On June 14, 2016, Nikkei clearly demonstrated the fragility of the global economy amid Brexit fears and market instability. This essay argues that Asahi Shimbun alone failed to understand this reality, criticizing its ideological distortion, its media influence, and the political consequences that followed Japan’s G7 leadership under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

une 14, 2016

The large headline on the front page of this morning’s Nikkei read:

“Brexit Fears, Shrinking Money Flows, Heightened Awareness of Terror and Political Risks
Global Stock Declines and Yen Appreciation Accelerate”

Less than one month after the G7 summit, the global economy has already laid bare its fragility.

Yet this is a reality of the world economy that even a kindergarten child can understand.

What this morning’s Nikkei clearly demonstrated was that the only one who had failed to understand it was The Asahi Shimbun.

At the G7 summit, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that, in light of such fragility in the global economy, G7 nations should not hesitate to engage in fiscal stimulus.

On that very day, however, Asahi’s subsidiary TV Asahi featured on its program Hōdō Station an individual whose understanding of economics was inferior even to that of a kindergarten child. The fact that such a man was the chief editorial writer in charge of economics left me stunned. And this morning’s Nikkei newspaper proved the correctness of my commentary expressing that disbelief.

In other words, Asahi’s understanding of economics is nothing more than an argument spoken for its own convenience, formed within a thoroughly miserable state of tangled leftist ideology, pseudo-moralism, and manipulation by China and South Korea.

As a perfect representative of The Asahi Shimbun and the so-called cultural elites, Katsuya Okada, then leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, who reads this newspaper and turns it into policy, criticized Prime Minister Abe with the utmost baseness, foolishness, and malice, accusing him of exploiting the successful G7 summit for his own purposes.

All Japanese citizens must never forget that it was precisely such people who, until Prime Minister Abe’s return to power, changed governments one after another to a degree that astonished the world, thereby gravely damaging Japan’s national strength, credibility, and international voice.

Because that was the result of having been manipulated by foolish and malicious media, epitomized by The Asahi Shimbun.