Originally published on April 21, 2019.
This essay interprets the birth of the second Abe administration as the renewed dismantling of the postwar regime long upheld by Asahi Shimbun, arguing that the subsequent rise in stock prices and the weakening of the yen clearly refuted Asahi’s claims.
Through the departure of Wakamiya Yoshibumi, Asahi’s sudden New Year praise of the Hinomaru, and its demand for tax relief on newspapers ahead of the consumption-tax hike, the piece sharply exposes the opportunism of Asahi Shimbun and the distortions of Japan’s postwar media order.

2019-04-21
The second Abe administration was born.
That meant that the dismantling of the postwar regime long supported by Asahi had resumed, and that many citizens supported it.
Both rising stock prices and the weaker yen clearly refuted Asahi’s claims.

What follows continues from the previous chapter.

Was television politics nothing but an illusion.
Before even that analysis could be completed, the second Abe administration was born.
That meant that the dismantling of the postwar regime long supported by Asahi had resumed, and that many citizens supported it.
Both rising stock prices and the weaker yen clearly refuted Asahi’s claims.

Wakamiya Yoshibumi, the principal culprit in this misdirection, quickly grabbed his retirement money and fled.
Where, then, was Asahi to go.

If the postwar regime was no longer tenable, then perhaps it would finally begin writing facts, and so on New Year’s Day its front page led with “A Town Flying the Hinomaru.”
Saying that the Hinomaru is beautiful.
Even the Japan Teachers’ Union, which had followed Asahi, must have been astonished.

With the consumption-tax increase approaching, Kentaro Akiyama, chairman of the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association and president of Asahi Shimbun, began saying that “it is wrong to tax knowledge,” and argued that newspapers alone should receive a tax reduction.
Your newspaper has spent years lining up lies about the comfort women and the Nanjing Massacre.
And now, at this late stage, you presume to speak piously of “knowledge.”