Published on August 20, 2019. Based on Yoshihisa Komori’s Sankei Shimbun column, this article examines the Washington Post’s report claiming a “clash” between President Trump and Prime Minister Abe, journalist John Hudson, NHK’s reporting stance, anonymous sources, alleged Japanese-side leaks, and comments by Shihoko Goto, criticizing the report as biased from the outset against Trump and Abe.

August 20, 2019.
The Washington Post…journalist John Hudson…together with people such as Onishi Norimitsu, who continued writing anti-Japanese articles for the New York Times, is probably a person whom the Japanese people must watch carefully.
This is the chapter I sent out on September 13, 2018, under the title: I happened to be watching when, at the time this Washington Post article appeared, NHK reported it as if it had been waiting for it.
Komori Yoshihisa writes a serial column in the Sankei Shimbun under the title “Latitude and Longitude.”
The following is from the article published in this morning’s Sankei Shimbun under the headline “Anti-Trump and anti-Abe from the outset.”
I happened to be watching when, at the time this Washington Post article appeared, NHK reported it as if it had been waiting for it.
I wondered what on earth this was about, and why they were broadcasting such incomprehensible nonsense now, but immediately I thought that it must be for the sake of the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, and I thought of the wickedness of the people who control NHK’s news department.
The emphases in the text and the passages marked with ～ are mine.
At the end of August, the American newspaper the Washington Post reported the theory of a “clash between the two leaders, Trump and Abe.”
It was an article to the effect that the two close U.S. and Japanese leaders had become estranged, and it was officially denied by the Japanese side.
But its influence spread distorted ripples.
This kind of reporting related to Japan and coming from the United States will probably appear again.
Therefore, I tried to analyze this article.
As a result, what emerged first was a political bias of being anti-Trump and anti-Abe from the outset.
This article, which is said to have been written mainly by John Hudson, a reporter in charge of the State Department and other matters at the Washington Post, was released on the newspaper’s online edition on August 28.
Together with people such as Onishi Norimitsu, who continued writing anti-Japanese articles for the New York Times, he is probably a person whom the Japanese people must watch carefully.
On September 3, it was slightly shortened and published in the newspaper’s print edition.
The first peculiar point of this long article is the phrase at the beginning, “I remember Pearl Harbor,” which President Trump is said to have uttered.
According to the article, the president threw these words at Prime Minister Abe Shinzo during the summit meeting in June.
Prime Minister Abe denied the “remark” itself, but in general American references to Pearl Harbor, in writing, usually take the imperative form: “Remember Pearl Harbor,” meaning, “Remember, do not forget, the Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor.”
If President Trump said that he himself “remembered” it, the meaning differs from the expression of hostility in the imperative form.
In fact, the article itself also wrote that a “diplomat” involved in the summit meeting said, “I cannot explain the meaning of the president’s reference to Pearl Harbor.”
Yet in the article as a whole, what remains is only the impression that the president showed such hostility toward Prime Minister Abe that he even used an anti-Japanese slogan from the U.S.-Japan war.
The second peculiar point is the description that the Trump administration was irritated because a Japanese government representative concealed from the U.S. side the fact that he had met with a senior North Korean official in July regarding the abduction issue.
The exchanges between Japan and the United States over the abduction issue are broad, and no picture at all emerges in which the two leaders became estranged because of this one matter.
What is more concerning is that the information about this high-level Japan-North Korea contact was clearly leaked from somewhere on the Japanese side, an intentional leak of confidential information.
Needless to say, it must have been a leak from the Asahi Shimbun or from someone who sympathizes with them.
This is because they carry out activities on stages such as the United Nations that are exactly like South Korea’s tattletale diplomacy, and the manner is exactly the same.
The third feature that impresses upon us the bias of the article is that all the sources suggesting a deterioration in the Trump-Abe relationship are anonymous, while as a named source it depends heavily on the views of a single particular Japanese researcher who is far removed from Japan-U.S. negotiations.
The article repeatedly cited the accusatory words of Goto Shihoko, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a semi-governmental research institution in Washington, such as “Prime Minister Abe has failed in strengthening relations with the United States in both the economic and security fields,” and “President Trump’s worldview is the same as that of the Second World War era,” and used them as the basis for the “clash between the two leaders.”
Ms. Goto is a capable researcher who has lived in Washington for many years, but she is not known to have a career involving Japan-U.S. negotiations or Japanese politics.
However, her comments exactly fit the basic tone of an anti-Trump and anti-Abe article.
This Goto Shihoko, too, like Hayashi Yoko and others, is probably one of the persons to watch carefully as someone whom it would be no exaggeration at all to call a traitor or national traitor, whose real nature is to carry out anti-Japanese propaganda on the world stage.
The Washington Post has consistently continued commentary and reporting attacking the Trump administration.
This article, too, makes explicit its stance of throwing cold water even on the strengthening of relations with Japan, which is regarded as an achievement of Trump diplomacy.
Professor Emeritus Jim Auer of Vanderbilt University, who has been involved in Japan-U.S. relations for many years, commented on this article by saying that “it can be called fake news that depicts the diplomacy of the Trump administration badly based on conjecture.”
Guest Correspondent in Washington.