Pathway to Japanese Literature

I had not known the term "black market" before the war.
Not knowing was pathetic—during my youth, when Europe had passed through post-Great War chaos and seemed on the verge of recovery, news and literature had been saturated with inflation and moral disorder to the point of nausea; yet even if I contemplated war and death, war and conspiracy, things like inflation and black markets, farmers profiting from war—none of it resonated when read in fiction.
It was no different from never having read them at all—I might as well have walked right past.
While prattling on about literature and humanity, about probing the human condition, and poring over historical texts concerning major events like wars, I couldn’t even begin to imagine that behind these wars lurked in human life the strange web of black market dealings.

The Taika Reform established the kubunden system.
Then they would falsify household registries to evade taxes and corvée labor, flee to temple lands or aristocratic estates exempt from taxation, or donate private fields.
Thus the manors flourished, the era of aristocratic splendor arose, and the farmers, further colluding with administrators to evade taxes, brought about the samurai age.

While reading such histories, they still failed to strike me with any real force before the war.

In the medieval period, guilds arose.
Sarugaku-za and Ginza likely originated with this meaning—they resembled trade unions, coalitions of peers formed to protect their rights from others. They unilaterally and arbitrarily established sales territories in these areas, then persecuted any merchants who infringed upon them.

If I describe it this way, it sounds exactly like gangs of ruffians—every market over here and over there has its own territory.
Even pan-pan girls have territories.
If I put it this way, some may take offense at equating trade unions with the territories of ruffians.
In the past, I too did not interpret things in such a negative light.
Since these medieval guilds are terms that appear frequently even in books like Mr. Marx’s Das Kapital, I would straighten my collar and listen with reverence, never once having suspected them to be some sort of ruffianly association.

Truly, war strips away everything—not just from humans, but from academics, culture, all the trappings of superficial civility. Even samurai shed their superficial civility when war comes, but unlike samurai—those ruffians—I naively assumed that academia, being no such thing, was composed of natural-born gentlemen who would never cast it off. This was what people meant by peacetime mentality—how aptly those of old coined it. This is what they called *tatami-mizu-ren*: sheltered conditioning. People like me were products of *tatami-mizu-ren*—who never learned to question our superficial civility because we knew nothing of war; this not knowing was a pitiful thing.

The moment I thought, "Good grief, this is outrageous," was at a national liquor store queue where ruffians had occupied the front and instituted rotating shifts.
But at that time, I still hadn't noticed—I had simply dismissed it as the work of ruffians.
That's not it.

When tobacco finally grew scarce and shops everywhere began selling it only at set times, lines would form from the predawn hours.
Even though they said they started selling at seven, I lined up from four and still couldn't buy any.
I mustered my courage and lined up at three o'clock.
I could finally buy one.
But after two or three days, unless I lined up by two o'clock, I couldn't buy any anymore.

Why couldn't I buy any?
In other words, I had been defeated by the neighborhood association joint front.
At three in the morning, it was pitch black; even as I stood in line, I could perceive nothing but the shifting movements of people before and behind me.
In any case, however, I was around twentieth in line.
Everyone appeared to be ordinary folk—old men, old women, authority figures, schoolgirls—and with myself excluded, there didn't seem to be a single ruffian-like person in sight, which put me at ease—but that wasn't the case.
When dawn broke, they came pouring in—the number of people cutting into line far exceeded those queuing properly.

“Auntie, over here! Our neighborhood association is here!” they’d call out, and with responses like “Ah, right? It’s surprisingly far back, isn’t it?”—while one or three people at a time cut in from front, back, left, and right—I would instantly find myself below hundredth place.

At this point, I came to a new understanding regarding the origins of guilds—this was no different from the territories claimed by ruffians.
To be precise, it’s not that guilds and za are gatherings of ruffians—when people are driven to desperation, they all become ruffians, reverting to the territorial mentality of ruffians. In short—but it’s because they’re in dire straits.

If tobacco were abundant, something like neighborhood association guilds would form—these queue guilds; truly, are these not guilds? They are literally seats.
They need not assert their guilds or rights.

In the past, they too must have been in dire straits.
They must have been in such dire straits that they could not survive without forming gangs and united fronts; however, in their origins of formation, there can be no difference from the territories of pan-pan girls.

Therefore, dear readers, take heed: since the war, Japan had reverted to the medieval period.
In other words, we were clad in the superficial civility inherited from our ancestors—electric lights, gas, railways; morality, human compassion, benevolence; law and regulated order—and thus believed this was not the medieval period. We never learned to question that superficial civility.
This superficial civility had taken nearly a thousand years to be inherited and perfected up to the present day, so everyone had come to regard it as practically a part of their own flesh. Yet to our astonishment, when war continued for two or three years, that millennium of time vanished as if effortlessly, and we realized we no longer wore this superficial civility upon our bodies.

Superficial civility cannot be measured by time.
It was the war that taught me to doubt time.
In my youth, I too read works like *Ethics* and the *Middle Way Treatise*, mimicking the act of earnestly pondering how one might doubt the past, present, and future—yet how a single reality remained beyond doubt. But I am now a materialist; still, that a materialist could—nay, must—doubt history and time through a materialist lens was something I had never once considered.
Truly, how pathetic not to know.
In other words, it was because I had not truly known war.

With only our current morals, order, and ideals, humans reverted to the medieval period when driven to desperation. They lacked the strength to sustain this reversal.

The Communist Party fundamentally lacked superficial civility, making them straightforwardly medieval; as the guiding principles of their unions unilaterally asserted guild interests, they ultimately differed not at all in essence from the neighborhood tobacco guilds or Raku-cho's pan-pan guilds.

I did not like the medieval period.
I did not like the neighborhood tobacco guilds.
This was not born of resentment from having perpetually witnessed signs of crushing defeat at those auntie guilds' hands.

However, when driven to desperation, they reverted to the medieval.
The truly effective method to prevent this regression currently lay beyond the reach of morals or theories—they would not revert to the medieval period unless driven to desperation.
There appeared to be no other method beyond this.

The fact that desperation leads to medieval regression had to be understood; hence, at present, black marketeers were not medieval, and the bourgeoisie could never comprehend the medieval spirit.
It was utterly astonishing that I, who was not of the bourgeoisie but perpetually in hardship, nevertheless had failed to grasp the medieval spirit during peacetime.

However, I consider that in my case—though perpetually in hardship yet never bending my principles to the medieval period—there lies some redeeming quality.

To unilaterally assert only one’s own interests required considerable courage when done alone.
However, when banding together, no courage was needed at all.

Confucius and Christ both belonged to ancient philosophies—systems of thought premised on individual self-reliance, ideas concerning heroes and moral principles that demanded ferocious courage as compensation even while sanctioning self-serving delusions. But by the medieval period, there had been progress: courage became entirely unnecessary from the outset, replaced by cunning stratagems and the immediate formation of gangs—merchants established merchants’ guilds, artisans artisans’ guilds, Pan-pan girls Pan-pan guilds, and authorities neighborhood association guilds—all engaging in this practice.

Compared to Christ’s primal nature, Confucius is far more social—yet he does not side with the gang mentality.

I do not like the medieval period either.
I prefer the ethics of antiquity—of primal humans—over the medieval period, and if we are to revert to the medieval, I believe we must first return to antiquity—to primal humans.
If one is to strip away superficial civility, rather than merely removing it to remain in the medieval period, my preferred method is to shed even the loincloth and regress all the way to primal humans.

During the time when I lined up at two or three in the predawn hours yet couldn’t buy a single cigarette, there was certainly the tyranny of the neighborhood guilds—but on the other hand, it was also an open secret that shopkeepers would divert fifty out of a hundred cigarettes to acquaintances and VIPs.
However, at that time, tobacco shops were not yet engaging in black market activities.
It wasn’t that they were selling at black market prices—it was a matter of social obligations to acquaintances and personal favors to VIPs; that was the nature of it.

During the war, the premise of returning to the old order still existed; there was this calculation toward a future where VIPs would once again become VIPs and acquaintances would repay favors. But now, with VIPs bankrupt and acquaintances turned black marketeers, that premise of restoring the old order had vanished. Thus, everyone formed medieval guilds or became ronin, each thriving according to medieval methods. Spiders are born spinning webs; humans, upon losing a war, naturally revert to the medieval.
Hachisuka Koroku was already on the verge of rising from a ronin to a lord with his own castle and domain in all directions.

If the Pan-pan guilds, market guilds, neighborhood association guilds, and employee union guilds were medieval in nature, then black marketeers—being individualistic—still retained something of antiquity, requiring the primal courage of early humans.

For antiquity had been an era in which humans battled their original sin and evil—all humans were sinners, stray sheep who could not save themselves from sin without clinging to a savior—yet in the gang mentality of the medieval period, original sin was cleanly severed, freeing one from the need to acknowledge their own sins; one needed only assert their rights.
Therefore, employee union guilds and market guilds had not the slightest awareness of original sin, but black marketeers, being of antiquity, contended with sin.
It required great ferocious courage.

Are black marketeers preferable, or guilds? Which ultimately proves better?
Both remain equally undesirable.
Yet regardless, must we not establish clear distinction?

★

The Lord of the Tanuki Palace was making clever statements in court.
The lord declared: “I received payment under an agreement to deliver goods. It just so happened that the paper I had earmarked became unavailable, and I was arrested before fulfilling the contract. Had I been given a little more time, I would have eventually completed the transaction. Therefore, this was a legitimate business deal—merely one where the terms had not yet been finalized. It is not fraud.”

However, courts lacked the means to employ direct methods of dissecting a lord’s heart to judge his psychology; there existed no technique to directly seize and ascertain human psychology—whether one thought this or did not think that.

Therefore, they investigated indirectly.
The lord had claimed there was paper in a certain warehouse; whether that warehouse actually contained paper and whether the lord possessed the authority to move it—and if so, perhaps he had intended to eventually fulfill his promise.
There was no paper in the warehouse; that being the case, the lord became suspect.
However, the lord had believed there was paper in the warehouse.
And there could have arisen credible conditions—for instance, if the lord had been deceived by someone into believing paper was present there—in which case a defense might have held: that he was not a fraudster but had simply yet to fulfill a commercial contract, nothing more.

The Shizuoka molasses incident in the Seiko case served as a textbook example of this scheme: before the information reached Mr. Seiko, it had been relayed through individuals like Arimura, Saeki, Miyagawa, Yonemoto, Shibuya, Maeda, and Nagata—ultimately tracing back to an operation orchestrated by the swindler Yajima Matsuro. Though the sugar Yajima claimed to possess did not exist, the fabricated names of figures like Baron Miyake and Duke Ichijo were leveraged to convincing effect, leading people to believe the goods were real.
In other words, only Yajima Matsuro was the swindler, while all others were victims ensnared in his fraud.

The nature of this fraud was also highly convenient for exploitation—in that even if one knew the warehouse contained no goods, as long as conditions existed for believing they did, it allowed one to claim they had harbored no fraudulent intent. While brokers were said to have been covertly active on an immense scale since the Seiko case, ultimately, the goods did not exist.
However, I thought they existed because I had heard it from that man.
That man, again—I had heard it from another person; I too had thought they existed; everyone answered like this.
If one could claim they had genuinely believed in their existence—thereby insisting it wasn’t fraud—then everyone would say they had heard it from someone else, had believed it, had believed it so easily.

Thus, brokers care nothing for physical goods; what matters is that the information is believed. If the information is skillfully crafted, it becomes money. These individuals possess legal knowledge and have thoroughly mastered the stratagems of preparing conditions that avoid criminal liability.

There has long been a common scam known as advance fee fraud, but recent ones require full upfront payment; that’s the only difference, I suppose.

In the past, when goods were abundant, merchants struggled desperately to make sales—with payments generally settled afterward and deposits being trivial in amount—so dignitaries would never stoop to such fraud.
Nowadays, it’s former Diet members, director-presidents—those who ought to be lords—who engage in such practices.

What, then, is a Tonosama?
Therefore, as I have already explained at length in the previous chapter, we are currently in a medieval age—a world of market guilds, neighborhood association guilds, ronin, and bandits—where Tonosama no longer exist.
Unfortunately, humans too do not exist.
Union members exist, but humans do not.
It is because we reverted to the medieval period but did not revert to antiquity.

If the president of a market guild were elected as a Diet member, then needless to say he would be a Diet member—would he not?

Though this particular market guild president lost his election, it had long been common for presidents of his ilk to get elected as Diet members—such was the absurdity of elections.

Yet this was hardly limited to Diet members.
Everything became electioneering; even inferior goods could find buyers through campaign tactics.
Commerce followed suit—pharmaceuticals, films, cosmetics, novels—all ultimately differed little from Diet members.

However, no matter how much electioneering one does, truly inferior goods will ultimately remain unsold. Mosquito coils that don't kill mosquitoes, matches that won't light—no one buys such things. Because it was rationed, people endured in silence; and since we were currently in a medieval age, the government was no different from jito—undeniably part of a ronin gang possessing the brute force to make people buy matches that wouldn't light.

The aunties of the neighborhood association guild could immediately detect inferior soap and matches, but they couldn't discern the inferior goods that Diet members were. Women Diet members suddenly materialized in numbers exceeding thirty. The fair election of one vote per person—that such shams became Diet members! Ah, what a travesty! Must I bear responsibility for the single vote cast by those foolish masses? Raging about it was futile.

That’s just how social life is.

I think I'm superior.
The masses are stupid, I think.
Logical-minded Japanese people quickly latch onto such reasoning, hoodwink society, and arrive at the conviction that their own choices are correct.
They instantly become fascists.

Why on earth am I superior?
I have read some economics books, studied history, and maintain convictions about politics.
That's why I'm superior.
Just like the Lord of the Tanuki Palace's testimony, there exists no means to cut open one's chest and determine whether they're superior or not.

Rather than dwelling on such nebulous matters, it was more crucial to recognize the fact that the masses were superior to me.
Ancient farmers fought against taxes and corvée labor; they struggled desperately, became wandering refugees, falsified household registries—and ultimately, these actions came to shape the course of power.
The nobility prospered, then declined, and samurai arose.
The tax evasion acts of peasants were in fact shaping Japan's history.
That was what the masses were.

The Lord of the Tanuki Palace might well have become a Diet member before long.
The fact that lords came to be was also something the masses brought about.
Since it was Tonosama, perhaps it was the House of Councillors.
And wasn't that just fine?
Why was this acceptable?
The masses had chosen, and thus it had come to be.

Don't think you alone are superior.
"I'm superior; the masses are stupid"—I detest anyone who spouts such nonsense.
Those types immediately adopt moralistic airs, wield power self-righteously, display petty bureaucrat mentalities, and turn fascist.
No one is superior.

During the war, Lieutenant General Shiouten—infamous for persecuting Jews—became a Diet member with Japan's highest vote count.
And isn't that perfectly acceptable?
The masses get hounded by power, obeying its every decree while being tossed left and right, utterly adrift.
Yet ultimately, it's these same masses—ground down by power—who set power in motion; this form emerges.
Such is the shape of what we call history.

What are the masses?
They know nothing of politics.
They know nothing of literature.
They know nothing of the nation's tragic fate.
Yet the masses go on living.

They cannot eat decent food.
Let such a Japan perish in defeat.
That is what the masses are.
Even if Japan perishes, they want to eat decent food.
They want to stay with that person.

These masses—scorched by war flames, barely surviving—remain a silent yet cheerful multitude.
Their vitality defies belief.
How do they endure these ration shortages?
Yet endure they do.
No one sparks revolution.
They persist unperturbed.
How can survival even be possible?
By literal measure, they should be dead.
Politics proves utterly worthless.
Those who endure unshaken are the masses.

"I am superior."
"What utter fools the masses are."
"Such people will only become another Tojo Hideki."
"They will only become various petty officials under him."

"A correct ideology cannot be born from a sense of superiority I hold toward the masses."
"The bourgeoisie cannot be allowed to take the place of the masses."
"In other words, simply as humans: Christ addressed original sin, and Confucius saw benevolence as life's principle."
"In any case, we must start from humanity."
"Even if we regress thousands of years, it matters not."
"Over countless thousands of years, superficial civility must be seen as entirely futile."

Are the masses primitive people?
They were not primeval humans.
Nor were they primitive people.
In other words, they were medieval primitives.
Hounded by aristocratic power into tax evasion and flight, falsifying family registers, evading wartime contributions, employing every trick to deceive, forming gangs to hoard tobacco, creating pan-pan guilds—their essence was that of medieval primitives. Without electric lights or gas, they made do with candles and firewood; if life was deemed reducible to such basics, then basics sufficed. They were medieval people who invented neither lights nor gas themselves.

However, intellectuals too had secretly relied on civilized knowledge; yet when defeated in war, it became clear they were nothing more than medieval humans.

After all, there were intellectuals in the medieval period too, and there were good people.
The Jewish scholars were cursed by Christ; the self-righteous good people received Shinran’s rebuke; these good people ostensibly attained rebirth—such was the outcome where they managed to fulfill their true intentions at the critical moment.

As for what we call Jewish scholars—well, today they would likely become PhDs in philosophy—but those good people who barely attained rebirth under Shinran’s teachings: in today’s terms, they are ones who furrow their brows excessively, rage against moral collapse, hate black marketeers, hate pan-pan girls, hate eroticism, hate the grotesque, hate strikes; saints with this much hatred would be troubled—yet they cannot help but hate.
When someone becomes a "good person," their heart is besieged by great worries, and their troubles know no respite.

Under the new constitution, the distinction between samurai and townspeople vanished, imperial nobles disappeared—everyone was human, even the Emperor was human; people professed to believe this, but in truth none of them actually did.

First， he looked at the newspaper.
Fraud suspect： former Diet member Mr． So-and-so， it read．
Pistol robbery suspect： So-and-so， it read．
Even those who had done good deeds—if they were company employees or above， it read Mr． So-and-so； if drivers， So-and-so．

At this point, the righteous intellectual-sensei became indignant and demanded, “What is this distinction between *-shi* and *-kun*?”
“What is this *-shi* for villains? Whether villains are relegated to *yobisute* or Diet members are relegated to *yobisute*, all good citizens must be given *-shi*.”

Why must criminals be relegated to *yobisute*?
Crime should be hated.
But are there humans who do not commit sin?
Are not both the neighborhood association guilds and pan-pan guilds equally sinners before God’s seat?
Is eating black market rice not a sin?
Everyone eats black market rice; if they don’t, they cannot survive. If they cannot survive without doing so, is it permissible to commit sin? Is that not a sin?

Every human being harbors all manner of criminals within their heart.
Kodaira and Higuchi reside within our hearts.
At times, there are somewhat bizarre incidents.
"A mother killed Mamako and, along with her own child, spent three days boiling and eating Mamako’s flesh—we’d never commit such a crime. No such demon lives inside me."
“However, your ladyship’s point does not concern the issue of crime.”
“Not everyone wants to eat human flesh.”
“Those who dislike edible frogs will never want to eat them.”
“They feel no appetite.”
“This is a matter of taste.”
“It is not a matter of crime.”
“Crime resides in everyone’s heart.”

All people are alike.
If the Prime Minister is Mr. Katayama, then adulterous murderer Mr. Kodaira must remain Mr. Kodaira even when sentenced to death.
It must be Mr. Tojo Hideki.

Human nature shows no variation among all people.
There exists no distinction between sinners and saints.
In a society where this self-awareness remains unexercised, whatever veneer of civility one might fabricate will inevitably regress to medieval banditry when opportunity strikes—it amounts to nothing beyond this.

★

I do not care for this thing called sentimental kindness.
I suffered both the sentimental favoritism in tobacco queues and the neighborhood guilds' tyranny, but at the smallest shop run by an ailing elderly couple in my neighborhood—a place allocated thirty or twenty sticks when others received five hundred or at least a hundred—the old man there took pity on me for some reason and once whispered:
"Come anytime—I'll set aside contraband for you."
Then he added, "What's wrong with that?" but I gave no reply.

I was not ill, but during the war I may have been utterly malnourished.
There were no special rations whatsoever.

Subsisting solely on pumpkins and beans as staples, in a state where being allowed to eat sardines once a month was considered a significant event, the elderly tobacco shop owner seemed to regard me as an invalid and showered me with great sympathy.

I wanted tobacco, but I lacked the courage to resort to sympathy.
If it were malice, I could bring myself to accept it—but I cannot abide human kindness.
As for black market prices, they were what I normally used—though truth be told, back then I didn’t even have enough money to buy black market tobacco.

As far as the old man at this tobacco shop was concerned, the sympathy directed at me was of an extremely pure nature.
He didn’t know where I came from—my address, name, or occupation.
It was simply a nature that sympathized with my sickly appearance and impoverished state—utterly devoid of any intention to curry favor or act for personal gain.

If it were black market rates, I could respond; if they meant to profit from it, I could negotiate through reciprocal exchange.
Faced with pure sympathy, I can only cower in mortification—indeed, I imagine all of us so-called literati share this frailty.

Since I failed to reciprocate his kindness, whenever I now occasionally meet the old man en route to the baths, he fixes me with a glare before turning away.
The pain cuts deep.

I maintain that such simple human compassion must be processed with intellectual precision.
Kindness and affection shouldn't be doled out in miserly portions.
They demand totality—staking one's entire being alongside the act.
Otherwise, these sentimental impulses merely grow faintly soiled; better to cleanly convert such emotional matters into material terms.

Therefore, rather than living in this world of human kindness, I found it easier to navigate the materialistic human relationships of today. If someone were going to divert tobacco, I preferred they sell it at clear black market prices rather than peddle it at official rates under some pretense of human kindness. Both were sins, but being villainously sinful proved clearer and cleaner than being virtuously sinful.

The law might lightly punish those who diverted goods at official prices through human kindness, but before God’s seat, there could be no gradation of sins. The ignorance of failing to recognize one’s own sin precisely through virtuous conduct—this too constituted another sin. Thus, I considered it cleaner to commit crimes villainously with clear intent. Ignorance was sin. Virtuous ignorance was a deeper sin. Sin must always be consciously acknowledged.

It takes boldness for a person to unilaterally assert only their own interests.
However, when banding together to do this, one needs no courage.
In these associative bonds—the Neighborhood Association guild, the Market guild—there still lies virtuous ignorance.
Reflection on other positions, selfhood, criticism of sin, impartial observation of the general situation—those things are no longer necessary.
If those things exist, one cannot assert selfish desires without courage.

That is to say, there had already been many such good people since the medieval period—since antiquity.
If even good people barely attained salvation—that is, scarcely achieved their true desires—how much more so for evil people?
Because they were aware of their sins, the children of sin who resolutely trod the path of evil with pathos and courage were loved more than the good people before God’s seat.

Black marketeers run rampant, good people grow poor—they call this a strange world, a moral collapse, an apocalyptic age. But we didn’t become this way only now; we had always been medieval people through and through. In former times, trains weren’t crowded, so there was no need to shove others aside and knock them down; rice was plentiful, so black marketeers didn’t exist. Instead, there were people who couldn’t eat despite working and those who wanted to work but found no jobs—but back then, with no convenient path like black markets to immediately secure food, they had no choice but to hang themselves or worse. Thus, black marketeers didn’t exist simply because the occupational category of black marketeer hadn’t emerged—not because there were no people who wanted to become black marketeers.

If goods were in surplus, black marketeers would naturally disappear.
If trains were no longer crowded, no one would push others aside.
It was entirely natural; there was nothing artificial about it.
This was neither collapse nor anything of the sort.
It resembled a natural phenomenon.

Just because someone delayed their response or faltered slightly in speech, they would slap and kick soldiers—wasn't that sort of order far more of a moral collapse?
What manner of order was this that conquered and domesticated humans through power?

The natural byproducts of defeat—black marketeers and pan-pan girls—had almost nothing criminal about them.
In our daily lives as common people, if unavoidable, we might even relieve ourselves standing up in public; when in a hurry, dash through ignoring traffic signals; crimes on the level of black marketeers and pan-pan girls were committed by nearly everyone without exception.

Compared to this, how could the evils of politicians—who knowingly committed grave sins while crafting noble pretexts, preparing to exploit legal loopholes, wielding power, relying on dependencies, and even manipulating national law—not be evils beyond comparison?

The Seiko Incident was not some new breed of fraud emerging today.
Fraud had always existed thus through every age, with similar dealings long being conducted behind politics' curtain.
They said the Market Guild boss donated ten million yen to become an officially endorsed candidate.
Were such matters not fraud's very womb?
Did not politics' very nature foster fraud's character?

While streets overflowed with voices condemning pan-pan girls and black marketeers, scarcely any cursed such political parties' state of being.
Why?
Those holding power even had their children's crimes overlooked by police—the Japanese had never prevailed against authority since ancient times, just as crying children cannot defeat magistrates; being power worshippers, they blindly submitted to authority, and consequently when seizing power themselves, wielded it recklessly without compunction.

In my area, there were constant blackouts; I, who feared blackouts more than anything, refused to use an electric stove despite having neither gas nor firewood.
Then came someone who smashed through my house's fence at dawn and stole it.
You could hardly blame them.
But since a broken fence would trouble me too, when I clattered open the window and yelled "Hey!", off they fled—off they fled. As I stayed awake until morning, that violent crashing sound told me everything immediately—this was clearly some flustered amateur thief.
When desperate, one has no choice.

However, committing crimes under the excuse that “there’s no choice when desperate” cannot be justified.
Thus, criminals vanish like mist.
“Can’t be helped—is stealing so wrong?” Yet they never confront me with such arguments.

But on the side of the authorities cutting off electricity—no coal, no water; what doesn’t exist can’t be helped; being desperate means no alternative.
“It’s only natural,” they say.

“No rice—since there’s none, it can’t be helped. Rations suspended,” they declare.
Thieves flee without defiance, yet the authorities brazenly stand their ground.
They call the Lord of the Tanuki Palace a swindler for missing delivery deadlines, but these authorities withhold promised goods—though since they don’t take payment, I suppose they aren’t swindlers. Yet in their swindler-like essence, unaware of their own sins, they never neglect to preach about enduring scarcity and moral decay to the nation.

When you went to the government office to complain about their actions, they said they didn't know—it was an order from a higher office.

As for those involved in the Military Uniform Incident and other such cases—"I don't know," they said. "That person told us it was in that warehouse, so we believed it existed."
Fraud incidents and government officials—weren't they of the same character?
There was no morality anywhere.

Between the pan-pan girls and black marketeers versus what the authorities did—which side represented a greater moral collapse?

Engaging in pan-pan work required courage.
Becoming a black marketeer also required courage.
Fighting against sin and downfall demanded tremendous courage.
Officials needed none of it.
By occupying seats called government offices, they not only avoided recognizing their sins but could even declare that refusing to comply with their forced ration suspensions constituted vice.

However, I did not mean this was some major sin.
It was no major sin.
In their failure to recognize their own guilt, they shared equal blame with neighborhood guilds and market guilds; they were only marginally worse than the black marketeers and pan-pan girls who recognized their sins and wrestled with their consciences.

Black marketeers may be a postwar phenomenon, but when politicians profit—though no one called this “yami” in the past—isn’t this too a form of yami?
It constitutes neither legitimate transactions nor income recorded in tax ledgers.
Thus black marketeers have always existed elsewhere; today’s moral collapse is no new development—it had been collapsing all along.
Japan had been medieval from the start.
It remained medieval through and through, merely draped in borrowed underwear of superficial civility; its essence never changed.
Is not the entire nation itself nothing more than a fraud-ridden, yami-driven, pan-pan-like entity?

There was no difference between Jikōson's character and the Emperor's character.
During the war, they had clapped their hands in unison, performed national rituals, bowed deeply toward the Imperial Palace over people's backsides in packed trains; even now there were those submitting direct petitions, those donating rice—and they called these heartwarming tales.
This character showed no difference from Jikōson-sama.

We medieval Japanese as a nation had still not reached awareness of our own ignorance.
This ignorance meant failing to recognize even that it constituted sin; humanity had not even begun to become aware of itself, much less its original sin.

Without becoming aware of our own sin-laden hearts, we cannot shed our medieval selves.
I too shall follow Shinran's example and declare without reservation: in postwar Japan, it is precisely these so-called good people who are decaying.
The character of Japanese officials and self-styled virtuous citizens shows greater moral decay than pan-pan girls—the very morality and order of Japan itself are rotting at their foundations.

Without recognizing oneself as a sinner, neither true ideology nor ideals can exist.