Using a brutal murder case in Kawasaki as an example, this essay criticizes Japanese newspapers for concealing perpetrators’ origins, thereby projecting brutality onto Japanese society as a whole. It argues that such reporting constitutes a paradoxical form of hate speech against Japan.

2016-05-25

Despite the fact that the perpetrator of the horrific murder of a boy in Kawasaki was in reality a resident Korean, it is utterly absurd that Japanese newspapers wrote only the Japanese name (alias) of the perpetrator and did not write the Korean name; this inevitably causes people abroad to believe that Japanese themselves are a people who commit such brutal acts of lingchi.
The only journalist, to my knowledge, who made this entirely reasonable point while simultaneously teaching the Japanese people the truth of the matter is Masayuki Takayama.
For example, in the case of Kang Sang-jung, who has the Japanese name Tetsuo Nagano, the newspapers have written only the Korean name Kang Sang-jung, or in the case of a TV Asahi news desk editor (who, naturally, should also be a resident Korean who has been naturalized and therefore has a Japanese name), they have reported only the Korean name, believing that doing so constitutes an expression of respect.
However, when it comes to a murder case, reporting the perpetrator under a Japanese name is an utterly strange practice, something that even an elementary school student would understand.
In relation to the hate speech bill discussed later, it is no exaggeration to say that this constitutes a paradoxical form of hate speech against Japan.
Regarding the perpetrator of the stabbing death of a female university student who had worked part-time as an idol—an incident marked by the abnormality of repeated stabbing—currently being reported on television, the news referred to the suspect as “self-identified as Iwasaki.”
I immediately understood that this must have been the strongest possible protest or expression by the reporter who wrote that news script.
This is because people with long residence histories in the Kansai region must have intuitively sensed that this perpetrator was not Japanese.
I believe that Masayuki Takayama will eventually make clear that this inference is correct.
The fact that such truths exist not in newspapers but on the internet is also one sign that newspapers are now falling behind the internet.
It is no exaggeration to say that, in reality, far more truth is written on the internet than in what newspapers publish.
Needless to say, writings by authors who operate at a level even below determining whether something is true or not are irrelevant in this case.
In particular, the strange taboos that Japanese newspapers have created with regard to South Korea and China—in simple terms, their voluntary abandonment of freedom of speech—are likely the reason why newspapers such as Asahi Shimbun have become propaganda newspapers, writing articles manipulated by the governments and intelligence agencies of South Korea and China.