日本の罠 1Japan Trap, Part 1

Today marks the Winter Solstice, the day when the sun is at its weakest, yet simultaneously begins to regain its strength. When we contemplate this death and rebirth of the sun, we are reminded once again that the cycles of nature remain unchanged for humanity. Humans have become far too arrogant, priding themselves as life forms that have denaturalized themselves, yet this arrogance is, after all, merely a conceited vanity. In times past, every nation and people regarded this day as a special point of inversion between death and regeneration. Regardless of what fortune or misfortune this year—or recent times—has brought you, let us, if possible, return everything to zero today and step swiftly into a new year. The sun continues to teach us this lesson even now.

Now, to welcome the Winter Solstice is to witness an absolute directional shift in the providence of nature, where light henceforth has no choice but to increase and fill the world. However, while the sun repeats its rise and fall within the year, human society does not necessarily follow suit. And yet, there is undoubtedly a similar cycle within human society. It is here, within this historical cycle, that we must observe my motherland, Japan, which stands as the vanguard of a certain kind of modern national self-destruction, or perhaps, ethnic dissolution.

How do you view Japan? To answer the question of what Japan has become, and where it is heading, is no easy task in a world that is far too complex. In the West, a significant current known as the shift to the right began long ago; to the casual observer unfamiliar with Japan’s internal affairs, it may naturally appear that this wave has only recently surged onto Japanese shores. Indeed, since Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae took office on October 21, 2025, there have been indications of this in her seemingly right-leaning rhetoric and repeated performance of unilateral aggression toward China.

However, if asked what this truly is, and if one believes that this situation can be perceived through a shallow assessment that simply clamors about Japan tilting to the right, the answer is no. To begin with, the fundamental error in such a perspective lies in a phantom image that is divorced from the actual substance of Japan.

Certainly, when looking at Japan from the outside, some form of illusion is assumed as a premise. If one visits Japan merely for tourism, one sees only what one wishes to see; there is no way to know the reality of the Japanese people’s daily lives or the social systems. Yet, speaking from my experience as one born in 1991, now entering my mid-thirties, I must admit that the era known as the "Lost 30 Years"—starting from the late 1990s—was the very process of Japan’s descent. As a practical matter, the Japanese people are now in a state of considerable poverty, and the hearts of the citizenry have grown desolate in proportion. With hope for the future severed, corruption and anxiety have reached a level where society itself cannot be sustained, and a quiet tension reigns supreme. In short, there is nothing left to be done. To put it simply, Japan has already crossed the point of no return. It is crucial to reference Japan as it continues to charge forward as a precedent: a nation-state of a colossal system that has passed the critical threshold, and the fate of its one hundred million self-domesticated citizens.

In other words, for politics or corporations to attempt something now—for example, even if the current Prime Minister Takaichi speaks bravely of "economic reconstruction"—it is merely the logic of accumulation. It is a falsehood, for the stage where such things were possible ended long ago. Or consider the "Japan First" stance of the Sanseito party, already labeled as far-right; whether they can resolve the accelerating tension and conflict between Japanese and foreigners remains unknown. Viewed dispassionately, Japan has finished the phase where any intervention could be timely; we have already breached the critical mass where nothing can be done. For instance, the declining birthrate and aging population—the greatest problem—was understood over thirty years ago, yet there is the undeniable fact that no measures were taken. In other words, over these thirty years, Japan has proven by its own hand that it will do nothing, even while knowing what the outcome would be.

Therefore, in this piece, I will offer insight into the internal substance of Japan—something that can never be understood from the outside—through a unique perspective. Who, exactly, is the owner of Japan?

What is noteworthy is the establishment of a rigid social system (alias: the world's finest mutual surveillance system) following the rapid economic growth of the late 20th century, followed by the collapse of the bubble economy, and the subsequent resurrection of a rigid bureaucratic system in that era. The history of the thirty years since then is now trembling violently. The collapse of Japan’s bubble economy is generally symbolized by the failure of Yamaichi Securities in November 1997, but if we use that as a standard, one could argue that Japan before that point and Japan after were entirely different countries. Indeed, anyone who knew Japan before this benchmark would be astonished by the difference in the real of Japan today.

Even in my personal memory, the late 1990s feels like a clear node, a turning point where the figure of the Japanese people changed. However, it is correct to view this not as something suddenly vanishing or being lost, but as a slow, gradual decline, unnoticed even by the citizens themselves. Because major corporations, the government, and the nation itself possessed considerable assets due to the postwar high economic growth and the bubble economy, Japan was able to prolong the reset, despite the fact that under normal circumstances, national fiscal collapse or crisis should have necessitated a complete clearing of the bad situation. That is to say, Japan’s characteristic is that it does not fall suddenly. In contrast, South Korea, which had similar circumstances and systems as a neighboring country, experienced a fiscal crisis known as the IMF Crisis in 1997, thereby gaining an opportunity to reset its postwar system—at least more so than Japan. But Japan could not do this. And in Japan’s case, since survival could be prolonged to some extent by continuing to cannibalize held assets, society as a whole turned its consciousness toward system maintenance. At the same time, beasts are now swarming in search of these Japanese assets.

With this life-prolonging measure becoming a societal policy, Japan entered an era of self-mutilation, destroying its own allure. This is because corporations stopped announcing technologies, products, and services that would astonish the world as they once did, and the zombification of survival through asset liquidation accelerated. During this time, corporate executives and upper management fell into the pathology of caring only about shareholders and ensuring no problems occurred during their own terms. Accordingly, new projects within companies ceased to pass, and adherence to precedent was thoroughly enforced throughout society. This adherence to precedent has now deeply permeated the actual lives of the citizenry and has been the driving force obstructing Japan’s growth over these thirty years. To put it another way, this is an extreme ideology that does not permit failure even once; in short, it is a system of deduction.

If one fails, one need only learn and try again; Japan’s high economic growth was, after all, born as a result of such attempts. Yet, the society inverted into an extreme form that does not forgive failure, and the once-vigorous citizenry gradually began to find the very act of living suffocating (it was around this time that suicide and social withdrawal, or hikikomori, became internationally recognized problems ahead of the curve).

Japan’s basic policy for these thirty years has been "Do Nothing." Any individual who "Does Something" has been immediately canceled and socially obliterated. Ordinarily, anyone understands that doing nothing leads to decline, but clinging to the single failure of the bubble collapse, Japan entered an extreme, nation-scale withdrawal after 1997. Simultaneously, the pathology—or rather, the corruption—that was steadily progressing in this era has been revealed one after another in the last ten years. It is the organized rampancy of fraud to maintain the system by doing nothing.

Let us look back once more. Twenty years ago, who could have imagined a situation where giants like Toshiba or Sharp would vanish? Organizations that were once said to represent not just Japan but the world have now all met with bankruptcy or miserable ends; this is simply because they merely prolonged their lives by eating away at the assets they had accumulated. The one who did not miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, when Japan switched to life support, was the corporate sector of our neighbor, South Korea. The international leap of Samsung and LG began here, in correspondence with the decline of Japanese corporations.

Incidentally, since this may be difficult to visualize, let us look at the top 50 companies in the global market capitalization ranking in 1989 and 2024. This alone makes what I am trying to say self-evident.

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As can be understood from this, the troublesome aspect is that because there was considerable asset vitality until the 1990s, Japan was able to prolong its life even as its corporations completely lost international competitiveness by 2024. The adverse effect of these massive parent companies—which should have been weeded out long ago by market principles—surviving instead is that, in reality, it resulted in completely crushing the chances of Japan’s youth. I was perfectly synchronized with the flow of this era, so I understand this problem painfully well.

In fact, until the early 1990s, Japan was an era where chances came around to the young, and there was a social spirit of "let's try it, even if we fail" regarding novel ideas. Today, we see young people around the world consuming Japanese culture, but the headwaters of these creations lie in the things produced during that spirited era. However, by the time I graduated high school in early 2009, and when my friends were entering society in the early 2010s, a distorted social structure had been firmly established: one that gave no chances to the youth and crushed them thoroughly. Typical of this is adherence to precedent—absolutely never touching anything that hasn't been done before, and crushing anyone who tries to do something new. This trend is highly governed comprehensively at the individual, corporate, social, and national levels; viewing this merely as totalitarianism or capitalism is far too ignorant and naive. This is something that can absolutely never be understood without the experience of having lived in Japanese society. The Japanese mutual surveillance system is abnormally robust.

However, do not be misled by the ring of the phrase "Lost 30 Years." Despite the intensifying exhaustion, up to a certain period, Japan still possessed momentum. The flow changed decisively, delivering the finishing blow, with the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. However, it was not the earthquake that invited Japan’s decline; rather, slightly before that, there was a final turning point that determined the momentous future of whether Japan would change or not. First, let us look at the era I consider to be that pivot point. That is the year 2009, slightly before the disaster.

In the House of Representatives election on August 30, 2009, a landmark event occurred: the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) administration, which had maintained an almost dictatorial state consistently throughout the postwar period, collapsed, and the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power by winning significantly more than a single-party majority. At this time, the DPJ administration was led by Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro and Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio. They rebelled against the fact that the system of the LDP administration (that is, the rulers involved in LDP vested interests) placed weight not on adapting to the changes of the times, but rather on preventing growth; they resolved to thoroughly discard the LDP’s methods, which left the citizenry in relative destitution. In other words, the intent of the Hatoyama-Ozawa DPJ administration at the time of the regime change lay in the very act of resetting the malignant system that obstructed Japan’s growth.

However, looking at Japan today, one can see that the LDP administration has returned before anyone realized it, the DPJ has become a mere shell and fractured, and the form it had just over a decade ago is nowhere to be found. What on earth happened during this process? By observing this flow, one can see why Japan has declined to this extent, and where it is heading from here. The problem is not occurring now.

To put it briefly, the reason the DPJ administration collapsed so abruptly is that the system reset and renovation that Ozawa and Hatoyama attempted to undertake touched the "imperial wrath" of "Someone."

First, after World War II, the United States constructed a system to govern Japan through an invisible occupation. This requires not only the US side but, naturally, people on the Japanese side to work to maintain that system. This consists primarily of the bureaucratic system constructed by the current Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (those from the "American School") and the mass media. If this is the "surface" of the "Japanese-style system," then behind the governance of that system stands the US Forces in Japan. This rigid system of vested interests has been maintained unchanged from the postwar period to this day, but Ozawa and Hatoyama actually plotted to reset this system.

The reason is clear. To raise a banner of revolt against a system where the US and certain Japanese rulers collude to govern the Japanese people. I do not wish to speak of exaggerated conspiracy theories here; they merely wanted to execute the obvious act of Japanese people deciding matters for Japan. Yet, due to the existence of this system, that is entirely impossible.

Among their initiatives, what Ozawa and Hatoyama attempted to undertake was the execution of distancing Japan from the US Forces in Japan, often called the "Shadow Emperor." This is because the traditional Japanese rulers were merely conducting the governance of Japanese people by abusing the authority of the US without exception, while the substantive command tower was the US Forces in Japan. In other words, if one puts distance here, it is easy to collapse the Japanese rulers. In fact, after the establishment of the Hatoyama administration, the top priority item the Prime Minister himself spearheaded was the relocation issue of the US Futenma Base (Okinawa).

Then as now, more than half of the US Forces in Japan are stationed in tiny Okinawa, creating a problem where the burden of the Japan-US alliance is excessively forced upon Okinawa alone. In short, as long as more than half the troops are stationed in the same place, a rigid governance system is sustained. Thus, Hatoyama repeatedly stated that he would move this Futenma Base "at least outside the prefecture." His intent was fundamentally a relocation to US territories like Guam or Saipan, which are close to Japan. That is, by dispersing the US military bases within Japan to other regions at the very least, he attempted to weaken, even slightly, the rigid chain of command of the system governing Japan.

Even from this movement by Ozawa and Hatoyama alone, it should be visible that Japan’s suzerain is still the US military holding postwar occupation interests. If Japan’s suzerain were the Japanese themselves—for instance, the bureaucratic apparatus—one could simply intervene in that apparatus immediately. Yet, here they persistently handled the US military base issue. This is because any sensible Japanese person knows that this is the governance mechanism of the invisible occupation (though this can absolutely never be said in public).

Thus, as soon as the DPJ administration was established, they reviewed the relationship with the US through the US military, rooted in a strategy to proceed on a unique Japanese path, and sincerely considered a future where Japan would emerge from the invisible occupation through a long-term plan to walk as a truly independent nation. However, the attempt to review the relationship with the US Forces in Japan touched the wrath of "Someone," and the Hatoyama administration, born only in mid-September, had its future blocked by a disturbing current. Simultaneously, Ozawa and Hatoyama abolished "something" linked to this intent, which also touched the wrath of "Someone." That was the "Annual Reform Regulatory Recommendations."

You may not have heard of this, but the Annual Reform Regulatory Recommendations are documents in which the US government annually demands specific changes in economic policy, such as deregulation and market opening, from the Japanese government. The nominal purpose sounds benign—mutual economic development—but the reality is an absolute relationship of submission where the demands of the US, the victor of WWII, are met by the Japanese side, the loser, exactly as told. In other words, the economy of one nation can be manipulated however intended by the will of another (the induction of the bubble economy and its collapse is typical). Though they say "exchange," since the first recommendations began in 1994, and becoming more coercive from 2001, the Japanese side has obediently complied. Ozawa and Hatoyama, unable to overlook this clear interference in Japan’s domestic affairs by the US, abolished these Annual Reform Regulatory Recommendations. Readers likely grew up in independent nations, so these circumstances may be difficult to visualize, but in short, it was a measure for Japan to become an independent state. And this, too, touched the wrath of "Someone."

Perhaps readers are not that familiar with this flow of Japanese history, so let us look back at the era once more. Please read on while keeping in the corner of your mind that the policies of the DPJ administration regarding the US base relocation and the Annual Reform Regulatory Recommendations touched the wrath of "Someone."

First, on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009, shortly after the birth of the administration. It begins with the sudden indictment without arrest of Prime Minister Hatoyama’s former secretary by the public prosecutor for violation of the Political Funds Control Act. At this time, rather than targeting the former secretary directly involved, the mass media switched the issue to Prime Minister Hatoyama’s own tax evasion suspicion, which they had persistently problematized back in June, and began reporting it on a grand scale, initiating a simultaneous assault on the Prime Minister. I was 18 at the time, but looking back, I had the impression that a simultaneous assault by the mass media on Prime Minister Hatoyama began, triggered by a command from "Someone." That is how persistently, every day, they broadcast nothing but news designed to implant a "bad image" of Hatoyama. As touched upon in Shitsurae, Japan’s mass media is under the jurisdiction of the US Yokota Air Base, which holds Japan’s information control. In other words, the cabal that did not like Hatoyama’s policies used the mass media, which they could move freely, to launch a simultaneous attack on Hatoyama personally.

Then, starting with the event where Prime Minister Hatoyama was raised to the scaffold, as the year turned to January 15–16, 2010, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Squad moved, and under the pretext of suspicions surrounding land purchases by Secretary-General Ozawa’s fund management organization, they took the step of urgently arresting three secretaries. At this time, the image of the raid on the office of Ozawa, the Secretary-General (think of him as No. 2) of the DPJ, was reported extensively via mass media, and news of the arrest of secretaries who were incumbent Diet members flowed day and night, causing the public image of the DPJ administration to plummet. At the time, social media was not yet common in Japan, and the information source for the majority of the public was the mass media.

Here, having shaken the foundation by simultaneously attacking the No. 1 and No. 2 of the DPJ administration, the Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution then voted on April 27, 2010, that Ozawa—who had been not indicted for the same issue—was now "deserving of indictment" (should be put on trial), adding further insult to injury. With this, a movement within the DPJ to remove Secretary-General Ozawa began, and simultaneously Prime Minister Hatoyama’s capability was questioned, accelerating the move to force both to resign. Thus, entering May 2010, Prime Minister Hatoyama completely lost his initial momentum, retracted the policy he had strongly advocated—"relocate Futenma Base at least outside the prefecture"—and announced the abandonment of this relocation issue. As a result, on June 2, 2010, he announced his resignation at the DPJ Joint Plenary Meeting of Party Members of Both Houses of the Diet, leading to a situation where both men resigned.

The leaders who tried to save the Japanese people from the invisible occupation and make the motherland an independent nation were banished from society in the blink of an eye because they touched the wrath of an invisible "Someone." What is particularly surprising is that the two men carrying the administration of Japan, the Prime Minister and the Secretary-General, were banished simultaneously. I call this shocking event "Japanese-style Cancel Culture." Incidentally, the trial of Ozawa, forced by the intent of "Someone," resulted in a not-guilty verdict as of April 2012. That is, they targeted Ozawa, who had no issues, colluded with the mass media, fabricated a scandal, and canceled him. Furthermore, Hatoyama’s tax evasion suspicion also resulted in non-indictment in May 2010. The fact that Japan’s state powers, such as the prosecutors and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, moved instantly against the No. 1 and No. 2 of the administration at the time without decent evidence or grounds implies that this "Someone" possesses the authority to move such organizations at will. You can likely surmise what it means to be able to move prosecutors and the District Public Prosecutors Office with a single word.

Please keep this event in mind. Here, the path for Japan to become an independent nation was completely severed. From this point on, politicians and bureaucrats who move only at the behest of "Someone" proceed to kill Japan one after another. My assessment is that modern Japan self-destructed under an invisible occupation.

The resignation of these two meant, equally, that personnel aligned with the wishes of "Someone" would be appointed within the DPJ administration. As a result, Kan Naoto of the DPJ subsequently took office as Prime Minister, but due to a crushing defeat in the House of Councillors election in July 2010, the Diet entered a "twisted" state where the majority differed between the Lower and Upper Houses, making it difficult to pass bills. Then, in early March 2011, it was discovered that Prime Minister Kan’s fund management organization had received political donations from a Korean resident in Japan. On the grounds that Japan’s Political Funds Control Act prohibits donations from foreigners, the opposition LDP pursued him fiercely, and once again, the mass media reported on nothing but this issue day after day. Just as it was said that his resignation was a matter of time, a decisive event occurred.

That was the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, and the accompanying Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Here, the Kan administration was prolonged to deal with the unprecedented national crisis, but due to issues such as the response to the nuclear accident and the non-disclosure of countless pieces of information, and because the mass media continued its criticism of the DPJ, public distrust exploded. Using the Great East Japan Earthquake as a pretext, demands for resignation erupted, claiming "Reconstruction cannot proceed under Prime Minister Kan." Consequently, upon his resignation in August, an administration led by the DPJ’s Noda Yoshihiko was inaugurated. However, Prime Minister Noda broke his election manifesto and advocated for a consumption tax hike, citing reconstruction resources and social security stability as reasons. The crucial point is that the one who fiercely opposed this bill was Ozawa Ichiro.

Why did Ozawa Ichiro, who spent his life as a politician striving to realize the obvious future where Japanese people decide Japanese matters in a truly independent state free from the postwar invisible occupation, oppose this consumption tax hike by Prime Minister Noda of the same DPJ? In fact, what occurred here is what Naomi Klein called the "Shock Doctrine." The essential point is that in this flow from Kan Naoto to Noda Yoshihiko, they did not touch upon the US military issue with a single word. In other words, despite the regime change, the DPJ saw how Ozawa and Hatoyama, who aimed to distance Japan from the US Forces in Japan, touched the wrath of "Someone" and were socially obliterated in less than a year; they trembled in fear and fell into the same disgraceful state as LDP politicians: doing nothing contrary to the intent of "Someone."

This consumption tax hike being for "reconstruction" is merely nominal. The reality is that it is a consolation payment (tribute) from the DPJ side to "Someone" for touching their wrath through the movements of Ozawa and Hatoyama. That is, because they touched the wrath, they would dampen that anger by hiking taxes, sucking money from the Japanese people, and offering it up as is, thereby securing the maintenance of the DPJ administration and receiving a share of the vested interests formed with the LDP side (incidentally, the LDP still does this as a matter of course today, but the mass media absolutely never pursues it). It may come as a surprise, but this system of tribute offering via tax hikes has not budged an inch. Where, exactly, is the tax money paid by the Japanese people disappearing to?

Ozawa, who knew this distorted flow of money painfully well through his survival in the top world of politics, strongly criticized the Noda administration of the same DPJ for advocating a consumption tax hike—a burden on the people. One must read the background of this. It begs the question: who was seriously thinking about and acting for the future of Japan and the Japanese people?

Thus, Ozawa, sensing that the DPJ had completely capitulated to the existing Japanese-style system in less than three years, immediately left the DPJ with numerous members and moved to form a political party that put the people's lives first. With this, the DPJ became completely hollowed out, and the foundation of the administration collapsed. Because once this happens, the DPJ is the same as the corruption of the LDP; and if they are the same, then the experienced LDP, skilled in maintaining vested interests, is preferable. In fact, when the House of Representatives election was held on December 16, 2012, the DPJ suffered a crushing defeat, reducing its seats from 230 to 57, rendering it unable to recover.

Here, the LDP secured a single-party majority and returned to the seat of power. At this time, the existence of an opposition party vanished from Japan, and the country entered a state of LDP dictatorship greater than ever before (strictly speaking, there are factional struggles within the LDP). Thus, the man who returned to the Prime Ministership with a landslide LDP victory was Abe Shinzo. Since Abe had served as Prime Minister in 2006–2007, this is called the Second Abe Administration. From here began the "Abe supremacy" era, the longest in postwar Japan, and in a mere thirteen years or so, it would build the current future where Japan and the Japanese people have declined extremely.

As a supplement, in Japan, for a socially prominent figure to speak publicly on content of even this level leads immediately to social obliteration, and at times, danger to one's life. Personally, I feel that precisely because we are of the generation that does not know World War II directly, we must think about this now. For World War II has not yet ended. The important thing is that occupation can never be limited solely to the authority of the occupier. I am convinced, from an insight into the Japanese side, of the fact that occupation is always a collaboration of bidirectional authorities. The screenwriter Ishido Toshiro, whose scripts for 1960s films I love, published a work in 1995 titled The Enemy of the Japanese is the "Japanese", and it is the same for any country. The true enemy is not outside. Unless we know that the true problem writhes like a parasite within our own interior, neither a nation nor a people can reform.

Will the day ever come when true reform occurs in Japan?

To understand that, in the next article, I will observe from the inside the "Japanese circumstances never visible from the outside," exploring why the era of Abe Shinzo’s supremacy was a problem, how it connected to the incident of his assassination on July 8, 2022, and how the existence of a "certain organization" writhing behind it is connected to the current hardline right-wing performance of Prime Minister Takaichi.