Written on May 17, 2019, this article examines how Shinzo Abe confronted the Asahi Shimbun’s fake-news culture head-on, and how issues such as the comfort women controversy, the Yoshida testimony affair, and the Moritomo and Kake scandals exposed the limits of its postwar style of manipulating public opinion.

2019-05-17
When Abe turned it back on them by asking, “Do you believe the fake Asahi?” and goaded them by saying, “If there is any involvement by me, I will resign,” they made a great uproar, only for the Liberal Democratic Party in the general election to win far more than a single-party majority in the Diet.
The Asahi was defeated once again.

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The fight against fake news entered a new dimension.
It was Shinzo Abe who had begun the fight against fake news before Trump.
At the Japan National Press Club party leaders’ debate at the end of December 2012, on the eve of the birth of the second Abe administration, which was also touched upon in the dialogue, Hiroshi Hoshi of the Asahi pressed him on the comfort women issue.
Abe then shot back, “Wasn’t it because your newspaper spread the story of a swindler named Seiji Yoshida?”
When they tried to crush him just as they had during the first Abe administration, this time Abe counterattacked by saying that the wartime comfort women issue was Asahi fake news.
They hated Abe beyond measure.
But in the end, Seiji Yoshida’s lies could no longer be concealed, they were forced to retract the articles, and then, as if to press the attack further, the Yoshida testimony issue emerged.
As for the Yoshida testimony as well, in its interpretation of that document, the exalted Asahi brazenly acted as if to say, “Are you people complaining that we read this as meaning the Fukushima Daiichi workers withdrew in violation of orders?”
It was showing the same overbearing and swollen arrogance that had ensnared Professor Watanabe.
This time, however, other newspapers’ examinations denounced it by pointing out that nowhere in the document was such a thing written, and as a result President Kimura lost his head.
In the United States, the America of conspiracy described earlier, the globalization that would not hesitate to engage in subversion of states or war for the sake of money, had run into a dead end, and as voters saw through it, Hillary lost the presidential election.
Trump was viciously battered by the New York Times and CNN, representatives of that insidious America, but he fought back by saying, “They are fake news.”
Meeting that Trump very quickly, Abe said, “It was I who fought fake news before you and won.”
That was a declaration of victory over the Asahi.
The American media, seeking to remind people that they still have influence, are desperately attacking Trump personally.
But in the end, American journalism cannot survive unless it follows the direction of the government, and so it is fated to support the international order and the wars created by the United States.
The Asahi, which looks up to such American media as its master, accelerated its anti-Abe attacks relentlessly like a kite with its string cut.
Thus it dragged out the Moritomo and Kake issues, but Abe turned it back by asking, “Do you believe the fake Asahi?” and, after provoking them by saying, “If there is any involvement by me, I will resign,” they made a great uproar, only for the Liberal Democratic Party in the general election to win far more than a single-party majority.
The Asahi was defeated once again.
I had thought that only prewar-generation old men believed that, among Japan’s current politicians, Abe alone was capable of conducting proper diplomacy.
I had thought the rest were the anti-Abe baby-boom generation and their juniors, but unexpectedly, survey results showed that the younger the people, the more they supported Abe.
That made me slightly happy.
By producing results, the Abe administration has been changing Japan.
The younger the generation, the more able they have become to sense fake news as fake.
This is a major change.
Abe himself must surely be feeling a real sense of traction on this point.
In the meantime, the Asahi went on failing in its attempts to create political crises over the state secrets law, security legislation, the conspiracy law, and the Moritomo and Kake affairs.
Even on constitutional revision, it has been forced to acknowledge the results of its own public-opinion polls showing support and opposition running close.
Until now, the Asahi had tried to create political situations by manipulating public opinion, and it had succeeded.
But under the second Abe administration, voters saw through that, and no matter how much it manipulated public opinion, it kept losing.
Is this not proof that the Asahi’s postwar methods have reached their limit?
Even from looking at its pages, the Asahi Shimbun has been changing.
In the parts other than anti-Abe, anti-nuclear, and anti-Japan content, it has come to resemble a health magazine.
Its pages have started to look like a collaboration between a health magazine and a women’s magazine, filled with things like how to cure constipation.
According to people inside, the fall in circulation will not stop, reporting expenses have been restricted, and in 2016 even taxi vouchers were abolished.
Furthermore, salaries too were reportedly to be reduced by an average of 1.6 million yen from April 2019.
If newspaper companies are fated to die as they are, then the nature of the fight against fake news will also change.
If the Asahi Shimbun were to become decent and begin conveying the truth, Japan would change greatly in a positive direction in less than half a year.
This article will continue.