growth to think calmly. Ideally, the premise for Japan to truly fulfill its sovereignty and independence postwar would have been to promote rearmament domestically in tandem with the realization of economic leeway on a national scale, and to execute the complete withdrawal of US forces over several decades. However, a Japan blinded by the desire for economic growth, and the US forces in Japan blinded by the privileges of occupation policy, formed a strong collusion. Unable to let go of these vested interests, they began to obstruct autonomy and independence.

Despite having already achieved economic growth on the scale of a victor of the Second World War, Japan avoided the responsibility of autonomy and independence expected of a developed nation. Instead, it hammered out a strange international strategy that stubbornly refused change, weaponizing "peace." Thus, countless problems that should have been resolved at least sixty years ago still reign as supreme issues today, without moving an inch. This is the primary cause of Japan’s decline. The problem did not begin now; it was already prepared sixty years ago.

I was born in 1991, after the defeat of the older generation I mentioned yesterday, and after resignation had become widespread. In American terms, this corresponds to the peak of the Millennials, but in Japan, it overlaps with the reversal into a declining birthrate and aging population, and the beginning of the loss as the bubble economy began to collapse. What exactly happened around this time? Readers who visited Japan during this era would likely be bewildered by the stark difference between the Japan of today and the Japan of that time. This bewilderment is not limited to foreigners; it is the same for the Japanese. It seems that the shadow of the motherland’s residual image lurks therein.

For Japan to continue postponing its problems was synonymous with the citizenry being encroached upon by the desire for economic growth. In other words, a terrifying supremacy of profit was thoroughly enforced upon a population of one hundred million, while conversely, spiritual cultivation was neglected. Regarding this spiritual cultivation, it is true that the victorious nations, viewing the Japanese spirit during the Second World War as problematic, eviscerated it during the postwar occupation policy. However, this does not mean that all possibilities were severed. This fatal rift—the runaway supremacy of profit and the collapse of spiritual cultivation—conceals the greatest theme carried into twenty-first-century Japan. In short, the question is whether Japan can resolve this problem by itself. Or rather, whether there is even the will to resolve it by themselves.

Looking back to shortly before my birth, some readers may remember that the backdrop to Japan rushing into the bubble economy, triggered by the Plaza Accord of 1985, involved the US government being forced to respond to rising "Japan Bashing" within the United States. This stemmed from an aversion within the US towards Japan, a nation that had burdened the US side (the US military) with one hundred percent of its military defense while concentrating one hundred percent on its own economic growth, eventually rising to a position that threatened the US economy. At that time, many still remembered the Second World War, and emotionally, it was unacceptable for Japan, a defeated nation, to surpass the US in economic scale.

Thus, the intentional induction into the bubble economy began, and Japan plunged into an era of frenzy. Fundamentally, because this illusion of Japan’s economic growth concealed the supremacy of profit at its root, the citizenry began to celebrate the aspects of profit supremacy day and night on a national scale. In this frenzied era, there was no future for a Japanese people who had already lost their spiritual cultivation; they were reduced to a "foolish species that is no longer human," capable only of converting matters into money through total profit supremacy. Fixated on the illusion of right-shoulder economic growth, and because the experience of that success was so intense, this attachment to the illusion would steadily destroy the future of the next generation. The two greatest symbols of this are the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dawn of the personal computer era symbolized by Windows 95. The former was a turning point toward subsequent globalization, the latter toward the digital age. Japan, however, did not actively attempt to adopt these two waves of the new era but moved in the opposite direction.

However, those who know Japan from that time reasonably well might find this strange. Was it not that the Japanese of the past were a people extremely skilled in digital technology, deploying ambitious products and services, and were they not quite well-versed in digital technology? And at the same time, you might think: come to mention it, the Japanese of today are the exact opposite—ignorant of digital technology, and their products and services no longer catch our eyes. Furthermore, the utilization or literacy of digital technology by today’s Japanese is at a level hardly befitting a developed nation. This perspective is correct. I myself find this point exceedingly strange. Where did that curiosity-filled momentum of the Japanese, who once absorbed new technologies instantly and produced and released new products and services one after another with unique remixing abilities, disappear to? The key lies in the mid-1980s.

On August 12, 1985, just before the signing of the Plaza Accord on September 22, an important event occurred that would determine the future of Japan’s digital age. Around 1983, Sakamura Ken, then an assistant at the University of Tokyo, proposed TRON as a real-time OS for embedded systems. This was a revolutionary project to develop TRON (The real-time Operating system Nucleus) in anticipation of the arrival of the future IoT era, intended for global expansion as a Japanese-made OS. Yet, most people likely have never heard of TRON. In fact, this technology was constructed upon ideas that could have driven the Windows system, which mobilized the current of personal computers, out of the market.

However, three enemies stood in the way of the revolutionary TRON. First, SoftBank, which was making its fortune with spreadsheet software at the time, and because spreadsheet software could run on TRON. Second, NEC, which feared its sales network of PC-98s loaded with Microsoft’s OS would be invaded. And finally, against the Ministry of Education, which argued that domestic education should use a domestic OS and attempted to introduce computer education adopting TRON into elementary schools nationwide, the bureaucrats of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now METI)—men from the "American School" anxious about losing their vested interests—colluded and lobbied the US.

Through this lobbying by Japanese individuals holding vested interests to the US side, TRON was listed—in an exception among exceptions—under the Super 301 provision in 1989, a procedure by which the US identifies countries adopting unfair trade policies and presses for concessions using sanctions as a weapon. Thus, TRON, which held the potential to change the world, was eviscerated. Those familiar with the history of information and communications might doubt why TRON did not become a world-standard OS, but the origin lies not in the movements of the US side, but in the fact that Japan crushed the future of its own domestic OS with its own hands.

However, coincident with TRON being viewed as a problem by domestic vested interests, a completely different event occurred, unrelated to the Super 301 of 1989. That was the aforementioned August 12, 1985. On this day, Japan Airlines Flight 123, carrying 524 passengers and crew, crashed into Mount Osutaka, killing 520—the vast majority. The investigation into the cause of this JAL 123 crash was sloppy, and since that time, countless theories, neither fully truth nor conspiracy, have emerged. But in fact, there is the reality that 17 engineers involved in the TRON project were on board this flight (all perished), and the project leader, Sakamura, later stated that he too was supposed to board if his schedule had permitted.

Furthermore, Aoyama Toko, who was working as a cabin attendant for JAL at the same time and could not accept the death of her colleagues, conducted a detailed investigation over her lifetime to uncover the truth of the accident, publishing new facts regarding this crash in a nonfiction work in 2017. According to this, there were multiple witness reports of two Self-Defense Force Phantom jets tracking the flight just before the crash. Also, although it was known from the time that the discovery of the crash site was delayed, it has not yet been announced what the Self-Defense Forces were doing until the next morning when the fuselage was officially deemed discovered. Her investigative testimony relays that a strong stench of gasoline mixed with tar hung over the site, and the bodies at the scene were completely carbonized to a degree impossible in a normal accident. Flamethrowers used by military forces, including the Self-Defense Forces, use a gel fuel mixing gasoline and tar; this suggests the possibility that someone burned the site with powerful fuel to destroy evidence between the crash and the following morning, and that the majority of survivors may have died at that time. Furthermore, analysis of a photograph taken out the window of the flight reveals an orange object flying toward the airplane. At the time, practice missiles of the Self-Defense Forces were painted orange.

In other words, regarding this truth, there is a theory that "someone" intentionally caused the crash to protect the US information industry. Another major theory posits an accidental firing of a tracking missile by a US military aircraft. However, Prime Minister Nakasone at the time stubbornly refused to make public the truth regarding this accident, publicly stating many times that he would "take the truth to the grave." Indeed, he kept his mouth shut regarding this accident until his death in 2019. Of course, the truth remains unknown. The truth will likely be revealed in some era, perhaps through US public documents.

Triggered by this suspicious crash, and amidst a drifting distrust toward a government that would make no accurate announcement, the Plaza Accord was signed the following month. By satisfying the desires of profit supremacy, this event was buried in darkness, and the people’s interest turned toward making money rather than pursuing the truth of the problem. It was typical "bread and circuses." It is a quintessential symbol that for the Japanese, their own profit-making was more important than the truth of their motherland’s vile corruption. Despite having already achieved economic stability on a global standard at the national scale, the Japanese never focused on the cultivation of the spirit here either. In short, they crushed the final turning point with their own hands. Thus, following the military defeat of the Second World War, Japan met its defeat in the economic war. Moreover, this second defeat was a choice devoid of a future, one that ignored the currents determining the next thirty years, choosing instead to devour the gluttonous memory of past successes. This marked the beginning of the "Lost 30 Years" that continues today.

From here, the signs of the bubble economy’s collapse began around 1991, exactly when I was born. However, because there was a time lag of about seven years until the collapse, only the intense heat remained with the Japanese people until the late 90s. In fact, I observed the adults around my father quite a lot as a child, and the vivid impression remains that everyone was shining considerably. Even if they had fallen into profit supremacy, it was an era when Japan still had momentum. The wind and scent of that time—that my father and the surrounding adults were shining—were vivid even to me as a child, and they remain my primal experience today. It is precisely because I possess this primal experience that I wish to confront head-on the question of why the motherland has reached such extreme misery in just thirty years.

In a world where the disquieting glory and loss of the 90s were intermingled, the Japanese lost themselves in the frenzy and lost the future of their motherland as well. Thus, the merit of the Japanese people—the ethnic characteristic of being quick to learn and adopt new technologies globally—vanished. They fell into an inverted state where they would not acknowledge challenges to new things themselves, and if such movements appeared, they would crush the future. Symbolic of Japan’s defeat in information and communications was the Information Superhighway launched by Al Gore, which copied the VI&P concept put forth by NTT. This became the nationwide information infrastructure development known as the NII (National Information Infrastructure) initiative with the inauguration of the Clinton administration in 1993, becoming the foundation of today’s US information and communications strategy. The US bet on the future of information and communications by investing a huge budget, but Japan, despite proposing it, did not execute it. This is the third defeat, the defeat in information and communications, following the military and economic defeats. In fact, Japan has been defeated by the US three times since 1945.

Even by simply looking back at the era around my birth like this, I feel the faint contours of what history is and what a motherland is rising to the surface. In yesterday’s article, I wrote about the wind and scent of the era felt through cinema, and further, the humidity and heat that scorched the skin from the other side of the screen; that is precisely what remains intensely as my primal experience. However, I, living in the real, have walked through a cold landscape of the motherland that resembles ruins after that heat was lost. This strange sensation of "knowing the heat, yet living in a world without heat." This may be the true nature of the "sense of loss toward the motherland" that I harbor. For if I ask whether the movements of the hearts of the youth of the past—their thirst for the future and their earnest thought that they might change the world—are connected to us today, I feel a rupture. Their passion was severed somewhere, and it seems we are merely standing still in a place where even the embers have nearly gone out. Do readers not also hold such feelings in some form? The fact that thirty years can so cruelly transform the figure of a motherland is not limited to Japan; it is the same in the US and the UK.

And this rupture I feel has become even more definitive in the generation younger than me. Here lies the cruelest fact held by modern Japan: that the texture of the country called Japan mutated with the mid-1990s as the watershed. As I have written thus far, the motherland for me refers to the Japan up until the mid-90s, which still retained faint traces of heat and the scent of struggle. And caution is required, for when anyone, Japanese or foreigner, speaks of "Japan," that image is always synchronized with the era prior to this. However, the young people of the current generation, those in their 20s or younger, do not know this Japan at all. They are a generation born and raised in a world that knows no heat.

By the time they were born, Japan was already in economic stagnation, and a sense of entrapment drifted through society. They have never once touched the heat possessed by the Japanese of the past—who actively created the future with momentum, rapidly absorbed the good points of other countries to supplement what was lacking in their own, and successively created ambitious products and services. For them, Japan is a clean, tasteless, odorless space that had lost its heat from the start, dominated not by a thirst for the future but by the anxiety of maintaining the status quo. From around here, the maintenance of the status quo—that is, the fixation on maintaining the residual image known as Japan—became the national strategy, and the movement of the citizenry turned toward self-domestication within this system. For better or worse, my parents' generation stood at the turning point of self-domestication, and because they were able to resist self-domestication until the mid-90s, they must have appeared shining in the eyes of me as a child.

But for the younger generation, the "heat" with which people once shouted on the streets and risked their lives to change something is merely an event in a history textbook, incapable of possessing reality as a tactile sensation. I cannot even share the sensation of "having lost" with them. Because for them, "absence" is the default from the beginning; they do not know the state before the loss. For them, the residual image of Japan is Japan, but there is no texture there. It can be called a motherland that cannot be touched; hence, they have no motherland. This realization is significant for me. Why do the young people of developed nations, not only in Japan, loathe and attack the motherland where they were born and raised to such an extent? The older generation likely finds this incomprehensible, but does not their scream originate here?

A sanitized society where the wind and scent have vanished. Raised there, they live in a place unrelated to the indigenous energy rising from the soil of the country, or the intense impulse of the individual reacting against it, which we once felt. Between the object I call my motherland, gazing at it with mixed feelings of love and hate, and the symbol of Japan they recognize, lies a deep, unbridgeable chasm. This rupture of recognition deepens my solitude and simultaneously strengthens the conviction that "the motherland is dead." The primal landscape we should share no longer exists. This is the realistic problem that has become a domestic intergenerational struggle, currently rising in developed nations.

The US is unique among developed nations in that generational turnover is progressing; since Millennials and Gen Z will become the majority of voters in 2028, the presidential elections of 2028 and 2032 will likely generate a great current. However, Japan and Europe share the problem of an aging society, and they cannot refresh values through generational turnover like the US. Therefore, unlike countries where intergenerational struggle holds the possibility of eventually being reflected in state management through politics, Japan and Europe are forced to proceed to the next world while harboring the limit of being unable to do this. Consequently, the younger demographics have nowhere to vent, and since it is impossible to overturn the problem of an aging society that makes status quo maintenance the rule through the power of numbers, they are left without recourse.

As I conveyed yesterday, public opinion in Japan, a super-aging society where the elderly form the majority of voters, can be easily manipulated by information management via the mass media, which is gripped by the US Yokota Air Base. Thus, the values and opinions of the younger generation do not pass through at all and are not reflected. Perhaps if you do not live in Japan, this sensation of "not being reflected at all" is hard to believe or understand, but literally, the values and opinions of the young truly do not pass through, nor are they reflected. This is because the Millennials and Gen Z, in global terms, are the minority in Japan.

In other words, the framework of the nation and the state of society that we now generally call Japan had already ended in the mid-1990s. The Japan that possessed historical continuity, pregnant with heat and struggle prior to that, died out once there. The Japan of today may be its empty shell, or perhaps another country operated by something moving on a completely different principle. The fact that the younger generation lives within that shell without knowing the heat of the past speaks more eloquently than anything else that this death is irreversible.

If that is so, we face the cold yet undeniable fact that the motherland is now nothing more than a residual image. Then, there is only one ritual necessary for us to truly advance toward the future. It is the acceptance of death. To deeply admit that the motherland has died. To sound the funeral knell, acknowledging that the country we once loved, took pride in, or clung to even while hating, no longer exists.

"To kill the motherland."

This may sound too strong, too disquieting. However, this is not an incitement to destruction. It is a faith in the truth that only after death is there certain regeneration. To look directly at the fact that the beloved motherland has lost the form of a motherland, and to watch over its death within one's heart. To stop clinging to the residual image of an old illusion, and to end it all once. Only at the end of that deep despair and silence will the new sprouting, the path to the next regeneration, become visible.

The heat and scent drifting from the movies of that era, which I wrote about through yesterday’s and today’s articles. They are not things to be nostalgic about as relics of a past that will return no more. They are the embers for us to light a fire with our own hands once again, upon the grave marker of the motherland we have once killed and mourned. To believe that there is always regeneration after death. To all those who feel that their beloved motherland is no longer a motherland and suffer in agony: that is the starting point, named pain, for us to carve open a new horizon.