Why did Asahi Shimbun consistently oppose long-term leadership in Japan while praising it abroad.
Drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s insight and subsequent facts, this essay exposes how Asahi’s editorial elites destabilized Japanese politics from within.

2016-08-25
Readers should feel keenly that my criticism of them is entirely correct.
An old issue of Shukan Shincho resurfaced, so I reread Masayuki Takayama’s column “Henken Jizai.”
The main theme of that issue was an article by Asahi Shimbun editorial writer Tadashi Tominaga, who oddly praised Angela Merkel.
Takayama criticized Tominaga, who admired Merkel for maintaining a long-term administration, from his own distinctive perspective.
This Tominaga later wrote truly foolish things on Twitter, such as claiming that supporters of Prime Minister Abe were Nazis, or that many participants in anti-Korea demonstrations were Abe supporters, and was consequently dismissed.
Given that Asahi’s editorial writers are now widely known to be largely of his kind, it was hardly surprising.
The facts later proved that Takayama’s criticism—his detection of Tominaga’s fundamental defects—was entirely on target.
Now then,
It is in fact Asahi Shimbun that has created the causes by which Japan, a nation that remains in substance the world’s second super economic power and one where the turntable of civilization still turns, has steadily lost its voice in international society.
Both Merkel, whom Tominaga praised, and Kohl before her, served long terms as German chancellors.
As for Japan, the situation needs no explanation.
Who was it that kept replacing Japanese prime ministers like a revolving door until Abe appeared.
People speak of “LDP one-party dominance,” yet within the LDP there were hardly any leaders who governed long enough to be identified abroad as “Prime Minister so-and-so of Japan,” as Kohl or Merkel were for Germany.
At best, one might barely recall Eisaku Sato.
In other words, despite claims of LDP dominance, the reality was constant internal strife stirred up by Asahi’s editorial writers, amounting to little more than battles within a teacup.
During the Democratic Party administration, it was Hiroshi Hoshi, who had postured as a heavyweight at Asahi Shimbun, who promoted Naoto Kan—arguably the worst prime minister in history—to the premiership, a fact readers should know well.
People like him repeatedly became editorial writers, inciting and pitting influential LDP figures against one another.
Regarding the recent Yuriko Koike affair—her unilateral declaration to run for Tokyo governor and the ripples it caused within the LDP—I suspect that one of the masterminds is none other than Hiroshi Hoshi, now a host on News 23.
That Hoshi embodies Asahi Shimbun’s desire to undermine Prime Minister Abe’s political foundation goes without saying.
Even from casually watching that day’s broadcast, one could see Hoshi explaining matters while displaying the name and face of Shigeru Ishiba on screen.
Asahi Shimbun, unwilling to allow Abe to build a long-term administration, clearly seeks once again to disrupt the LDP from within.
Since the official announcement of the House of Councillors election, Asahi’s editorials and commentaries—mobilizing plausible rhetoric and its favored academics—have predictably focused on criticizing Abenomics in order to denigrate Prime Minister Abe.
The abnormality of praising long-term leadership in a distant country like Germany, which once gave rise to Nazism, while absolutely refusing to permit long-term leadership by a Japanese prime minister, has gone completely unnoticed by Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writers.
Readers should feel keenly that my criticism of them is entirely correct.