Despite clear historical and legal facts—including China’s renunciation of war reparations in the Japan–China Joint Communiqué and subsequent Supreme Court rulings—Asahi Shimbun portrayed disputes involving Mitsubishi Materials and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines as Japan’s fault. This essay condemns the newspaper’s distortion of reality and its alignment with the arbitrary actions of China’s one-party dictatorship.

June 15, 2016
The outrageous nature of the June 1 edition of Asahi Shimbun was once again beyond description.
The rulers of a one-party communist dictatorship are beings who declare black to be white and white to be black, a reality the entire world has been forcefully reminded of through issues such as the South China Sea.
When the Chinese economy was on the verge of collapse due to Mao Zedong’s two major policy failures, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai issued the Japan–China Joint Communiqué and concluded a treaty of peace and friendship with Japan.
At that time, China received from Japan the largest amount of assistance in human history and used it as the foundation for its current economic development.
The following clause is clearly written therein.
“The Government of the People’s Republic of China declares that, in the interest of friendship between the peoples of China and Japan, it renounces its demand for war reparations from Japan.”
Regarding this matter, Wikipedia also records the following facts.
Validity of the Japan–China Joint Communiqué.
Because the communiqué did not adopt the formal structure of a treaty—at least in Japan—its status as a norm of international law became an issue.
By 2007, two cases before the Supreme Court of Japan disputed the legal effect of this communiqué.
The first was the Nishimatsu Construction forced labor lawsuit, concerning whether claims for damages arising from the forced mobilization of Chinese nationals had been renounced by Article 5 of the communiqué.
On April 27, 2007, the Supreme Court recognized the communiqué’s binding nature under international law, considering it either a unilateral declaration under international law by the government of the People’s Republic of China or a principle confirmed in the preamble of the Japan–China Treaty of Peace and Friendship, and noting that the Chinese government had treated it as a constitutive legal provision.
Furthermore, since the declaration was not intended to negate the framework of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Court interpreted it as having waived the claims held by individuals, including corporations.
Most readers of Asahi Shimbun are likely unaware of these clear facts.
What, then, did the Kansai evening edition of Asahi Shimbun write in its front-page headline on June 1?
It is a fact known to people of sound mind around the world that today’s one-party communist rulers of China arbitrarily advance all manner of matters according to their own convenience.
The issues involving Mitsubishi Materials and the recent case concerning Mitsui O.S.K. Lines are examples of such rulers making unreasonable demands and engaging in harassment against Japan.
It is also a fact known worldwide that such acts are committed precisely because Japan is not a country like the United States.
Yet, for some reason, Asahi Shimbun alone reported otherwise.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that this newspaper has already sold Japan to China.
For, unbelievably, they wrote such words as a major headline, portraying matters as if Japan were at fault.
That both Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Mitsubishi Materials settled only reluctantly, because their counterpart was a one-party communist dictatorship, is something that anyone with a sound mind can understand without being told.
Nevertheless, Asahi asserted an editorial line recognizing “historical responsibility” and claiming once again that Japan was in the wrong.
I am convinced that this newspaper has become one that Japanese citizens and the Japanese people can no longer forgive.
The articles were written by the following individuals.
Editorial board members Toyo Shuichi and Hayashi Nozomu, and Daisuke Nishimura in Beijing.
My concern—that Asahi Shimbun might be unable to exist as a media organization if anything were exposed by Chinese or South Korean intelligence agencies—has, through reading these articles, turned into certainty.