If I could do it all again, I'd be a farmer

Day 862, 23:26 • Published in Japan Japan • by Reiji Mitsurugi

Reiji Mitsurugi wears many hats, but speaks to you today as a private citizen.

Today is April Fool's Day. In just a month or so, it will have been one year since I published my first article in the Ashigaru Taishou and in it made the leap from silent farmer to active participant in the Japanese military-political landscape. Sometimes I'm left to wonder what things would be like if I hadn't taken that step.

I look, for example, at MacOllie, a proud Japanese soldier, older than myself by a good number of days. She never got involved in politics, or even bought a newspaper to enter the media. I would venture to say that, outside of the battlefield, MacOllie has no enemies. Everyone thinks well of her and we know we can count on her to do our country well.

What if I had done the same? I think of how my relationships with the people around me have changed over the last ten months. I remember greatly admiring Akki, for example, a man with whom I today couldn't be more at odds. I remember a lot of happy chats about Hungarian music with Darshu, who to me is now a subversive foreign agent. And how could I not mention KITA Ikki, the man who brought me into it all.


I smiled a lot more back then.

Before KITA Ikki introduced me to the Imperial Sun Party, I was sitting in Akki's National Alliance Party, quiet and complacent. I figured it was a good idea to get involved with the nation's largest party. But KITA was much more inviting and the ISP did seem to share my ideas a lot more than the NAP. So I became an Imperial Sun, and I just never stopped after that.

For a good long while, KITA and I were the core of a 'black and white avatar gang.' We went well together, shared similar ideas, challenged the status quo and, in my humble opinion, affected a lot of real, good change for the country. Under KITA's leadership, the Imperial Sun Party grew to be the largest in Japan. I came to know that jumping ship from the NAP was indeed the right choice.

But over time, KITA and I grew apart. The biggest wedge in this divide was the arrival of the North Koreans in August. Now, at first, we were very much on the same page, myself and KITA. While mistrustful of the new arrivals, we saw the opportunity to further upset the status quo. We tentatively worked with the new element in Japan and made a number of very real changes, not the least of which was the passage of our Constitution.

Sadly, though, KITA never grew to trust the new element, who can hardly be called new anymore. Many of KITA's converted critics are ironically newer to Japan than the people they consider outsiders. And I trust them all implicitly.

This issue of who can and cannot be trusted is the ugliest thing in politics today. I recently came across some suspicious circumstances surrounding KITA Ikki and jumped to some perhaps unfair conclusions about his past deeds and character. He claims I inferred things that did not happen. This could be true. But is there not also a possibility that the inferences he has made about the people he criticized are equally incorrect? Has he not been as harsh, unfair, and quick to accuse in his own past?

I cannot say. For who am I to judge? Here I am, a farmer in statesman's clothing, lamenting that I ever put them on. Just like Mobutu Sésé Seko, if I could do it all again, I'd be a farmer.