Published on July 12, 2019.
This passage examines why agitation has become more effective in Japan, focusing on growing distrust of the media, distrust of prosecutors, and the declining credibility of party politics itself.
It sharply warns that if politics and journalism continue to appeal to emotion and sentiment, they may eventually give rise to a dictatorial “monster.”

2019-07-12
Is there any background factor that has made agitation so much easier to gain influence in Japan?
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The opposition parties’ “criticism of document tampering” is superficial.
—Is there any background factor that has made agitation so much easier to gain influence in Japan?
Takai: I believe the influence of the mass media is very large.
The mass media has supported democratic society by conveying facts to the people, but recently it seems to me that they have been neglecting that responsibility.
In fact, due in part to the comfort women reporting for which the Asahi Shimbun admitted error, quite a number of citizens have come to feel distrust, wondering whether “the mass media tells us only the facts that are convenient for themselves.”
Once the public comes to think that “there is no means to know the facts,” agitation will become all the more able to spread its influence.
In addition, the prosecutors, who together with the mass media had been relied upon by the public as those who “convey the correct facts,” also lost the people’s trust after the evidence tampering case that led to the confirmed acquittal of former Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare bureau chief Atsuko Muraki.
The present reality, in which trust has collapsed both in the prosecutors, who should clarify the facts, and in the mass media, who should inform the people of the facts, is precisely what makes it easy for a “Goebbels” to emerge, and I think that is extremely dangerous.
If we think this through to the end, then for democracy, it is dangerous when more people uncritically accept the inciting reports of the mass media, and conversely, it is also dangerous when distrust of the mass media grows too strong because of such inciting reporting.
Agitation can give birth to a dictator.
If there are some in the mass media who have the simplistic idea that “if ratings go up, then a little agitation is fine,” they should have a sense of crisis that such irresponsibility could paralyze the reason of the people and give birth to a “monster” that takes advantage of it.
It is also possible that the mass media itself will be devoured by the dictator it has created, in other words, overthrown by it.
That is precisely why I believe the mass media should place importance above all on conveying accurate facts to the people, and leave to the rational judgment of the people the question of how power should be criticized.
—In an interview in the October 2017 issue of Seiron, Mr. Morley Robertson expressed a similar concern, but it does not appear that politicians or the mass media are aware of the danger of agitation.
Takai: I think it is extremely serious.
The opposition parties say of the rewriting of approval documents that it is “a crisis of democracy” and “a challenge to democracy,” but I believe they are missing the essence of the matter.
What should be feared most is this: “if the method of appealing to the feelings and emotions of the people becomes generalized as it is, will a monster be born in Japan?”
In fact, when we look across the world, it appears that we are entering an age in which “dictators” are rampant.
Judging from the opinion polls of the mass media, the approval rate of the opposition parties, which have appealed in an agitational manner, has not risen, while at the same time the number of people saying “no party supported” is increasing.
In other words, one can also view this as a sign that trust in party politics itself is wavering.
That, more than anything, is what should be called “a crisis of democracy.”