It wasn't the first time that the writer, politician and current governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, had put his foot in his mouth. The governor called last week's earthquake a "divine punishment" for the "egoism" of contemporary Japanese. "We need to use the tsunami," he said, "to wipe out egoism, which has attached itself like rust to the mentality of the Japanese people over a long period of time."

This has long been a hobbyhorse of the Japanese right—the idea that young...