This article examines how leading German newspapers, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, have continued to use anti-Japanese reporting rooted in the self-tormenting historical view promoted by the Asahi Shimbun. It also criticizes the IOC’s remarks on the Tokyo Olympics, the anti-Japanese propaganda activities of China and South Korea, and the restraint shown by Japanese politics and media in criticizing China over the Wuhan virus.

May 25, 2020
Leading German newspapers, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, have continued to make use of the anti-Japanese ideology based on the self-tormenting historical view of the Asahi Shimbun, which had dominated Japan until August six years ago, and of its reporting that constantly demeaned Japan and sided with China and South Korea.
They, too, had their own reasons for wanting to demean Japan.
In order to divert international public opinion from the crimes of Nazi Germany, they wanted to make Japan into a country that had committed, in China and on the Korean Peninsula, crimes similar to those of Nazi Germany.
As a result, a public opinion survey conducted in Germany several years ago showed that half of Germans held anti-Japanese views, something unbelievable to any decent Japanese person.
In all the years I have lived, I have never encountered a person who had anti-German feelings.
The same must have been true of the overwhelming majority of Japanese people.
To put it extremely, anti-German sentiment was virtually nonexistent in Japan.
Watching the expression on the face of IOC President Bach, I felt that he was absolutely not pro-Japanese.
This was several weeks before he suddenly stated that cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics could also be possible.
By chance, I was watching a daytime television talk show.
The previous day, there had been a mild earthquake in the Kanto region.
Using that as a pretext, a certain Kasahara, bearing the title of professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, made an outrageous statement, saying something like, “There are signs of an earthquake, so I am saying that I oppose holding the Tokyo Olympics in July next year.”
I was instantly appalled, wondering what on earth this man was.
But I immediately understood the truth.
The mastermind was the Asahi Shimbun, and this was a movement linked with the two anti-Japanese states, China and South Korea.
Then came the recent remarks by Coates of the IOC.
It is no exaggeration at all to say that, until August six years ago, Japan, which had been dominated by the Asahi Shimbun, was utterly powerless against the anti-Japanese propaganda activities of China and South Korea in the international community, including the IOC.
Holding the Olympic Games greatly contributes to the enhancement of national prestige and economic expansion.
That is why countries have engaged in fierce competition over the right to host the Olympics.
In recent years, because the costs have become too high, the kind of competition seen in the past has begun to recede.
Regarding the holding of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the IOC suddenly began talking about vaccines and the like.
Japan is by no means a country that would lose its national power simply because the Olympics were cancelled, but there is no doubt whatsoever that a vaccine will have been developed the following year, and the fact that the Winter Olympics are to be held in Beijing in 2022 is not unrelated to the remarks of this senior IOC official.
The reason neither the Diet nor the media raised any voice criticizing China over the Wuhan virus is probably that, until early March, Xi Jinping’s visit to Japan as a state guest had not been cancelled.
There must have been an agreement between the political world and the television media to refrain from criticizing a country whose representative was to be welcomed as a state guest.
Even if that was only a peculiarly Japanese tacit understanding, or the kind of “sontaku” at which the media excels.
However, Japan’s political world, the print media such as the Asahi Shimbun, and television media such as NHK should seriously reflect on what China has been doing in response to their self-restraint in criticizing China.
This article will continue.