This article revisits a chapter first published on February 12, 2019, using The Crimes and Punishments of the Mass Media, a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Rui Abiru, to examine the deception and bias embedded in the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, and Japan’s postwar mainstream media.
It argues that the entrenchment of WGIP-driven historical views, the persistence of masochistic interpretations of history, hostility toward the Abe administration, and the childish belief that liberalism alone represents absolute justice have deeply corrupted Japanese journalism.

2019-03-25
Especially in recent years, the Asahi Shimbun has, after losing all sense, degenerated into nothing more than a scandal sheet that, out of spite, spits words of curse toward the Abe administration and the Japanese people.
And JCJ says it seriously gave an award to such a newspaper.

When did the childish value system arise that says liberalism alone is absolute justice, and that for the sake of anti-power politics and liberal ideology, it is permissible to tell as many lies as necessary.
I am reposting here the chapter I published on 2019-02-12 under that title.
The Crimes and Punishments of the Mass Media, first published on February 10, 2019, by Masayuki Takayama and Rui Abiru, is a book that every Japanese citizen capable of reading printed text ought to read.
This book, in the form of a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, and Rui Abiru, the finest active newspaper reporter, senior and junior reporters from the Sankei Shimbun, is also kind to people with presbyopia.
The passages between asterisks are my own words.
Introduction.
This is about the year 2017, but the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the series of suspicions surrounding Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen received the “JCJ (Japan Congress of Journalists) Award.”
The JCJ Award is supposedly a prize given for outstanding journalistic activity.
It must be some kind of mistake, or else a bad joke.
By now, Japanese journalism as an entire industry has gone astray.
Media outlets have even appeared that shamelessly insist that there is such a thing as “the freedom not to report.”
Especially in recent years, the Asahi Shimbun has, after losing all sense, degenerated into nothing more than a scandal sheet that, out of spite, spits words of curse toward the Abe administration and the Japanese people.
And JCJ says it seriously gave an award to such a newspaper.
It brings shame to the name of journalist, and even more astonishing is the response of the mass media, which does not even regard this as bizarre.
Has Japan’s mainstream media already died.
When did the childish value system arise that says the mission of the mass media lies in anti-power speech, that liberalism alone is absolute justice, and that for the sake of anti-power politics and liberal ideology, it is permissible to tell as many lies as necessary.
The Asahi Shimbun openly declared this without embarrassment in 2007, in its front-page morning headline proclamation of “The Revival of Journalism.”
That was not so very long ago.
But its roots run deep.
Japan defeated Qing China.
It also defeated Russia, then the strongest power in the world.
Both were wars undertaken from the desire for self-defense, but before Japan realized it, it had become an enemy to be destroyed by the United States, which flaunted white supremacism.
Japan responded solemnly to the war that was forced upon it, and even so, it fought to the best of its ability.
Although it lost the war, Japan liberated all the colonies that had formed the foundation of white imperialism, and brought forth a new era in which not only white people but also Asians and Africans could each govern their own independent nations.
Clausewitz says that war is the continuation of politics by other means.
In the sense that it swiftly brought to an end white imperialism, which did not even regard other human beings as human, Japan may be said to have carried out magnificent international politics, but for that very reason it came to bear all the jealousy and hatred of white people, and under the name of postwar policy, the form of the nation, its history, and even the ethnic consciousness of the Japanese people were physically and psychologically dismantled.
In place of that, Japan was made to internalize a masochistic view of history in which it was a cruel aggressor state that oppressed and slaughtered the peoples of Asia.
This was a falsification of history through what they called the War Guilt Information Program, or WGIP.
The Asahi Shimbun and NHK stood present at that very scene, and while knowing it to be false, accepted the dismantling of Japan and the masochistic view of history in order to ensure their own survival.
One might call it an emergency evacuation, but even after Japan regained its independence, they continued to defend and propagate such counterfeit values and historical views in order to justify themselves.
Japanese people themselves have begun to notice this distortion.
Shinzo Abe is one of the very few politicians striving to recover the correct history.
Just before launching his second administration, he explicitly named the Asahi Shimbun, which still clung to WGIP, and pointed to it as fake news, and that may rightly be understood as a declaration of war to recover correct history.
For the mass media, which believed itself to be in an absolutely safe zone and felt no shame in reporting falsehoods, this must have been a world-shaking event.
Moreover, it led to the major defeat of the Asahi Shimbun’s complete retraction of its articles on “Seiji Yoshida.”
The reason it now rushes headlong into destroying Abe without any concern for appearances is that if it loses on that point, nothing remains for it but abolition.
Seventeen years ago, I too was inside the mass media.
I was merely an ordinary newspaper reporter.
That is why I understand so well their hypocrisy and their sense of privilege.
This book is a dialogue volume with Rui Abiru, a junior reporter from the Sankei Shimbun.
We are of different generations.
Our fields were also different, but he was already a capable reporter from those days.
Abiru is now unmistakably a star reporter of the Sankei Shimbun.
He has both sharp insight and strong writing ability.
We have remained in contact even after I became an OB.
Since the 1990s he had kept his eye on Shinzo Abe, and since then continued to observe him through even the years of disappointment following the collapse of the first Abe administration.
He is one of the few reporters who have recorded many of the direct words of Mr. Abe, who has now become one of the key figures in the world.
As for Mr. Abe, NHK even today (2019/2/12), with the Morikake issue, which is fake reporting manufactured by the Asahi Shimbun, opposition politicians who can without exaggeration be called agents of anti-Japan states, and NHK itself, inserted once again such items as the lie that Prime Minister Abe’s character cannot be trusted….
They included it again today….
And they announced a survey of not even as many as 2,000 people as if it were public opinion polling.
Even the way Kuwako presented it on Watch 9 was itself nothing other than impression manipulation….
She read it out as a disapproval rate of 37 percent against an approval rate of 47 percent.
If there had been no intention to manipulate impressions, she would simply have said approval rate 47 percent, disapproval rate 37 percent.
By saying “against,” they emphasize that the disapproval rate is this high….
And the agents controlling this news department seek to implant that in the subconscious.
The approval rate for the Liberal Democratic Party is always around 50 percent, while the approval rate for the Constitutional Democratic Party is only around 5 percent….
But they make no announcement about that matter….
Much less have they ever announced that against the Liberal Democratic Party’s 50 percent support rate, the Constitutional Democratic Party’s support rate is 5 percent.
On the contrary, today they did not even announce party support rates at all….
All Japanese citizens should infer that this is because the support rates of the opposition parties, including and below the Constitutional Democratic Party, were unbelievably low.
Mr. Abiru also has the vitality, amid a busy reporter’s life, to write a blog under his real name and to publish books one after another.
His columns are indeed highly popular among young people as well.
His perspective is also sound.
This book is the result of frank discussions with such a junior colleague about the proper state of Japan’s media.
I hope it may be of at least some help when thinking about Japan.