Through the issue of table tennis racket glue affecting match outcomes, this essay examines a rare instance of proper journalism by Asahi Shimbun—while exposing its persistent silence regarding Chinese misconduct and human rights violations.

I learned for the first time from this article that the adhesive used to attach table tennis rubber was a crucial factor determining victory or defeat.
2016-08-26
As already noted, I now only skim the Asahi Shimbun, but I do make sure to check the daily schedule in the sports section.
The other day, a close friend who stopped subscribing to Asahi in August two years ago and switched to the Sankei Shimbun wrote about a conversation he had with a Sankei employee.
During the Olympics, Asahi seized the occasion to flaunt its own printing technology and paper quality.
The difference between Asahi and, for example, Sankei lies in the global reach of their reporting networks and the size of their staffs, but it goes without saying that such resources have never been used to make Japan—a country where the turntable of civilization is rotating—the leader of the world.
In the sports pages during the Olympic period, for the first time in many years, I encountered three articles in which Asahi properly fulfilled the role of journalism.
The role of journalism is not to write one’s own opinions based on distorted ideology, but above all to convey facts that readers living in the worlds of business, agriculture, fisheries, and daily life have no way of knowing.
An article featuring the achievements of table tennis player Jun Mizutani showed that, at least in the sports section, Asahi still had journalists.
From this article, I learned for the first time that the adhesive used to attach table tennis rubber was a decisive factor in match outcomes.
It explained that this adhesive has a major impact on rebound performance, that solvents which were supposed to have been banned after a certain Olympic Games had somehow been left in a gray zone, and that in protest against this situation, Mizutani decided—and acted upon that decision—to boycott international competitions unless improvements were made.
Reading this article, I became convinced that this could only be the work of China.
I was convinced that the reason the issue had been left ambiguous was opposition from China, which raises its voice loudly whenever its own national interests are at stake.
Yet in Asahi’s article, despite the fact that it must have many correspondents in China, the word “China” appeared nowhere.
When I later searched to find out from which Olympics the practice had formally been banned, I found a detailed article.
It stated quite matter-of-factly that in China the solvent is openly sold and commonly used by everyone.
This is the posture of the Asahi Shimbun Company.
Even when there is wrongdoing, if the other party is China or South Korea, it says nothing.
Conversely, even when there is no wrongdoing at all, it has not only fully supported so-called civic groups that went to bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council or UNESCO to spread claims that Japan is a country that violates human rights or discriminates against women, but has also pressed ahead with legislation such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Hate Speech Law.
Despite all this, when faced with wrongdoing and arrogance by China or South Korea, or with egregious human rights abuses and violations of freedom of expression unthinkable in the twenty-first century, Asahi Shimbun raises not a single voice of protest to the world.