Book 1: Chapter Aft
Afterword
Hello, it’s nice to meet you. To some of you, long time no see. This is Toru Toba. Thank you for picking up The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt: Hey, How About Treason?
How did you like this book?
Its topic is what you might call “governance.”
Governance: It’s seen as a vague, difficult, troubling topic. The more you look into it, the tougher this undertaking seems.
But at the same time, a nation isn’t something that moves by way of some invisible force working outside the bounds of mortal knowledge. It’s run entirely by human hands.
And because it’s run by humans, there are countless times when people have come together, racking their brains to decide on a solution, only for it to fail. Or just when they expect success, foreign countries might interfere or natural phenomena could cause some chaos, making them stumble in unpredictable directions. Other times, they might succeed without any major obstacles, winding up in a situation where they ought to give themselves a round of applause.
I think everyone has more or less oscillated between this kind of joy and sorrow.
Governance is about human behavior—a complex, tangled thing involving the thoughts and feelings of all kinds of people.