Ghosts, November 2025 work.

My work for November 2025 is a “ZAITEN” serial column.

ZAITEN “The Contrarian Thinking of a Time Observer”

The December 2025 issue is “Will the Komeito Party become the new ‘enemy of the people’?”

The 98th installment. As the title suggests, it is about the Komeito Party leaving the coalition government. In the previous issue (the 97th), I wrote about how the Komeito Party was throwing a curveball to keep the possibility of a Sanae Takaichi presidency in check, and wondered what they would do if Takaichi actually won the presidential election... and it turned out exactly that way.

I am not sure if I should laugh nonchalantly at this turn of events (like Taro Kimura, who correctly predicted Trump's victory).
Even though they can no longer be used as a hitman following the arrest of Takashi Tachibana, the public is looking for a “punching bag whose conscience won't be pricked even if you hit them,” and these people fit that criteria perfectly.

By the way, those who have read the punchline probably know, but since the berserker in my house has finally disappeared, I have stopped my subscription to the Terror Newspaper.
It would be easier to find material for my column if I were still reading it, but even setting that aside, there is too little to read, and for some reason, I was the one paying for the subscription, so it became ridiculous.

Yet, a few days later, I was asked to accept a free delivery (oshi-gami) of an affiliated newspaper.
It seems to be an order from the upper management; they probably want to inflate the number of party members because their party strength is in jeopardy.
I forget the circumstances, but about 40 years ago, I was once asked to subscribe, and thanks to that, I was reading the serialization of Nobuhiko Kobayashi's “Seken-shirazu” (Ignorant of the World) in real-time.
It is a novel that was later given a strange, Kataoka Yoshio-style title change to “Heartbreak Back-to-Back” to match the cover illustration by Akimi Yoshida, which drew criticism.
The photo cover of Nae Yuki when “Far East Serenade” was adapted into a drama was also terrible, but you cannot express the texture of 80s Nobuhiko Kobayashi works without Tatsu Minegishi's illustrations.

Be that as it may, although it was themed around “the fear of nuclear war” in accordance with the nature of the publication at the time and the trends of the era, it was a mystery why it was being serialized, and I stopped my subscription as soon as the serialization ended, but well, that was the last time.

Thus, I am no longer struggling for column material.
Whether I actually want to write about it is another matter.

Random postscript.

I am unusually busy being dragged into an acquaintance's work.
It is not the kind of project that goes public, though.
During that work, we had a conversation where it was said, “Regarding activities other than ZAITEN,” “Wouldn't it be better to stop trying to find something in past archives?” “Because isn't your ZAITEN serial column already disconnected from the past?”

I think “all I can do now is retell the past,” so when I am told that, I feel a sense of hopelessness.
Conversely, if I talk about the present, it only amounts to something like my ZAITEN column... I am troubled because it only fits into about 1400 characters a month.

My attitude during my time as a critic was to find something in the trends I was involved with for work, but trends are just trends, and criticism was only misused to absolutize/idolize things that had gone out of style.
I hated that pettiness, so I thought about an attitude of mourning things that had gone out of style, but this did not go well.
The public spirit cannot endure the reality that the trends they believe in have gone out of style.

I have been thinking about such things for over 15 years now.
My column in Gendai Business was the last manuscript I wrote with an attitude of mourning, but I could not shake the feeling that it just did not fit well.

In the first place, even the title “The Contrarian Thinking of a Time Observer” is strange.
The phrase “contrarian” in this ZAITEN serial column was added by the person in charge, and I have absolutely no intention of writing as a contrarian.
The 1400-character monthly column works because my eyes as a time observer are fundamentally misaligned with the times, but I have come to the conclusion that it is probably difficult to write other things in a non-fiction narrative style anymore.

Well, I am thinking about such things as I approach the 100th installment of the series.

I have to write the manuscript for the next issue soon, but in terms of the column, the current actions of the Takaichi administration are mostly within the range of prediction and are not very interesting, so I think I will use a different topic.