A recall campaign against Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura was launched over the use of public funds for exhibits that were regarded as insulting Emperor Showa, Japan’s war dead, and the Japanese people.
Drawing on journalist Ryusho Kadota’s article, this essay examines freedom of expression, the public interest, taxpayers’ consent, media coverage that focused almost exclusively on the comfort-woman statue, and NHK’s reported decision not to show the wording on Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura’s protest placard.

July 18, 2020
On June 17, Katsuya Takasu, director of the Takasu Clinic, submitted a petition to the Aichi Prefectural Assembly requesting a resolution of no confidence against Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura.
Surrounded by reporters, Dr. Takasu declared:
“Beginning on August 1, we will gather signatures for the recall of Governor Omura, releasing the water with full force like a dam whose gates have finally been opened.”
The opening shot of the decisive battle is about to be fired.
I am one of those watching this struggle from a number of perspectives.
There are several reasons, but the most important is that it directly calls into question the conduct of the mass media.
In this column and in various other forums, I have repeatedly discussed the works displayed at the “After ‘Freedom of Expression?’” exhibition.
That is because I personally visited the exhibition on August 3 last year, immediately before it was closed.
In a word, it was a collection of works expressing hatred toward Japan and the Japanese people.
There may be people who deeply dislike the Japanese, and there may also be those who harbor ethnic resentment.
There is no inherent problem with such people creating and exhibiting works under the principle of freedom of expression.
However, the matter becomes entirely different when the exhibition is made public through the use of taxpayers’ money.
In that case, the consent of taxpayers must naturally be a fundamental prerequisite.
It was from that perspective that I viewed the works.
After opening the white curtain at the entrance, I first saw, on the right, an engraving in which a skull was staring at Emperor Showa.
On the opposite side of the passage was another work in which the face of Emperor Showa had been cut out and a large X had been drawn in the background.
It was an engraving that mutilated the face of Emperor Showa in formal attire.
Its title was “A Picture That Should Be Burned.”
Farther ahead on the right was a monitor displaying a powerful video in which a portrait of Emperor Showa was burned with a gas burner and the remains were trampled underfoot.
One could imagine that the artist must have harbored an extraordinary degree of resentment toward Emperor Showa.
After passing that area and entering a larger space, I saw a tent-like work shaped like a snow hut.
At the top of its outer wall was a Japanese flag bearing farewell messages written for a soldier departing for war.
Around it were pasted newspaper articles calling for the protection of Article 9 of the Constitution, articles criticizing visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and statements condemning the Abe administration.
The American Stars and Stripes was spread across the floor.
The title was “Portrait of an Era—Endangered Species, idiot JAPONICA, Circular Burial Mound.”
The word “idiot” means foolish, while JAPONICA might be translated as Japan or Japanese taste.
In any case, the work appeared to represent the grave of the “foolish” Japanese people as an endangered species.
Considering the title and the placement of the flag bearing farewell messages to a departing soldier at the top, I felt that the work was, at the very least, contemptuous of the people who had died in war.
Beyond it stood the familiar “girl statue,” which is said to symbolize the comfort women.
The exhibition was truly a collection of works expressing hostility toward Japan for the purpose of political propaganda.
At the very least, it was certainly not something that taxpayers could readily accept.
Shocked by the content of the exhibition, Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura announced that the city could not spend taxpayers’ money on it.
Governor Omura immediately responded:
“When a person exercising public authority declares that this content is good or bad, it may reasonably be regarded as censorship under Article 21 of the Constitution.
You should be conscious of that fact.”
With these words, he justified the exhibition.
Then, in May 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, Governor Omura filed a lawsuit against the City of Nagoya seeking payment of approximately 33 million yen as the city’s share of the exhibition expenses.
Public attention focused on the dispute between Governor Omura, who appeared to regard freedom of expression as unlimited, and Mayor Kawamura, who argued that even freedom of expression has limits.
If Governor Omura’s reasoning were followed, Aichi Prefecture would be able to use taxpayers’ money to exhibit anything without restriction, including child pornography.
Article 12 of the Constitution states that the freedoms and rights guaranteed to the people must not be abused and that the people are responsible for using them for the public welfare.
Perhaps the governor is unaware of that provision.
It was under these circumstances that Dr. Takasu launched the recall campaign, declaring that the use of taxpayers’ money in this way could not be tolerated.
The mass media, however, consistently failed to mention any of the works regarded as insulting Emperor Showa or Japan’s war dead.
They focused exclusively on the girl statue and repeatedly reduced the criticism of the exhibition to the claim that a small number of right-wing or anti-Korean groups had objected to the display of the statue.
In this way, they engaged in reporting that manipulated public impressions.
NHK went so far that, when reporting on Mayor Kawamura’s sit-in protest against the reopening of the exhibition, it deliberately prevented viewers from seeing the words written on his placard:
“A Question to the People of Japan!
Will You Permit an Insult to His Majesty?”
Even in the age of the internet, the mass media continue to conceal the truth, divert the public’s attention from the essential facts, and attempt to manipulate the people.
That arrogant attitude on the part of the media is also one of the matters being called into question by the recall campaign.
Ryusho Kadota
Born in Kochi Prefecture in 1958.
Author and journalist.
His books include Why Were You Able to Fight Despair? and The Man Who Saw the Brink of Death.
He received the 19th Shichihei Yamamoto Prize for I Dedicate This Life to Justice.
His more recent works include The Disease Called Newspapers and Epidemic 2020.
【Editorial Note】
The most important question raised by this article is not simply whether an individual finds a particular work offensive.
The freedom of private individuals to create works based on their own beliefs, using their own funds, and to display them in a private venue is not identical to the use of taxpayers’ money by a local government to present those works as part of an official public project.
Once public money is involved, the project must satisfy requirements of public benefit, procedural legitimacy, and accountability.
Questions and criticism from citizens regarding the use of public funds cannot be silenced merely by invoking the phrase “freedom of expression.”
Freedom of expression is an essential right intended to prevent prior restraint and ideological control by the government.
It does not mean that the government is required to provide public funding for every conceivable form of expression.
Prohibiting an exhibition and declining to finance an exhibition are different actions and must be discussed separately.
Equally important is the media’s selection of the issues it chooses to report.
If the criticism of the exhibition is presented as though it concerned only the girl statue, the existence of the video burning Emperor Showa’s portrait and the works regarded as insulting Japan’s war dead and the national flag disappears from public awareness.
The result is a constructed narrative in which critics of the exhibition appear to be nothing more than right-wing or anti-Korean groups reacting to the comfort-woman issue.
This differs from false reporting in the narrow sense of broadcasting information that is factually untrue.
However, selectively withholding essential facts in order to lead viewers toward a particular conclusion can become a more difficult form of impression management to detect.
If NHK reported Mayor Kawamura’s placard while selecting images that prevented viewers from reading its central message, the reason for that editorial choice should be examined.
No news organization can report every detail without limitation.
Nevertheless, when information indispensable to understanding the nature of an event is intentionally excluded, journalism ceases to be a means of conveying facts and becomes a means of directing how citizens interpret them.
Those who invoke freedom of expression must respect not only the freedom of those displaying the works but also the freedom of citizens to criticize them.
In a democracy, questioning the use of public money and holding a governor politically accountable are both legitimate forms of citizen participation.
The issue was not limited to the artistic merits of particular exhibits.
It concerned three fundamental questions.
For whose benefit is public money spent?
What did the media report, and what did they omit?
Were citizens given sufficient information upon which to form their own judgment?