This essay reexamines the Osaka–San Francisco sister-city dispute, the comfort woman statue controversy, and Asahi Shimbun’s editorials.
It questions media responsibility, past reporting corrections, and the credibility of narratives surrounding wartime history.

2019-01-11
If one wishes to speak about wartime prostitutes, then Nemoto Kiyoki should first go and apologize, saying, “We told lies.”
Which side should “return to the starting point”?
It is a hundred years too early for them to lecture Osaka City.
Was it editorial chief Nemoto who wrote that editorial?
Has he forgotten that his own newspaper turned “ordinary prostitutes” into “sex slaves”?
I hereby republish the chapter originally issued on November 19, 2018.
Regarding the facts revealed in that chapter, two years ago I also prayed that Shohei Ohtani would not go to the San Francisco Giants.
I even declared that a team based in such a city would never become world champion.
They reinforced strongly in the off-season, which caused slight concern, but I remained certain it would never happen.
Until I learned what kind of city San Francisco truly is, the Giants had been one of my favorite teams, but that feeling has now almost vanished.
If the city remains as it is, it will never become number one in the world even in a hundred years.
Because it is impossible for God to bless such a city of evil.
Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist of the postwar world, wrote in his Shukan Shincho column this week under the title “A Hundred Years Too Early.”
When Osaka became a sister city with San Francisco sixty years ago, there was no deep meaning.
As Japan’s second city, it simply sought another country’s second city, preferably a port city.
Russia was Saint Petersburg.
China was Shanghai.
Australia was Melbourne.
By that logic, Boston or New Orleans would have made more sense in the United States.
Los Angeles was also an option.
Yet Osaka chose San Francisco.
Considering history, this seems a grave mistake.
In the early twentieth century, during the Russo-Japanese War, the San Francisco Chronicle launched a fierce anti-Japanese campaign.
They claimed Japanese immigrants did not spend money locally.
They married only by photograph.
They had no love.
They even wrote that “Japanese steal the brains of whites.”
Takamine Jokichi’s scientific achievement was accused of theft.
The accusation was later exposed as false, yet the name persisted.
After Japan’s victory in the war, anti-Japanese sentiment intensified.
When the San Francisco earthquake struck, Japan sent 500,000 yen in aid.
The response was the expulsion of Japanese children from public schools.
Eventually, the comfort woman statue issue arose.
Osaka terminated the sister-city relationship.
Naturally.
Yet Asahi wrote in an editorial urging a “return to the starting point.”
It blamed remarks by Hashimoto.
It criticized him as reckless.
But what of Asahi’s own past?
Has it forgotten its own false reporting?
Has it forgotten the resignation of its president over those errors?
If one wishes to speak of wartime prostitutes, who should apologize first?
Who should “return to the starting point”?
It is far too early for them to lecture Osaka.