2024-01-15
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, Henkenjizai: Who Buried Shinzo Abe?
This is the latest volume in the book series based on his celebrated columns in Shukan Shincho, but the original text has been polished further, making it even easier to read.
This book alone makes him worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is a must-read not only for the people of Japan but for people throughout the world.
Asahi’s Lies Exposed by the Former Prime Minister
Until immediately after the end of the war, the Asahi Shimbun was a decent newspaper.
After the U.S. military entered Japan, it reported with indignation that American soldiers were committing as many as 120 rapes and robberies every day.
It also warned citizens that “fountain pens and wristwatches will be stolen as well.”
The Nippon Times also commented, “If we must live under military rule, the Japanese military during the Second World War was far better.”
Asahi questioned Ichiro Hatoyama about the atomic bombings and published the following article on September 15, 1945.
Hatoyama declared, “The atomic bomb is a war crime and an act that violates international law even more gravely than attacking a hospital ship or using poison gas,” and severely criticized the United States, saying, “American generals should visit the bombed cities and see the devastation for themselves.”
When the GHQ forced the newspaper to publish an article entitled “The Japanese Military’s Massacre of Manila’s Citizens,” the editorial department protested, “How could 100,000 people have been raped and murdered under the artillery fire and bombing of the U.S. military?”
It also added the phrases “There are witnesses” and “This must be verified” to the article.
These two incidents infuriated the GHQ, and when Asahi was ordered to suspend publication, it is generally said that the newspaper offered to become “the loyal dog of the Allied Forces.”
Some believe that it did not merely change sides, but “actively abandoned Japan.”
Indeed, even after the GHQ had departed, Asahi did not stop denigrating Japan, nor did it attempt to stand with the Japanese people.
Whom, then, did it follow?
Kyozo Mori, for example, continued to write the opening editorials for the Asahi Journal, while Tomoo Hirooka chose to live alongside Mao Zedong.
For Mao Zedong’s sake, Hirooka had Katsuichi Honda write Travels in China, which contained not a shred of truth, and thereby disparaged the Japanese people.
Masaru Hata and Seiki Watanabe followed the Soviet Union, shouting, “Long live Stalin!”
Even within the editorial department, the China faction and the Soviet faction fiercely opposed each other, but they cooperated when it came to criticizing Japan.
In the 1980s, when Watanabe of the Soviet faction was president of the newspaper, he created a tremendous uproar over the Ministry of Education’s textbook screening, claiming that the Japanese military’s “invasion” of northern China had been rewritten as an “advance.”
The newspaper further reported, “The Nanking Massacre occurred. The 23rd Miyakonojo Regiment, which led the invasion, committed the massacre.”
It also published a special report entitled “This Was the Poison Gas Operation in China,” accompanied by a photograph of smoke rising into the air.
All three stories were false, but even after the lies had been exposed, Asahi did not issue so much as a correction.
Meanwhile, through his friend Allen Dulles, whom he had known since his days as a correspondent, Shintaro Kasa continued to press the CIA to spread the “War Guilt Information Program” (WGIP) left behind by the GHQ.
At the same time, Kyozo Mori’s Asahi Journal sold 250,000 copies every week and incited the students.
During the 1960 protests against the Security Treaty, it drove 100,000 students to storm the National Diet, resulting in the death of Michiko Kanba.
When an atmosphere resembling the eve of a revolution began to intensify, Shintaro Kasa immediately accepted the wishes of the United States, which did not want Japan to become communist.
He summoned the chief editors of seven Tokyo newspapers, including the Mainichi, Yomiuri, and Sankei.
He then had them publish a joint editorial intended to pacify the protesting students and calling on them to “reject violence and protect parliamentary democracy.”
The newspapers knew that Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union stood behind Asahi.
But they also knew that an even greater power stood behind them: the United States.
Kasa’s words were the words of the United States.
The public was astonished.
They wondered whether the Asahi Journal, after inciting a revolution, would pull away the ladder at the very last moment.
For Asahi, Japan was merely an object to be mocked and humiliated—a country it had abandoned long ago.
What did it matter if it pulled away the ladder from that country at the very end?
Shinzo Abe was the man who appeared at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Asahi.
The former Prime Minister exposed the comfort women lie that Asahi had Seiji Yoshida tell and effectively rejected it by having the Kono Statement, which had endorsed that lie, examined.
The Murayama Statement, the Japanese version of the WGIP that Asahi had not defended, was also superseded by the Abe Statement, which declared that “Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War encouraged the peoples of the Asian colonies.”
Asahi was enraged, and its Soviet, China, and American factions united to bring Abe down.
Masakazu Honda wrote the lie about the “alteration of an NHK program,” while Hiroshi Hoshi pursued the wartime sexual-slavery accusation.
But it became a boomerang and instead resulted in President Tadakazu Kimura losing his position.
The “Mori-Kake” allegations fabricated by Asahi’s Osaka social affairs department also rebounded against the newspaper, resulting in a recurring loss of 14 billion yen.
The madness that followed the empty cries of “Death to Abe” grew even more intense.
In any case, there was no end in sight.
Why does the newspaper not cease publication before its people are arrested for complicity in murder?
(August 4, 2022 issue)

2024/1/14 in Kyoto