Written on May 3, 2019, this essay sharply criticizes the dissolution of the sister-city relationship between Osaka and San Francisco by examining San Francisco’s history of anti-Japanese sentiment, anti-Japan activism centered in Chinatown, the comfort woman statue issue, and the hypocrisy of the Asahi Shimbun.
It denounces the perversity of those who have long spread falsehoods and propaganda on postwar historical issues attempting to lecture Osaka, and concludes that it is the Asahi Shimbun itself that must return to first principles.

2019-05-03
Florence Fang, namely Fang Lizhiqin, controls this place and, in line with China’s intentions, is turning Chinatown into a base for anti-Japanese and contemptuous anti-Japan activities.
Just like in Beijing, an anti-Japanese memorial hall was opened here as well, and last year…

A chapter I published on 2018-11-19 under the title, “Was the editorial written by editorial chief Kiyoki Nemoto, perhaps.
Has this man forgotten the past in which his own newspaper turned ‘mere prostitutes’ into ‘sex slaves’,” has now entered the top ten in real-time search rankings.
This week’s installment of the famous column serialized in Shukan Shincho by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, was published under the title “A Hundred Years Too Early.”
When Osaka City became a sister city with San Francisco
(SF)
sixty years ago, there was no particularly deep meaning behind it.
Since Osaka was Japan’s second city, the idea was to pair it with the second city of each respective country, and if possible, a city of the same port character was desirable.
So with Russia it formed a sister-city tie with Saint Petersburg, with China with Shanghai, and with Australia with Melbourne.
If one applies that selection standard to the United States, Boston would come to mind first, and New Orleans would also have done.
On the West Coast there was also Los Angeles.
There was Terminal Island, where Japanese immigrants had once landed.
For Japanese Americans, it could be likened to Ellis Island, the immigration gateway on the East Coast.
Setting all those aside, Osaka City chose San Francisco.
In light of history, that seems a major mistake.
Here, in the early twentieth century, during the Russo-Japanese War, the local newspaper San Francisco Chronicle launched a ferocious anti-Japanese campaign.
It said that Japanese Americans only sent money back home and did not spend money locally, and that Japanese Americans chose spouses only from photographs and that there was no love in their marriages.
The extreme point of it was “Brown steals white brain”
(Japanese steal white people’s wisdom).
At that time, Jokichi Takamine succeeded in extracting and crystallizing adrenaline from the adrenal gland.
It was a worldwide achievement, but the American John Abel said, “Takamine stole my research,” and arbitrarily named it epinephrine.
Later Abel’s lie was exposed, but the American medical world still uses epinephrine as the official name.
The Chronicle cheered on that kind of mood.
When Japan won the Russo-Japanese War, contempt for Japanese people developed into something even more grotesque, outright anti-Japanese hatred, and the San Francisco earthquake that occurred immediately afterward gave it form.
The Japanese sympathized with the city’s suffering and contributed 500,000 yen in relief money.
That was greater than the total relief contributions from all other countries, but the citizens’ return gift was “to expel Japanese children from public schools.”
The United States had earlier created the Chinese Exclusion Act in order to deal with coolies, but by that time the Chinese had become the more favored side, and the dangerous Japanese Americans alone were slandered and even subjected to arson attacks.
Up to then, Hollywood had made the dark-hearted and cruel “Fu Manchu” the symbol of the Chinese, but from that point on the villain was definitively the Japanese, and the representative Chinese figure was replaced by the lovable detective “Charlie Chan.”
San Francisco’s underworld Chinatown too was suddenly treated warmly and flourished.
The Chinese ought to have been grateful to Japan.
According to Keiko Kawazoe, recently Florence Fang, namely Fang Lizhiqin, has controlled the place and, in line with China’s intentions, turned Chinatown into a base for anti-Japanese and contemptuous anti-Japan activity.
As in Beijing, an anti-Japanese memorial hall was opened, and last year a comfort woman statue was erected on the roof of a building for “the hundreds of thousands of women who were made sex slaves by the Japanese military, forced to take twenty customers a day, and finally killed.”
That was immediately elevated by the Chinese mayor into a city park monument.
If those numbers were true, it would mean that the entire Japanese army had thrown the war aside and was spending every day with women.
Because it was so absurd, Osaka City cut off its sister-city relationship with San Francisco.
Naturally.
Then the Asahi Shimbun, in an editorial, wrote a passage lecturing, “Return to the starting point and reconsider.”
It points out that what caused the matter to become tangled was Toru Hashimoto’s statement that “prostitutes were necessary on the battlefield.”
That, it says, provoked the citizens of San Francisco.
It criticizes Hashimoto as having been reckless.
Was the editorial written by editorial chief Kiyoki Nemoto, perhaps.
Has this man forgotten the past in which his own newspaper turned “mere prostitutes” into “sex slaves.”
That lie was exposed, and Kimura Tadakazu lost his position.
Has he forgotten how, at that time, they wept and begged for mercy saying, “We will issue corrections in English to the countries that misunderstood, so please forgive us.”
What is unforgivable is that they even rigged things so that the English text itself could not be searched from outside.
If they wish to talk about wartime prostitutes, then first Kiyoki Nemoto should go in person and apologize, saying, “We told lies.”
Which side is it that ought to “return to the starting point.”
They are a hundred years too early to offer opinions to Osaka City.