Written on May 13, 2019, this essay examines the Okinawa Times and the Ryukyu Shimpo through their reporting on the “dojin” remark, their children’s newspapers, and their coverage of the Osprey incident, criticizing them for spreading anti-base ideology among Okinawan residents, especially children, and arguing that their influence reflects the vulnerability of democracy and makes them prime targets for operations aimed at dividing Japan.

2019-05-13
The Okinawa Times and the Ryukyu Shimpo are targets of operations by China and the Korean Peninsula…
In other words, these two newspapers are ideal targets for separating Japan and the United States, and for the division and weakening of Japan.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Selecting “Dojin” as the Buzzword of the Year
In 2016, it became a topic of controversy when a riot police officer from the Osaka Prefectural Police, during the helicopter pad relocation work in Okinawa, used the word “dojin” toward anti-base activists.
Because the Okinawa Times and the Ryukyu Shimpo kept taking up this matter obsessively in their pages, I wrote in this magazine, “Every morning, each time I turn the pages of these two newspapers, the word ‘dojin’ catches my eye, to such an extent that at this rate one begins to think it may even be chosen as Okinawa’s buzzword of the year.”
Then the Okinawa Times, in its December 30 issue, published a feature called “Reader-Selected Okinawa Buzzwords of the Year 2016,” reporting that the “‘Dojin’ and ‘Shinajin’ remarks” had been chosen for the grand prize.
This Okinawa edition of the Buzzwords of the Year seems to be an annual year-end feature of the paper.
This year, the paper had nominated 19 terms in advance and accepted readers’ votes through its website and by fax.
A total of 147 people took part, and multiple voting was also allowed.
It is said that the “dojin” remark gathered 79 votes, accounting for about 60 percent of the total.
Incidentally, the other top-ranking buzzwords included “Osprey crash? Emergency landing?”, “We should be thanked” (a remark by the U.S. forces coordinating officer in Okinawa after the Osprey accident), and “unjust repression,” with many of them connected to the U.S. base issue.
Such “buzzwords” were none other than terms that this same newspaper had diligently continued to print day after day in its pages in an effort to make them permeate the prefectural population, and then in the end nominated itself as candidates for the grand prize.
They were self-produced and self-performed “buzzwords.”
The target of Okinawan media, which wants at all costs to imprint anti-base ideology on the prefectural residents, is aimed not only at adults but also at children.
In order to have newspaper articles used as teaching materials in schools and the like, both papers regularly publish newspapers for children and deliver them together with the ordinary paper.
Articles in the Ryukyu Shimpo’s children’s newspaper “RyūPON!” contain content that, contrary to that innocent title, quite openly includes anti-base ideology.
The issue of “RyūPON!” dated 2016 ] 且 month 20 carried on its front page an article with the headline, “The ‘Dojin’ Remark from the Takae Helipad Construction Site: Okinawan Discrimination at Its Root.”
People appearing in the article say things such as, “After being abused with words like ‘dojin’ and ‘Shinajin,’ we cannot tolerate demands for the construction of a new base,” and it also introduces in an easy-to-understand chronology the history of Okinawan discrimination and humiliation, saying, “If you look back at Okinawan history, you can see the background of the ‘dojin’ remark”….
As for the Osprey accident, the issue dated December 25 urged readers to “think with your own head.”
It criticized other media that reported it not as a “crash” but as an “emergency landing,” saying, “There were cases during the war when Japanese newspapers did not tell readers the truth.”
Who is it, in fact, that is now concealing the truth on the U.S. base issue?
Not only children but adults too must by all means think with their own heads.
Incidentally, the article says, “It is an important problem what kind of words television and newspapers use to convey events occurring in society.
That is because they have a major influence on people’s judgments and lives.”
For prefectural newspapers that spare no effort in impression manipulation and guided reporting, rephrasing the Henoko relocation as “construction of a new base,” the security arrangements at the site as “excessive security” and “unjust repression,” and the Osprey as a “defective aircraft,” to preach the importance of “words” is not that a black joke?

Leaving Okinawa Prefecture under the domination of these two newspapers is precisely the pitfall and vulnerability of democracy, and the Okinawa Times and the Ryukyu Shimpo are targets of operations by China and the Korean Peninsula…
In other words, these two newspapers are ideal targets for separating Japan and the United States, and for the division and weakening of Japan.