Published on August 17, 2019. Continuing from Masayuki Takayama’s Korea and the Media Shamelessly Tell Lies, this article criticizes scholars who pander to the Asahi Shimbun, including the alleged poison-gas photograph issue involving Professor Fujiwara Akira, claims about East Timor, PM2.5, constitutional pacifism, and the rhetoric of constitutionalism.

August 17, 2019.
The Asahi Shimbun approached him, saying that it might allow him to write for it, and then pressed him to say that a photograph showing smoke billowing up from rice paddies by Lake Dongting in China was “poison gas used by the Japanese Army.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The foolish illusion that appearing in the Asahi Shimbun makes one first-rate.
In the past, foolish scholars believed that appearing in the Asahi Shimbun made them first-rate.
Professor Fujiwara Akira of Hitotsubashi University was one of them, and at one point the Asahi Shimbun approached him, saying that it might allow him to write for it, and then pressed him to say that a photograph showing smoke billowing up from rice paddies by Lake Dongting in China was “poison gas used by the Japanese Army.”
Fujiwara, too, was at least a scholar of sorts.
Poison gas was first used in trench warfare during the First World War.
It was made heavier than air, crawled along the ground, flowed into trenches, and killed.
He thought that if it rose into the sky, it would not even be worth discussing, but he could not afford to offend the Asahi Shimbun.
So, as a statement by Professor Fujiwara, he went along with, “Yes, this is poison gas.”
Just when he thought that no one would defy the Asahi Shimbun, Ishikawa Mizuho of the Sankei Shimbun exposed the lie.
Fujiwara was denounced by the public as a lying professor, and after that he disappeared.
But the breed of foolish scholars never runs out.
Gotō Ken’ichi of Waseda University wrote the lie that the Japanese Army killed 50,000 islanders in East Timor.
The Asahi Shimbun was pleased, but he was shunned by his neighbors as if he were a monster.
Professor Asuka Jusen of Tohoku University wrote arrogantly in the Asahi Shimbun that “China is an honor student in exhaust-gas regulation. Japan should learn from it.”
Immediately afterward, the PM2.5 uproar broke out, his lie was exposed, and even the seemingly venerable name Asuka turned out to be fraudulent.
It was revealed that he was a Chinese person who had changed his name into a Japanese style.
Now complaints are flooding the Ministry of Education, asking why such a lying foreigner is made a university professor.
Even so, there are still scholars who want to write for the Asahi Shimbun, and now it feels as if Oguma Eiji has taken Fujiwara Akira’s place.
He collects and comments on the words of scholars one has never heard of who pander to the constitutional-protectionist Asahi Shimbun, in an article titled “Why It Has Not Been Amended,” dated April 27, 2019.
As for why the Constitution has gone seventy years without amendment, Kenneth McElwain tells a lie with a straight face, saying that “because of the flexibility of saying, ‘this shall be prescribed by law,’ it was possible to avoid amendment.”
What nonsense.
The reason it was not amended was that, even if one wanted to amend it, there was not even a national referendum law to entrust the people with the judgment of approval or disapproval.
Was it not Abe who created that law, which came into effect only seven years ago?
Ordinary Japanese people do not by any means like a Constitution that MacArthur arbitrarily created while impersonating His Majesty with the words “I deeply rejoice” in the imperial rescript.
In response to that, Oguma introduces Kimura Sōta’s words: “There is no problem with the contents of the present Constitution. The only complaint they can make is that it was imposed.”
In that way, he praises a Constitution with the beggar’s mentality that says we should live by clinging to other countries.
This sophist is said to have come from Hasebe Yasuo’s seminar.
Somehow, I feel I understand.
And what Oguma brings out is constitutionalism.
It is the Asahi Shimbun’s favorite argument, returning to the original meaning of the character 憲 and saying that “Constitution” means “the law that corrects the law.”
But Japanese people have never been particular about the original meanings of Chinese characters.
For example, take the character 民 in democracy.
Its original meaning is that the pupil part, the “one” line, of 艮, meaning an eye, is crushed, making it blind, and that is 民.
In other words, the common people mean “a foolish group that can see nothing.”
Japanese people, without caring about such things, coined the word democracy with the intention of referring to ordinary living beings.
The Chinese, on seeing that word, apparently thought it meant “mob rule,” but they decided, well, let us imitate the Japanese here, and became accustomed to Japanese-made Chinese terms.
Now, 75 percent of the words used by Chinese people are Japanese, and Miyawaki Junko says, “China now belongs to the Japanese cultural sphere.”
In such an age, they say that the character 憲 in Constitution should be read as correcting the law.
I wondered who other than the Asahi Shimbun would believe such nonsense, and it turns out that the aforementioned Irish Kenneth something believes it and promotes it wholeheartedly.
If he is going to enter the Japanese cultural sphere, he should properly learn that culture.
Oguma, too, if he keeps flattering the Asahi Shimbun and saying irresponsible things forever, will end up following the same path as Fujiwara Akira.