I have long argued that whereas the 20th century was an age of utopia, the 21st century will be an age without a utopia. "Utopia" means an imaginary ideal place where everything is perfect.

During the first three-quarters of the 20th century, utopia was believed to be found in socialism. A large number of youths and intellectuals in Japan blindly believed in the prophecies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that the capitalist system would inevitably collapse because of the "contradictions" inherent in the relationship between production and labor relations, and would be replaced by a socialist system free of such contradictions under which workers would no longer be exploited by capitalists.

In the mid-1960s, I remember bidding farewell to a man by the name of Kim, who was my classmate and a Korean resident in Japan. He and his family returned to North Korea; he said he was going to be a man like Kim Il Sung, Pyongyang's strongman.