Originally published on July 21, 2019.
This essay introduces a column by Rui Abiru published in the Sankei Shimbun, arguing that the Asahi Shimbun’s criticism of the Abe administration may in fact be a projection of the Asahi’s own nature.
Through the Asahi’s reporting on Seiji Yoshida’s testimony in the comfort women issue, its hostility toward differing views, its indoctrination of readers, and its posture of “mocking reporting,” the essay criticizes the newspaper’s journalistic character.

2019-07-21
Is the Asahi not arbitrarily projecting onto Prime Minister Abe its own image: the image of those who have been hostile toward and contemptuous of differing views?
The following is from an essay by Abiru Rui, one of the finest active reporters of our time, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun.
It proves, more than enough, that the Asahi Shimbun is an abnormal newspaper company full of low men and low women whom it would be no exaggeration to call paranoid patients, though their behavior also exposes to all the world that it is of exactly the same quality as the ethnic persistence characteristic of the country of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Even so, when one thinks that such a newspaper company, together with NHK, which blindly believed in it, ruled Japan until August five years ago, it is a hair-raising story.
One of the most foolish and terrifying supernatural phenomena in world history had covered Japan.
The Asahi Shimbun: criticism of the government that reflects itself.
Every time I read it, I feel as if it were a self-introduction by the Asahi Shimbun that continues endlessly.
The Asahi criticizes Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his administration almost every day from the same angle, but it reads as if it were speaking about itself.
For example, the editorial in the morning edition of the 17th, “Where Is the Magnanimity of the Ruling Party?” wrote as follows.
“The behavior of an administration that neglects efforts to build broad agreement and, relying on forces that support it, pushes politics forward by force.”
“Politics that merely treats the opposition parties as enemies and lacks the tolerance to accept dissenting opinions will only deepen social divisions.”
Also, in the column “Taji Soron” in the morning edition of the same day, editor Takahashi Junko declared as follows.
“Different opinions and values are adjusted over time, and somehow a point of compromise is found and an accommodation reached.
If that will and action are lacking, then no matter how many words are piled up, it cannot be called debate.”
Her argument is probably that one should listen to diverse opinions and face even those with differing views with tolerance and respect.
At first glance, it sounds reasonable, but when the Asahi says this, a newspaper that has always regarded itself as absolute justice and has excluded and suppressed differing opinions as foreign matter, it only leaves one cold.
Implanting the same claim.
However, this line of argument seems to be one of the Asahi’s recent favorites, and Fukushima Shinji, an editorial writer, wrote something similar in the column “Thinking on Sunday” in the morning edition of the 14th.
“It is strange that a person who is about to become the longest-serving prime minister in history this autumn still does not stop behaving as if he takes pride in himself by looking down on others.”
“The prime minister lacks the attitude of representing the country including those who oppose him.”
From the same point of view, in the first installment of the serial article “Questioning: 2019 House of Councillors Election,” titled “Will ‘Mocking Politics’ Continue?” in the morning edition of the 7th, Matsuda Kyohei, deputy head of the political department, concluded as follows.
“They gather among insiders and sneer.
There oozes out a consciousness that one is above the other party, looks down on them, and excludes them.”
“The roots of discrimination and peer pressure produced by politics that looks down on people are deep.”
“Does he intend to complete the remaining two-plus years of his term as LDP president without embracing differing views?”
It is clear that Prime Minister Abe, who does not obey the Asahi’s opinions and views, is so offensive to them that they cannot stand it.
Even so, it is as if they are trying, by changing the method, changing the items, and changing the writers, to implant the same claim in their readers.
Hostility toward differing views.
But is it not the Asahi itself that has gathered among insiders, sneered, and continued “mocking reporting”?
Regarding the comfort women issue, the Asahi reported eighteen times on the late Seiji Yoshida, who gave false testimony that he had forcibly taken women away on the Korean Peninsula.
And when readers raised doubts such as, “I have never seen or heard of such a thing.
In light of military discipline and the feelings of soldiers, that is impossible,” the Asahi replied in a sneering manner in the evening-edition column “Window” on March 3, 1992.
“There are things one does not want to know or believe.
But unless one struggles with that feeling, history cannot be preserved.”
In April of that year, the Sankei Shimbun reported, at the top of the social-news page of its morning edition on the 30th, that the credibility of Yoshida’s testimony was suspicious, under the headline, “Doubts Over Forced-Taking Testimony: Victims’ Side Denies the ‘Confession’ of the Perpetrator’s Side.”
Nevertheless, the Asahi did not try to investigate or verify that content, nor did it even take it up.
If the Asahi had corrected and withdrawn its related articles on Yoshida’s testimony at that point, the comfort women issue should not have spread so widely.
Is the Asahi not arbitrarily projecting onto Prime Minister Abe its own image: the image of those who have been hostile toward and contemptuous of differing views?
(Editorial writer and political department editorial committee member)