This excerpt from Mass Media: Crime and Punishment (Masayuki Takayama × Rui Abiru) examines how narratives such as the Nanjing Incident, Yasukuni Shrine, and the Rising Sun flag are internationalized despite widespread ignorance of Far Eastern history. Even U.S. officials reportedly did not know that Japan and South Korea never went to war. The text argues that shallow misunderstandings are amplified into “major issues” through media-driven agenda-setting, echoing domestic political tactics like the Moritomo and Kake controversies.

2019-02-12.
In other words, the reality is that this is a shallow matter at its roots.
Even a shallow matter can be forcibly engineered into a major issue, just like the Moritomo and Kake controversies.

The following continues from the previous chapter.
Far Eastern history is of no interest to the international community.
Abiru.
There is no doubt that China’s Kuomintang and the United States at the time were extremely closely tied.
It is fair to call it a well-known fact.
Takayama.
Commentator Kin Birei says that all of Chiang Kai-shek’s close aides had studied in the United States.
In other words, China’s Fulbright-type intellectuals (laughs).
Their training was also managed by the CPI, and the funding came from the reparations China was forced to pay to the United States after the Boxer Rebellion.
Abiru.
In the case of the Nanjing Incident, I think it was indeed the Kuomintang, backed by U.S. assistance, that first spread the propaganda, but it did not become a major issue until much later.
It was after Katsuichi Honda’s Travels in China (Asahi Shimbun, 1972), wasn’t it.
Takayama.
Even at the Tokyo Trials, they went out of their way to bring in someone like Magee to testify, didn’t they.
Abiru.
But at that time, it did not become such a big topic.
Takayama.
That’s right.
And the truth is probably that GHQ, which ran the Tokyo Trials, used the Asahi Shimbun to write as if the Nanjing Incident—crafted by the U.S. Public Information Committee—had really happened.
Abiru.
The issue of prime ministers visiting Yasukuni Shrine was also something the Asahi Shimbun transmitted to the world—no, “reported” to the world.
By the way, the South Korean government also complains about Yasukuni.
That is strange, isn’t it.
If China says it, then, giving them a hundred steps, one might say, “You shouldn’t really say it, but you may have your circumstances, so I’ll allow you to say it,” but why is South Korea saying it.
After all, South Korea never fought a war with Japan.
A diplomat acquaintance told me that, regarding the Yasukuni issue—which until then had only been raised by lower-level officials—during the Roh Moo-hyun administration it was for the first time that a cabinet-level person complained.
When our side asked the South Korean diplomatic authorities, “Why is South Korea bringing up this issue,” they replied, “Well, China is saying various things, so we thought we had to say something too” (laughs).
It is not logic.
As a characteristic of that people, once they start saying it, they begin to get worked up.
Takayama.
The Rising Sun flag issue is the same.
Why would you pick a fight with the flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy when you never even fought it, that’s the point.
Abiru.
The international community knows nothing about Far Eastern history.
This too is something I heard from that diplomat, but in the year after the second Abe administration was formed, he went to the U.S. East Coast and exchanged views with various people including senior U.S. government officials.
And one of those senior officials did not know that Japan had never gone to war with South Korea.
Even senior officials are only at that level.
In fact, President Trump also did not know that Japan and South Korea had never gone to war until Prime Minister Abe told him.
We have to teach them from our side.
In other words, this is a shallow matter at its roots.
Even a shallow matter can be forcibly engineered into a major issue, just like the Moritomo and Kake controversies.
This article continues.