This article, dated April 28, 2020, draws on a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Miki Otaka published in a monthly magazine to examine China’s propaganda war, Mainichi Shimbun’s China Watch, the Jeam-ri Church incident, the Port Arthur massacre narrative, and the lineage of fabricated reporting that led to the Nanjing Massacre narrative. It criticizes the abnormality of some Japanese media, which lie not for the national interest but to damage it.

April 28, 2020
Mainichi Shimbun, too, has been taken in by China.
In fact, Mainichi distributed “China Watch” as an insert on the fourth Thursday of every month.
The following is the continuation of the special dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Miki Otaka, published in the monthly magazine released on April 24, which every Japanese citizen should read, under the title “People Infected by the China Virus, Which Is More Frightening Than Corona.”
A deep-rooted propaganda war.
Takayama:
China tells lie after lie about the Wuhan virus, but is there not a more deeply rooted propaganda war?
In He Qinglian’s China’s Great Propaganda, Fusosha, translated by Kaori Fukushima, various examples of China’s propaganda war are given in great detail.
Otaka:
I also touched on it in my book, but Mainichi Shimbun, too, has been taken in by China.
In fact, Mainichi distributed “China Watch” as an insert on the fourth Thursday of every month.
Takayama:
In your book, you repeatedly take up the Jeam-ri Church incident, 1919, related to Korea’s March First Independence Movement.
Otaka:
That is the incident in which Japanese authorities are said to have massacred about twenty local Koreans.
Takayama:
Even now, they bring up this story and demand apologies.
When I spoke before with Han Chang-woo, chairman of Maruhan, he also used it as the basis for saying “Japanese people are cruel.”
Otaka:
Mr. Han Chang-woo, the don of the pachinko industry.
Although he made his fortune in Japan through pachinko, which is prohibited in South Korea, I wonder whether it is acceptable for him to casually label Japanese people in that way.
Pachinko money flows to North Korea as funds for the development of nuclear missiles, so it is a terrible story.
As for pachinko Diet members, the Parliamentary League for the Promotion of the Amusement Industry, some have switched over to IR, and one wonders what country’s legislators they are.
A parliamentary league should properly speak up to people such as Mr. Han Chang-woo, including on taxation, but they misunderstand the meaning of their role.
Speaking of the Jeam-ri Church incident, last year as well, Japanese pastors visited South Korea and went around apologizing.
Takayama:
In your book, you introduced a passage from the diary of Army General Taro Utsunomiya about “foreigners wielding poisonous pens.”
A poisonous pen means a reporter who intentionally tries to degrade Japan.
Otaka:
The Asahi ran a feature article titled “The Utsunomiya Diary: Valuable Testimony of a Bitter History,” dated March 1, 2007, yet it arbitrarily did not publish the part about the “poisonous pen.”
Takayama:
I think General Utsunomiya’s point has important meaning.
If one looks at the evaluations of Japan by foreign reporters and scholars who came to Japan from the end of the Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji period, one can see that, at that time, they perceived Japan very calmly and with good sense.
Otaka:
There were many hired foreigners.
For example, Lafcadio Hearn, Koizumi Yakumo, and Fenollosa took a deep interest in Japanese culture and inherited and protected it.
Takayama:
However, one day, suddenly, foreign reporters and missionaries began speaking ill of Japan.
The trigger was the appearance, during the Sino-Japanese War, of the story called the “Port Arthur Massacre,” 1894.
The Japanese army fought bravely, treated surrendering Chinese prisoners generously, and also treated wounded soldiers.
European newspapers wrote this honestly, but American newspapers were completely different.
For example, James Creelman, a correspondent for the New York World.
He wrote that after the Japanese army captured the Port Arthur fortress, it rushed into the city and killed 20,000 Qing soldiers and Port Arthur civilians in an extremely brutal manner.
The Japanese side was flustered and said, “This is completely unfounded.”
It was not exactly the devil’s proof, but Japan had a very hard time proving something that did not exist.
Otaka:
On Wikipedia, the Port Arthur Massacre is posted as a fact.
Takayama:
Why did American newspapers carry such irresponsible articles?
Part of it was because it was the heyday of yellow journalism and they embellished the story, but that is not the essence.
The United States opened Japan to the world and probably thought of itself as something like the guardian of this mysterious people with a delicate aesthetic sense.
Then, in the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese displayed a brilliant naval battle, and even in land battles they showed clean and strong fighting without looting or slaughter.
At that time, Americans, who were still engaging in looting, slaughter, and rape in the Indian Wars, felt as if their own savagery had been exposed, and they suddenly came to dislike Japan.
Otaka:
Creelman deliberately wrote articles portraying the Japanese army as brutal, perhaps to reassure American citizens that “they too are as cruel as we are,” while also intending thereafter to write about Japan more badly than necessary and break Japan’s national prestige.
Takayama:
Good proof of that is that until before the Sino-Japanese War, evaluations of Japan were extremely favorable.
For example, The New York Times wrote, “Both the Japanese and the Chinese are strange, but the Chinese are unpleasantly strange.”
But after the Sino-Japanese War, they stopped treating Japan that way, and when they occasionally took it up, they only criticized it harshly.
After that, this disinformation about the Port Arthur Massacre became the model for reporting on Japan and led all the way to the Nanjing Massacre.
After this, Creelman, in the Spanish-American War, 1898, also wrote disinformation about how brutally and inhumanely Spain had acted in Cuba, without even going to the scene, thereby justifying America’s war acts.
He was a reporter who seems to have spent his life writing lies.
Otaka:
He is truly the model of a “foreign reporter wielding a poisonous pen.”
He is just like an Asahi reporter, though.
A wry smile.
Lies to damage the national interest.
Takayama:
Foreign journalism thinks it is all right to tell big lies if it is for the national interest.
In Japan’s case, however, they lie in order to damage the national interest.
Everyone bursts into laughter.
Otaka:
Why are they so completely opposite?
Takayama:
I do not understand that psychology.
You have taken up apology men such as Yukio Hatoyama and Uichiro Niwa and reported their strangeness.
Otaka:
I sometimes think that perhaps they have fallen into traps, had their weaknesses seized, and have no choice but to perform apology performances.
Takayama:
That may also be true.
In fact, He Qinglian’s “propaganda war” describes China-style grand external propaganda, in which China slanders and defames the other country, lowers its national prestige, and turns it into money.
But its origin goes back to Spain.
When Spain invaded Central and South America, Las Casas, a Spanish Dominican missionary, accused his own countrymen of inhuman brutality.
Otaka:
It was compiled as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Iwanami Bunko.
This report was published around 1542.
Takayama:
Las Casas did not have the intention of degrading his own country.
He accused it in accordance with his “conscience” as a missionary.
But Las Casas himself also harshly used the local people as slaves.
He was doing the same sort of thing himself, but he defended himself by saying that he was somewhat of a gentleman.
Perhaps such hypocrisy also exists in the hearts of Yukio Hatoyama and Uichiro Niwa.
Otaka:
That is vicious hypocrisy.
During the Age of Discovery, Spain, ahead of the British Empire, was called an “empire on which the sun never sets,” and led the Invincible Armada to conquer various parts of the world, building a great empire.
Takayama:
At that time, between Spain and Portugal, which had conquered every sea, the Treaty of Tordesillas was concluded in 1494.
With the approval of Pope Alexander VI, it determined the method of dividing new territories outside Europe.
It was decided that, in the sea about two thousand kilometers west of the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Senegal in West Africa, new territories east of the line along the meridian would belong to Portugal, and those to the west would belong to Spain.
The G2 of that era decided it that way.
Otaka:
Perhaps China began speaking of the “First Island Chain” and the “Second Island Chain” by imitating that treaty arrangement.
Takayama:
China is simply an arrogant great power, but it certainly feels that way.
Returning to Tordesillas, Portugal possessed places such as the East Indies, but most of the territories, centered on Central and South America, were controlled by Spain.
After that division, Britain, the Netherlands, France, and others set out to acquire colonies, but Spain stood in their way as a great wall.
Then how could Spain be driven out?
That is why Las Casas’s book of accusations was used.
This article will continue.