Published on July 14, 2019.
Based on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this article critically records Asahi Shimbun’s correction of its poison gas photograph report, the Okinawa coral graffiti incident, and the structure of self-abasing articles that degrade the Japanese military and Japanese people.

July 14, 2019
Originally, it should have written, “It was not poison gas, but a smoke screen.
Following our editorial policy of portraying the Japanese military negatively, we published a careless article.
We apologize.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Getting Through with an “Evasive Correction.”
The result of the verification was exactly as stated.
Asahi lost and issued a correction, but all it said was that “the location of the chemical warfare was mistaken.”
Originally, it should have written, “It was not poison gas, but a smoke screen.
Following our editorial policy of portraying the Japanese military negatively, we published a careless article.
We apologize.”
Saying, “Poison gas was used, but the location was different,” does not even constitute a correction.
This was the first example of Asahi-style “evasive correction.”
Several years later, Asahi published a photograph of graffiti-marked coral in Okinawa under the headline “Who Is the KY Who Defiled the Coral?” along with an article slandering the Japanese people, saying, “It will become a monument to the Japanese people.
A monument to poverty of spirit, to a荒んだ heart…”
This, too, was false, both the photograph and the article.
The president admitted that the photographer and the reporter had conspired to write on the coral themselves and then attached an article degrading the Japanese people, and he resigned.
However, the reporter who wrote the degrading article received no punishment.
Just as with the poison gas uproar, they seem to think that no matter what lies they tell to degrade the Japanese people, it is not a crime.
Asahi has an extraordinary number of self-abasing articles of this sort.
For example, regarding the construction of the underground Imperial General Headquarters in Matsumoto City, it has had Chinese and Koreans say things such as “hundreds of Korean laborers involved in the construction were all killed so that the secret would not be revealed,” or “when Chinese coal miners weakened, the Japanese military put them alive into rendering furnaces and extracted oil from them,” and then published those stories.
All of them were lies.
Correcting each one every time it is exposed would be troublesome, and correction articles appearing almost every day would also look bad.
That is why they do not do it.