If you are a very enthusiastic reader of my works which I sincerely expect you to be, you’re already aware I’ve rarely write down columns here these days. There are several reasons. First, I just don’t have any time to give thoughts and ideas by writing here. Second, regardless of my repeated warnings, there are indeed some Japanese readers who illegally translate and copy what I wrote down here. Again, this IS my work and can’t be translated and copied without my written permission. Particularly to those who enthusiastically but illegally copy my writings, this is the last warning you may never skip (I know your names. An English teacher and his staffs.).

This time, I’m writing to you, dear readers, because I gradually become aware it’s not the Japanese ordinary people but the upper-class in the global community except for my own country, Japan, such as successful overseas Chinese family members that must be targeted by this official weblog. From time to time, I’m invited to significant events abroad and given opportunities to speak about forthcoming common future of the global community. Every time when I do so, there is always a part of audience there, which belongs to the above-mentioned social class and kindly and passionately pays great attention to my speech. Thus, I make up my mind to write down my thoughts and impressions here again so that these people all over the world can reach me and my forecasting in the internet.

The day before yesterday, a prominent and extremely successful overseas Chinese business person kindly invited my chief secretary and me to an amazing party in Shanghai. At a glance, I found it to be a party of American style: Everybody got together, and enjoyed him/herself, while he/she is intentionally invited from various fields. While having enjoyed dancing with R&B and even “Auld lang syne” from Scotland, he kindly introduced us, “VIPs from Japan”, to all the other guests, who are both successful and ambitious young entrepreneurs and business persons in Shanghai. The party itself was not only pleasant but insightful for me and my chief secretary, who had worked there for six years before joining my office in Tokyo. Remembering the old sweet days in Shanghai, she told me, “Yeah, this is exactly what I’m missing in Tokyo. This atmosphere, I mean”. When young Japanese guys and girls get together in a party, they either are pessimistic enough to talk about how to escape from the declining Japanese society, or enthusiastically hunt husband/wife to be. That’s it, and they never talk about how to collaborate together for success in business. But there, in Shanghai, the situation was completely different. As it’s always the case for the Chinese, they just talked about how to succeed in life and how to cooperate with each other for this goal. I really love to experience such an atmosphere which leads us to our possible future success. The old but most energetic Chinese business gulu, who, as mentioned beforehand, kindly organized the party during our visit to the Bund, said to me, “Let’s repeat it in Tokio. Get together again in Azabu-juban”.

While dancing together, he added one simple question to our conversation: “Japan should (or even has to) join the Chinese policy ‘One-belt, one-road’. Do you know why?” Capitalism is doomed to always expand market. Particularly for countries such as Japan, of which economic growth can be done only by foreign trade, this axiom is inevitable. In the post-war era, Japan has, in fact, pursued this policy, while heavily relying on Japan-US alliance. Once US succeeds to open a foreign market, sometimes even with military power, Japan soon follows and massively sells her products in the market while enjoying intentionally depreciated JPY. Through this way, Japan effectively transfers national wealth of other nations and keep it in domestic economy by all means. Even though the ordinary Japanese firmly believe their economic growth so far was done by their own innovation and energetic marketing and sales, the fact was so. This business model of Japan in the post-war era is vulnerable to the collapse of Japan-US alliance. This is why GOJ and all the Japanese Prime Minisiters just follow instructions and demands from US without any objections.

But now, the time is chaning. The US is repeating the same trade policy vis-a-vis PRC as she once did to Japan. The Americans intended to escalate trade conflicts with PRC and dramatize it as if it were a “trade war”. But the Chinese business gulu, who was dancing with me in Shanghai, smiled and simply said, “I’m confident China will win the ‘trade war'”. According to his understanding, there won’t be surely no winner in this “war” in the short term. However, how about the long-term. The modern history shows the country, People’s Republic of China”, was founded by Chinese communists, after they had been forced to fight against enemies so long time. In the country’s “blood”, unparalleled resilience is incorporated, which the Americans, “the Always-Winners in the modern history”, never know.

While the expectation of PRC’s final win in this “trade war” is higher than we usually think, Japan will be, soonner or later, forced to choose either China or US. When she’ll do so, she’ll have to take into account the simple fact there are so many other suppliers of goods and resources to PRC, while it’s PRC that US’s most important trade partner. As long as USG forbids American companies to freely trade with the Chinese, US economy is weakened in an accelerated manner. That is, of course, really bad for both D. Trump and his successor (maybe from 2021?).

“Japan seems to have no other choice than to formulate a brand-new trade policy based on PRC’s ‘one-belt, one-road'”, my Chinese gulu said. And he never forgot to whisper the following to me: ” As long as the developing countries, which the policy intends to connect itself to, remains their status as such, they can’t help from buying Chinese products. But, once they will succeed to boost their economies thanks to this policy, their people will abruptly change their buying attitude, and buy only Japanese products of good quality. It’s always the case for economic growth and development in the post-war era. Thus, I wanna say to my Japanese friends, ‘Don’t be afraid and hesitate to join us. Your future is prosperous as ours.'”.

Having heard this argument, I spontaneously asked him for his opinion on distorted conditionality for foreign loan by PRC to developing countries. To maintain the “one-belt, one-road” policy, PRC massively gives loans to developing countries, which allow PRC to import their own natural resources and buy Chinese products and services in return. To kick off and accelerate this cycle, PRC obviously violates international standards for conditionality in terms of foreign loan, and US and other western countries get angry more and more. This is very bad for the international established financial regime such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund. To answer my question in this regard, the gulu laughed and shortly said, “Well, what did Japan do to PRC? What PRC is now doing is exactly the same as your country has done so far to PRC and other developing countries”.

Is there really no way-out for Japan other than simply changing its trade (or even alliance) policy and joining the circle of “one-belt, one-road”? I personally don’t think so. Because Japan still has a secret lethal weapon in her hand. What is it?

“You know, Japan will soon default, no matter what the global community will make effort to prevent her from doing so. From the forthcoming autumn, you’ll feel what I now mean to say. And from the early spring of the next year, you’ll directly see what I’m now saying. Be careful”, I told him. Japan’s default will cause a domino effect of sovereign debt crisis all over the world, especially in both US and PRC, and at the last stage of such a crisis, the global community will be forced to rethink and create the new world order which has been never seen in the human history.

“Really? Nobody told me such a future crisis. Are you sure? Show me some evidences”, the gulu said. Evidence? Of course, I can show you some. But the point is not US and PRC, but Japan is the chosen nation which already receives the message from the very near future and either intentionally or unconsciouslly prepares for the forthcoming development of the human civilization. I am a part of the chosen group in Japan, which is allowed to access to the message and detailed secret scenario including very near-future economic and security crisis, pandemic. What I’m permitted here, is just to disclose parts of that only step by step and with my own words (no original scenario and message). And as you already know, those who exactly know what will happen tomorrow, are the persons who may hold the ultimate power.

The future world is not the one based on “one-belt one-road”, but “Pax Japonica” initiated by the words which have been descending primarily to Japan and her chosen people. Stay tuned.

Today,  I was honored to deliver a public speech at 2019 High Level Seminar on World-leading Think Tanks co-organized by Center for China and Globalization and Penn Wharton China Center in Berijing.  Check it out with the above-shown short video and think together with me about future role of think tanks in the age of new globalism.

The World Water Council informed its board of governors had just accepted the application of my institute, Institute for International Strategy and Information Analysis, Inc. (IISIA, Tokyo/Japan), for membership officially. We’re extremely proud to announce it herewith.

The IISIA, of which I’ve been owner and founder since 2007, continuously makes efforts to initiate both productive and future-oriented discussions on global issues such as water management and seeks effective solutions for enabling us to accelerate breakthrough on behalf of next generations. By successfully acquiring the membership of WWC, the institute further pursues its constructive role for the better world.

His Majesty, the Emeperor of Japan, has personally dedicated himself to World Water Forum organized by WWC and frequently attended the fora to substantially contribute to discussions there.

Yesterday, our institute, the IISIA, successfully singed the agreement for scientific and academic cooperation with the St. Petersburg State Economic University (UNECON). We’ll expand our future-oriented and innovative cooperation on win-win base between Japan and Russia beyond borders.

（Source: Seeking Alpha）

Obviously, we’re heading to the era of global trade war. While Trump Administration has been enthusiastically pursuing to close all the doors of US market vis-a-vis foreign enterprises, the rest of the world can do almost nothing. Every time when international conferences on trade issues are held, the discussions are just heating up and never lead us to peaceful solutions of trade conflicts.

Recently, Japanese Prime Minister Sinzo Abe was allowed to meet US President Donald Trump face to face in New York, where they released a statement in terms of trade issues. Even though Japan managed to save part of her vital national interest in the automobile sector, she fell into a trap of Trump Administration, which could successfully force her to combat against PRC together in the trade war beyond the Pacific.

Having said that, I firmly believe we’re urged to achieve a “Copernican Revolution” to overcome the emerging crisis in the global community. Nobody doubts the fact the modern society is based on the following several principles: Liberalism, democracy and capitalism. The point is, from my viewpoint, we’re about to fail to tackle the on-going trade issues, because we just forget the inevitable discrepancy between “liberalism” and “democracy”, which Carl Schmitt once pointed out in his legendary works on the constitutionalism in the Weimar Republic in Germany.

As one of the Japanese experts in this field, I would say we should just get back to the reality this traditional discrepancy has showed in the world history. When you stick to “democracy”, you’re automatically obliged to exclude those who are (somehow) different from you. Instead of accepting them, you intentionally neglect them by calling them “minority”. According to the principle of democracy, only the majority is permitted to make the rules and execute.

Democracy is geographically limited, since we’re still incapable of making all the people on the globe vote in the same election technically. Even if such technological difficulties would be overcome in the very near future, democracy never ends in the geographically limited manner. Because nations state, where the principle of “democracy” is alway asked and accepted,  can exist, only when a circle is drawn around a certain territory. Democracy and nation state system are thus based on the famous principle of “friend-enemy decision (Freund und Feind Entscheidung (Carl Schmitt))”.

In this regard, all the measures Trump Administration have been taking are genuinely “democratic”, while they intend to differentiate “friends (national interest of US)” and enemies (favors for foreign countries). This is exactly why we, outsiders, can never understand why Donald Trump can still keep his popularity in US. His credo, “America First”, is nothing but the expression of this kind of modern democracy.

Being contradictory to this geographic (or sometimes alleged “ethnic”) limitaion of democracy, liberalism never stops being “unlimited”. Something is not “liberal”, where someone/something hinders it from being “unlimited”. In this context, those who want to remain “liberal” by all means, inevitabily have to become “globalists”, who don’t know national borders any more. They always regard all the obstacles, which block them to do something freely, as “structure” and “barrier” as well, which shall be, from their viewpoint, immediately abolished. For them, the nation state system must be abolished, while they are full of this kind of “structure” and “barrier”. In shotr, liberalism leads us to globalism, where no single limitation is allowed.

The theory of “comparative advantage” has been the traditional propaganda which has managed to hide the discrepancy between democracy and libaralism. However, the irony of the hisotry is we need (financial) capitalism which instinctively motivates to move forward. To earn much more in the market, we need volatilities, which then widens the difference between winners and losers. The latter seeks any opportunities to revenge, which accelerate instability and volatility of the world community. Once and where previous equivalence in the world vanishes, the above mentioned theory of “comparative advantage” comes to an end. That will then highlight the dicrepancy between nation state’s democracy and globalists’ liberalism, as we see right now.

So many leadres of the differents countries appeal for maintaining the peaceful world based on the free trade we’ve enjoyed since the end of WWII. Nevertheless, the dicrepancy is just widening up thanks to Trump’s counterappeal for “America First”. Antagonism against others are rapidly growing up everywhere, while the previous equivalence based on the theory of “comparative advantage” is being lost step by step. Instead of rescuing “libaralism” in domestic politics, democracy accelerates the tendency to differentiate someone from others, as we now see the growing popularity for “Alternative fuer Deutschland (Alternative for Germany)”, a new party in Germany.  All of us are urged to remember the historical fact the Nazi regime was completely “democratic”, when it reached the top of the power (“Machtergreifung”). As soon as the Nazi as symbol of emotional democracy won, liberalism died.

Not to make the history repeat itself, globalists such as ICC, World Bank and IMF are about to launch new approaches in the internet, where no geographic limitation due to national borders isn’t known. However, I personaly think it might be doomed to fail from the very beginning of the project, condionted that a kind of human collective consciousness won’t appear. Only this “human collective consciousness” can remind us of “oneness” and “compassion” which overcome the eternal discrepancy between democracy and liberalism.

The question is how the “human collective consciousness”, or the feeling of “oneness” will be nurtured and expanded in the world community. This is the very question I’ve been asking myself in Japan, the country where all the issues of the advanced economies accumulate and are about to explode in the very near future (maybe by the spring of 2020).

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to enjoy a luncheon with a high ranking guest from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). I’ve been personally invited to the G20 CEO Advisory Group of the ICC, which discusses recommendations to the G-level on behalf of the global business community. This time, my colleague, who’s by the way an Australian, paid a visit to Tokyo to consult with his partners in Japan in terms of the Japanese presidency of G20 from the forthcoming December.

What he kindoy explained to me surprised me extremely. Within the framework of the B20, we’re used to organize task forces besides “plenary session”, which pick up global issues specifically for gathering collective wisdom of the global business community. However, based on his explanation, the Japanaese secretariat of B20 obviously intends to abandon task forces and hold just a plenary session called “B20 summit” on 14 and 15 March 2019. In addition, Japan never invites global consulting firms such as McKinsey and Co. to discussions under her B20/G20 presidency, which usually play signicant roles to hand over “narratives” of the global issues to the presidency every year. Without their intellectual assistance, Japan and her secretariat for B20 presidency, the Keidanren, obviously cut off any external “noises” to their own economic policies. This is exactly what the Abe Ministration has been doing for protectiong its own political and economic interest vis-a-vis any outsiders including the public.

“To my surprise”, my colleague from the ICC said, “the word ‘sustainability’ my Japanese counterparts enthusiastically used in his presentation seems to have other meaning and connotation than our usual understanding”. Even though his counterpart of the Keidanren enthusiastically pointed out to him that the Japanese B20 presidency will highlight the SDGs, he couldn’t fully grasp what the guy meant to say.

Having heard that, I spontaneously asked him a question: “The word ‘sustainability’, or ‘持続可能性’ in Japanese, only means ‘maintaining what is done’. But I’m wondering whether original meaning of ‘sustainability’ does have any other connotations.”

Laughing abruptly, my colleague from Paris knidly gave me a short explanation in this regard: “Sustainability doesn’t mean conservatism. To sustain a certain situation, we also need an improvement. Something innovative has to be done, so that the status quo remains. I’m afraid the Japanese misunderstand the word ‘sustainability'”. With a smile, I nicked.

The next year, 2019, will show you completely parallel worlds on the globe. The one is Japan where every interest and structure since 1945 still remains. Another one is the rest of the world under the western leadership, where everything has to be improved for the sustanability. Under the B20/G20 Presidency of Japan, this dichotomy will reveal dramatically, which will surely lead us to a fatal crash between Japan and other countries, particularly US and Europe. This will be the end of the conventional world order and kick off the new era with complete destruction of the “world of yesterday”. The battlefield ahead will not be in any other countries and regions, but Japan. Don’t forget it. Stay tuned.

For me as a former chief desk officer for DPRK issues of the Japanese MOFA, it was extremely astonishing to see journalists and mass media have been concentrating on only “denuclearizaion” of DPRK ahead of the sumitt between Trump and KJU in Singapore. Taking various opportunities such as yesteday’s press conference in the FCCJ in Tokyo/Japan, I underlined “denuclearization” as such can’t be the main issue in the US-DPRK relationship. Instead, we should rather focus on “other issues”, which Trump expressively mentioned during his press event, while this expression implicitly means issues of “illicit activities” done by the Kim-regime so far.

Having read through the joint statement of Trump and KJU, you should make sure at first “nothing new and significant as well” is mentioned there. We’d better ask ourselves why Trump could accept such a statement text which obviously prioritizes interest of the Kim-regime as follows:
As for “denuclearization”, CVID isn’t mentioned at all.
Regarding the “end of the Korean War”, Trump just comitted to effeorts for building up stable peace in the Korean Peninsula. Nothing more.
The POW/MIA issue is picked up, even though USG were used to make appropriate “payment ” to get back their identified remains from Pyongyang.
Of course, no single expression such as “Japanese abductee issues” is referred to.
No date of the next summit is inserted.
Again, you should now wonder why Trump singed such a text which unilaterally prefers interest of the Kim-regime. From my viewpoint, this clearly implies there must be a secret agreement between Trump and KJU, which prioritizes covert national interest in return.
Well, let’s see what’s next. You have to forget at least euphoria you had in the last a few days. Stay tuned.

At the dawn of the (hopefully!) forthcoming US-DPRK summit in Singapore, the New York Times on June 3, 2018 quoted my comment on the typical behavior of DPRK delegation in diplomacy as follows. Click the link to NYTs original article:

“The American diplomats should be careful,” said Takeo Harada, a former Japanese diplomat who was the chief desk officer for the North Korean desk in the Foreign Ministry when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang. “Even though they could be very friendly during preparation talks, you never know how the North Korean side would behave in the last moment during the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un.”

On 11 June, 2018, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) kindly hold a press conference where I’ll be given an opportunity to express my own opinion and analysis on DPRK issues and the future of East Asia. Those who have interest to join us, click this link and ask the FCCJ.

Just uploaded a short video of my statements given on the occasion of this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which I reall enjoyed. Besides all the other (few) Japanese speakers and panelists, who are “officially” dispatched by the Government of Japan, I was the only speaker who voluntarily raised the hand to speak out to the audience as the voice of the Japanese civil society.

Well, guys, I’m extremely interested in how you’ll respond to my thought to compare “Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft” with the on-going transition from knowledge economy to trust economy. Your comments are kindly requested. Many thanks indeed in advance for your swift replies.