Most reporting did not reveal the startling remainder of his lengthy speech. I'd like to linger for a moment on that unreported remainder. Nakasone's speech, in its entirety, is a delirious sweep through historical time and cultural space. His ostensible theme is the place of an international Japan in the world today and the Liberal Democratic party's role in attaining that place. But along the way he makes an excursus not only through Japanese history, but also through global space, invoking a theory of parallel development proposed by the anthropologist Umesao Tadao, director of the National Museum of Ethnology.
All paranoiac deliriums stir up similar historical, geographic, and racial masses.
Nakasone's speech is a classically paranoiac attempt to confirm Japanese world parity in an increasingly fragmented international and domestic milieu, to restore the honor of the Japanese race by comparing it to other races. Within this delirium, however, is a canny recognition of the crucial importance of knowledge and information, with education and literacy as the clearest confirmation of Japan's contemporary superiority. Nakasone's narrative of knowledge conjoins prehistorical past and high-tech future in a series of assertions about the status of knowledge in Japan today. First of all, society's rhythm and tempo are extraordinarily fast. Politics must match their pace.