This essay examines Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun coverage of Taro Aso’s remarks about “one people and one emperor,” criticizing the media’s use of the Ainu Policy Promotion Act to attack Japan’s national character. It also discusses nitpicking journalism that intimidates politicians, Kazuhiro Haraguchi’s view of China, and the decline of politicians in the Reiwa era.

April 21, 2020
Apparently, what they want to say is that because the government has decided by law that the Ainu people are an “indigenous people,” Japan is not “one people.”
Their intention is transparent, very transparent.
They want to use the Ainu Policy Promotion Act as a sacred and inviolable text, and attack politicians who try to protect the national character of Japan, which has flourished around the Imperial Household.
This is a republication of a chapter I sent out on February 13 under that title.
The following is from this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Seiron, from “Media Back Report Card.”
Opening section omitted.
The passages between asterisks are mine.
There is another major reason why politicians in the Reiwa era have become small in scale.
It is the existence of “nitpicking media,” led by the Asahi Shimbun.
They take the “verbal slips” of politicians they dislike, exaggerate them grossly, and attack them thoroughly.
The harm they have caused by making politicians as a whole shrink back is truly enormous.
Just recently, Taro Aso was again made a target.
At a local national policy report meeting, he said this.
“There is no other country where, for the long span of two thousand years, in one place, with one language, one people, and one emperor, a dynasty has continued. It is a good country.”
The Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun made a fuss, saying that this was a “problematic remark,” and Minister Aso “apologized and corrected” it.
Now then, what exactly is the problem with Aso’s statement?
I have no idea.
The Asahi article says, “Last year, the government enacted the Ainu Policy Promotion Act, which clearly describes the Ainu people as an ‘indigenous people’ and aims for a society that respects their pride.”
Apparently, what they want to say is that because the government has decided by law that the Ainu people are an “indigenous people,” Japan is not “one people.”
If that is what they mean, they should write it clearly.
While they are at it, they should also write that they do not like the undeniable fact that “a dynasty with one emperor has continued.”
Their intention is transparent, very transparent.
They want to use the Ainu Policy Promotion Act as a sacred and inviolable text, and attack politicians who try to protect the national character of Japan, which has flourished around the Imperial Household.
To begin with, there is also an argument that the Ainu people are not an “indigenous people” in the same sense as the American Indians, who are apparently now called Native Americans.
Recently, Masayuki Takayama taught us that a laboratory at the University of Tokyo had clarified the fact that Japanese people, including the people of Okinawa, all share the same Jomon DNA.
When I first saw the theory of Okinawan independence and the like, it was when I was regularly subscribing to Shukan Asahi.
The Asahi wrote about it with delight.
A one-party communist dictatorship that has made anti-Japanese propaganda its national policy has advocated such things.
Chinese agents aiming at Okinawan independence, the division of Hokkaido, the division of Japan, and then invasion and conquest, claim that the people of Okinawa are an ethnic minority.
In addition, the Buraku Liberation League, together with IMADR, which is its true form, has been carrying out activities at the United Nations exactly in accordance with China’s operations.
The researchers at the University of Tokyo instantly crushed the schemes of such vicious people.
At the same time, they also crushed the sloppiness and absurdity of the United Nations, which easily takes the words of such people at face value.
Japan must immediately conduct DNA testing of those who call themselves Ainu.
To begin with, it is a well-known fact that Hokkaido is an extremely cold land, and that full-scale development began only after the Meiji era.
Before that, until the Heian period, the Tohoku region was called Emishi.
The Japanese people there were descendants of the Jomon people.
The researchers at the University of Tokyo clarified that all Japanese people are so.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the descendants of the Jomon people who lived in the extremely cold land of Hokkaido continued the Jomon way of life until the Meiji period.
The monthly magazine I refer to also published a painstaking work revealing the reality that the central figure who began saying that the Ainu were an indigenous people was a believer in North Korea’s Juche ideology.
Even so, what is the worst, what is malicious beyond measure, is the conduct of the Asahi Shimbun.
To allow this newspaper to continue existing indefinitely is equal to selling Japan to China and the Korean Peninsula.
The time has long since come for the Japanese people to realize this.
In fact, 6,305 opinions were submitted in the public comments concerning the basic policy accompanying the enforcement of the Ainu Policy Promotion Act, and almost all of them were reportedly negative.
According to the Hokkaido Shimbun, the Cabinet Secretariat did not disclose 98 percent of the public comments, treating them as “opinions unrelated to the proposal.”
Then what was the purpose of inviting public comments?
What on earth were the Prime Minister’s Office and the Liberal Democratic Party doing when they so easily passed such a problematic law?
Let the responsible person come forward!
The old “divine nation” remark was the same.
Ever since a kind of “bullying journalism” became rampant, in which the media seize on fragments of words, degrade the other person, force an apology, and then feel satisfied, the speeches and remarks of politicians have become increasingly boring.
Until some time ago, on Sunday mornings, terrestrial television programs in which leading politicians presented their views or debated were popular.
But the only one that remains is NHK’s Sunday Debate, which NHK seems to do half out of obligation.
The other programs have disappeared.
When I asked a producer at a certain television station, he said it was because “politicians’ remarks have become boring, and ratings can no longer be obtained.”
How hopeless.
If politicians’ mouths shrink back out of fear of being attacked by the media, and both ruling and opposition parties say only pretty words that no one can oppose, it is only natural that no one will watch.
Even if they repeatedly chant the fashionable SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, voters will merely lose interest.
Thus, politicians in the Reiwa era are becoming smaller and smaller not only in action but also in speech.
Just as I wrote that, I seemed to hear a voice from somewhere saying, “Haven’t politicians become not only smaller, but more stupid?”
No, no, that would be too rude to our elected representatives, I was about to say, when my eyes went blank.
In a tweet by a politician named Kazuhiro Haraguchi, the following was written.
“China is also a democratic country. When I asked whether it was not a one-party dictatorship, they answered that it was not a Communist Party one-party dictatorship, and that there are six other parties. They too have an attitude of protecting human rights. I hope they will carry that through…”
January 17.
At first, I thought it was strong irony.
But judging from the fact that it had not been deleted at the time I was writing this article, it appears that he really thinks so.
They too have an attitude of protecting human rights?
What, has His Excellency Haraguchi wandered into a labyrinthine world where everything is the reverse of reality?
Even so, to think that a person who believes “China is also a democratic country” served as Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications under the Democratic Party government.
People in such a labyrinthine world are joining hands with zombie Ichiro Ozawa and wriggling about in an attempt to seize power again.
It sends a chill down my spine.
If the alternative is to see hell again, perhaps we have no choice but to endure politicians being “small.”