Originally published on April 21, 2019.
This essay looks back on the campaign against Toyota in the United States, condemning the way Asahi Shimbun and figures such as Seiji Maehara sided with America in attacking the company, even though later exhaustive investigations found no defect in Toyota vehicles.
Drawing on a column by Masayuki Takayama, it exposes America’s economic assault on Japan, Asahi’s servile obedience toward the United States, and the same logic of evasion and blame-shifting seen in the comfort women reporting scandal and in international institutions.

2019-04-21
The Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism was Seiji Maehara… .
With his gaze fixed on the camera, he criticized Toyota in exactly the same tone as Asahi Shimbun… .
As readers know, I sharply denounced him, saying that this man was a disgrace to Kyoto University.

What follows is from a chapter I published on October 13, 2015.

When Toyota suddenly came under a barrage of utterly fraudulent attacks… .
By chance, I heard the testimony of a middle-aged woman from the American Midwest speaking before a Senate committee… .
And I was the first in the world to realize and declare, “This is exactly like McCarthy’s Red Scare.
This is a fabrication.”

As readers know, I was the first person in the world to see through the fact that this entire affair was a frame-up.
The following article by him proves the correctness of my argument 100 percent.
And, befitting a genuine newspaper reporter who may well be called the best in Japan, he informs us by covering the facts in full.
Many people throughout Japan will learn the entire course of events from this article.
People throughout the world should as well.
This too is from the same author’s work as in the previous chapter, pp. 46 to 49.
*The bold emphasis other than the title, and the sentences between the asterisks, are mine.

Asahi Shimbun was America’s lapdog.

Omitted from the opening passage.

Twenty years later, as the Big Three collapsed one after another and Toyota snatched first place in U.S. sales volume, the situation began to resemble the 1980s.
Then, in 2009, a 911 call came into the San Diego police.
It was from the driver of a Lexus, whose voice was recorded saying, “The accelerator won’t come back.
The brakes don’t work either,” before the car crashed and burst into flames at an intersection, killing four people including the driver, his wife, and their child.
It was said the car had reached 190 kilometers per hour.

American society erupted even more fiercely than it had in the Audi case.
Newspapers made a commotion, saying that defects in Toyota’s electronic controls had killed American citizens, and Associate Professor David Gilbert of the University of Illinois used a tachometer display to create footage showing a Lexus supposedly spinning out of control, which ABC television broadcast.
Transportation Secretary LaHood shouted, “Don’t drive a Toyota,” and Toyota president Akio Toyoda was summoned before a congressional hearing and subjected to abuse that was hard to listen to.
Toyoda apologized and vowed to determine the cause.

Japan’s misfortune is that at such times Asahi Shimbun and the rest side with America and attack Toyota.
At the time, it was the Democratic Party government, and the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism was Seiji Maehara.
Readers know well that I harshly criticized the way he, staring into the camera, attacked Toyota in exactly the same tone as Asahi Shimbun, saying that this man was a disgrace to Kyoto University.

Asahi’s editor-in-chief at the time, Yoichi Funabashi, wrote that “in American society today, Toyota has become synonymous with defects,” and the evening edition’s “Soryushi” column continued its mockery and insinuations, saying that buying a Prius had turned out to be a loss.
Both Funabashi and Asahi’s correspondents call Americans “masters.”
They write everything exactly as their masters tell them to.

In America, the families of 89 people said to have died in Toyota vehicles over the previous ten years began preparing to sue Toyota under product liability law, and American newspapers wrote, “The total will amount to one trillion yen.
Toyota will become another Audi.”

And yet, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation spent a year thoroughly investigating 23 vehicles, including the car involved in the San Diego accident, no defect was found.
“ LaHood ordered that the investigation results be concealed,” said one member of the safety board, G. Parson, and the accident vehicle was sent to the National Academy of Sciences for reinvestigation.
Still no defect was found, and in the end it was even brought to NASA, yet Toyota was still found innocent.

In the course of this series of investigations, it became clear that Professor Gilbert of the University of Illinois had falsified the tachometer records, and that many of those claiming runaway-acceleration damage were swindlers trying to extort money from Toyota.

Thus, only after two and a half years had passed did the National Academy of Sciences finally acknowledge Toyota’s innocence.
LaHood feigned ignorance, and the American papers did write about it, but only to say, “Not guilty, but not innocent.”

Is not the logic of these American newspapers exactly the same as the absurd conclusion Asahi Shimbun produced last August regarding the fabricated comfort women issue, when it finally admitted the fabrication but then gathered pro-Asahi academics, set up a so-called third-party committee, and declared that it had not really been fabrication after all… .
In other words, it is exactly the same blame-shifting logic used to evade responsibility.
Asahi and its most vile and pitiable fellow-travelers must have copied the logic of those American newspapers from this episode.

Note added today, April 21, 2019.
This is exactly the same pattern as the laughable so-called final ruling recently issued by the WTO under circumstances where there were only three members involved.
In other words, people of the same kind as the reporter who wrote the article above are serving as WTO committee members… .
The United Nations and the international community so praised by Asahi and NHK are nothing more than organizations made up of such irresponsible people.

And in the article reporting that GM had regained first place in sales by overtaking Toyota, it said, “Toyota’s production declined because of the tsunami and the floods in Thailand.”
That is wrong.
It declined because America slandered Toyota relentlessly and drove it down.

Even more shameful is that not one of Japan’s Washington correspondents wrote in large type that Toyota was innocent.
Are they afraid their masters will get angry if they write about America’s viciousness?