2024-01-12

It Is Hard to Think Otherwise Than That the Asahi Paved the Way for Tetsuya Yamagami’s Crime to Succeed
January 9, 2024
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, Henken Jizai: Who Buried Shinzo Abe?, published on December 15, 2023.
This is the latest volume in a series compiling the celebrated column from Shukan Shincho, and the original articles have been revised and made even easier to read.
I declare that this book alone proves that he is the writer who deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
“Abe’s Funeral,” Staged by the Asahi
About fifteen years ago, a reception was held in Ichigaya to celebrate the publication of one of the books in the Henken Jizai series.
Masahiro Miyazaki organized it.
Before I knew it, the name “Shinzo Abe” had been placed on the statement of purpose as though he were the chief representative of all the organizers.
When I said that this was going too far, I received the irresponsible reply, “That is simply how it turned out when we arranged the names in Japanese alphabetical order.”
Perhaps partly because of that, so many people attended that political commentator Hisayuki Miyake remarked, “If someone blew this place up, Japan’s conservative forum would be wiped out.”
Then, amid all this, former Prime Minister Abe really did appear.
He said that he was an avid reader of Henken Jizai, which made me feel genuinely humbled.
At the time, Mr. Abe had only recently resigned from his first administration after his health deteriorated because of the Asahi Shimbun’s relentless harassment.
When Hisayuki Miyake confronted the Asahi’s chief editorial writer, Hirofumi Wakamiya, about its deranged attacks on Abe, Wakamiya replied, “Because it is our company policy” (Eitaro Ogawa, The Promised Day: An Essay on Shinzo Abe).
That remark was followed by the notorious line, “We will hold Abe’s funeral.”
The feud between the two sides was old and long-standing.
Mr. Abe was an extraordinary figure among Japanese prime ministers.
He was neither short, bald, nor fat.
He was tall and stylish, spoke English, and, above all, was neither a University of Tokyo graduate nor a former bureaucrat.
An ordinary prime minister could have been won over through bureaucratic connections or old-school academic networks.
If he refused to obey, he could also be threatened through newspaper coverage.
But none of that worked on Mr. Abe.
Moreover, their political convictions were diametrically opposed.
Ever since Shoichi Midoro, the Asahi had ingratiated itself with China, kowtowed to North Korea, and demeaned Japan.
Mr. Abe stood at the opposite extreme.
At a time when the Asahi solemnly referred to North Korea as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe compelled Kim Jong Il to acknowledge the abduction of Japanese citizens.
It was also Mr. Abe who stopped the Asahi, working together with Hitoshi Tanaka, from sending the abductees back to North Korea.
Having once succeeded in destroying the Abe administration in accordance with its company policy, the Asahi became serious about holding “Abe’s funeral” again in 2012, during a party leaders’ debate sponsored by the Japan National Press Club before the inauguration of the second Abe administration.
Representing the organizers, Hiroshi Hoshi stood up and arrogantly demanded to know how Abe intended to deal with the comfort-women issue.
The answer was, “Mr. Hoshi, the comfort-women issue exists because your Asahi Shimbun spread the story of a fraudster named Seiji Yoshida as though it were fact, does it not?”
In a live nationwide broadcast, Abe squarely exposed the Asahi’s distorted nature and compulsive habit of lying.
Hiroshi Hoshi was left speechless, and the Asahi was enraged by Shinzo Abe’s counterattack, but it could no longer conceal the fact that it had spent thirty years spreading lies that demeaned Japan.
President Tadakazu Kimura was forced out, the Asahi’s circulation fell almost comically, and its reporters were no longer even given taxi vouchers.
The task of avenging that humiliation was entrusted to the present chief editorial writer, Seiki Nemoto.
Nemoto thought about it.
For example, reporting that “Prime Minister Abe gave Moritomo Gakuen an 80 percent discount on state-owned land at its request” would be a lie.
That is because no such fact existed.
But if the paper wrote as though there were grounds for suspicion, saying that “the prime minister or Mrs. Akie may have caused the Ministry of Finance to show them special consideration,” it would not constitute false reporting.
Using this method, it could write anything while disguising it as journalism.
Nemoto therefore had the paper relentlessly promote the alleged Moritomo and Kake scandals.
Although the ruling parties had finally secured two-thirds of the seats in both houses of the Diet, parliamentary deliberations were consumed by reports of alleged scandals, and constitutional revision did not advance a single step.
Even after retreating to the modest proposal of merely adding an explicit reference to the Self-Defense Forces, the Diet remained paralyzed by one new allegation after another.
In the end, hounded by Jiro Yamaguchi’s cry, “I will cut Abe down,” Mr. Abe was forced to retire once again.
Even then, Nemoto did not relent.
Whenever activists with whom the paper was aligned pursued the former prime minister and disrupted his street speeches, the Asahi eagerly put it into print.
When the police restricted the activists, the Asahi encouraged them to sue and even extracted the absurd ruling from the Sapporo District Court that “disrupting a speech is a legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.”
Nemoto then used an editorial to intimidate the police, declaring, “The police must not restrict members of the audience at former Prime Minister Abe’s street speeches,” thereby inciting the disruption of his speeches.
The paper portrayed the former prime minister as a dishonest man, allowed Jiro Yamaguchi to proclaim that he would “cut Abe down,” and restrained the security authorities from controlling audiences at his street speeches.
It is hard to think otherwise than that the Asahi paved the way for Tetsuya Yamagami’s crime to succeed.
With what feelings did Nemoto watch events unfold exactly as he himself had plotted?
(Issue of July 21, 2022)

2024/1/9 in Kyoto