Published on August 16, 2019.
Based on the dialogue The Crimes and Punishments of the Mass Media by Masayuki Takayama and Rui Abiru, this article discusses the background to The Asahi Shimbun’s hostility toward Shinzo Abe.
Through the NHK “comfort women” program alteration report, reporter Masakazu Honda, the North Korean abduction issue, Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, the Moritomo and Kake reporting, the Yoshida Testimony incident, and the Akira Ikegami column controversy, it criticizes The Asahi Shimbun’s reporting culture and its attacks on the Abe administration.

August 16, 2019.
Around the time the article on “NHK’s ‘comfort women’ program alteration” appeared, Mr. Abe had decided to fight North Korea to the end over the abduction issue.
They probably published the article in order to crush this.
The person who wrote it was Masakazu Honda.
The person who wrote it was Masakazu Honda.
But, on the contrary, their fellow liar NHK rejected it, saying they knew nothing of the kind, and the false report was exposed.
This is a chapter I published on February 17, 2019, under that title.
The Crimes and Punishments of the Mass Media, Masayuki Takayama × Rui Abiru, first published on February 10, 2019, is a book that every Japanese citizen who can read print must read.
This book, which takes the form of a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, and Rui Abiru, the finest active newspaper reporter, senior and junior reporters of the Sankei Shimbun, is also kind to people with presbyopia.
Not only should readers immediately go to the nearest bookstore to purchase it, but since the elderly are all the more information-vulnerable, and most of them subscribe to newspapers such as Asahi, Mainichi, Tokyo, and Chunichi and watch NHK,
readers should recommend this book to the elderly people around them and to ladies who rely on television as their source of information.
The following is an excerpt from page 100.
●Why The Asahi Shimbun makes Shinzo Abe its enemy.
Abiru.
Why do falsehoods pass as they are?
After all, people like things that seem like secret revelations, things only they know, or things that resemble conspiracy theories.
They probably want to think that because they know the conspiracy, they must be wise and correct.
Seiji Yoshida’s testimony concerning comfort women, for example, is absolutely impossible if one thinks about it normally.
Even though he was saying something that anyone, no matter how they thought about it, would find impossible, everyone believed it.
A man with the insignificant title of mobilization chief of the Shimonoseki branch of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Patriotic Labor Service Association could not possibly have landed on Jeju Island, moved the military, and forcibly taken women away.
Takayama.
The Moritomo and Kake issues, too, no matter how one thinks about it, that reporting should never have gained public acceptance.
The Asahi Shimbun, which is writing it, is itself extremely conscious of this, and is trying at all costs to continue writing in a way that says, “suspicions remain.”
＊Arima and Kuwako of NHK Watch 9 also kept saying day after day, “suspicions remain.”＊
There are reporters who write articles, but there is also the copy desk that puts headlines on them.
They themselves must know that they are deliberately taking things in the direction of suspicion.
They are all doing such things together.
Those who work at The Asahi Shimbun seem to think that facts do not matter, as long as they can receive their salaries without trouble.
Abiru.
They are willful offenders.
And then there is group psychology.
Because it is a large company, everyone does it together at once, licking one another’s wounds within the group, and I think it may become a matter of “this is fine.”
Takayama.
The salaries at The Asahi Shimbun have fallen sharply, and it is said that the reliable annual salary will also be cut by an average of 1.6 million yen in fiscal 2019.
Its circulation is also falling with an audible crash.
There are even reports that, if things go badly, actual sales may have fallen to nearly three million.
If they cannot uphold justice, have lost the pride of journalists, and, on top of that, the essential money no longer comes out, then naturally their sense of crisis will grow.
Abiru.
They have a sense of crisis, but perhaps they think, “It is Abe’s fault.”
Everything is “Abe’s fault.”
As for why Mr. Abe is hated by The Asahi Shimbun, I think there is indeed a long history behind it.
In the 2000s, when he was Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, he repeatedly criticized Asahi’s stance on the abduction issue, and the grudge dates from around that time.
In 2005, The Asahi Shimbun published an article with the headline, “NHK ‘comfort women’ program altered; Sho Nakagawa and Abe summoned executives the previous day and pointed out ‘biased content.’”
Mr. Abe’s rebuttal at that time was tremendous.
At the time, in interviews with monthly magazines such as Shokun! (Bungeishunju, discontinued in 2009), regarding the decline in The Asahi Shimbun’s circulation, he said things such as, “This is probably the result of longtime readers becoming disgusted with Asahi’s fabrication-prone nature, which clings like a chronic disease.”
It was a matter of how dare a mere Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary say such things to “the great Asahi.”
Takayama.
Around the time the article on “NHK’s ‘comfort women’ program alteration” appeared, Mr. Abe had decided to fight North Korea to the end over the abduction issue.
They probably published the article in order to crush this.
The person who wrote it was Masakazu Honda.
But, on the contrary, their fellow liar NHK rejected it, saying they knew nothing of the kind, and the false report was exposed.
The Asahi Shimbun said it would entrust the judgment to a fair third-party committee, gathered its kept constitutional scholars and fellow members of the press, reached a conclusion as though it was not false, and escaped both apology and closure.
To begin with, after pompously calling itself the “bell of society” and the “fourth estate,” and arrogantly dominating society from above, to be unable even to judge the right and wrong of what it had done is not something that can be laughed off.
Abiru.
They did not apologize, but the president at the time was made to offer the excuse, “There were some parts where our reporting was insufficient.”
Takayama.
It was the very definition of a false report.
And then there was the 2012 leaders’ debate among eleven parties.
To Hoshi Hiroshi, who was sitting in the seat for asking the representative question, Abe criticized the comfort women issue by naming him directly and saying, “The book written by a fraud-like man named Seiji Yoshida, based on your Asahi Shimbun’s false reporting, was….”
There had never before been a prime minister who spoke that way to the great Asahi.
Abiru.
Mr. Abe himself had long served as secretary-general of the Diet Members’ League on History Textbooks, and he knew more about the comfort women issue than anyone.
That is why he also knows in detail how irresponsibly Asahi has handled it.
There is that background as well.
Takayama.
In front of the whole world, while all the other reporters and party leaders were listening, he named it directly and said, “The Asahi Shimbun spread fake news.”
Moreover, he said that your newspaper had continued spreading lies for thirty years.
Hoshi Hiroshi became flustered and mumbled.
Since then, Asahi took “Take down Abe” as its watchword and frantically tried to counterattack, but Seiji Yoshida was a mass of lies, and neither his real name nor his background contained a single correct thing.
Of course, there was not a single word of truth in what he said.
After a little over a year, in 2014, they decided to cut off the storyteller Seiji Yoshida.
Abiru.
On August 5 and 6, in a feature titled “Thinking About the Comfort Women Issue,” they wrote articles that did not apologize but said, in effect, that there had been a slight deviation, and they received even more criticism.
The “Yoshida Testimony incident” concerning the hearing record of Masao Yoshida, former manager of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, had also occurred, and it felt as though they were thinking of apologizing for the “comfort women reporting” while they were already apologizing for the “Yoshida Testimony incident.”
Takayama.
You were the one who exposed the matter of the “Yoshida Testimony,” weren’t you?
So, on the same level as Mr. Abe, Rui Abiru is also, for The Asahi Shimbun, an “enemy who must be executed.”
They cannot hate you enough.
This is something I heard from people involved, but when they thought they had put a certain end to “Seiji Yoshida,” the falsehood of the “Yoshida Testimony” was exposed, and on top of that the “Akira Ikegami column rejection problem” occurred.
It is said that President Tadakazu Kimura could not survive this triple blow.
When I said, “Oh, Ikegami Akira was that big?” they said, “That was big.”
Abiru.
Whether Mr. Ikegami Akira’s column was rejected or not is really not important.
But for some reason, it seems to have been big inside the company.
Takayama.
To begin with, Ikegami Akira does not write anything particularly sharp.
Abiru.
Last year there was also a suspicion of quotation plagiarism.
Takayama.
Masataka Watanabe took over, but far from making a fresh start, he is now left behind by the runaway editorial department and has no presence.
The present situation is probably that someone around editorial chief Kiyoki Nemoto is continuing to take revenge on Abe and the Japanese people as though performing a curse ritual at the hour of the ox.
Abiru.
After President Tadakazu Kimura resigned, there was internal reflection, and it seems that management decided to interfere as little as possible with the editorial side.
The president and other executives do not intervene.
So rather, now the editorial side is running wild, and no one can apply the brakes.
Takayama.
When the new president, Masataka Watanabe, said at a union meeting that he would cut salaries by an average of 1.5 or 1.6 million yen, opposition arose.
Of course it did.
Watanabe said, “If you do not like it, you are welcome to quit,” and that made the uproar even bigger, so in the end the pay cut was delayed by one year and was to be implemented from April 2019.
It became such a major internal conflict that a management measure was delayed by a year, and inside the company things are in shambles, money is steadily decreasing, and apparently it is even worse than Fuji Television.
Abiru.
I think Asahi is still all right.
After all, that place is a real estate company.
I would like them to change the company name to “Asahi Real Estate.”