The Asahi Shimbun’s reporting on the comfort women issue exaggerated alleged “military involvement” without proper factual confirmation and created political pressure just before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea.
This article critically traces how the Asahi reports of January 1992, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōichi Katō’s hasty apology, and Miyazawa’s repeated apologies in South Korea later led to the Kōno Statement.
It asks how media distortion and fragile diplomatic judgment left deep and lasting damage to the nation.

2019-03-06
Prime Minister Miyazawa apologized eight times because of Asahi’s “fabricated article.”
It struck just before his visit to South Korea.
“The Asahi of war” made Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa bow his head eight times in South Korea through its fabricated article on the “forced roundup of comfort women.”

Kōichi Katō, who had long sold himself as a liberal, was of the same kind as the Asahi.
He himself says that he passed both the Asahi Shimbun and the Foreign Ministry examinations, but chose to enter the Foreign Ministry.
A chapter I posted under that title on 2019-02-06 entered goo’s top ten search rankings today.
The material that the Asahi reported as “documents showing military involvement” was in fact material about “cracking down” on unscrupulous operators little different from kidnappers.
That was the chapter I posted on 2017-11-09 and again on 2018-11-09.

The following comes from Fukio Ikehara’s excellent book, Did Emperor Shōwa Dislike the Asahi? in The Giant Media: The History of Its Fabrications, KK Best Book, 1,200 yen.

Prime Minister Miyazawa apologized eight times because of Asahi’s “fabricated article.”
It struck just before his visit to South Korea.
“The Asahi of war” made Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa bow his head eight times in South Korea through its fabricated article on the “forced roundup of comfort women.”

Just as in its morning edition of August 14, 1945, the day before the end of the war, it hurled “one hundred million as balls of fire” at the Imperial Conference, it struck again with a top-front-page “fabricated” article just before Prime Minister Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea in 1992.
The course of events at that time was as follows.

January 11, 1992.
Asahi front-page top article.
“Documents showing military involvement in comfort stations.”
“Government view shaken.”
“Defense Agency library finds materials related to wartime comfort women.”

January 12, 1992.
Asahi editorial.
“Comfort women were recruited or forcibly taken under the name of the women’s volunteer corps.”

January 13.
In response to Asahi’s “follow-up article,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōichi Katō, at the time, announced “apology and reflection.”
Katō, “foolishly,” did so without investigating or confirming the facts, and moreover apologized before Prime Minister Miyazawa himself did.

January 16.
Miyazawa visited South Korea.
In his summit meeting with President Roh Tae-woo, he used words of reflection and apology no fewer than eight times.

What the Asahi reported as “documents showing military involvement” was in reality material about “cracking down” on corrupt operators akin to kidnappers.
This malicious distortion and pressure campaign by the Asahi led on to the Kōno Statement of August 1993.

Kōichi Katō, who had marketed himself as a liberal, was of the same kind as the Asahi.
He himself says that he passed both the Asahi Shimbun and the Foreign Ministry examinations, but chose to enter the Foreign Ministry.

He was an “Asahi-favored” politician whose assets were his career, the University of Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry, the Liberal Democratic Party, and his family lineage, his own father having also been a member of the House of Representatives, but after being spoiled by Hiromu Nonaka and suddenly losing his senses in the “Katō rebellion,” he effectively ended his political life and folded up even before the Asahi did.