China has emerged in the East Asia region, with its GDP now exceeding Japan’s. It has also attempted to use its military to protect its maritime interests, stirring conflict with neighboring countries.

This situation raises concern that China could implement measures that threaten both Japanese and global economic activities, such as by banning exports of rare earths and other natural resources, imposing restrictions on investment and resorting to other means backed by its tremendous national strength. In the same way the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute-settlement procedures nullified one-sided measures such as Article 301 of the United States Trade Act, a framework is needed for disciplining actions by China pursuant to the rules to which numerous countries have agreed.

These reasons suggest why it would be effective for Japan to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations along with other developed countries of the Asia-Pacific region, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, take the initiative in establishing advanced rules on regional trade and investment, and present them to China and other countries. If TPP participants expanded to include most of the countries and areas of the Asia-Pacific region, it is likely that Chinese companies would see it as in their best interest to comply with the rules. In other words, it is desirable to first establish the TPP among countries capable of complying with the high-level rules and then to incorporate China, in order to establish a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) for the dual purposes of economic development and political stability in the overall region. This is necessary not only for controlling China’s actions, but also those of the United States, where the benefits of certain industries can easily influence national trade policies.

The effect of Japan’s “lost decade” lingers today, nearly ten years later, and there are still few signs of convincing recovery. Faced with new challenges of recovery and reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan’s economy will likely continue to confront medium- to long-term constraints that lie ahead, including further population decline, a lower birthrate combined with population aging, and accumulating fiscal deficits. Viewing the current situation it is hard to say that deflation is under control. Advancing strength of the yen and low stock prices tied with the increasing sovereign risk in Europe and the United States are making it increasingly difficult to identify a new growth path.

This article narrows down the impacts of medium- to long-term constraints on the Japanese economy, particularly with regard to population aging, the declining birthrate and fiscal deficits, and ties this together referring to policies necessary for sustainable economic growth.

My mother was innately a cook; and even more, she was an expert at raising children.

I lived with my mother for almost 52 years without ever questioning the taste of her food. She had prepared food for me until the evening before she died, telling me, “Don’t tell me I should rest. Have some rice with katsuo (bonito) sashimi.”

People will always eat food that shapes their life. This warms the hands and feet. It colors the cheeks. It motivates. It is such physical responses that accumulate like layers of thin paper on which people seek dependence. This accumulated dependence eventually redirects to a will to believe in something or someone. From the garden of faith grows hope, and the process has naturally developed the soil for love.

We cannot separate faith, hope and love because they are the entirety of life. But I cannot help believe that they originate from faith. And I believe it is in around the same area where we can find the reasons why people have to eat food that shapes their life.

Life’s goal is for the biological human to become a person comprised of faith, hope and love. There are many conditions for a human to become a person, but food is strictly one of those that we cannot possibly be without.

It must have taken my mother and me to put this conviction into words.

By some turn of fate, this magazine took interest in my involvement in the subject of food and life, and in additional response to the younger generation’s increasing interest in the Bible, the publisher Bungeishuju Ltd. asked me to delve into food-related scenes in the Bible, particularly into the ultimate love embodied in the bread and wine scene of the Last Supper. I believe it is extremely rare for a general magazine to squarely face this sacred ritual.

Since this topic was about discussing the real-life experience of food in terms of one’s view of life, I felt the need to obtain a supporting foundation from experiences in and academic knowledge of other fields. The four experts I turned to offered their sincere support.

Mr. Sato Ryusuke who led the project offered his 75-year-old heart and soul, saying, “I’ve actually now studied for the third time in my life.”

I hope to deliver the passion of these experts to readers further beyond the target of this magazine. This is because a Korean woman once said to me, “The Japanese people eat in a way to merely survive each season. We eat in a way to prepare for the next season.” These words came during a casual conversation we had while laying on a stone spa at Tamagawa Onsen in Akita Prefecture, and had stuck in my mind ever since. Yet this frank comment is, in fact, an offering to you as well. Those of you in your 20s and 30s and living a single life, please know that urban lives especially should take on these words so that you can break out of your current eating styles.

I further ask our key players in politics, economics, academics, art, religion, media and various other fields to uphold a view on life and come up with their directions on food issues in light of the population increase Asia will face in the next 20–30 years. A view on life is the most greatly lacking topic in this nation.

Translated from “Shoku to Inochi — hito ga hito to narutameni,” Bungeishunju, November 2011, pp. 348–349. (Courtesy of Bungeishunju Ltd.)

MIKURIYA Takashi: Today we would like to reflect on political parties in the past 20 years, including those that are now defunct, and their relation to politics. My hope is that by looking at what each party did and the policies they achieved, and evaluating them and gauging their historical significance, we can identify the structural problems in today’s government.

Let’s start in 1992. This was the year we saw the downfall of Shin Kanemaru, chairman of the largest faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the Takeshita faction, owing to the Tokyo Sagawa Express incident in which he received 500 million yen in illegal donations. It was an era when factions within the LDP played key roles, and the Takeshita faction formed by Takeshita Noboru and Kanemaru Shin was particularly powerful. Kanemaru’s downfall prompted the faction to split into the Obuchi (led by Obuchi Keizo) and Hata/Ozawa (led by Hata Tstutomu) factions, which later led to the downfall of the LDP. Before we study the other parties, I think we must touch upon this Takeshita group.

MATSUBARA Ryuichiro: Former Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro was the key figure in all this. Ozawa voted for the non-confidence resolution against the Miyazawa administration and later left the party to form the Japan Renewal Party. This triggered the LDP breakup that would occur later. The Takeshita faction ended up as it did because of a devil of sorts within it, named Ozawa.

Ozawa at this point had already advocated the very ideals that laid the groundwork for the political and administrative reforms of the Hosokawa administration and structural reforms of the Koizumi administration that would come later. I feel that everything that has led to today’s politics sprouted from sometime around 1992.

Mikuriya: A key party here was the Japan New Party (JNP) that former governor of Kumamoto Prefecture Hosokawa Morihiro formed in 1992. The JNP ran for that year’s House of Councilors (upper house) elections and won four seats. Hosokawa had declared the founding of his new party in the monthly magazine Bungei shunjuu. This ultimately turned out acting like a public advertisement to seek candidates, which was something that no party had ever dreamed of doing. Hosokawa was sort of a genius, coming up with one innovative idea after another.

The JNP only held four seats, so without the right to participate in the House Steering Committee or ask questions in the assembly, it initially was unable to make noticeable moves. But having gradually gained power through gubernatorial/mayoral and regional elections, the party succeeded in the 1993 House of Representatives elections by winning 35 seats, all with first-time representatives. Fifteen graduates of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management won in this election, including current Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, which was another event that led to today’s situation.

Matsubara: What was truly shocking about Hosokawa for the general public like us was that he was the first politician to pay such attention to appearance. I wonder how many politicians back then cared so much about a single necktie. He was also the one that established the trend of disclosing everything and making decisions openly, as opposed to the closed-door politics of the LDP. Although whether or not that was truly good is another question. This is because, as we saw in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) presidential elections in August, the party needs to form its cabinet on the premise of restoring harmony after the electoral battle.

Mikuriya: Indeed, this was when politics made the decisive turn toward avoiding behind-the-scenes decision-making. But the LDP was still unable to break out of its old system, and those who hated that trend began leaving the party like teeth falling off a comb.

Matsubara: In the 1993 House of Representatives elections, the Japan Renewal Party (JRP) won 55 seats and JNP 35, while the LDP lost its majority standing at 223 seats and fell to the opposition for the first time in the party’s history. Another key player here was New Party Sakigake, which was led by Takemura Masayoshi and won 13 seats.

Past Prime Ministers

Mikuriya: New Party Sakigake and the JNP were unmistakably the parties that opened the doors to political reorganization in the early 1990s.

Matsubara: These two parties were the equivalent of Apple and its role in the IT industry. The JRP was like the Microsoft that came later and attracted many people, but New Party Sakigake and the JNP were the ones that had the truly innovative ideas.

Mikuriya: Ozawa’s Renewal Party turned out to be the pursuer, but he ended up swallowing the other two parties with his influence. Getting the Socialist Party and Komeito involved as well, he set up a non-LDP coalition government, placing Hosokawa as prime minister and Takemura as chief cabinet secretary. The two parties initially had no intention of joining the alliance, but Ozawa brought them together, which was simply amazing.

Matsubara: Looking back now, this forming of a coalition government was the first event that demonstrated Ozawa’s power to its fullest extent. Hosokawa and Takemura ultimately parted over issues such as public welfare tax. Ozawa forcefully put together two people with completely different qualities and then broke them apart, so he displayed faces of both builder and destroyer. He did a similar thing later in the DPJ, but the case mentioned was the only time that he really succeeded.