This essay introduces a serialized column by Mutsumi Miyawaki published in the monthly magazine Sound Argument and exposes the double standard of “Anti-Abe Innocence” widespread among Japan’s mass media and left-leaning public figures.
Showing that the real truth often exists on the internet, it sharply points out the contradictions surrounding speech suppression, the LGBT controversy, the IR law, and the opposition parties’ no-confidence motion against the Cabinet.

2019-03-27
Netizens were mocking them, saying, “You detained Cabinet ministers in the Diet with a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, and then…”
I am republishing here a chapter originally released on 2018-09-09 under the title, “A brilliant article suggesting both that the real truth exists on the internet and that the Asahi Shimbun possesses a truly abnormal cast of mind.”
The following is from Mutsumi Miyawaki’s serialized column, published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument under the title, “The Runaway ‘Anti-Abe Innocence.’”
If one reads the article in the previous chapter, one sees that the real truth indeed exists on the internet, and that this is a brilliant article suggesting the abnormality of the Asahi Shimbun’s mind.
The emphases in the text, except for the headings, and the portions between the asterisks are mine.
At the time of the nationalization of the Senkaku Islands in 2012, in Ishigaki City, Okinawa Prefecture, arson and looting targeting factories and stores of Japanese companies occurred frequently within China.
It is still fresh in memory that Chinese internet users praised this lawless behavior as “Patriotism Is No Crime,” and that the Chinese government turned a blind eye to the سلسلة of riots, but recently on the Japanese internet one often sees the phrase “Anti-Abe Innocence.”
This is internet slang that replaces “patriotism” with “anti-Abe,” and ridicules the mass media and public figures who repeat opportunistic criticism and self-righteous attacks.
It refers to situations in which the head of a school corporation, criticized as “right-wing” for encouraging kindergarten children to recite the Imperial Rescript on Education, suddenly became cherished as a “victim of the Abe administration” the moment he turned to criticizing the Prime Minister, or in which a person who, in the position of Vice Minister of Education, had controlled the amakudari placement system, began to be treated respectfully as a “fighter against power” the instant he started attacking the Abe administration.
In the hands of the forces that preach “Anti-Abe Innocence,” scandals involving opposition lawmakers are “ignored,” while suspicions connected to “pro-Abe” figures are mercilessly attacked.
Silent when it comes to the “Abe Truth Religion.”
At the end of July, former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada tweeted to participants in a meeting of a constitutional revision group, “Thank you for supporting Prime Minister Abe without being poisoned by the new religion called Constitutionalism, despite being in the legal profession,” and was fiercely criticized.
She was probably contrasting the legal world, where pro-constitution voices are loud, with Prime Minister Abe, who aims for constitutional revision, but perhaps unable to withstand the successive attacks, she herself deleted the tweet, saying that “the wording was too strong.”
The usual pro-constitution camp, including the Asahi Shimbun, joyfully seized on this episode, and on August 1 the digital edition of Shimbun Akahata denounced it, saying, “To attack the position of defending the Constitution, the supreme law of the nation, as ‘Constitutionalism’ or a ‘new religion,’ amounts to confessing that support for Prime Minister Abe and defense of the Constitution are in conflict. … Ms. Inada’s post clearly violates the constitutional duty of members of the Diet to uphold the Constitution.”
The duty to uphold the Constitution presumably refers to Article 99 of the Constitution of Japan, which states that “The Emperor or the Regent as well as Ministers of State, members of the Diet, judges, and all other public officials have the obligation to respect and uphold this Constitution,” but slightly before that, Article 96 contains provisions for changing the Constitution.
In other words, constitutional revision itself does not stand in opposition to the Constitution, and the author rather feels that the attitude of the anti-revision camp, which allows no changes whatsoever, is the stranger one.
Moreover, if comparing something to a new religion is to be treated as a problem, why is there no criticism of House of Councillors member Hiroyuki Konishi, then unaffiliated and belonging to the Constitutional Democratic Party caucus, who invoked Aum Shinrikyo and tweeted, “We must defeat the Abe Truth Religion”?
He may differ in rank from a former minister, but he is still a member of the Diet just the same.
If the reason for overlooking this is “Anti-Abe Innocence,” then it is plainly a form of reverse discrimination.
Even some gay people are appalled by the protest activities.
Speaking of discrimination, around the passage in Mio Sugita’s contribution to Shincho 45 in which she argued about LGBT couples that “they do not produce children, in other words, they lack ‘productivity,’” the Asahi Shimbun took the lead in launching large-scale criticism, declaring it “discrimination.”
On Twitter, posts with the hashtag “#TwitterDemoDemandingTheResignationOfMioSugita” were observed, and demonstrations were also held.
Such reactions too lose their persuasive force if attitudes change depending on the target.
On a BS Asahi program on July 29, Tetsuro Fukuyama, Secretary-General of the Constitutional Democratic Party, fiercely attacked Sugita’s remarks as “deliberate and simply outrageous,” but he did not mention at all that in January 2007 former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, then now the party’s Supreme Adviser, had said in a campaign speech for the Aichi gubernatorial election that “Tokyo and Aichi are the places with the lowest productivity in terms of producing children.”
Incidentally, videos of Mr. Kan’s “productivity speech” have been widely spread online, and the party’s double standard is being denounced.
On the other hand, several accounts openly identifying themselves as “gay” were confirmed to be calling these protest activities “a nuisance.”
For example, one said this.
“Do you have any idea how much your actions are troubling us LGBT people? … At least legally I am treated equally, except for marriage. It is also a fact that gay couples cannot have children, and what Sugita is saying is not wrong. Calm down.”
According to reports, the Constitutional Democratic Party is aiming to legalize same-sex marriage.
Article 24 of the Constitution says, “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes,” but in its document “View on the Constitution: Constitutional Discussion,” established on July 19, the Constitutional Democratic Party explained this clause as meaning that it was intended to free people, from the prewar household system in which parents forcibly decided marriage partners or the approval of the head of the household or parents was required, to decide by their own free will whether to marry and whom to marry, and therefore “it is not a norm prohibiting same-sex marriage.”
However, if that is so, the question remains why the drafters of the Constitution used the word “both sexes” rather than “both persons” or “both parties.”
If by any chance the Constitution was written in the postwar confusion by someone with an uncertain command of Japanese, then would it not be necessary, in accordance with Article 96, to revise the Constitution so as to rewrite it into correct Japanese?
Left-wing public figures are tolerant of speech suppression.
This heading itself is an excellent heading indicating that left-wing public figures possess the same disposition as dictators such as those of the Chinese Communist Party.
It hardly needs to be said that precisely on issues where opinions are divided, such as various LGBT policies, it is necessary to gather views broadly and engage in discussion.
It is through this process that diverse values are confirmed.
If opinions are suppressed, debate becomes one-sided, and the diversity that supports a healthy democracy is lost.
Now, from the video-sharing site YouTube, only conservative videos are being deleted one after another, and it has widely become rumored to be “speech suppression.”
The critic Tsuneyasu Takeda, who writes a serial for this magazine, and the conservative YouTuber KAZUYA have also become victims, and all of the videos on the author’s “Miyawaki Channel” have likewise been deleted.
Asahi Shimbun Digital, on July 6, 2018, under the headline “Discriminatory Expressions: YouTube Deletes Videos One After Another After User Reports,” reported as though only problematic videos were being deleted, but the reality is different.
If one looks at today’s article in the Sankei Shimbun, one may conclude that inside the Asahi Shimbun there are countless people with exactly the same DNA as people from China and the Korean Peninsula, people who have the disposition to have articles inconvenient to themselves deleted, and to run to the United Nations and the world to tattle with their lies, and that there are countless such people among Asahi reporters and the so-called cultural figures who follow them.
Labels are being attached even to videos containing absolutely no “discrimination” or “hate,” and organized reports demanding that YouTube delete them are being repeated.
Looking at those boasting of their methods and “results” on anonymous bulletin boards, such activities appear to be carried out by anti-conservative forces.
The Asahi Shimbun reported these actions, which suppress “freedom of speech,” in a half-approving manner.
Moreover, there are left-leaning figures such as the psychiatrist Rika Kayama, who sang with joy upon learning of KAZUYA’s video deletions, and the people of “the Left” are truly tolerant of speech suppression.
This matter is introduced in detail in the August 1 and August 8 issues of the e-mail magazine Seiron Premium.
“Pachinko ○” and “Casino ×.”
The issue that became a point of dispute at the end of the ordinary Diet session was the “IR Law,” which allows casino development.
On July 20, when it was passed, the opposition parties submitted a “Motion of No Confidence Against the Cabinet” to the House of Representatives.
Yukio Edano, leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, launched into a long harangue, saying that “they prioritized lifting the ban on gambling over disaster response,” and criticized the government’s response to the heavy rain disaster in western Japan, but netizens were mocking him, saying, “You detained Cabinet ministers in the Diet with a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, and then …”
Perhaps inspired by the “great performance” of her party leader, Tomomi Azuma, a Machida City Council member from the same party, also roared on Twitter as follows.
“Since this is the occasion, I will say it. My blood-related father had a terrible pachinko addiction. On holidays, we would happily prepare from early morning to go out as a family, but no matter how much we tried to stop him, he would go to pachinko and not come back until night. … In the end my father took money and disappeared. I am absolutely against casinos.”
In response to this, it was only natural that critical comments such as “Then abolish pachinko first” poured in.
To leave existing “pachinko addiction” untouched, while fearing casino addiction and opposing it, is yet another example of the lack of persuasiveness produced by “Anti-Abe Innocence.”