This piece, based on a chapter posted on November 9, 2017, examines the affinity between the temperament of the Asahi Shimbun and postwar Japan’s left-wing political movements through passages drawn from Fukio Ikehara’s book Did Emperor Shōwa Dislike the Asahi?
From Tōgō Shigehiko and Wakamiya Yoshibumi to the Zenkyōtō movement, the University of Tokyo unrest, and TV Asahi’s Tsubaki Sadayoshi, it traces the distorted ties between postwar media and political activism and investigates a stain left on the history of Japanese journalism.
It offers substantial insight for considering the personnel networks, ideological tendencies, and the problem of biased reporting associated with the Asahi Shimbun.

2019-04-19
Watanabe Tsuneo, editor-in-chief of the Yomiuri Shimbun, pointed to Tsubaki as “a deliberate offender in biased reporting,” and said, “Tsubaki left a stain on the history of Japanese television.”
This is from the chapter I posted on 2017-11-09 under the title,
A reporter of such slight worth that he is said merely to have remarked that “It is Asahi’s company policy that we will hold Abe’s funeral,” and who only deepened the Asahi’s decline.
The following is from Fukio Ikehara’s excellent book, Does Emperor Shōwa Dislike the Asahi? in The Giant Media: The History of Its Fabrications.
KK Best Book, 1,200 yen.
It is from there.
The Asahi, fond of pedigree, unrelated to reporters’ actual ability.
Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori, who labored together with Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō toward ending the war.
The twin Tōgō brothers, whose grandfather was that great former foreign minister, both entered Hibiya High School.
The younger brother, Kazuhiko, went from the University of Tokyo into the Foreign Ministry, while the elder brother, Shigehiko, entered the Asahi Shimbun after Waseda.
Shigehiko, who became an Asahi reporter in 1968, was regarded within the company as a promising hope because of the quality of his family background, but while he was a reporter in 1976, it came to light that he had committed molestation by touching the buttocks of a young girl visiting the National Diet Building, and he resigned at his own request.
After that, Shigehiko moved on to become a reporter for the Washington Post, and there he obtained a scoop only once.
I came to understand that perhaps the reason the Washington Post also so often wrote anti-Japan articles was because men like this had been on its staff.
It was the 1993 scoop on the decision of Masako Owada as Crown Princess.
However, rumors never ceased that behind this scoop there had been as the source the Foreign Ministry line of his younger brother Kazuhiko and Owada Hisashi.
Even after becoming a Tokyo correspondent for a foreign newspaper, Shigehiko’s sexual-harassment habit did not end, and after repeated offenses he received an actual prison sentence of eight months.
The prosecution had sought one year.
And he left the Washington Post as well.
The father of Wakamiya Yoshibumi was Wakamiya Kotarō, who moved from being a political reporter at the Asahi Shimbun to becoming secretary to Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō.
They were an Asahi reporter family spanning two generations.
Yoshibumi followed the Asahi elite course from political reporter to editor-in-chief, but whether in his articles or in his political outlook, he had almost no real substance “worth speaking of.”
He was no more than the sort of reporter said to have declared that “It is Asahi’s company policy that we will hold Abe’s funeral,” and he only deepened the Asahi’s decline.
The Asahi and the Zenkyōtō.
A similar disposition.
At the time of the University of Tokyo unrest, the Zenkyōtō, which sympathized with the Cultural Revolution, loudly proclaimed that “rebellion is justified.”
From around the summer of 1968, the All-University Zenkyōtō carried out an “all-university strike” and barricaded all classrooms.
At that time, as one of the leaders of the so-called ordinary students, I argued in print in a roundtable of volunteer University of Tokyo students in the October issue of the magazine Jiyū for “lifting the indefinite strike” and “introducing the riot police.”
The day after the publication of Jiyū, I was astonished to see on a signboard in front of the main gate of the University of Tokyo the words “Crush Fukio Ikehara.”
It was just like a wall poster by the Red Guards.
At the medical faculty, where the unrest ran deepest, there was such tension that even participants in the roundtable were treated anonymously.
I was hot-blooded as a member of the judo club in both high school and university, and I confronted the Zenkyōtō many times, but at that time there had not yet been any major assault incidents.
Or rather, even when there were violent incidents, there were no “arrests.”
The university was a “lawless zone” into which police power could not be introduced.
At the time, if one looked at the geba poles carried by the Zenkyōtō crowd, there were violent ones with large nails tied inside them.
Perhaps because blame was not brought against this state of affairs, it later led to sinister extremist “internal conflict” incidents such as the Asama-Sansō Incident.
In November 1968, there was the one-week confinement bargaining incident involving Kentarō Hayashi, then dean of the Faculty of Letters.
I recall carrying provisions for my teacher Professor Hayashi and going to the classroom where he was being confined.
They “detained” the professors, stood them on the platform, and Zenkyōtō activists fiercely denounced them over microphones, saying, “The authoritarian nature of the university is your fault.”
The Zenkyōtō-sympathizing students present there shouted repeatedly, “That’s right, that’s right.”
It was exactly Red Guard style.
They would not let them go home until they engaged in “self-criticism.”
There were even teachers who would say, “I am sorry, I was wrong,” perform self-criticism, and leave.
But Kentarō Hayashi firmly rejected their demands and held fast to his convictions.
He was “rescued” a week later under doctor’s orders.
It became very clear which of the professors, habitually spoken of as progressive intellectuals, truly had convictions and which did not.
Some pandered to the Zenkyōtō, but Professor Maruyama Masao of the Faculty of Law was admirable.
Professor Maruyama’s lectures were popular, and I too attended them when I was a third-year student.
They were far more interesting to hear directly than to read in the texts.
The title of the lecture was “History of American Political Thought.”
The large lecture hall for the law and literature faculties was filled with hundreds of attendees.
After the “indefinite strike” began, I saw Professor Maruyama surrounded by Zenkyōtō sympathizers, arguing fiercely with them on campus and on the sidewalks.
He did not yield a single step, saying, “You are wrong.”
The University of Tokyo authorities, who had endured and endured, finally decided to introduce the riot police into Yasuda Auditorium and remove the illegally occupying students.
From January 18 to 19, 1969, for the first time since the unrest had begun, the riot police were introduced onto the campus.
I too was “at the scene.”
On the first day of the introduction, the 18th, the battle of Molotov cocktails and tear-gas rounds over “Yasuda Castle” was fierce, and the riot police withdrew once on that first day.
That evening, the ginkgo-lined avenue remained in turmoil even after the riot police withdrew.
It was expected that the next day the riot police would launch a full-scale “assault on Yasuda Castle,” and there were even University of Tokyo students fleeing.
On the following day, the 19th, the blockade of Yasuda Auditorium was lifted for the first time in about half a year.
All of the students barricaded inside were arrested, but there were few University of Tokyo students and many from other universities.
The behavioral style of the University of Tokyo Zenkyōtō sympathizers, who in the end placed themselves above all else, resembles the temperament of the Asahi Shimbun.
The Asahi dislikes the Japanese Communist Party’s youth wing, but Zenkyōtō types are welcome.
There are many Asahi reporters who sympathize with the Zenkyōtō because they resemble them in temperament.
Tsubaki Sadayoshi of the Tsubaki Incident.
Director of News at TV Asahi.
Was one such figure.
Tsubaki said, “At the time of the University of Tokyo Yasuda Auditorium Incident, I sympathized with the students.”
Watanabe Tsuneo, editor-in-chief of the Yomiuri Shimbun, pointed to Tsubaki as “a deliberate offender in biased reporting,” and said, “Tsubaki left a stain on the history of Japanese television.”