Behind biased U.S. media coverage of Japan lies the frustration of left-leaning intellectuals.
The claim that revising Article 9 would automatically turn Japan militaristic is equivalent to racism, portraying the Japanese as inherently warlike.
This article highlights the disturbing fact that such logic exists even among Japanese themselves, based on the analysis of an American scholar.

It is profoundly strange that this claim exists even among the Japanese themselves.
2016-12-11
The following is a news article delivered on December 10 by the Sankei Shimbun.
All emphasis in the text, except for the headline, is mine.
2016.12.10 14:00
【Yoshihisa Komori’s Latitude and Longitude】
The reason behind biased U.S. media coverage of Japan is “frustration.”
Major U.S. media outlets such as the New York Times revealed serious errors and bias in their coverage of the recent presidential election.
In its reporting on Japan, the paper has repeatedly used disparaging labels such as “right-wing” and “nationalist” to describe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
How much objectivity or accuracy do such words actually possess.
Why do such labeling terms emerge.
I asked Earl Kinmonth, an American scholar who has long analyzed U.S. and European media coverage of Japan.
He earned a doctorate in Japanese history at the University of Wisconsin, taught at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and currently serves as a professor at Taisho University, making him a veteran Japan specialist.
He has compiled his findings in a study titled “Japan’s Image in Overseas Media.”
“Abe does not fit the American definition of right-wing at all. He has no religious coloration, and his domestic policies favor a liberal ‘big government’ approach. Yet the New York Times and left-leaning Japan specialists in the U.S. deliberately use the term ‘right-wing’ with contempt. It is inaccurate and biased.”
The term nationalist ordinarily means someone who loves their own country, but it is often used with the implication of narrow-minded chauvinism.
Kinmonth also calls this usage biased.
“In the normal sense, there is no national leader in any country, including the United States, who is not a nationalist. Yet only the negative meaning is imposed on Prime Minister Abe. President Obama is never called a nationalist. This is bias.”
He also rebuts accusations that Abe “denies” or “revises” history.
“A prominent example of fabrication was a March 2007 New York Times article by reporter Norimitsu Onishi claiming that Abe ‘denied comfort women.’ Abe merely denied forced recruitment by the Japanese military, yet the article distorted this into a denial of the existence of comfort women themselves.”
Such false and distorted reporting is not limited to Abe coverage.
Even recently, claims such as “Nippon Kaigi controls Japanese politics,” “Japan suppresses free speech,” “constitutional revision revives militarism,” and “Abe aims to return to the 1930s” have proliferated.
Kinmonth explicitly condemns the argument that revising Article 9 would lead to militarism as equivalent to racism.
“The suggestion that unless Japan maintains Article 9 it will launch wars of aggression is tantamount to claiming that the Japanese possess uniquely warlike genes. That such a claim exists even among the Japanese themselves is truly strange.”
As for why such views persist in the United States, Kinmonth offers a scathing analysis.
“Many Japan specialists and journalists in the U.S. are left-wing by American standards, but achieve no real change domestically. They likely vent their frustration on Japan, a substitute target that never talks back.”