January 24, 2023
The following is an excerpt from the book shown in the accompanying photograph, published on December 28, 2022, under the title The Truth About China in 2023: Xi Jinping’s Worst Five Years Have Begun.
It is a dialogue between Masahiro Miyazaki, whom it would be no exaggeration to describe as a modern-day Tadao Umesao, and Seki Hei, one of the foremost experts on China.
It is essential reading not only for Japanese citizens but also for people around the world.
Pages 34–39
Resentment over the “Textbook Misreporting” Exposed by a Unification Church–Affiliated Newspaper
Miyazaki
China’s methods were extremely cunning—or, rather, they showed a certain understanding of the subtleties of human emotions.
They were not sophisticated, but they skillfully alternated between the carrot and the stick, between enticement and intimidation.
They used honey traps without restraint, too.
Their methods were exactly like those of the yakuza (wry laugh).
Seki Hei
The problem is that good-natured Japanese people have been made easy marks.
They swallow the carrot without question and accept the stick just as readily.
As we just discussed, when the Japanese media reported that Japanese junior high school history textbooks had changed “invasion” of China to “advance,” China complained to the Japanese government.
There was an occasion when China demanded a correction, insisting that it had clearly been an invasion by the Japanese military, not an advance.
But in fact, the member organizations of the press club had misreported the story on the basis of a Nippon Television reporter’s reporting, and not a single textbook had been changed to “advance.”
Nevertheless, the Japanese government hastily introduced the Neighboring Countries Clause, stipulating that “necessary consideration shall be given, from the standpoint of international understanding and international cooperation, to the treatment of modern and contemporary historical events involving neighboring Asian countries.”
They were showing consideration for neighboring countries when writing their own country’s textbooks.
No other country has such a provision.
Why should we have to accommodate a neighboring country’s wishes when producing textbooks for our own country?
Miyazaki
Misreporting by the Japanese media turned it into such a major incident.
It followed the same pattern as the false reporting by the Asahi Shimbun and others about the forcible removal of comfort women.
The Sankei Shimbun was the only newspaper that properly apologized for its misreporting.
Many Japanese people still assume that the textbook publishers were to blame for publishing textbooks with those revisions.
At the time, the critic Tsuyoshi Muramatsu, a scholar of French literature and professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, went to Beijing and explained that “not a single publisher changed ‘invasion’ to ‘advance,’” and apparently the Chinese scholars were uniformly astonished.
Not one of those Chinese scholars knew this.
Reporting—misreporting—causes one misunderstanding to breed another.
It is a classic example of how those misunderstandings accumulate and develop into a serious problem.
When Shoichi Watanabe, who, like Muramatsu, criticized the textbook misreporting controversy, passed away, the Sankei Shimbun published the following article.
The Textbook Screening Story of “Invasion → Advance” Was a Major Reporting Error
Shoichi Watanabe Exposed “China and South Korea Barking at a Falsehood”
April 30, 2017, 8:00 a.m. (online edition)—Hiroshi Watanabe
Watanabe learned that the story had been misreported from an article in the August 6, 1982, edition of Sekai Nippo.
Under the headline “The Textbooks That Had Not Actually Changed,” the article named the textbook publishers and presented a table comparing the wording before and after screening.
Sekai Nippo is a daily newspaper affiliated with the Unification Church, now the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Although its content has become thinner today, it had many overseas correspondents at the time, carried abundant original reporting with a strongly anti-communist perspective, and had many devoted readers among conservatives.
In his book My Forty-Year War with the Asahi Shimbun, published by PHP Institute, Watanabe recalled the following:
“Although the organization behind its publication was the Unification Church, a problematic organization, apart from articles concerning Sun Myung Moon, it was a newspaper that produced high-quality reporting at the time and also followed the textbook issue carefully.”
“But there were no such articles in the major newspapers.”
“While I was wondering what was going on, I heard from Gyo Tsutsumi, the editor-in-chief of Shokun!, who told me, ‘There is someone investigating this issue,’ so I decided to go and meet him.”
That person was Itakura.
After hearing what Itakura had to say, Watanabe decided to bring the issue before the public.
The Sankei Shimbun and Fuji Television Apologized
Watanabe appeared as a guest on Fuji Television’s Takemura Kenichi: Cutting Through the State of Society, broadcast on August 22, 1982, and explained that no rewriting from “invasion” to “advance” had taken place.
It was the first clear statement of this fact in the major media.
The monthly magazine Shokun!, released on September 2, 1982, published Watanabe’s essay titled “The Textbook Controversy at Which Ten Thousand Dogs Barked in Vain,” provoking an enormous response.
The title played on the proverb “When one dog barks at nothing, ten thousand dogs spread it as truth,” meaning that when one person tells a lie, many people in society spread it as the truth.
Shukan Bunshun, released on the same day, also published an article carrying the headings “Surprise: No Rewriting of ‘North China—Invasion → Advance’ Took Place!” and “The Textbook Uproar Began with a Historic Reporting Error.”
On September 7, the Sankei Shimbun published a prominent apology on its second city news page under the headings “Our Deepest Apologies to Our Readers” and “The Textbook Issue: How We Misreported ‘Invasion’ → ‘Advance.’”
The following day, September 8, it also reported prominently on its front page under the headlines “Textbook Issue: The Basis of China’s Protest Shaken” and “It Began with Media Misreporting.”
On Fuji Television’s late-night FNN News Report 23:00 on September 9, anchor Kotaro Tawara stated: “In this news program, we avoided making definitive statements about the rewriting, and we believe we maintained a certain degree of restraint by saying that the textbook issue was a domestic matter for Japan and that balance was important in its descriptions.”
“However, although the director-general of the Ministry of Education’s Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau stated on July 30 that ‘no rewriting took place in the current screening,’ we failed to verify the facts and made no effort to correct the misunderstanding and misreporting widespread in journalism.”
“We frankly acknowledge this and deeply regret it.”
He then bowed deeply.
Although the protests from China and South Korea subsided once the reporting was revealed to be mistaken, the Neighboring Countries Clause was subsequently added to the screening criteria on the basis of the Miyazawa Statement, stipulating that “necessary consideration shall be given, from the standpoint of international understanding and international cooperation, to the treatment of modern and contemporary historical events involving neighboring Asian countries,” leaving a lasting problem for history education.
Seki Hei
Whether in the textbook misreporting or the comfort women misreporting, the Japanese media bear a heavy responsibility for what they publish.
Miyazaki
Right now, in connection with Abe’s assassination, the former Unification Church is being attacked, and politicians who agreed to interviews with its affiliated newspaper, Sekai Nippo, are being singled out for criticism.
But one could also say that this stems from resentment toward Sekai Nippo for being the first to expose the textbook misreporting controversy forty years ago.
This may be a suspicious reading of events, but perhaps they intend it as retaliation against the Unification Church–affiliated organization that embarrassed them.
To be continued.