Until March 22, 2020, Japan had been one of the countries most successful in preventing the spread of the Wuhan virus, second only to Taiwan. This essay examines the conduct of NHK and commercial television networks, the influence of Asahi Shimbun-style ideology, and the structural problems of Japan’s postwar media, asking whether these institutions truly stand with the Japanese people.

April 20, 2020
The Wuhan virus and the reality of Japan.
Until March 22, Japan had been, second only to Taiwan, the country that had prevented infection most successfully in the world.
Originally, Japan could have been on the same level as Taiwan.
But Taiwan, having been excluded from the WHO because of China’s tyranny, and having suffered a bitter experience during SARS, which also originated in China just as the Wuhan virus did, was led to make the right decisions.
Japan, on the other hand, still has the Asahi Shimbun, which, unbelievably, has placed the foolish, absurd, and lowest of organizations, the United Nations, above the nation of Japan itself.
The Asahi Shimbun has been the backbone of opposition-party politicians, and has placed China and South Korea above Japan.
Those who grew up subscribing to and carefully reading the editorials of this Asahi Shimbun have controlled the news department of NHK, which is watched by the largest number of Japanese citizens.
And that is not all.
There is a fact taught to us by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
In the confusion after the war, many Korean residents in Japan, including those connected with Chongryon, entered television stations and newspaper companies, including NHK.
Many of them used Japanese names, as represented by Tetsuya Chikushi.
Therefore, the great majority of Japanese citizens, including myself, had no way of knowing the reality.
When Nobuhiko Sakai, former professor at the University of Tokyo, pointed out yesterday in his Sankei Shimbun column the evil of excessive staging in coronavirus coverage by commercial television stations, I, who mainly watch NHK’s 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. news programs, immediately realized something.
At almost the same time as what Mr. Sakai had been pointing out, NHK too had begun inserting strange narration.
At the same time, I realized that the staging they were using—the narration and the strangely resonant background music—was exactly the same as the utterly absurd impression manipulation carried out by South Korea at the time of the radar irradiation incident.
In other words, the reality of Japanese television stations is exactly as described in the painstaking work published on the Internet by a TBS employee.
The matter of the postwar confusion.
The matter of how North Korea was to be referred to.
Chongryon intimidated TBS and forced it to provide conveniences in hiring, including admission without examination, to people connected with Chongryon.
They, in particular, hold important posts in news departments and editorial departments.
The result, for example, is surely Nippon Television.
Even from what I happened to watch, at least once a year, on a Sunday, after Going ended, it produced and broadcast a special program, for example, justifying the fabrication of the Nanjing Massacre.
Unbelievably, it broadcast a program claiming that it had truly happened exactly that way, even though the sloppiness of its verification was obvious.
It was a program that used photographs intentionally, in other words, fabricatedly, and added unbelievably ominous narration.
Recently, it broadcast another truly ridiculous program, with the same kind of narration, asserting that the Ainu were the indigenous people of Japan.
I was so appalled that I immediately switched it off.
Those who make and broadcast such programs are absolutely not genuine Japanese citizens.
Nor are they likely to be Japanese citizens who grew up reading the Asahi Shimbun and the like, and became lumps of masochistic historical views and anti-Japanese ideology.
Because the people who produce and broadcast these programs possess an anti-Japanese sentiment that goes even beyond that.
To be continued.