This essay argues that sustained deflationary mindset in Japan was shaped by media narratives, particularly the Asahi Shimbun and echoed broadcasts, rather than policy failure. It critiques hollow opposition to Abenomics and examines how public psychology was formed.

2016-09-22

On the other hand, what proved by itself to be a reality beyond contempt was today’s Asahi Shimbun.
The Asahi Shimbun did not report at all the facts conveyed by the Sankei Shimbun. As subscribers know, they were not carried anywhere on today’s pages.
Rather, today’s Asahi Shimbun was a paper that made extraordinarily clear just how abnormal and distorted the thinking of those who produce its pages truly is.
To begin with, it was the Asahi Shimbun that created the first prolonged deflation in the history of advanced nations. Far from showing even a shred of reflection on that fact, the paper’s stance was revealed when, at the G7 held in Ise-Shima in May, Prime Minister Abe—who demonstrated leadership that could hardly be surpassed among prime ministers to date—was confronted on the very day on Hōdō Station by a man who, with a plainly condescending attitude, declared to the Prime Minister that there existed no problems in the current world that required fiscal stimulus, and that the Prime Minister’s remarks were nonsensical. This man, the economics desk’s chief editorial writer Masato Hara, who thus proved to the entire world that he himself was the very embodiment of nonsense, became the center around which the Asahi Shimbun filled page after page—virtually the entire paper—with vehement criticism and denial of the policy decided by the Bank of Japan yesterday.
It was before August of the year before last that Governor Kuroda of the Bank of Japan appeared and finally began to implement the policies that ought to be carried out. At that time, the Asahi Shimbun boasted a claimed circulation exceeding seven million, a figure rare in the world of newspapers. Even though it is racing straight down the path of its death throes—perhaps already undergoing the torments of King Enma in this very life—the Asahi Shimbun still maintains a circulation exceeding four million today.
The current issue of VOICE magazine is also filled with essays worth reading, and among them, Kenichi Ohmae points out that despite Abenomics, Japan has not escaped deflation because the mindset of the elderly, who hold the most money in Japan, has withered. Yet even in Ohmae’s essay, there remains a fact that is missing.
Missing entirely are the facts that the great majority of the elderly he refers to subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun, and that the Asahi Shimbun has continued to publish negative commentary on the Abe administration’s economic policies by mobilizing scholars who share its views.
That deflation is a matter of mindset goes without saying.
The perspective of who has continued to create that mindset is completely absent, because Ohmae is too intent on asserting his own theory.
As someone who is repeatedly made aware of the fact that those who grew up reading the Asahi Shimbun now produce NHK’s news programs, I watch with a profound sense of gloom.
Even today, the Asahi Shimbun, with more than four million subscribing households, denies these policies, and in response, NHK—watched by many Japanese—voices skepticism on television.
In other words, the simple fact that they create the deflationary mindset and thereby create deflation itself is entirely missing even from Ohmae’s otherwise valuable work.
If one believes that criticizing Abenomics is something that sells, then it is not even worth discussing.