Published on July 14, 2019.
Based on a dialogue between former Asahi Shimbun employees, this article records how left-wing forces returned within postwar Asahi, and how the 96-hour strike, Murayama’s direct rule, the Murayama disturbance, and the Hirooka regime led to the leftward shift of both the paper and its personnel system.

July 14, 2019
As a problem common to postwar companies, the more capable people had been lost in greater numbers in the war.
Therefore, even leftists who were returned to the field climbed the ladder of promotion one after another through their strength in controlling the workplace.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Murayama Disturbance That Became a Turning Point.
Hongo: Rather, it was the era of “Shinobu and Nagai.”
So immediately after the end of the war, the left once took over, but that was overturned.
Those people returned to their original workplaces.
But you see, as a problem common to postwar companies, the more capable people had been lost in greater numbers in the war.
Therefore, even leftists who were returned to the field climbed the ladder of promotion one after another through their strength in controlling the workplace.
Ishikawa: That means Hirooka, Mori, and Watanabe Seiki, doesn’t it?
Hongo: Mori and Watanabe also rose from the workplace in that way.
And even if we call it the editorial bureau at the head office, there were very few people there at the time.
Then, at the end of 1959, there was the 96-hour strike, the “96 Strike.”
It was the year before the 1960 Anpo protests.
Around this time, the left once again began to run rampant inside the company.
In reality, from the beginning of the 1950s, the newspaper’s pages had shifted terribly far to the left.
The especially terrible Morioka bureau produced a prefectural edition so left-leaning that even inside the company it was called “Asahi Shimbun’s Akahata prefectural edition.”
This was the time when reporters such as Hiroshi Iwadare, later famous for North Korea reporting, were there.
Inagaki: Was he the younger brother of former Socialist Party House of Representatives member Sukio Iwadare?
Hongo: They were called “the brilliant brothers from Nagano,” but his reporting was completely attached to North Korea.
However, immediately after the “96 Strike,” Senior Managing Director Shinobu suddenly resigned.
Partly because he had himself established the retirement age system for executives, but it was also as if he took responsibility for being unable to suppress the left.
Then President Murayama Nagataka, who was eager and said, “I want to try doing it myself,” began his direct rule and first tried to carry out a conquest of the left.
At that time, the person he appointed as Tokyo editorial bureau chief was Kimura Teruhiko, who had been deputy editorial bureau chief.
At the time of the 96 Strike, and then immediately afterward at the time of the 1960 Anpo protests, Hirooka was a plain director and Tokyo editorial bureau chief.
President Murayama did not think well of Hirooka, questioned the leftward tilt of the paper, and sent him off to Kyushu.
At the time, this was called being in charge of the Western Head Office, but regarding this personnel move, Mori wrote in his memoir, My History of Asahi Shimbun, that “Hirooka was driven to the West, and a dark age came to the company.”
The “dark age” meant Murayama’s direct rule, and he also wrote ill of Kimura, who followed it.
Kimura had long had connections with the right-wing political society Kokuryukai, and ideologically he was rather center-right.
However, under Murayama’s direct rule, a fatal mismanagement occurred.
In the Murayama owner family, actions that failed to distinguish between public and private matters piled up.
Thus, from 1963, an internal family dispute began.
After much turmoil, Hirooka, who had been sent off to Kyushu, submitted a motion at the board meeting on January 20, 1964, to dismiss President Murayama, and it passed.
He leapt from plain director straight to senior managing director, and the next day he installed Mori, his sworn friend from their days in the Osaka economic department, as chief editorial writer.
From here onward, the left-wing line became fixed.
Inagaki: This “Murayama disturbance” became one turning point.
Certainly, Asahi Shimbun had been turning left up to that point, but that was also a reflection of society as a whole having become left-leaning.
At that time, speech inside Asahi was fairly free.
In fact, there were many different kinds of people inside the company.
Because left-wing people like Mori had not yet grasped personnel authority, all kinds of people were hired.
Therefore, naturally, opinions differed, and there were scenes in which people debated each other.
However, after the Murayama disturbance, when the so-called Hirooka regime began, everything changed completely.
That was because Hirooka’s power base was extremely fragile.
The controlling shares amounted to less than 50 percent.
So they desperately gathered the share certificates held by union members.
Hongo: That was the Stock Trust Committee.
In fact, it had no legal standing.
It had no corporate status; it was merely a formal organization that collected shares.
They often even used official authority to gather shares for the Hirooka administration and create a “support-the-regime structure.”
Then superiors with ambitions for promotion would say to middle managers, “Among your subordinates, there are still people who have not entrusted their shares.
Make them entrust them quickly,” and so on.
When someone like me said, “Don’t be ridiculous.
How can you violate private property rights?
Collecting shares is not something to be done using the chain of command,” I was told things like, “If you say things like that, you have no future.”
That kind of era continued for a long time.
Before Hirooka took power, there was an internal market for Asahi shares inside the company, although they were unlisted, and notices would appear saying things like, “A certain person is retiring, so 300 shares are available.”
Everyone bought them by bidding.
However, Hirooka and his people destroyed all of that and said to collect the shares using official authority.
In the worst cases, the person in charge would go on the night of a wake and say, “Your late husband should have had 1,000 shares, but if you would be so kind, please return them to the company,” and collect them.
Inagaki: They also collected them through the union bosses.
That is where the corrupt connection with the union was formed.
Hongo: Exactly.
Inagaki: In other words, because of that, after the Hirooka regime began, those people completely grasped personnel authority, and they came to hire only left-leaning people.
In other words, if someone was an openly obvious Communist Party member, or if his father was also one, or if he was the child of someone from something like a Communist Party family, they brought him in, and they also brought in reporters like Honda, who became a topic of discussion in the NHK program alteration issue.
Ishikawa: Ah, Honda Masakazu.
Inagaki: They calmly bring in reporters like that.
That is why incidents never cease.
This essay continues.