Drawing on a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Eitaro Ogawa in WiLL magazine, this article examines the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the abduction issue, the comfort women campaign, the Moritomo issue, North Korea, China, and the Senkaku Islands.

June 7, 2020
When the abduction issue seemed about to be brought sharply into focus by this, the Asahi Shimbun, as if choosing the timing deliberately, launched its comfort women campaign three months later.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The true nature of the anti-Japan network.
Takayama
In 1991, the Saitama Prefectural Police announced that Yaeko Taguchi, who had disappeared, was the person who had taught Japanese to the North Korean spy Mayumi Hachiya, namely Kim Hyon-hui, who carried out the Korean Air bombing incident.
When the abduction issue seemed about to be brought sharply into focus by this, the Asahi Shimbun, as if choosing the timing deliberately, launched its comfort women campaign three months later.
In the summer of 1991, Takashi Uemura published a completely false article saying, “A forcibly taken comfort woman opens her heavy mouth,” and, as if following it up, Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a professor at Chuo University, came out with “the military’s involvement in comfort women.”
In order to divert attention from the abduction issue, they turned the comfort women issue into a diplomatic problem and revived it.
The timing coincides in an almost uncanny way.
Whenever something inconvenient for North Korea or China happens, the Asahi Shimbun always starts making a fuss.
Ogawa
Around the time when the Asahi Shimbun began reporting on the Moritomo issue, North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests were becoming active.
They were clearly timing it to hit.
In the end, when the Japanese government expressed concern over North Korea’s missile tests, they even said, “Are you trying to hide Morikake by emphasizing the missile threat?”
Takayama
When criticism of China grew stronger over the coronavirus, the Asahi Shimbun kept throwing out one “suspicion” after another.
They brought out the suicide note of the Finance Ministry official who had taken his own life over the document-tampering issue, and when that did not become very heated, they moved on to Abenomask.
When that also ended in failure, they turned to the extension of the retirement age for prosecutors.
Ogawa
The media are completely controlled, aren’t they?
Anti-Japan and pro-China forces have put down roots over many long years.
Takayama
Those people on the other side do not mind taking time.
The Senkaku Islands are the same.
Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping sowed the seeds with “shelving,” and before anyone knew it, Xi Jinping was calling them a “core interest.”
They spent half a century refining a single lie.
Ogawa
Looking back at history, it is difficult for those who have stained their hands with crooked methods to keep winning forever.
Sooner or later, they will receive a severe backlash.
This article continues.