Quoting an internal Asahi article, this chapter reflects on the gap between the readership journalists imagined and the reality they faced. It highlights how changing public sentiment exposed the illusion of a presumed moral audience.

2015-12-28
The readership I had imagined was a convenient and comforting illusion for ourselves.
The following continues from the previous chapter.
Reading this passage reminded me of another article.
It was an article in the Asahi Shimbun’s monthly magazine Journalism (July 2012 issue) titled “The Only One Who Saw Society Clearly Was Hashimoto: A Lament by an Asahi Osaka Social Affairs Desk Editor.”
Regarding a bill to mandate the singing of the national anthem at public school ceremonies by ordinance, the reporter declared heatedly that “the ordinance is a direct challenge to the postwar democracy that the Asahi Shimbun has protected and nurtured,” and set out to conduct a street survey.
“The results were beyond anything we had imagined. Twenty-six out of thirty people supported the ordinance. They said it was absurd that people who cannot follow basic rules are working as teachers. It was a shock. Honestly, I had expected 60 to 70 percent to oppose it. I believed that for conscientious Japanese, the compulsory use of the national flag and anthem, tied to memories of a war that brought great sacrifice both domestically and abroad, would be fundamentally unacceptable. I thought those people were the readers of the Asahi Shimbun. But such people now account for only about ten percent. We believed we were leading a conscientious public opinion, yet when we turned back, there was no one there. The readership I had imagined was a convenient and comforting illusion for ourselves.”
The author of this article, Emiko Inagaki, then a desk editor in the Osaka Social Affairs Department, later served as an editorial writer and left the Asahi Shimbun through early retirement in September 2015.