Published on July 14, 2019.
Based on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this article records Shinzo Abe’s statement on visiting Yasukuni Shrine at a party leaders’ debate, his criticism of Asahi Shimbun over the comfort women issue, the falsehood of Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, the verification of the Kono Statement, and Asahi’s anti-Abe reporting.

July 14, 2019
But Abe was different.
First, regarding his visit to Yasukuni Shrine, he said, “Yasukuni is in Japan.
There is no place in Japan where the Japanese prime minister cannot go.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Exposing the Irresponsibility of the Kono Statement.
But Abe was different.
First, regarding his visit to Yasukuni Shrine, he said, “Yasukuni is in Japan.
There is no place in Japan where the Japanese prime minister cannot go.”
His answer on the comfort women issue was even more remarkable.
“That was a story fabricated by a fraudster named Seiji Yoshida, and Mr. Hoshi’s Asahi Shimbun spread it as if it were fact and made it bigger and bigger.”
He said that all responsibility lay with Asahi Shimbun, which had reported falsehoods.
Before that, Asahi had crushed the first Abe administration.
Considering that connection, it was a natural answer, and Hoshi probably asked the question knowing that.
After the prime minister said that, the second Abe administration calmly proceeded to verify the comfort women issue, and first the irresponsibility of the Kono Statement was exposed.
Meanwhile, Asahi Shimbun had intended to use Hoshi’s question as the opening move in an offensive to hold Abe’s second funeral, but before that, it had the obligation to prove that “Seiji Yoshida,” whose name had been raised before the eyes of the public, was not a fraudster.
President Kimura Tadakazu immediately ordered that Seiji Yoshida be proven to be an “apostle of the self-abasing view of history” who spoke the truth.
Then it became clear that nothing about Seiji Yoshida was factual, beginning with his name and career, all the way to his claim that he had used ten soldiers on Jeju Island to forcibly take away 200 Korean women.
Without knowing even that, based on Seiji Yoshida’s lies, they had created several spin-off works, such as Yayori Matsui’s “abduction of six women from Busan” and Takashi Uemura’s “Kim Hak-sun in Seoul.”
They could offer no excuse.
Thus, in the summer of the second year after Hoshi’s question, Asahi Shimbun admitted Seiji Yoshida’s lies and offered up the head of its president.
If a newspaper continued lies that degraded Japan for thirty years, normally it would be discontinued.
However, for the first time, a hole was opened in the once-impregnable self-abasing view of history.
Because of that, the good-natured Japanese people allowed Asahi to survive.
However, even looking at Hoshi’s latest article, Asahi Shimbun shows little sign of improvement.
Rather than speaking anti-Japanese sentiment through elaborate lies disguised as fairness, what now stands out is a line of going straight into open bias.
The recent reporting on the security legislation was just that, with no hesitation in its agitation against Abe, suggesting that “conscription will be imposed.”
This essay continues.