すべてを壊さなければならないという命題The Proposition That Everything Must Be Broken Down

To truly make the world better, one must first dismantle everything. We inhabit a world where everyone knows this truth, yet no one can act upon it. Or rather, a world where people will do anything else, but will absolutely refuse to do that one thing, solely because it threatens their vested interests and social status. As things stand, no matter what countermeasures are taken, reaching a better future is impossible. When viewing matters from this vantage point, what strikes the eye first is that the fundamental issues—those preceding any attempt to change or improve the world—are not being considered.

I felt this acutely, once again, observing the Bank of Japan’s Monetary Policy Meeting in the middle of this month and the abnormal market reaction that followed. At this meeting, the BOJ decided to raise the policy interest rate from 0.50% to 0.75%. This is the highest level in approximately 30 years, since 1995, when the bubble economy was ending yet still lingering. By the iron laws of economics, raising interest rates should increase the value of the currency (the Japanese Yen). Yet, immediately following this announcement, the foreign exchange market was flooded with fierce selling of the Yen, causing the exchange rate to plummet to the upper 157-yen range against the dollar—the highest (weakest) level this year. Simultaneously, the yield on 10-year government bonds breached 2.1%. Thus, Japan fell into a "triple weakness": bond prices falling due to rising yields, coupled with a simultaneous sell-off of the Yen.

Fundamentally, a situation where a currency continues to depreciate even when the central bank raises interest rates is an indicator—indeed, irrefutable proof—that international confidence in that nation’s currency has collapsed. Strictly speaking, this situation is identical to the chronic currency crisis of the Turkish Lira; viewed dispassionately, one must conclude that Japan has already fallen into a state of currency crisis. After all, this was the turning point that exposed to the world, in no uncertain terms, that Japan’s currency policy has finally become uncontrollable, ending the phase where it could be glossed over by mere exchange rate fluctuations. Yet, shockingly, the Japanese mass media reports nothing of this fact. They make no mention of the reality that international trust in the national currency has already collapsed and that Japan is effectively in a currency crisis. Instead, they continue to report on trivial news and gossip, ignoring the sequence of events that occurred on December 18-19 as if they never happened. Consequently, the majority of the citizenry knows nothing of the fact that the Japanese Yen is already in a state of crisis.

For those who do not fluctuate with the situation, who observe the form of their motherland calmly without being swayed by emotion, this was a shocking event that reaffirmed, in visible form, that Japan has crossed the point of no return. Just as the Turkish Lira crisis was caused by the economic policies put forth by President Erdoğan between 2021 and the first half of 2023, the collapse of the Japanese Yen today is caused by "Abenomics," orchestrated by the then-dictatorial Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, who dominated the 2010s. Yet, the mass media does not touch upon this either. Neither the government nor the bureaucracy will ever admit that Abenomics was a failure, and the media refuses to pursue it. In other words, Japan’s pathology lies in the very fact that the social transparency which existed prior to the second Abe administration has vanished.

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, gave rise to a Shock Doctrine. Through this, the resurrected LDP brought out Shinzo Abe—a man devoid of political capability—successfully annihilated the opposition parties, and entered a state of dictatorship. The World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, is one indicator of a nation's transparency. In fact, until 2010, Japan ranked 11th out of 180 countries, possessing a relatively high level of social transparency. However, due to the circumstances regarding the non-disclosure of information during the nuclear accident, the rank dropped to 22nd in 2012. Then, in 2013, upon the inauguration of the Abe administration, it plummeted to 53rd, followed by 59th in 2014, 61st in 2015, and 72nd in 2016 and 2017. In short, during the period from the start of the second Abe administration on December 26, 2012, to Prime Minister Abe’s resignation on September 4, 2020, Japan became a symbolic example of a nation with significant issues regarding international transparency.

Because this regime continues while effectively zombified, strict information control is still being exercised at the mass media dimension. In Japan’s hyper-aged society, the primary information source for the majority of the public remains the mass media, and since this generation grew up with it, their trust in it remains high. This means that although Japan’s bankruptcy is proven from all directions when viewed internationally, a situation persists domestically where the citizens do not know, and are not informed, that the bankruptcy is occurring.

To me, experiencing this situation daily in the flesh, this state of affairs appears strikingly similar to the late period of the Edo Shogunate (around the mid-18th century), when the system that had lasted for about 300 years suffered institutional fatigue and lost its ability to govern. In the sense that it was the end of the Shogunate, this era is called the Bakumatsu. I will proceed to consider the situation of that era by overlaying it with the present; I invite each reader to interpret it by comparing it with the current situation in Japan. It will be easier to understand if you read "Shogunate" as "Government."

At that time, the Shogunate and the surrounding domains had fallen into dysfunction. Driven into a corner where they had no means to act, an attitude of doing nothing—of being unable to do anything—was rampant. As a result, the first to suffer actual harm were not the urban centers of the time—Tokyo (Edo), Kyoto, and Osaka—but rather the regions far removed from the political center of Tokyo. The prime example of this was the Choshu Domain (modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture). Choshu was a hub connecting the island of Kyushu and the main island of Honshu, and it managed the Kanmon Strait, the shortest route from the Sea of Japan to the Seto Inland Sea, and from there to the Pacific side. Therefore, they witnessed on a daily basis the spectacle of Western fleets deploying military operations in the waters near Japan. However, the Shogunate was far away in Tokyo, and moreover, being already dysfunctional, could decide nothing. Thus, in 1863 and 1864, the Choshu Domain ignored the Shogunate’s resolutions and, on its own authority, commenced war against the allied forces of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States, who were repeatedly engaging in provocations. This is called the Shimonoseki War.

However, there was no way they could match the Western military forces possessing the latest modern weaponry. As a result, the Choshu Domain suffered a crushing defeat and part of its territory was occupied by the allied forces. But here, the samurai of the Choshu Domain, having gained the experience of actual military conflict, realized more strongly than any other domain the fear that Japan would be occupied by Western nations if they continued to follow the Shogunate. Originally, the ideology of "Joi" [攘夷] (expelling the barbarians)—forcibly rejecting pressure from outside—was spreading across Japan at this point. Yet, the only ones with the experience of actually warring with the West were the Choshu Domain, and, in a manner linked to the Shimonoseki War, the Satsuma Domain (modern-day Kagoshima) in Kyushu, where fighting broke out with the British Empire on August 15-17 of the same year, 1863. In this case, the British side suffered greater damage than Satsuma, so both sides settled the matter through peace negotiations to avoid further military collision. This is called the Anglo-Satsuma War.

In other words, during the Bakumatsu, the administrative ability of the Shogun and his senior vassals in Edo (Tokyo) was virtually non-existent, and the foreign wars actually occurring in western Japan, far away, along with the threat of the Western powers, were treated as if they did not exist entirely. Since there was no internet at the time, the people of Edo showed no interest in what was happening in the remote regions of western Japan where they had never been. The current appearance of Japan can be said to be a form of the attitude of the Edo people of that time expanded to the entire country. An attitude where they are informed of nothing regarding domestic facts, know nothing of what is happening outside the country, and have no interest in it.

Thus, the samurai of the Choshu and Satsuma Domains, possessing actual experience of foreign war, keenly realized that Shogunate-led Joi was no longer possible. Interpreting this in my own way, they completely discarded the possibility of "Shogunate-led Joi" (conducting foreign war under the permission and command of the Shogunate). This was a critical turning point where, precisely because they had fought the Western powers and witnessed the strength of modern weaponry and military force, they realized that the Joi theory discussed at the academic level was mere armchair theory. After all, at this point, the awareness grew, centering on the Choshu samurai, that there was no possibility in the solutions thought up by intellectuals, and that it was meaningless unless one acted. Why was the Choshu Domain able to advocate this direct action? It was because, from the mid-to-late 1850s, when the disquieting atmosphere had begun a little earlier, a certain individual had thoroughly drilled this direct action into his followers. That individual was the brain of the Choshu Domain—a samurai, thinker, and educator named Yoshida Shoin (1830–1859).

Yoshida Shoin secretly converted his private school into a training period for revolutionaries of direct action, drilling into the gathering young samurai of Choshu that philosophy without action has no meaning. In modern terms, this could be called anti-intellectualism or anti-elitism, but that is only one facet; the essence is the practice of Yangmingism. Yoshida Shoin was also a figure influenced by the Yangmingism of Wang Yangming, which I have frequently mentioned in Shitsurae. However, regarded as the spearhead of the overthrow of the Shogunate—positioned as the leader of a terrorist training institution in contemporary terms—he was ultimately imprisoned and executed at the young age of 29.

It can be said that it was inevitable that the young samurai of Choshu, who worshipped this Yoshida Shoin as a master and were influenced by his ideology, would, upon experiencing the Shimonoseki War a few years later, realize that Yoshida Shoin’s thinking was correct and sharpen the direct action they had been trained in from there. Thus, they placed the traditional attitude focused on Joi theory on the back burner and set the overthrow of the Shogunate as the highest priority. However, no matter how exhausted the Shogunate was, a system that had lasted for 300 years possessed a certain strength and dependency. Moreover, even if the samurai of the remote Choshu and Satsuma Domains, who were ignored as country bumpkins at the time, advocated the overthrow of the Shogunate, it was considered a joke and no one would take them seriously. Furthermore, because their main force consisted of lower-ranking samurai, they held no social influence.

After much contemplation, they discovered a single possibility. This was to differentiate themselves by clearly adopting an anti-Shogunate stance emphasizing their experience in foreign war, while ostensibly hoisting the banner of Joi theory itself, as it was socially effective for recruiting supporters. Since Japan is not just Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, they thought this would allow them to gain the support of samurai in similar circumstances belonging to other domains. To legitimize the anti-Shogunate movement, the ideology they adopted was "Sonno" [尊皇] (Revere the Emperor). Simply put, the Sonno ideology is the logic that the initiative of the state does not lie with the Shogun (the Tokugawa Shogunate family), but that the real power to lead Japan should inherently reside with the Emperor (the Imperial Household). Until then, these ideas had been advocated and debated fragmentarily in various places, but it was from around this time that they were linked in actual revolutionary action. One must not overlook that the marriage of these different ideologies lay in the ideology of direct action of Yoshida Shoin.

However, the Choshu Domain and the Satsuma Domain were on bad terms, detesting each other, so an alliance was out of the question. Yet, unless these two domains, which bore the main axis of the anti-Shogunate movement, allied, the overthrow of the Shogunate was impossible. I mentioned earlier that there was no internet in this era, but in fact, an existence that substituted for the internet was beginning to be active. I believe that what truly bore the burden of the turning point from the Edo period to the Meiji period lay in the carriers of information transmission and ideological permeation who acted as the inter-network of the time. These were the "Dappansha" [脱藩者] (Drifters/Masterless Samurai). Simply put, they were independent samurai who had abandoned their status as samurai belonging to a domain and moved about freely. In modern terms, they can be called digital nomads who, having given up on their motherland's state, continue to move in search of the next possibility.

The Dappansha, by voluntarily abandoning all regulatory conditions of belonging to a domain, possessed the advantage of being able to cultivate a calm eye to search for the next possibility through movement. Of course, just like digital nomads, not all Dappansha were like this—the majority merely moved for profit—but it is a fact that a few people who truly thought of the future of their motherland moved with this advantage. The figure who suddenly rose to prominence as the prime example of this was a single, heretofore completely unknown samurai. That was Sakamoto Ryoma (1836–1867).

Sakamoto Ryoma, a samurai of the Tosa Domain (modern-day Kochi Prefecture), was born and raised in a frontier domain in Shikoku, ignored by the urban centers just like Choshu and Satsuma. However, this Tosa Domain saw strong potential in the overthrow of the Shogunate that some samurai of Choshu and Satsuma had begun to advocate, and was attempting to interact with them. In other words, a samurai who had fled the Tosa Domain was moving around as the adhesive between the hostile Choshu and Satsuma Domains. In particular, Sakamoto Ryoma continued to move as a Dappansha, and in this limit-situation, he seriously pondered where the future of Japan was heading. Seeking the next possibility, he personally observed various regions, listened to various people, and continued to think about how to end the Shogunate’s hegemony without succumbing to the pressure of the Western powers.

The characteristic of Sakamoto Ryoma, who was full of curiosity and kept moving more than anyone else among these Dappansha, lay in the point that he actively sought opportunities for dialogue not only with the Japanese of Choshu and Satsuma but also with the Westerners of the Great Powers who were the targets of the Joi theory. Thus, Sakamoto Ryoma discovered a perspective for a new era: how to realistically compromise the relationship between Japan and the West, and construct a relationship where Japan would not be occupied. At this time, as a logical conclusion, he too became convinced that as long as the Shogunate existed, a relationship between Japan's future and the West could definitively not be established. At the same time, he understood that unless he allied the hostile Choshu and Satsuma Domains, who were beginning to become the main axis forces for overthrowing the Shogunate, this future was also impossible. Thus, to ally these two and achieve a single purpose, Sakamoto Ryoma began to approach a certain figure. It was a dangerous gamble for Sakamoto Ryoma, but that figure was Thomas Glover (1838–1911).

Glover, hailing from Scotland, traveled to Shanghai in 1859 and joined Jardine Matheson & Co., which was then the largest trading company in East Asia. In mid-September 1859, he traveled to Nagasaki, Japan, and began working at a trading branch managed by a fellow Scot. at this point, he was nothing more than a single unknown businessman, but from here, his life was transformed by the upheaval within Japan. When the manager left Nagasaki in 1861, Glover took over the business and established Glover & Co. with a joint partner. The actual state of affairs at the time was the image of a Japanese (Nagasaki) agency of Jardine Matheson. Therefore, at this time, they mainly conducted exports of raw silk and tea, but this was an era when the situation began to become unstable. Since Nagasaki was located in Kyushu, one could understand the movements of the neighboring Satsuma and Choshu Domains, and Nagasaki, being an open trading port, was by its nature a place where people of unknown origins gathered. In other words, Nagasaki possessed a chaotic character that cannot be described in a single word, comprising rough samurai contemplating the overthrow of the Shogunate, religious figures and scholars preaching radical ideologies, Dappansha, and foreigners.

Here, Glover, being able to learn of Japan’s situation as information in Nagasaki, plotted to make money and executed a certain change in policy. In short, he professed to earn from war profiteering. Displaying a character typical of a Scot who had observed the methods of the British Empire from the sidelines, he began to smuggle and buy and sell weapons to both the forces protecting the Shogunate and the forces trying to overthrow it. Naturally, this generated explosive profits, and from around this time, Glover’s identity became that of an arms dealer, importing and selling weapons and ammunition one after another, expanding his profits more and more. If you have traveled to Nagasaki, you may have visited the tourist site where Thomas Glover’s house and garden are preserved as "Glover Garden" it signifies that he was a foreign arms dealer who owned vast land situated in a location with a panoramic view of Nagasaki city.

And Glover felt that to generate even more profit, the existence of a Japanese person who would move around Japan and sell off weapons in his stead was necessary, so he searched around. The one he met here was Sakamoto Ryoma. It was natural that the arrow of choice fell upon Sakamoto Ryoma, a rare talent who had become independent by fleeing his domain, possessed the intellect to gain insight into the future at a young age, moved with ferocious enthusiasm, and showed understanding for both Japan and the West.

In particular, Glover, understanding the direction that Sakamoto Ryoma would conclude an alliance between Satsuma and Choshu to overthrow the Shogunate, calculated that if a major war were to occur henceforth, supplying weapons to both sides would yield immense profits. However, since there was a risk of Joi against foreigners if he stood at the front himself, he thought it better to set up the Japanese Sakamoto Ryoma as the face and use him as much as possible. Thus, backed by Glover, Sakamoto Ryoma established a company called Kameyama Shachu [亀山社中] in Nagasaki. The reality of this company remains unclear in many aspects due to the nature of the era, and the full picture has yet to be revealed. However, personally, I view it as likely having been established as a dummy corporation for channeling weapons and warships domestically. In fact, the testimonies of those who remembered those times describe the reality of Kameyama Shachu differently, and debates to unravel the actual state continue even now, but in short, they likely did anything and everything, both openly and in secret.

Viewed broadly, a weapons supply route emerges: “Glover & Co. (Thomas Glover)” to “Kameyama Shachu (Sakamoto Ryoma)” to “Satsuma Domain/Choshu Domain.” This route was not limited to weapons supply; key clients like the Satsuma and Choshu Domains also borrowed money from Glover to pay for weapons and warships, revealing a figure of Glover conducting a fairly wide range of business, including arms dealing and moneylending. Incidentally, blinded by the massively piling profits, Glover lost his discerning eye for the era. When the Shogunate was overthrown and the new government was established, the war ended, weapons stopped selling, and furthermore, since the domains to which he had provided funds were dismantled one after another by the policy of the new government and payments stalled, he went bankrupt three years later in 1870. Thereafter, he spent his time serving as the manager of the Mitsubishi coal mine, which bore the main axis of modernization, from 1881, serving as an advisor to the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu in 1885, and being involved in the foundation of what would become Kirin Holdings, before finally passing away at his home in Tokyo in 1911.

Such a series of pressures on Japan from foreign countries is called "Gaiatsu" [外圧] (external pressure) domestically, and it is considered that this external pressure is always present at historical turning points. Speaking of recent events, this is symbolized by the Johnny Kitagawa scandal: an incident that the Japanese mass media, whose philosophy is not to report, did not report or pursue themselves, but which was eventually reported domestically only in a strange reverse-import form after the British BBC reported and pursued it. These, too, are called "Gaiatsu" domestically. Whatever the name, it is a fact that the situation has come to closely resemble the Bakumatsu. It still feels like the juncture between the late and final Edo period, but perhaps, in the future, an upheaval like the revolutionary movement of the Bakumatsu may occur in Japan.

To truly make the world better, one must first dismantle everything. The words I wrote at the beginning will come to be understood by the Japanese people over the next 20 to 30 years, and eventually, the moment of explosion will arrive. But for that to happen, the citizens who know nothing must fall yet further, to the very bottom of the abyss.