Drawing on a column by Masayuki Takayama, this essay examines who destabilized Japan’s leadership before Shinzo Abe’s rise.
It argues that persistent media-driven political interference—particularly by the Asahi Shimbun’s editorial establishment—prevented long-term leadership and weakened Japan’s standing in the international community.

2016-07-04

I came across an old issue of Weekly Shinchō and decided to read Masayuki Takayama’s column “Henken Jizai.”
In that issue, the main theme was Asahi Shimbun editorial writer Tadashi Tominaga’s peculiar tendency to lavish praise on Angela Merkel.
Takayama criticized Tominaga—who praised Merkel for building a long-term administration—from his uniquely incisive perspective.
This Tominaga was later dismissed after posting truly foolish statements on Twitter, such as claiming that supporters of Prime Minister Abe were Nazis, or that many participants in anti-Korean demonstrations were Abe supporters (though it is now common knowledge that most Asahi editorial writers are of his ilk), so I read it thinking, “That figures.”
Subsequent events proved that Takayama’s criticism—his ability to sense the flaws in a person like Tominaga—was precisely on target.
Now then,
It is in fact the Asahi Shimbun that has created the conditions under which Japan—a country that remains in substance the world’s second-largest economic superpower and in which the turntable of civilization continues to rotate—has steadily lost its voice in the international community.
Both Merkel, whom Tominaga praised, and her predecessor Kohl served as German chancellors for long periods.
As for Japan, the situation needs no explanation.
Who was it that kept replacing Japan’s prime ministers like a revolving door during the long period before Prime Minister Abe emerged?
People say “the LDP is dominant,” yet within the Liberal Democratic Party there were hardly any prime ministers who led long-term administrations like Kohl or Merkel, such that one could say, “When you think of Japan, you think of Prime Minister so-and-so.”
At best, one might barely recall Eisaku Satō.
In other words, despite talk of LDP dominance, the reality was that Japanese politics were constantly stirred up by Asahi editorial writers, producing nothing more than tempests in a teacup.
That it was Hiroshi Hoshi, who postured as a heavyweight at the Asahi Shimbun, who elevated Naoto Kan—arguably the worst prime minister in history—during the Democratic Party administration, is something readers surely know well.
People like him, rotating in and out of editorial positions, incited and pitted influential LDP figures against one another.
Regarding the recent Yuriko Koike affair—her unilateral declaration to run for Tokyo governor and the resulting ripples within the LDP—I suspect that one of the masterminds may be Hiroshi Hoshi, now an anchor on News 23.
It goes without saying that Hoshi embodies the Asahi Shimbun’s desire to undermine Prime Minister Abe’s political foundation.
Even from casually watching that day’s broadcast, one could see Hoshi displaying and explaining the name and face of Shigeru Ishiba on screen.
It is equally obvious that, as before, the Asahi Shimbun does not want Prime Minister Abe to establish a long-term administration and is seeking some way to disrupt the LDP from within.
Since the Upper House election was announced, Asahi editorials and commentaries—employing seemingly plausible arguments and the newspaper’s favored academics—have been filled with criticism of Abenomics aimed at discrediting Prime Minister Abe, a fact well known to all.
The abnormality of praising long-term leadership in a country like Germany—far removed from Japan and once the birthplace of Nazism—while absolutely refusing to tolerate long-term leadership by a Japanese prime minister, has completely escaped the notice of Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers.
Readers will surely feel keenly that my criticism of them is entirely correct.