This essay exposes the contradiction of NHK and other Japanese media organizations that demanded political leadership but attacked the Abe administration once it achieved it, using phrases such as “the merits and demerits of leadership by the Prime Minister’s Office” and “the merits and demerits of a long-term administration.” It examines the influence of GHQ, the WGIP, the Asahi Shimbun, and the media’s continuing deference to China and the Korean Peninsula.

September 3, 202
This essay was written after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his resignation, when NHK and other Japanese television networks were repeatedly criticizing his administration through such phrases as “the merits and demerits of a long-term administration,” “the merits and demerits of political leadership,” and “the merits and demerits of leadership by the Prime Minister’s Office.”
The news media had long demanded that decisions be made under political leadership.
Yet once the Abe administration put that principle into practice, the media turned political leadership itself into an object of criticism.
This essay denounces more than that logical contradiction.
It addresses a fundamental distortion in postwar journalism: Japanese media inherited historical perceptions influenced by the GHQ occupation policy and the WGIP, repeatedly deferred to China and the Korean Peninsula, and attacked politicians who worked in Japan’s national interest.
【Complete English Translation】
The people who control NHK’s news division are of a low caliber.
Every perceptive person who watched last night’s “News Watch 9” would agree.
A man bearing a title such as political news director—whose face could scarcely have looked more grotesque—has a mind formed by GHQ indoctrination, the WGIP, and the editorials of the Asahi Shimbun.
They had long insisted that decisions should be made under political leadership.
Prime Minister Abe, a politician whom it would not be an exaggeration to describe as the greatest in Japan’s history, embodied that principle.
Then they began talking about the “merits and demerits” of political leadership, meaning leadership by the Prime Minister’s Office.
The other night, Arima repeatedly referred, with a bizarre expression and like a fool capable of repeating only one thing, to the “merits and demerits” of a long-term administration.
Last night, they merely replaced the “merits and demerits” of a long-term administration with the “merits and demerits” of political leadership and used it to attack the administration.
Whenever it suited them, they cited Germany, where a long-term administration had continued for sixteen years, in order to criticize Prime Minister Abe.
Yet these same people had never once criticized Germany by talking about the “merits and demerits” of its long-term administration.
Just how low is the intellectual level of these people?
In other words, just how foolish are they?
The bizarre expression of the man introduced as the political news director last night was also the face of a union activist—the typical face of a man who does nothing but defer to China and South Korea.
Such a man, together with the highly paid employees of NHK, an organization that is, in substance, Japan’s state broadcaster, repeatedly practices deference while confronting a politician who has performed the highest level of work for Japan.
They behave as though they embody justice and as though they speak on behalf of the Japanese people.
They claim that political leadership caused bureaucrats to begin deferring to politicians.
Yet these are the employees who once reported exactly as GHQ demanded and deferred to the WGIP, and who now, as an extension of that conduct, criticize the government while continuing to defer to China and the Korean Peninsula.
Calling themselves a public broadcaster, they repeatedly speak of “deference” and the “merits and demerits of a long-term administration.”
I was also appalled while watching another broadcaster that I had thought might be slightly better than they were.
To obtain an assessment of the three candidates running to become president of the Liberal Democratic Party—and therefore prime minister—the broadcaster brought out Soichiro Tahara.
What kind of intellectual structure do the people who call themselves the media in Japan actually possess?
These are the people who control television.
Then there are the foolish opposition political operators who think only about how they will appear on television.
The one-party Communist dictatorship called China, which has presumably manipulated them completely, has spent vast sums expanding its military power, smiling more broadly than ever as it brought its evil to completion.
Who cooperated in creating such an absurd world?
Needless to say, it was the media.
The political operators and so-called cultural figures who aligned themselves with the media created the China that exists today.
The caliber of the female presenter at the broadcaster I had thought was slightly better is also dreadful.
Trump visited the site of a riot that had produced appalling devastation and expressed his appreciation to the people responding to it.
Yet she said that he was fueling division, repeating precisely the rhetoric of the communists attempting to overthrow the United States.