Published on July 12, 2019.
Presented as a chapter originally published on September 27, 2015, this passage sharply exposes the structure by which the Asahi Shimbun and television commentators worked together to steer public opinion and bring down the first Abe administration.
It points to the reality of “television politics,” in which newspaper editorials are endlessly repeated on television to move politics itself, and accuses Japan’s media space of having been distorted for many years.

2019-07-12
If you give the Asahi editorials to foolish commentators and have them repeat them on television from morning till night, that becomes public opinion, and even the Abe administration could be brought down.
What follows is a chapter published on 2015-09-27 under the title, “In the flush of victory, the Asahi Shimbun ran a two-page spread dialogue between Tetsuya Chikushi and Wakamiya Yoshibumi, explaining the mechanism of how they were able to bring down the administration.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The bold emphasis is mine.
[Continued] Japan, This Is Asahi. 2013.03.04
The current affairs column “Oribushi no Ki” published in the March 2013 issue of Seiron explains the “mechanism” by which the anti-Japan mass media, led by the Asahi Shimbun, came to topple the first Abe administration.
…Seven years earlier, when the Abe administration began to say that the time had come to stop lying, this newspaper threw even fairness in reporting aside and brought down the administration through abuse and falsehoods.
The newspaper convention immediately afterward turned into a victory celebration for the Asahi Shimbun, and it awarded the Newspaper Culture Prize to former president Toshitada Nakae. 　
He was the man who used his subordinate Takashi Uemura, who had a Korean wife, and Chuo University professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi to launch that wartime comfort women campaign. 　
In other words, he was a meritorious figure who brought down an enemy of the postwar regime and had once sought its further expansion.
The Asahi Shimbun, flushed with victory, ran a two-page dialogue between Tetsuya Chikushi and Wakamiya Yoshibumi, in which they smugly explained the mechanism of how they had been able to bring down the administration. 　
To summarize it, “the Abe administration was crushed by public opinion created by the arguments of the Asahi Shimbun” (Wakamiya). 　
But Asahi did not form public opinion directly. 　
“Public opinion is created by repeatedly instilling things through commentators on wide shows and news programs.”
As for those commentators, “people like your neighbors are more effective” (Chikushi). 　
For example, an actress whose husband was stolen away, or a dull-looking baseball player, or a cameraman would do.
And then, how do you implant Asahi’s arguments into them? 　
They are not intelligent enough to have views of their own, so before they go on air, at the television station, you “hand them the Asahi Shimbun editorials” (Wakamiya), explain them carefully, and make them able to parrot them back.
That is why there is no need for the whole nation to read them.
Only “a very small number need read the editorials” (Chikushi).
In short, if you give the Asahi editorials to foolish commentators and have them repeat them on television from morning till night, that becomes public opinion, and even the Abe administration could be brought down. 　
Television wide shows flatter “the masses eager to rebel” (Ortega y Gasset) and dominate politics. 　
“The age of television politics has truly arrived” (Chikushi).
The dialogue ends with those two unpleasant men rubbing cheeks over the claim that Japan’s governments are decided by the Asahi Shimbun and television.
In fact, with this formation, the Asahi Shimbun succeeded in imposing the Democratic Party on the nation. 　
It was simply too awful, and so a year-end general election had to be held, but even then Wakamiya seems to have believed that television politics still retained its magical power. 　
That was why Asahi’s front-page headline on the morning of the general election was, “Government, replaced or maintained?” 　
He still believed by more than half that the Democratic Party government could be maintained. 　
That is because Asahi, in its editorials, called for denuclearization, denounced the Liberal Democratic Party for advocating constitutional revision, and stirred up fear by portraying escape from deflation as a dangerous gamble.
Foolish figures such as Akihiro Ohtani and Minoru Monta clamored around the clock exactly in line with the editorials, shouting that it must be denuclearization and that the Liberal Democratic Party was ready to grab a metal bat, while Ichiro Furutachi repeated in a voice like that of a funeral master of ceremonies that Yukiko Kada, who advocated graduation from nuclear power, was the right choice. …
For the details, I would ask readers to consult this blog, but for several decades the Asahi Shimbun had been controlled by left-leaning journalists such as Wakamiya Yoshibumi, and this fellow finally took his enormous retirement payment and left the company this year.
Since he had risen as far as editor-in-chief, he could still have remained at Asahi for quite some time, but perhaps even within Asahi criticism of him had finally begun to swirl.
The rest is omitted.