Based on Takamasa Kadota’s column, this article examines how most Japanese newspapers, except the Sankei Shimbun, ignored the recall movement against Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura led by Katsuya Takasu and others. It records how coverage of the Aichi Triennale’s “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” exhibition reduced the issue to the comfort-woman statue while concealing the deeper problem of anti-Japanese works funded by taxpayers’ money.

2020-06-07
Because I myself viewed the exhibition immediately after it opened, I understood why the mass media were concealing the truth.
They wanted to report that freedom of expression was being violated in Japan by some right-wing elements.
The following is from Takamasa Kadota’s serialized column published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title, “The Age When Newspapers Could Avoid Writing the Truth Is Over.”
At 2 p.m. on June 2, Katsuya Takasu, Naoki Hyakuta, and others held a press conference at a hotel in Nagoya City and announced that they would begin a recall movement against Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura.
At last year’s Aichi Triennale, in the exhibition “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’,” works such as one in which a portrait of Emperor Showa was burned with a burner and trampled underfoot, and a grave-like work that mocked and desecrated our war dead ancestors, became a problem.
Takasu objected to the fact that taxpayers’ money had been used for these works, saying, “We cannot allow our taxes to be used for this.”
The press conference lasted two hours, and there was also a question-and-answer session with local reporters.
However, in the Tokyo editions dated the following day, the 3rd, although only the Sankei carried an article titled, “Movement to Remove Aichi Governor: Director Takasu Says, ‘I Cannot Support Him,’” the other newspapers completely ignored it.
I have taken up this issue again and again since last year.
The newspapers focused only on the girl statue that had been exhibited, and repeatedly carried reports manipulating the impression that the flood of criticism against the exhibition had occurred because some right-wing and anti-Korean forces “reacted against the display of the girl statue.”
However, in reality, the problem was that taxpayers’ money had been used for a group of hate works against Japan, including the works mentioned above.
Because I myself viewed the exhibition immediately after it opened, I understood why the mass media were concealing the truth.
They wanted to report that freedom of expression was being violated in Japan by some right-wing elements.
For that purpose, they had to conceal the fact that these were works of excessive hatred toward Japan.
As if by prior agreement, each newspaper reported that “criticism flooded in over the display of the girl statue,” thereby minimizing the issue.
And this time, they simply ignored the recall movement itself.
Given that Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura and Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura even expressed support for this movement, it was highly newsworthy.
Even so, the newspapers exercised their “freedom not to report.”
Thus, the awareness that “the truth comes from the internet” took root among the people.
Newspapers that publish only articles convenient to their own principles and claims have been abandoned, and their circulation continues to plummet.
As I watched Takasu and the others’ press conference, I vaguely thought that whether newspapers would report this or not would show whether they still had a “tomorrow.”
The result, as stated above, was that none except the Sankei reported it.
For a long time, newspapers monopolized information, processed it conveniently in line with their own assertions, and handed it down to the masses.
The age when they could avoid writing the truth has long since ended, yet these organizations still cannot reform themselves.
In the end, perhaps newspapers have no choice but to disappear.