Citing a HANADA magazine essay by Rupi Abiru, this text scrutinizes Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of the Kake Gakuen issue. It highlights a suspiciously shadowed document photo that appears to conceal text inconsistent with the article’s narrative, arguing that the controversy itself may be “fake” and manufactured through manipulative reporting tactics.

2017-07-30

Instead of publishing it normally, they went out of their way to cast a shadow artificially over the lower part of the document.
The following is from this month’s issue of the monthly magazine HANADA (840 yen).
It is an essay that not only the Japanese people but people all over the world should read.
The Asahi Shimbun Is in a “State of Frenzy”
Rupi Abiru, Editorial Writer and Political Desk Editor, Sankei Shimbun
It is an essay spanning ten pages in a three-column layout. —
The Issue Itself Is Fake
“The Asahi Shimbun has gone insane.” “It’s as if it’s in a state of frenzy.”
Since the opening of this year’s ordinary session of the Diet, how many times have I heard such lines from senior government officials?
The Asahi Shimbun had long carried a strong anti-Abe tone, criticizing Abe by name in its editorials ever since the days when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe served as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in Junichiro Koizumi’s administration, but recently its reporting stance has clearly departed from common sense.
A series of Asahi Shimbun reports concerning the plan by the Kake Gakuen educational corporation to establish a new veterinary school by using the National Strategic Special Zone system can be described as taking on the appearance of a campaign to topple the government, waged at the paper’s own corporate risk.
As if even the height of telegraph poles and the redness of mailboxes were all Prime Minister Abe’s fault, it employs every possible means—nitpicking, impression manipulation, the “freedom not to report,” and selective, cropped reporting—to undermine the image of the Abe administration.
It does not even try to hide its malicious and grotesque form.
The Kake Gakuen issue burst into flames all at once because of the Asahi Shimbun’s May 17 morning edition front-page top story: “New Faculty ‘Prime Minister’s Intention’” and “Document Recorded in the Ministry of Education.”
The article stated the following about the plan to establish a new veterinary school:
“It has been learned that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology had put into written form a record stating that it had been told by the Cabinet Office, which is in charge of the special zone, things such as ‘the highest level of the Prime Minister’s Office is saying it’ and ‘I have heard it is the Prime Minister’s intention.’”
In the first place, it hardly seems that a document resembling an internal memo within the Ministry of Education could prove anything, but let us set that aside.
What I want to point out is that the article also included a photograph of a document titled “Cabinet Office Response to Items for Ministerial Confirmation,” and that photograph was puzzling.
Instead of publishing it normally, they went out of their way to cast a shadow artificially over the lower part of the document.
As a result, the portion that reads, “Since the designation of the area in Imabari City, a process has been followed on the premise of ‘regulatory reform in the shortest distance,’ and I have heard this is the Prime Minister’s intention,” can be read clearly, but the text that followed below it was made unreadable.
Was this merely a photographic staging choice, or was there some kind of intent? —
Then, about one month later, on June 15, when the Ministry of Education announced that it had found a similar document as a result of an internal reinvestigation, the concealed portion read as follows:
“If it is done in the form of a ‘National Strategic Special Zone Advisory Council decision,’ since the Prime Minister is the chair, would it not appear to be an instruction from the Prime Minister?”
In other words, it means that the Cabinet Office advised the Ministry of Education on how they might dress it up as if it were an instruction from Prime Minister Abe.
Conversely, that means there was no instruction from the Prime Minister.
The Asahi Shimbun probably hid the portion that did not fit the tone of its article by using an unnatural photograph.
This is exactly as Yozo Yamamoto, the minister in charge of regulatory reform, stated at a press conference on May 19: “There is absolutely no instruction from Prime Minister Abe. They may want to create such a story, but it is different from the facts.”
They say there is no smoke without fire, but it is different if someone spreads fuel and sets the fire.
As for the Kake Gakuen issue, I suspect that the issue itself may be “fake.”
To be continued.