Published on July 17, 2019.
As a continuation of the previous chapter, this essay addresses Yasukuni Shrine visits, the comfort women issue, Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, the Kono Statement, and the Asahi Shimbun’s false reporting.
Through Prime Minister Abe’s remarks, it examines the Asahi Shimbun’s responsibility for expanding the comfort women issue, the falsehood of Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, and how the first hole was opened in Japan’s masochistic historical view.

July 17, 2019.
He said that all responsibility lay with the Asahi Shimbun, which had carried out false reporting.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Exposing the irresponsibility of the Kono Statement.
But Abe was different.
First, regarding visits to Yasukuni Shrine, he said, “Yasukuni is in Japan.
There is no place in Japan that the prime minister of Japan cannot visit.”
His answer to the comfort women issue was even more remarkable.
“That was a story invented by a fraud named Seiji Yoshida, and Mr. Hoshi’s Asahi Shimbun spread it as if it were fact and made it grow larger and larger.”
He said that all responsibility lay with the Asahi Shimbun, which had carried out false reporting.
Before that, the Asahi Shimbun had brought down the first Abe administration.
Considering that connection, it was a natural answer, and Hoshi probably asked the question knowing that.
The prime minister said so, and the second Abe administration quietly proceeded to examine the comfort women issue, and first the irresponsibility of the Kono Statement was exposed.
Meanwhile, the Asahi Shimbun had intended to use Hoshi’s question as the starting point for an offensive to hold Abe’s second funeral, but before that, it became obliged to prove, regarding “Seiji Yoshida,” who had been questioned in front of the public eye, that he was not a fraud.
President Tadakazu Kimura immediately ordered that Seiji Yoshida be proven to be an “apostle of the masochistic historical view” who spoke the truth.
Then it became clear that nothing was factual, beginning with Seiji Yoshida’s name and background, and extending to his claim that he had used ten soldiers on Jeju Island to take away 200 Korean women.
Without knowing even that, they had created many spin-off works based on Seiji Yoshida’s lies, such as Yayori Matsui’s “abduction of six women from Busan” and Takashi Uemura’s “Kim Hak-sun of Seoul.”
They could not offer any excuse.
Thus, in the second summer after Hoshi’s question, the Asahi Shimbun admitted Seiji Yoshida’s lies and offered up the head of its president.
If a newspaper continues lies that demean Japan for thirty years, normally it should be discontinued.
However, for the first time a hole had been opened in the once-impregnable masochistic historical view.
Because of that, the good-natured Japanese allowed the Asahi Shimbun to prolong its life.
However, even looking at Hoshi’s latest article, not many points of improvement can be seen in the Asahi Shimbun.
Rather than telling anti-Japanese narratives through elaborate lies disguised as fairness, what stands out now is a line of going straight into bias.
The recent reporting on security legislation is exactly that, and there is no hesitation in its agitation that directly opposes Abe and suggests that “conscription will be imposed.”
This essay continues.