Originally published on July 8, 2019.
Drawing on the writings of Masayuki Takayama, this essay sharply denounces the degeneration of The Asahi Shimbun as seen in its article on Ochiai Keiko, and the corruption of journalism that continues to publish falsehoods without even verifying them.
It also examines the Asahi leadership’s admiration for Mao Zedong, Japan’s long-standing tendency to overestimate China, and the role of correspondent reporting in inflating that illusion.

2019-07-08
Exposing The Asahi Shimbun’s degeneration through its article on Ochiai Keiko.
The filth of continuing to publish lies while knowing they are lies, without even verifying the article, goes on.

All those who have read the following work by Masayuki Takayama must surely have reaffirmed that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.

Exposing The Asahi Shimbun’s degeneration through its article on Ochiai Keiko.

The filth of continuing to publish lies while knowing they are lies, without even verifying the article, goes on.

Asahi president Hirooka, who revered Mao Zedong.

History is often viewed through fixed preconceptions.

That is also true of the China next door.

Deep down, people tend to think of it as a great country.

In reality, even if one looks only at the postwar period still within memory, it was not sound.

What Mao Zedong, who emerged after building mountains of corpses, carried out was the Great Leap Forward policy, demanding that rice and iron production be doubled while leaving raw materials and farmland exactly as they were.

The result was a great famine, and thirty million people died.

Mao Zedong himself likened himself to Li Zicheng, who was said to have carried out good government such as the equal distribution of farmland.

In fact, north of Beijing, in front of the Ming Thirteen Tombs, there stands a statue of Li Zicheng with Mao’s face, but in reality Mao resembled the Ming Hongwu Emperor, who indulged in massacre and oppression.

Text omitted.

Such a Mao was revered like a god by Kuwabara Takeo and Hirooka Tomoo of The Asahi Shimbun.

And it was not only Mao.

People had come to believe that the Tang, the Han, and the Ming too were dazzlingly great empires.

Yet, for example, the number of troops Hideyoshi sent out to defeat that Ming reached 130,000, which in today’s terms would amount to ten divisions.

Against that, the Ming could prepare only 50,000.

Japan’s national power and military strength were overwhelmingly higher.

And yet Japanese history books stop with, “How reckless.”

They would think of it only through the fixed idea that “China is big.”

Those who know the actual conditions of China today are probably only the resident correspondents of the various newspapers stationed there, but they too move politically.

If they can make readers believe in the illusion that “China is a great power,” they themselves will be valued.

That is why their reporting devotes itself solely to enlarging the illusion of China.

To be continued.