Published on April 17, 2019.
Based on a Sankei Shimbun column by Abiru Rui, this piece examines how the Asahi Shimbun, in tandem with South Korea, reinforced the narrative that Japan alone was to blame for the comfort women and wartime labor issues.
Through the false reporting of Seiji Yoshida’s claims, the apologies of the Miyazawa government, and repeated shifts in argument, it argues that Asahi’s misinformation became a major cause of the deterioration in Japan-South Korea relations.

2019-04-17
It can be said that, because the government kept apologizing on the premise of Asahi’s mistaken articles, the issue became established as an accomplished fact.
As I have mentioned many times, Abiru Rui is one of the very few active newspaper reporters, that is, journalists, who possess the highest level of discernment in Japan.
The following is from his article published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
The parts between asterisks are mine.
South Korea and the Asahi Shimbun.
Strikingly similar methods.
I could not help admiring it as a splendid piece of coordinated play.
I mean the Asahi Shimbun and South Korea.
In its explanatory article “Easy to Understand from the Beginning!” in the morning edition of the 23rd, the Asahi declared the following about the March First Independence Movement of 1919, which arose in resistance to Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula.
A toss and an attack.
“To begin with, the issues of former wartime laborers and former comfort women would not have arisen had there been no Japanese rule.”
Then the Korean paper, the Japanese-language edition of JoongAng Ilbo, on the 25th distributed an article with the headline, “Asahi Shimbun: ‘Without Japanese rule, the laborer and comfort-women issues would not have arisen,’” excerpting that portion of Asahi’s article.
At once I pictured a volleyball beautifully tossed by the Asahi and cleanly spiked by South Korea.
The two are helping each other reinforce the argument that when problems arise between the two countries and South Korean criticism of Japan intensifies, Japan is to blame.
But is that really so.
A few years ago, the author parodied a waka poem by Ariwara no Narihira and composed this poor verse.
If only in this world there were no Asahi at all, Japan-South Korea relations would be far more peaceful.
It replaces “cherry blossoms” in the original poem with “Asahi,” and “the heart of spring” with “Japan-South Korea relations,” but in fact I truly think so.
A major reason why Japan-South Korea relations have deteriorated this far must be the responsibility of the Asahi, which ignited the comfort-women issue by persistently publishing, eighteen times, and spreading throughout the world, Seiji Yoshida’s falsehood that women on the Korean Peninsula had been forcibly taken away and made into comfort women.
On the premise of mistaken articles.
Just before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa visited South Korea in January 1992, the Asahi carried on its front page an article titled, “Documents Showing Military Involvement in Comfort Stations,” and alongside it an explanatory article containing the following descriptions, later shown to be false.
“It is said that about 80 percent were Korean women.”
“Korean women were forcibly taken away under the name of the women’s volunteer corps.”
“The number is said to have been anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000.”
All of these were groundless fabrications, but the shaken Miyazawa Cabinet apologized without even examining the facts, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato issuing a statement of “apology and reflection.”
Abroad, it was reported that the Japanese government had admitted coercion, and Prime Minister Miyazawa, visiting South Korea, apologized eight times.
Because the government repeatedly apologized on the premise of Asahi’s mistaken articles, it can be said that the issue became established as an accomplished fact.
Repeated substitution of the issue.
In the radar-lock incident against a Maritime Self-Defense Force patrol aircraft, South Korea first denied that the lock-on had been aimed at the patrol aircraft, and when that became difficult to sustain, it shifted the issue and claimed that the patrol aircraft’s low-altitude flight was an act of intimidation.
This South Korean method closely resembles the arguments made in Asahi editorials over the comfort-women issue.
This is exactly what all Japanese citizens with discernment had been thinking, just as Abiru did.
In the editorial of January 12, 1992, “Let Us Not Turn Our Eyes from History,” the Asahi flatly asserted forced abduction as fact, but in the March 20, 1993 editorial, “Japan’s Morality Is Being Tested,” as the forced-abduction theory began to lose ground, it quietly retreated to the guess that forced abduction probably occurred.
In the March 31, 1997 editorial, “Let Us Not Turn Our Eyes from History,” it shifted the issue and said that whether there had been forced abduction or not was not the point, and in the June 21, 2014 editorial, “Return to the Starting Point of Resolving the Issue,” it did not even touch on forced abduction itself.
Then, in the front-page article of August 5 of that same year, it went so far as to dodge the matter by saying that the focus was women’s human rights.
In other words, it ignored what it had itself made the issue at the start, what sort of arguments it had developed, and how it had affected Japan-South Korea relations.
If the Asahi is going to criticize Japan’s past in its explanatory articles as though it were someone else’s business, then rather it ought to write this.
“To begin with, the former comfort-women issue would not have arisen had there been no Asahi reporting.”
(Editorial board member and political desk editorial board member)