Through Masayuki Takayama’s celebrated column Henken Jizai, this essay sharply probes the historical outlook, China-related posture, and anti-Japan reporting habits of Asahi Shimbun journalists.
By revisiting the historical realities of the Singapore-Malaya campaign, irregular forces in civilian clothes, and the issue of the purge of Chinese residents, it asks what lies at the root of Asahi Shimbun’s loss of public trust.

2019-04-13
Without even reading the articles written by her senior colleagues, she simply plunges headlong into the words of cruel and lying Chinese.
Asahi Shimbun does not sell.
That may be because of Mayumi.

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s celebrated column Henken Jizai published in the issue of Shukan Shincho released yesterday.
That Masayuki Takayama is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
Still more.
That the so-called correspondents of major Western magazines, those disreputable foreigners who dominate the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and are hardly worth calling journalists, are as far beneath him as the moon is from a soft-shelled turtle, is an unmistakable fact.
In this week’s issue as well.
Readers around the world will marvel.
And they will know that he has once again perfectly proven the correctness of my assessment.
At the same time, the world will learn that Asahi Shimbun, which you have long believed to be Japan’s representative newspaper,
eagerly pounces on comments that demean Japan,
or rather eagerly demeans Japan itself,
that it is in short a gathering of reporters made up of masochistic historical views and anti-Japan ideology.
If they were the newspaper representing your own country, what would you think.
Even if your country’s representative newspaper had some problems,
you would still surely feel relief that it was not an organization of employees like Asahi Shimbun’s, people who can scarcely be called anything less than traitors to their own nation.

His Majesty the King’s Corps in Civilian Clothes.

In late January 1942, when the fall of Singapore was near, Asahi Shimbun published a roundtable discussion on Malaya, gathering people connected with the Chida Company, including Chida Murotaro.
In fact, Chinese had been fleeing into Malaya since around the time of the Opium War, ingratiating themselves with the white rulers, controlling Malay laborers, and selling them opium.
Chida introduced the fact that by the early Showa period there were “around three hundred” schools for Chinese children.
By that time, the tensions between Japan and China had carried over directly, and Chinese in Malaya had begun attacking Japanese companies and Japanese residents there.
One such case was the incident involving Tani Yutaka, known as the Tiger of Malaya.
While he had returned to Japan, a mob of Chinese attacked the town of Terengganu, violated his sister, then cut off her head and took it away.
It was a cruelty characteristic of the Chinese.
After returning from Japan, Yutaka pursued the group that had killed his sister, and by going on to attack opium magnates as well, came to be feared by the Chinese under the name Harimau.
The Chinese believed in Britain’s victory and carried out sabotage and terror attacks against the Japanese army.
The roundtable said that the Chinese terror groups had a controlling organization behind them, the “Relief Committee” of Tan Kah Kee, who was connected with Chiang Kai-shek.
This organization had become the central anti-Japanese organ throughout the South Seas.
Incidentally, Tan Kah Kee was also in contact with Mao Zedong, and after the Communist regime was established after the war, he abandoned Malaya and returned to his native Fujian Province.
It was a foolish choice.
While fighting the British Indian Army, the Japanese forces had to remain alert to the movements of such Chinese guerrillas.
Even so, they advanced an average of twenty kilometers a day.
The Japanese army was truly strong.
Though the roundtable did not mention it, Asahi’s war correspondent Sakai Torakichi reported that around that time in Singapore there was “a Chinese-only combat unit organized by the British army.”
This unit was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley, and with 4,000 men it easily boasted brigade-level strength.
Among its soldiers were communist guerrillas who had been imprisoned in Changi Prison.
Their defining characteristic was that they had no official military uniforms.
In other words, they were a corps in civilian clothes, with yellow bandanas tied around their necks as their sole distinguishing mark.
After their commander, they were called the “Dal Force,” or “Dalley’s Desperadoes.”
When urban combat with the Japanese army broke out, they pretended to be innocent civilians while waiting for chances to attack, and when pressed they threw away their guns and fled into crowds of civilians.
Combat conducted in civilian clothes like this is itself regarded as guerrilla warfare in violation of international law.
If captured, even international law permitted the death penalty.
During the battle for Singapore, some of these Dal Force men were captured, and the existence of these forces in civilian clothes became clear.
Today, Chinese Singaporeans condemn the Japanese army’s purge of the overseas Chinese, but there is no question that they themselves created the cause.
In Alor Setar, the important city first brought under control in the Malayan campaign, a memorial honoring Japanese soldiers as heroes was recently restored by the Kedah state government, and its unveiling ceremony was held with great ceremony.
In response, local residents of Chinese descent began protesting, saying, “Ethnic Chinese residents were killed by the Japanese army,” and “Why are invading forces heroes?”
Asahi’s reporter Mori Mayumi reported with evident delight that “the state government was startled and apologized.”
During the war, the Chinese sided with the British forces and fought the Japanese army.
They also carried out despicable terror and even deployed forces in civilian clothes.
How can they possibly say, with a straight face, that it was unjust for them to be killed for that.
Incidentally, reporter Mori’s senior predecessor, correspondent Sakai, reported in an article dated December 30, 1941, how the Malays of that state warmly welcomed the Japanese army.
He also met with the state’s royal regent, M. Duwa, and reported his words of gratitude for liberation by the Japanese army:
“Britain has looked down on us and oppressed us.
Now at last the dawn of our people has come.”
Without even reading the articles written by her senior colleagues, she simply plunges headlong into the words of cruel and lying Chinese.
Asahi Shimbun does not sell.
That may be because of Mayumi.