Junichiro Koizumi (born January 8, 1942) was the 87th, 88th, and 89th Japanese prime minister.
During his time as Prime Minister, he was in a position to promote nuclear power, but after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, he began to advocate the abolition of nuclear power plants.
On January 10th, 2018, he announced the “Zero Nuclear Power and Renewable Energy Basic Bill” at a press conference. The bill called for an immediate shutdown of nuclear power plants.
In addition, along with four former prime ministers, Morihiro Hosokawa, Tomiichi Murayama, Yukio Hatoyama, and Naoto Suga, he sent a letter dated January 27, 2022, to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, asking to take action within the EU about abolishing the nuclear power plants.
This is a complete translation of his speech in Japanese on November 3rd, 2020, at Suttsu Town、Hokkaido Prefecture.
In the speech, he explains how his view toward nuclear power plants changed, the problem with nuclear plants, and what Japanese people should do.
The speech is quite enlightening.
“The path Japan should take” speech given by Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Former Prime Minister
November 3rd, 2020 at the Suttsu Town General Gymnasium, Hokkaido Prefecture
Thank you very much for introducing me.
My name is Junichiro Koizumi.
Thank you very much for inviting me today.
We have until 4:00.
It will be about 90 minutes.
Today, I want to express ideas that I am thinking about daily, focusing on the issue of nuclear power plants.
I would appreciate it if my ideas would help you with your daily lives.
Humans change their way of thinking.
Not only in political matters but also in various self-help issues.
When I was Prime Minister, I believed in the story that nuclear power plants are indispensable and important because Japan lacks energy resources.
There are three major reasons why we build nuclear power plants.
First, nuclear power plants are safe.
Second, the cost of nuclear power plants is the lowest compared to other power sources.
And at last, it is clean energy that does not emit CO2.
The proponents of nuclear power plants used these three reasons to persuade people.
But I found those reasons were not right when I saw the Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant accident in March 2011 on TV and in newspapers.
It happened about three years after I retired as Prime Minister,
For the first time, I felt suspicious about the nuclear power plant.
It was said that Japanese nuclear power plants were safe, but they weren’t.
Well, when I was the Prime Minister, I believed that nuclear power plants were essential and important for Japan by listening to the opinions of various energy experts from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry.
Nine years have passed since the incident in 2011 already.
Sometime after leaving the office in 2009, I questioned the three major reasons we build nuclear power plants, as advocates always say.
I started reading books on nuclear power plants by myself, and I understood.
I also read books written even before the Fukushima incident saying nuclear power plants are dangerous and that they should not be implemented.
Then, I started to doubt the three major reasons given by the proponents of nuclear power plants.
When I was prime minister, I only listened to the proponents of nuclear power plants because I felt people opposing the nuclear power plants were so-called leftists and anti or disliking the Liberal Democratic Party.
So, I didn’t trust those people.
After the accident, I read books and studied in my own way, and I realized that we were wrong about safety, cost, and clean energy in the nuclear plant.
So, I made a mistake.
I started to think about what I should do about this mistake.
Remembering the words in the Analects of Confucius: “If you don’t correct your mistakes, that is a real mistake. Don’t be afraid to correct your mistakes,” I thought I had to admit.
Rather than regretting why I didn’t say this while I was in the office, I decided to admit the mistake because now I know that Japan does not need nuclear power plants, and Japan has the foundations to go on without them.
Whenever I am invited to lecture, I talk about various thoughts on nuclear power plants.
Today, I have about 90 minutes, and I have enough time to talk about the issue.
I learned from my studies that the Soviet Union and the United States were the first to introduce nuclear power plants.
The United States implemented the nuclear power plant after World War II, but the nuclear accident occurred on Three Mile Island in 1979.
No one has lived on that island since then.
In 1986, Chernobyl in the Soviet Union exploded.
It has been thirty years have passed since the Soviet-era Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and spread radiation.
I don’t recall it was last year or two years ago when vegetable farmers in Chiba Prefecture found their crops contaminated with radiation.
Where did the radiation come from?
First, I thought they came from Fukushima, but they weren’t.
A newspaper article said radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly 30 years ago had spread and was deposited in vegetables in Chiba.
Of course, they could not ship it to sell.
Under these circumstances, many people have realized how dangerous nuclear power plants are.
Referring to the accident at Three Mile and Chernobyl, the government and related facilities insisted that Japan has taken adequate measures against accidents.
I believe the safety measures of the nuclear power plants were taken based on our high sensitivity to radiation since we have Hiroshima and Nagasaki damaged by atomic bombs.
But it wasn’t.
After the accident at Fukushima, the ruling party and the opposing party at the Diet unanimously established the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Verification and Investigation Commission.
As Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a former president of the Science Council of Japan, became the chairperson, the ruling and opposition parties unanimously agreed.
The investigation report of the Accident Investigation Committee reported that the positions of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) and the nuclear power plant companies were reversed, and the NRA became captives of the nuclear power plant companies.
The Captive.
It means NRA was not functioning as a supervisor.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that they totally followed what the nuclear power company said.
That was the conclusion of the report.
The NRA was not doing its job.
Well, captive is a rather harsh word, but the committee, the ruling party and opposition parties in the Diet are using this word.
That means the NRA has been lying to us.
Chairman Kurokawa concluded that the Fukushima accident was not a natural disaster caused by an earthquake and tsunami.
He said it was a man-made disaster.
The NRA neglected safety.
They overlooked safety and prioritized the profit.
The committee reported clearly that the NRA was a captive of the nuclear power company.
It’s pathetic.
Newspapers were not reporting about this much.
Although the NRA was not functioning, they have been promoting the nuclear power plant.
In 1985, Japan built a facility called Monju.
It’s quite a good name.
There is a saying that if three people come together, they will have wisdom like knowledge of Monju, Bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, who controls wisdom.
Anyway, Japan built a facility called Monju in Fukui.
1985 was the year of the nuclear power plant.
Monju was called a reactor of dreams.
However, it took ten years to complete.
It was completed in 1995, 10 years after the start of construction.
When the nuclear power plant supplies electricity, the plant produces nuclear waste.
Monju was considered a dream nuclear reactor because by chemically processing the nuclear waste with Monju, the waste turns into new fuel for nuclear power plants.
The nuclear waste that should be thrown away can be used as fuel again.
It was really a reactor of dreams.
Although this was completed, it soon broke down.
Experts tried to repair it, but I believe it was two years ago that they decided to decommission it.
The government spent ten years trying to build a dream reactor that would turn nuclear waste into fuel but discovered that there is no such thing as eternal energy.
Monju’s wisdom did not come out.
The NRA, consisting of nuclear power experts, finally decided the reactor’s decommissioning by saying it was not good.
By discovering the dream phenomenon would not happen after ten years, last year or two years ago, the NRA decided to decommission the reactor.
In the meantime, it cost 1.1 trillion yen.
All were paid by taxes.
Now, decommissioning the reactor is a difficult problem to deal with.
They haven’t come to any conclusions.
The process is difficult.
They totally wasted 1.1 trillion yen, and still, it costs 50 million yen a day just to leave the facility as it is.
No one knows how long it will take to decommission the nuclear reactor that caused the Fukushima nuclear accident.
The Japanese government and nuclear power plant officials say it will take 40 years, but some experts recently have said 40 years is not enough.
Decommissioning will not be possible in 40 years.
First, there is no disposal place for nuclear waste that is yielded after supplying electricity.
Industrial waste will remain after demolished buildings, automobiles, refrigerators, and home electric appliances.
And they are generated in large quantities.
Technologies have been developed to extract metals from the waste and turn them into new resources.
But all the industrial waste will not go away. Some remain.
Even if you take out usable precious metals, the waste remains.
To establish an industrial waste company, you must prepare a disposal site by yourself.
If you cannot prepare the disposal site, then prefectural governors do not give permission to establish a waste company.
In the case of the nuclear power plant, it is different.
There is still no nuclear waste disposal site.
I’m quite amazed how the government gives permission to restart the nuclear power plants without a disposal site.
No one knows the exact situation of the accident in Fukushima.
There are workers working to decontaminate the area with protective clothing to prevent radioactivity.
Inside the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the fuel must have melted, exploded, and fallen to the floor.
Uranium fuel cannot be removed that easily.
It is said that even protective cloth cannot prevent radioactivity inside the reactor.
Before decommissioning starts, we have to investigate what the situation inside the Fukushima nuclear reactor looks like.
Now, they built a robot for investigation because humans can’t enter.
It’s a really strong, solid robot.
We can’t decommission the reactor until we find out what kind of uranium fuel has been melted inside and what the situation is.
The government started to investigate inside the power plant by gathering experts in science and technology.
Last year or two years ago, they finally completed a sturdy robot to investigate inside the power plant.
They put the robot inside to make it see how things were going.
However, shortly after putting the robot in, it broke down.
It did not work.
It seems the high temperature inside the power plant is obstructing the investigation.
That means they still can’t see what’s happening inside the reactor.
They still can’t build a robot that doesn’t melt inside the power plant.
Nuclear reactors are not something we can control with current technology.
They are still in the middle of researching to make a robot that doesn’t break down, but they haven’t figured out the solution yet.
In this situation, the government and electric companies are still trying to restart the nuclear power plant.
Kyushu Electric Power Company has restarted the nuclear power plant, but if you think about safety in the future, it’s dangerous.
When three nuclear reactors in Fukushima exploded, and radiation spread, I was thinking about the worst scenario of what would happen if a fourth nuclear reactor exploded.
The Democratic Party was in power at that time.
If the fourth reactor were to explode and the radiation spread, the simulation said residents within a 250km radius would have to evacuate.
Fortunately, the fourth reactor did not explode.
But if you think about it, a 250km radius includes Kanagawa and Tokyo.
That means we must have 50 million people evacuated.
We have 100 million people living in Japan.
If we are to evacuate 50 million people, it is half of the whole population.
Where do we send them to evacuate?
Even now, tens of thousands of people who lived around Fukushima could not be returned.
The government is attempting to restart the nuclear power plants in this situation.
Moreover, we still do not have disposal sites for nuclear waste, but they are trying to produce nuclear waste.
The waste will come out if a new nuclear power plant is built.
Why does the Japanese government still want to take reckless action?
Before the Fukushima accident, Japan had 54 nuclear power plants.
After the accident occurred in 2011, for about two years until 2013, only two of the 54 nuclear power plants operated.
Begun in 2013 until last year, there was none. Zero.
No nuclear power plant was in operation.
There hasn’t been a single power outage from Hokkaido to Kyushu.
We’ve been through hot summers and cold winters without power outages, although no nuclear power plant operated.
We have proved that we can live without nuclear power plants.
What will happen to landfill sites for industrial waste now?
The world’s only nuclear waste disposal site is built at Onkalo in Finland.
It will be completed soon.
Finland has four nuclear power plants.
Finland is building a disposal site called Onkalo on an island made of bedrock to dispose of nuclear waste.
Onkalo means a hidden cave in Finnish.
Finland is a country made entirely of bedrock.
No earthquakes, no volcanoes, no tsunamis, and the whole country is made of bedrock.
The country decided to build a disposal site on an island made of bedrock from that perspective.
There are four nuclear power plants, and I went to Onkalo to see the site.
About an hour from Helsinki Airport, the plane landed at an airport near the coast.
Then, with a chartered ship, I arrived at the nuclear waste disposal island, Onkalo.
We took a chartered bus running through Spiral Road and went 400m deep underground.
I have heard there are many visitors.
Visitors come from all over the world.
There, you will be guided to the basement, about 400 meters deep, where a stage to see the site is set up for visitors.
There is a place where you can see the 2-kilometer-square space from the second floor.
The 2-kilometer-square space is almost completed.
They put nuclear waste in a sturdy iron cylindrical tube and preserve it for 100,000 years, preventing radiation from leaking.
Finland is building this kind of disposal site.
There are only four nuclear power plants.
A country with a population of 5 million.
A country made of bedrock, a country without earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanoes.
But Onkalo can hold only the waste coming out from two power plants.
For the other two power plants, they considered building the site on the mainland, but they said they couldn’t because of opposing movement by the residents.
Finland is the only country that is building a nuclear disposal site.
In other countries, they only have facilities called interim storage facilities.
No one knows how long to store the waste in the interim storage facility.
It will probably take 100, 200, or 300 years, even if we build a sturdy interim storage facility that does not allow the waste to leak.
In the 2km square space, empty cylinders are carried in now.
I told them it seemed the site was already complete.
Then, a person in charge told me to look at the wall.
Parts of the gray walls of the 2-kilometer-square space are turning black here and there like a stain.
When I asked him what this black stain was, I was told it was water.
It is only staining right now, but the moisture is coming into the space.
After 100, 200, or 1000 years from now, if the disposal site here is filled with water, the buried nuclear waste may leak into the water.
It’s 400 meters underground, and it’s made of bedrock.
But they still have an examination to see if the black spots are really moisture and what would happen if the stain penetrated as water.
If you dig 400 meters underground in Japan, you might find a hot spring, not just water.
Also, if Japan tries to build a disposal site like this, there will be a huge opposing movement by residents.
Even if disposal sites were constructed in Japan, only four nuclear power plants are used in Finland.
In our case, we have 54 nuclear power plants.
Industrial waste companies cannot be established unless they prepare their own disposal sites.
There are currently no nuclear disposal sites anywhere in Japan, but the government is promoting nuclear power plants.
There is no place they can think of to build the nuclear disposal site.
Because of this situation, I am insisting that we should not increase the number of nuclear power plants anymore, that we should not restart them, and that we should shift our policy to zero nuclear power plants.
If the nuclear power plants are restarted, the amount of nuclear waste definitely increase again.
I would like to continue promoting the idea that we should shift our policy to zero nuclear power plants because we are in a crisis right now.
People often say that a crisis is an opportunity.
Considering the Fukushima accident as a crisis, Japan is trying to stop coal-fired power plants, but at the same time, we should stop the nuclear power plants as well.
Some people say it’s impossible to stop both, but I don’t think it’s impossible.
Two years since the accident, we have come through without any nuclear power plant.
Nowadays, there is a global trend to stop using coal-fired power plants.
The important thing here is natural power like sun and wind.
Until now, people have been ridiculing power generation using natural power, saying there will be no power on cloudy days with no wind.
Recently, however, electricity storage technology has been developed.
Countries around the world are trying to expand solar and wind power generation.
Energy storage technology is also developing rapidly.
The problem can be solved if the government seriously deals with it, and this is the work that our government must do.
I recently came across the word “solar sharing.”
The other day, I visited Chiba Prefecture, where this is being done.
A farmer in Chiba Prefecture has come up with the idea of solar sharing.
They can grow crops, and at the same time, they can generate electricity by sunlight and sell the electricity.
They can get income from both crops and electricity.
This was invented by farmers.
They put about three meters of poles across the field and put solar panels on it.
They grow crops on the ground.
The farmer came up with the idea of making a profit by growing crops and selling electricity from sunlight.
So far, it is conducted only in a small area.
However, if we put it in the rice field in the future, we can use this solar sharing to power the whole country.
We have plenty of rice fields.
We also can carve a mountain, but there would be criticism that carving a mountain would destroy the environment.
So we should not carve a mountain.
However, if it is a rice field, farmers can grow rice while generating electricity with solar power.
According to the farmer, building a solar facility on the rice field creates shade on the field. Rather than just receiving direct sunlight, they say it is better.
The sunlight comes in here and there, even with shades.
Then, the growth of crops would be better than just receiving direct sunlight.
A farmer in Chiba Prefecture invented such a technique.
Solar sharing.
He says that if this is spread nationwide, Japan’s power supply will be sufficient with solar-sharing facilities alone.
It’s a dream business.
If we use these new, almost limitless sources of solar power, wind power, and water power, Japan can fully enjoy the blessings of nature, even without nuclear power or coal.
I believe such a situation is definitely possible.
This nuclear power plant accident should be taken as a chance to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
Japan experienced a tragic war in which more than 3 million people lost their lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs.
However, fortunately, the opponent was the United States.
There are many books about this war, but Professor Iokibe wrote that around 1943, the United States already knew they would win the war and were thinking about rebuilding Japan.
I wonder why Japan went into the war with such a country.
Writer Naoki Inose published a book called Defeat in the Summer of 1941 before he became the governor of Tokyo.
Why was the defeat in the summer of 1941 instead of the summer of 1945?
I found out after reading it.
Before the war, in the late 1930s to early 1940s, Japan’s relationships with the United States deteriorated.
During the Meiji period, Japan won the Japanese-China War and the Japan-Russia War.
The country was slightly overconfident and clashed with the US over Chinese territory. Then, the Japanese government created a research institute, a think tank, to research what happens if Japan goes to war with the United States.
But what they actually did was study how to make propaganda.
Also, the Japanese government gathered about 30 experts in January 1941.
It made them research and predict the results of the war.
They submitted the report to the cabinet in August 1941.
Those experts reported that if we were to go to war with the US, we would definitely lose.
However, the government dismissed it by saying this is only a theory and does not fit the real-world situation.
On December 8th, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and was utterly defeated.
It turned out that way.
The experts knew that we should not fight a reckless war.
That’s why politics are so important.
If the government had said stop the war, then tragic war would have been avoided.
Instead of saying “stop,” they discarded the report and rushed into the battle by saying we have Yamato’s (Japan’s) spirit.
They may have the spirit of Yamato, but they did not have weapons or money.
It is tragic for the citizens who became the victims.
But the good thing about Japanese people was that they were not discouraged.
Moreover, fortunately, the opponent we fought was the United States.
The United States in the middle of the war, she was thinking about how they rebuilt Japan after the war.
It was fortunate that we did not go to war with other countries.
The United States was tolerant.
The winner was tolerant.
Even though we lost the war, we were not enslaved.
The United States assisted in rebuilding Japan.
It is a blessing in misfortune.
If we had fought with a different country, we would not have experienced such lenient measures.
After the war, Japan developed with the assistance of the United States.
Although we lost, the other country was not trying to destroy Japan.
One of Japan’s strengths is its quickness to change.
Before the war, the United States and Britain were savages and devils.
After the war, Japan turned its greatest enemy into its greatest ally.
Therefore, Japan decided to never go to war again.
It is precisely because of the generosity of the United States.
Japan has received support from the United States and has developed to the present day. Japan truly turned a crisis into an opportunity.
Taking the defeat as an opportunity, Japan has set two primary goals.
One is that we must never go to war again.
Another was creating a society where people could live long lives.
At that time, the average length of life was 50 years old.
Around the time of the war, when I was a kid, I used to eat rice mixed with barley and sweet potatoes.
Even after the war ended, when I was in elementary school, I was still eating rice mixed with sweet potatoes and barley rice.
Many people were sick or dying from malnutrition.
There was a hospital building only for tuberculosis patients in Yokosuka.
I was close to the hospital director specializing in tuberculosis patients, so I often listened to him when I grew up.
There were many tuberculosis patients because of malnutrition.
Many people envied Tuberculosis patients because they ate a lot of delicious food. Tuberculosis patients need good food to be cured, but other people at that time had trouble finding food.
Many people used to get sick because they didn’t get enough nutrition, but now, more and more people get sick because they overeat.
It suggests Japan has recovered quite well.
America was also generous to us.
We are where we are today because the Japanese people have worked hard without giving up. We deeply reflected on the mistakes that we made in war and promised that we would never fight again.
Japan is now a country where you can live a long life.
To live long, food must first be distributed to all citizens, and we need to create enough doctors to see citizens when they get sick.
We have been working on this, and we succeeded.
Now, life is not 50 years.
We have entered the era of 100-year lifespans.
In fact, we must not take in too much food.
We need to have a balanced diet.
When we think about this, we turned a crisis into an opportunity after the war.
The enemy we fought against was America.
They started the war while thinking about rebuilding Japan.
I often think that Japan fought such a reckless and foolish war, but in any case, Japan changed its mind after losing the war.
We have achieved the goal of never having another war and creating a society where people can live for a long time.
Seventy years after the war.
That’s a big deal, isn’t it?
And we have become one of the few countries where people can live long lives.
I first became Minister of Health and Welfare at the end of 1988.
Emperor Showa passed away on January 7, 1989.
The New Imperial Era, the Heisei era, began on January 8th.
I have been the Minister of Health and Welfare since 1989.
The first thing I was asked when I entered the Minister’s office was, Mr. Minister, do you know how many centenarians there are in Japan today?
I said there might be about 100 people.
Because I was asked out of the blue.
The answer was “no. please keep in mind that in 1989, there were over 3,000 people over 100 years old.”
I was surprised that there were so many.
This year, there are over 80,000 people over 100 years old.
Really 80,000.
We have become a country where people can live for a long time.
Life is not 50 years anymore.
There are 80,000 people over the age of 100 years old living there.
That means if you have the right diet, it’s not just a dream to live 100 years.
In 30 years, the number has increased from 3,000 to 80,000.
In fact, Japan has become a country where you can live a long life.
The problem is that there are voices saying that living a long life is not enough, so various educational activities are being carried out to encourage people to live a long and healthy life. Rather than seeing a doctor or taking medicine, eat a well-balanced diet daily, moderate exercise, and get enough rest.
As people gradually understand that these are the three principles of health, more and more people live healthy and long lives. I think this is a good thing.
The biggest crises in Japan after WWII were the economic and oil crises.
In 1973, Israel and the Arabs started the war.
In the wake of this Fourth Arab–Israeli War, the oil crisis occurred.
Before the Fourth Arab–Israeli War broke out, Japan imported oil at around $2 per barrel. One barrel is about 150 to 160 liters.
Let me use the unit of oil today.
Then, the price suddenly jumped from around $2 to $10 and then $11.
Since Japan imports most of its oil, this has led to frenzied prices.
Two dollars per barrel has gone up to 10 dollars and 11 dollars, but people thought the price would not stop.
There would be a time of 50 dollars per barrel.
At that time, Mr. Taichi Sakaiya(novelist)predicted the price was not high enough, and there would be an era of prices of $10, $20, and $100.
Yes, five or six years ago, the era of prices of $150 per barrel actually came.
However, what changed from this point on was that Israel won a major victory over the Arabs as an oil-producing country.
It must have been frustrating for Arabs.
Countries that have oil are poorer, and countries that use oil are richer.
They called it outrageous and used oil as a weapon to raise the price, and we have already seen the consequences.
Then, Arabian nations realized that they could raise the price of oil to make a profit, but of course, there was a limit.
Recently, the price has dropped to around $40, while once the price was $100 or $150. Why? Including the United States, many countries have started to raise their voice that if the price of oil is so high, we have shale gas, natural energy, or other alternatives.
The US said that if we dig more, then we will get more energy.
They started doing this because they thought it was enough to make a profit to recover the amount they invested.
Then, oil-producing countries could no longer sell the oil at high prices.
The price is currently hovering around $40.
They recognized that if they raised the price higher, the sale of shale gas would be high.
It has become clear that raising the price of oil is not profitable because there are other forms of energy. Raising the price became difficult.
So what we can do in the future is natural energy.
Every country will do solar and wind power.
Japan, in particular, has solar, wind, and hydropower power.
It has an almost infinite amount of energy.
If such a country emerged, the oil would not be sold.
Oil-producing countries also need to think about this.
They come to realize that it does not go anywhere by just raising the price.
Japan is a country that has successfully responded to these changes in the past.
Even though we were defeated, we made the opponent our ally.
And Japanese people are demonstrating various activities all over the world, saying that we will never go to war again.
Many people are traveling in the world in various fields, aiming to get along with other countries.
We are entering a new era, and some interesting signs are emerging.
I think common sense is changing.
Well, until about 30 years ago, foreigners, Americans, and Europeans liked meat.
They don’t eat fish much. Eating raw fish or sushi is not possible.
Sushi is a food unique to the Japanese, and many foreigners say it is impossible to eat sushi. But now it is the most popular food in the world, including Africa, Europe, South America, North America, Asia, and Japan.
Sushi turned into the most popular food in the world.
People used to say they wouldn’t eat fish or sushi made with raw fish, but now sushi, not sukiyaki or yakitori, has become the most popular Japanese food in the world.
They now know the delicious taste of raw sushi.
Recently, I went to a sushi restaurant and had an interesting conversation.
When foreigners come, the Sushi master hides the chunks of fatty tuna.
Why?
Master said “if you are asked to have fatty tuna at a sushi restaurant and answer, ‘It ran out,’ that would be a disgrace to the sushi restaurant. I’ll save it for my regular customers.”
When 4 or 5 foreigners come to the restaurant, they only order fatty tuna because they know how delicious it is.
Foreigners often say, “Toro please, Toro please, Toro please.”
If they saw the chunk of Toro, the Sushi master can’t say no.
That’s why they must hide the Toro from foreigners saying, “It’s no longer available” and save them for regular Japanese customers.
This is the era of Sushi, the world’s most popular food.
But not only fatty tuna but also foreign people started to eat various kinds of raw fish.
In times like this, you might call it change, as even foreigners have realized that they must learn about delicious Japanese food and the Japanese concept of hygiene.
When Ms.Thatcher of England came to power, she said something like this about Japan. “Japan is a people that loves shochu. But Whiskey and shochu are the same distilled spirits.”
Apparently, the process of making them is quite the same.
Whiskey is also a distilled liquor, and shochu is a distilled liquor.
She said, “Even though the production method is the same, why is the tax on shochu so low and the tax on whiskey is so high? Make it even.”
That’s what she said.
The Prime Minister has done a lot of research, I guess.
Japan’s number of imports was small compared to Britain’s.
Japan said no, we can’t. Shochu is already a popular drink, and whiskey is a luxury drink.
Of course, Britain doesn’t accept that whiskey is a rich person’s drink in Japan.
The government had no choice but to raise taxes on shochu and lower the price of whiskey. Japan’s shochu industry, especially in Kagoshima, was so angry.
However, the great thing about the Japanese people is that they should have experienced a catastrophic situation by raising taxes on shochu and lowering taxes on whiskey, but that was not the case.
Thanks to their wisdom, high-quality shochu is now available.
Shochu is no longer a cheap drink.
Of course, there is also cheap shochu.
Potato shochu, barley shochu, and there is a shochu that is more expensive than whisky.
But those are quite popular in Japan.
Instead of decreasing its production, it has increased it.
I think the Japanese people’s technical ability, or their ability to produce various good things, is great.
As a result, Japanese people have come to understand the benefits of whiskey, and foreigners have also understood the benefits of shochu.
Japanese people have come to be highly regarded around the world for their products, which are world-class in a variety of fields, whether food or industrial products.
In this regard, the Japanese people have an excellent ability to respond to changes, and many people and companies are always researching how to produce products that can be used worldwide.
Even the Japanese cars.
In the beginning, Japanese cars were said to be worn out.
Toyota and Nissan worked hard in the middle of an era when Japanese cars were not good enough, cheap, and bad.
Now, Japanese cars are selling well in the United States.
Japanese cars are highly regarded in America, the home of automobiles.
It runs longer than an American car with the same liter of oil.
Japanese cars don’t break down, and even if they do, they come immediately to fix them.
With that kind of reputation, Japanese cars began selling well in America and Europe. Japanese companies, not only large companies but also small and medium-sized enterprises, strive to create such a world.
While facing various hardships, they are spreading the goodness of Japan to the world.
We will continue to spread the goodness of our products to the world.
I think this is wonderful thing.
Among politicians, there is only one person whose record cannot be broken.
Do you know who?
Throughout the pre-war and post-war years, Yukio Ozaki holds a record.
Have you heard his name?
There is a political archive next to the Houses of Parliament.
It was originally named the Ozaki Memorial Hall, but has now been renamed the Constitutional Government Memorial Hall.
Yukio Ozaki, who had the haiku name Gakudo Ozaki, ran for office in the first Imperial Diet election, when the first Meiji election system was established, at the age of 33.
Since then, he has won 25 consecutive times throughout the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras. He passed away at the age of 94 in 1951.
That’s amazing.
I am retiring after being elected 12 times.
Even if I were asked to hold 13 more elections, I would not be able to do so.
Elected 25 times in a row, served in the House of Representatives for 60 years.
No one has ever broken this record.
This is Yukio Ozaki.
He is said to be the god of constitutional government and the father of parliamentary politics. The words Yukio Ozaki wrote in the year he passed away are now displayed in a frame at the Constitutional Government Memorial Hall.
He wrote something like this.
“The real stage of life is always in the future.”
It was written when he was 94 years old, the year he died.
In the year he passed away, he said, “The real stage of life is always in the future.”
If you’re over 90, the average person probably doesn’t care about future.
That’s the difference.
Even at 94 years old, the real stage, the place where he can play an active role, is still ahead. It’s a big deal.
He is a man of such strong will that he was elected 25 times in a row and served in the House of Representatives for 60 years until he was 94 years old.
I retired after being elected 12 times, after 37 years.
Which is still quite a long time.
But there are always people above us.
This god of constitutional government, the main stage of this person’s life, was always in the future, and even at the time of his death, he was thinking about the future.
I think it is a great thing.
Also, a scholar from the Edo period left some nice words behind.
His name is Issai Sato, he’s a Japanese scholar, and he said some nice words.
I’d like to share some of them with you.
The first one is this.
“If you learn a little, you can do something great.”
It means learning at a young age is powerful and beneficial; when you become an adult, you become a talented person.
“If you grow up and learn, you won’t grow old and decline.”
If you continue to learn even after you grow up, you will not decline even if you grow old. Furthermore, the words that follow are also encouraging.
“If you grow old and learn, you will not rot even when you die.”
Most of the time, it rots humans.
The body rots, but the spirit does not.
That’s right, we still have the words of people who died hundreds of years ago.
Look at that and be inspired.
You can learn.
If you grow up and learn, you will not grow old and decline.
If you grow old and learn, you will never die and rot.
It won’t rot even when you get old.
There’s no end to learning.
There are no limits to what you can learn.
This is to say that we should always move forward with an aspiration to improve and the will to improve our current abilities, both mentally and physically.
It’s about time for me to get older and learn more, but I don’t want to forget this feeling. Always willing to learn.
“Everyone except me in life is my teacher.”
It means everyone is your master.
The words are left by Eiji Yoshikawa.
In life, everyone except me is a master.
Since ancient times, people have been refined by other people, not just through academic books, but also through interpersonal relationships.
If you act with a desire to improve, you will improve both mentally and physically.
I think I have to keep this in mind and try to do my best from now on.
Please, everyone, many young people are still compared to Mr. Yukio Ozaki here.
We live in an age of 100-year lifespans.
I hope you will continue to take better care of your health and do your best in all aspects.
Thank you for your attention.
Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi was probably the most popular prime minister in Japan.
He did not attach himself to his post and focused solely on learning about policy.
He acted like a lone wolf.
He was the kind of person to say his position straight forward.
While he was prime minister, he did not accept any nominations from factions, which was customary, and decided on all ministerial and party personnel matters himself.
Under the slogan, “There will be no economic recovery without structural reform,” he privatized the four road-related public corporations, Japan Oil Corporation, Japan Housing Finance Corporation, and Transportation Corporation.
In response to the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, he supported President Bush’s “war on terror.”
He passed the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Act to support the U.S. military’s invasion of Afghanistan and dispatched the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force to provide logistical support for the U.S. military.
He suddenly announced his visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) on August 30, 2002, and held the first Japan-North Korea summit meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Il on September 17.
During this visit, Kim Jong-il officially acknowledged North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals and approved the return of five of the abductees to Japan.
However, in response to North Korea’s response that eight of the remaining abductees were dead and one was missing, the families of the abductees did not hide their anger and even criticized Koizumi, who had returned to Japan after negotiations.
However, public opinion evaluated the results relatively highly.
In the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election on September 20, 2006, Shinzo Abe, who was considered certain even before the election, was chosen as his successor.
Koizumi’s term as president of the Liberal Democratic Party expired on September 21st the following day, and he resigned as Prime Minister on September 26th (on the same day, Abe became the 90th Prime Minister and the first Abe Cabinet was formed).
He was the first to step down at the end of his term since the Yasuhiro Nakasone administration in 1987, and the Koizumi administration was the fourth in the post-war era and the first long-term administration in the 21st century at the time of his resignation.