A discussion examining The Asahi Shimbun’s comfort women reporting, its international repercussions, its effect on Japan–South Korea relations, the absence of reference to its own responsibility in its review, its lack of English communication, and its broader journalistic record.

August 18, 2020
This article records a discussion among Sakurai, Kadota, and Abiru concerning The Asahi Shimbun’s review of its reporting on the comfort women issue, the impact that reporting had on the international community and Japan–South Korea relations, whether the newspaper addressed its own responsibility, its failure to communicate the review in English, and its broader history of editorial conduct.
The issue raised here extends beyond the correction or withdrawal of individual articles.
It concerns how information, once widely disseminated, can shape perceptions abroad, affect diplomatic relations and perceptions of a country and its people, and what responsibility a news organization bears for explaining the consequences of its reporting.

Key Quotation

“The story created by the Asahi has, in precisely this way, become an international issue and begun to take on a life of its own as though it were established fact. The erection of statues is one example.”

No Reference to Its Own Role in the Damage Done to Japan–South Korea Relations

Sakurai: What has happened as a result of the claim of forcible recruitment taking on a life of its own? Koreans are now staging a play in the United States about comfort women called “Comfort” — described here as “comfort = slave.” I saw it on the news. The stage depicts women who resist and cry out being violently taken away, as well as scenes in which attempts are made to violate them. It is understandable that Americans who know nothing about the comfort women issue would respond, “I never knew anything like this happened. How terrible,” and in fact such comments have been made.
The story created by the Asahi has, in precisely this way, become an international issue and begun to take on a life of its own as though it were established fact. The erection of statues is one example.
When I consider the gravity of the responsibility involved and the fact that the Asahi, nevertheless, has shown almost no remorse, I believe The Asahi Shimbun should be urged to cease publication. Bungeishunju discontinued its magazine Marco Polo over an article concerning the massacre of Jews.
Kadota: I believe the article said that there had been “no gas chambers” at Auschwitz.
Sakurai: There was another case. A magazine published by Kodansha, DAYS JAPAN, ran an article claiming that Agnes Chan received a very large fee for lectures, but when it emerged that this was not necessarily factual, the magazine was discontinued as well. Whether that latter decision was appropriate may be open to debate, but in any case the magazine ceased publication. Incidentally, DAYS JAPAN was published again under different management fourteen years later. What the Asahi has done on this occasion is no less serious than what those two publishers did. Could what the Asahi did not be described as criminal reporting against Japanese people of the past, Japanese people of the present and future, and Japan itself?
As I mentioned briefly earlier, the Asahi’s reporting also adversely affected many Koreans who had believed that “the Japanese did not do anything quite so terrible.” This is another point that must not be overlooked. There are scholars in South Korea who have written serious papers and books arguing that “there was no forcible recruitment of comfort women; in reality, they were sold by their fathers or husbands.” Yet such arguments were pushed aside, and an erroneous story that the Japanese military had forcibly taken them away was constructed, driving people who might otherwise have been more friendly toward Japan into anti-Japanese sentiment. In South Korea today, even expressing views sympathetic to Japan can result in social ostracism. In that sense, the Asahi has also brought immeasurable misfortune upon the Korean people. The Asahi bears enormous responsibility. That is why I believe matters have reached the point where the Asahi should first be closed down, and if those involved genuinely wish to practise journalism, they should establish a newspaper again with an entirely new organization.
Abiru: In its review article of the sixth, the Asahi devoted an entire page to the question, “Why did Japan–South Korea relations become so strained?” Yet there was no mention whatsoever of its own responsibility. The government’s review report on the Kono Statement also pointed out that an article in The Asahi Shimbun dated January 11, 1992, had inflamed public opinion in South Korea. Yet the Asahi made no reference to that either. At one point — this was a joke — I composed a little verse: “If only there were no Asahi in this world, how peaceful Japan–South Korea relations might have been…”
Sakurai: That’s good. (Laughter)
Abiru: Once matters have reached the situation we have today, repairing the relationship is extremely difficult. But one major factor that brought Japan–South Korea relations, which should originally have been capable of functioning much better, to this point was the Asahi.
Sakurai: It was probably the party bearing the greatest responsibility.
Kadota: Unless there is some clear reckoning, the consequences are simply too great to measure. My own son is one example, but abroad this issue has become an obstacle everywhere. It has become a barrier to young Japanese seeking opportunities internationally, and it casts a major shadow over genuine friendship between Japan and South Korea and over exchanges and friendships among young people. What the Asahi did certainly merits discontinuation, in my view.
Abiru: Yet in reality, far from discontinuing publication, the Asahi has not even published its inadequate review article in English.
Sakurai: That is correct.
Abiru: It gives the clear impression that the newspaper is concerned about damage to its reputation overseas and values its corporate image more highly than Japan’s national interest.
Kadota: Moreover, in South Korea, that Asahi review article has further intensified the comfort women issue. The Asahi wrote that the essential point was that women’s human rights had been violated, and this was widely reported, creating still further controversy.
Sakurai: At major turning points in history, the Asahi has made serious mistakes and yet has never reflected upon them. It has repeated this pattern. In its editorial of August 14, 1945, The Asahi Shimbun wrote that “the enemy powers, the United States and Britain,” had “used atomic bombs in air raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” and had “slaughtered our innocent people.” It then declared, “There is only one course in response: retaliation,” and that “the fireball formed by the united conviction of one hundred million people cannot be extinguished.” Yet five days earlier, the Asahi had already been informed by Hiroshi Shimomura, president of the Information Board, of the possibility of surrender. Diaries of Asahi executives from the period show that they believed they could not abruptly change their editorial line and call for unconditional surrender, and that it would be better to “pretend not to know and continue to bring to the fore the existing themes of ‘preservation of the national polity and unity of the hundred million.’”
What I question from the standpoint of journalism is this: once a newspaper has obtained information concerning surrender, it should report it as quickly as possible. If it cannot report it explicitly, it should at least signal it in its pages. Yet even in the editorial published on the day before surrender, it was still advocating the idea of “one hundred million as a single ball of fire.” Then, after the war, it changed completely.
I find the mentality of Asahi people and Asahi intellectuals extremely difficult to accept. Whatever the circumstances, they do not reflect upon their conduct. They always place themselves above others. They are imbued with the notion that the public and public opinion stand beneath them and that they are the ones who should lead. I would go so far as to say that readers should not tolerate such a newspaper.
Abiru: And almost everything it has advocated has turned out to be mistaken — beginning with a separate peace treaty, followed by the 1960 security treaty, PKO participation, and more recently its opposition to nuclear power, the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, and collective self-defense.
Kadota: The same applies to its reporting on China’s Cultural Revolution and its portrayal of North Korea as a “paradise on earth.”
Sakurai: And Cambodia’s Pol Pot revolution.
Abiru: That is why, regarding the recent debate over collective self-defense, a senior Foreign Ministry official told me, “When the Asahi opposes it this strongly, it gives us confidence to go ahead with it.”
Kadota: The speed with which the newspaper changed its position immediately after the August 14, 1945 editorial that Sakurai mentioned is also characteristic of the Asahi. Since high-school baseball has come up, consider this: in 1911 The Asahi Shimbun conducted a major campaign under the banner of the “harmful effects of baseball.” It ran a twenty-two-part campaign arguing that baseball was harmful.
Sakurai: What was supposedly harmful about baseball?
Kadota: For example, in baseball you try to steal the opponent’s play. The argument was that this made it “a sport like that of a pickpocket.” The same was said of stealing bases. Skills such as throwing off an opponent’s timing were also described as “base techniques,” meaning vulgar or dishonorable skills. Inazo Nitobe was enlisted to make such arguments, and even Maresuke Nogi was brought in. Nogi was quoted as saying that “a game requiring so much time is harmful to young people,” and the newspaper thoroughly attacked baseball in a twenty-two-part series. Yet four years later, the Asahi launched the National Secondary School Baseball Championship — the predecessor of today’s Summer Koshien tournament. Everyone was astonished. Within the industry, the Asahi had been excluded as a rival because it alone opposed baseball, and then suddenly it began sponsoring the National Secondary School Baseball Championship, which had by then reached its ninety-sixth tournament. Their speed in changing positions has not changed at all since those days. There is no consistency. They simply change course in an instant.