Published on August 27, 2019.
This article introduces a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Mutsuo Mabuchi published in the monthly magazine WiLL, discussing South Korea’s removal from Japan’s whitelist, GSOMIA, the comfort women agreement, the wartime labor issue, Asahi Shimbun’s pro-Korean reporting, and the essence of Abe diplomacy.
It argues that the time has come for Japan to reassess its relationship with South Korea and stand as a truly independent nation.

August 27, 2019.
With Japan’s removal of South Korea from its whitelist, the Moon Jae-in administration has become frantic in its anti-Japanese campaign.
As a countermeasure, South Korea has also moved to remove Japan from its “whitelist.”
But what meaning does that have?
Moon does not understand the size of his own country.
The following is from a dialogue feature between Masayuki Takayama and Mutsuo Mabuchi, published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title “A Former Diplomat and an Asahi Editorial Writer Who Still Side with South Korea.”
At last, the perfect opportunity has come for South Korea to be weaned from Japan.
The essence of Abe diplomacy.
Takayama.
With Japan’s removal of South Korea from its whitelist, the Moon Jae-in administration has become frantic in its anti-Japanese campaign.
As a countermeasure, South Korea has also moved to remove Japan from its “whitelist.”
But what meaning does that have?
Moon does not understand the size of his own country.
Mabuchi.
I think the removal from the “whitelist” is a good opportunity for South Korea to be weaned from Japan.
It will correct South Korea’s distorted nature, in which it is anti-Japanese while depending entirely on Japan.
It is time for both Japan and South Korea to become independent in the true sense.
Takayama.
We must let go of the hand we have been holding.
However, when something like this happens, clever Asahi Shimbun-like people start saying things like, “Is it all right to lose South Korea?” and “Show adult discretion.”
Japan has been swept along by such words and has always let things go with a “well, never mind.”
But associating with South Korea brings a hundred harms and not a single benefit.
Wasn’t Prime Minister Abe the first prime minister to see through that fact?
However, during the first Abe administration, the preparations were insufficient, and it was easily brought down.
Mabuchi.
He declared that he would “take Japan back,” but because of pressure from the United States as well, he unfortunately had no choice but to resign.
Takayama.
Five years passed after that, and at a party leaders’ debate before the second administration, he was asked by Hoshi Hiroshi, a former Asahi reporter, “What will you do about the comfort women issue?”
Mr. Abe replied, “Mr. Hoshi.
Was it not your Asahi Shimbun that spread throughout Japan the story of a fraudster named Yoshida Seiji as if it were fact?”
Mr. Abe said on a national broadcast that the comfort women issue was fake.
Hoshi was left speechless, and President Kimura Tadaichi must have fallen off his chair.
I think it was a great challenge that denounced the media’s monopoly over public opinion four years earlier than Trump.
Mabuchi.
In the end, in 2014, Asahi admitted that its articles on Yoshida Seiji had been mistaken.
Takayama.
He made Asahi admit that the comfort women issue was a fake led by the Asahi Shimbun.
It looked like an overwhelming victory.
Yet less than a year later, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, then in office, flew to Seoul and concluded the Japan-South Korea Agreement on the Comfort Women Issue.
It acknowledged that there had been military involvement.
It admitted wrongdoing, included words of apology from the prime minister, and provided one billion yen to create the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation.
That was astonishing.
After finally forcing Asahi, the stronghold of anti-Japanism, to submit and opening a hole in the false masochistic view of history, why did they wipe it all out?
The conservative forum criticized Mr. Abe with one voice.
Some even said that he had “mistaken the plan for the next hundred years.”
It was all the more shocking because it came at the very moment when we were about to see Asahi bow its head and set out on an apology tour around the world.
At that time, only South Korea rejoiced.
Elated that it had won, it celebrated wildly, saying, “Finally and irreversibly, this issue has ended in South Korea’s victory.”
However, before the words had even dried on their tongue, South Korea realized that, as a “country of han,” that had been far too rash.
So they overturned the matter, saying, “That agreement was wrong,” declared that “the comfort women issue is eternal,” dissolved the foundation, and kept producing more and more comfort women statues.
Only when things turned out this way did I feel that I had finally seen the essence of Abe diplomacy.
Even if you make concessions to the other side beyond the limit, that country will casually break its promises.
For the first time, the good and conscientious Japanese people realized that that country was not normal.
Meanwhile, South Korea compounded this abnormality by beginning to say, “Pay compensation to the forcibly taken wartime laborers.”
But precisely on that issue, under the 1965 Japan-South Korea Claims Agreement, Japan paid money with documents that made it even clearer, so that it would not later become a problem, saying, “This includes the wages and bonuses of wartime laborers.”
Mabuchi.
They overturn promises between states in exactly the same pattern as with the comfort women issue.
Takayama.
Just as Japanese people’s disgust was beginning to take shape, complaints about the Rising Sun Flag, the radar irradiation incident, and Moon Hee-sang’s outrageous remark that “the Emperor should apologize” followed one after another.
When most Japanese had already become fed up with South Korea, Abe removed South Korea from the whitelist.
He began putting distance between Japan and South Korea.
From now on, he will probably keep raising the threshold that had been lowered too much.
Such drastic treatment cannot be carried out unless public opinion goes along with it.
In fact, the publication campaign on “South Korea’s true nature,” which began with the comfort women agreement, was able to persuade the public sufficiently.
Everyone feels that they have “had enough” of South Korea.
A good proof of that is that television wide shows, which used to follow Asahi’s line, have now thoroughly adopted an anti-South Korea line.
Mabuchi.
In the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s public comment process, more than 95 percent responded that they were “generally in favor” of the current measure.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Japanese people have awakened.
Takayama.
Without Abe’s strategy up to that point, I do not think this much support could have been obtained.
He taught people that relations between nations cannot be based only on friendship.
I think he broadened the public’s international perspective.
Mabuchi.
What Mr. Abe had been doing throughout the second and subsequent Abe administrations was to “restore the original Japan,” which he could not do during the first administration.
At last, this removal from the whitelist can be said to have marked the first step.
The delusion of Asahi’s pro-Korean faction.
Takayama.
Relations with South Korea were nothing but a nightmare for Japan.
However, Japan also has its faults.
One of them was that Ryotaro Shiba, in Journey to the Land of Korea, wrote such things as “I am going to the country of the ancestors of the Japanese people” and “the Koreans, who have a history of maintaining a dignified civilization and independent state from an age older than Japan,” and put forward the theory that Japan and Korea share the same ancestry.
Mabuchi.
Amid all this, at last a great chance has come to cut ties with South Korea.
That is because the president of the United States is now Trump.
Until now, the United States has protected South Korea and weakened Japan’s power.
Even Hillary Clinton called the comfort women “sex slaves.”
Now Trump is trying to turn North Korea from a rogue state into a proper international state.
From the American point of view, South Korea is not necessary.
The Cold War structure on the Korean Peninsula that postwar America had built up ended with last year’s Singapore summit.
Yet many pro-American conservatives in Japan have not noticed this flow of history.
For example, former diplomat Kunihiko Miyake, in “Who Is ‘Losing South Korea’?” in the Sankei Shimbun dated August 8, says that the Trump administration’s responsibility is probably not small, but Trump feels no such responsibility.
Moreover, the very search for the culprit who is “losing South Korea” is meaningless.
For Japan and the United States, South Korea is no longer a partner whose loss would cause trouble.
Takayama.
Mr. Miyake writes his true feelings more openly in Voice, the September issue.
He says, “Because this will leave a great source of trouble for Japan, it would be better to withdraw it quickly.”
And Asahi editorial writer Yoshihiro Makino writes something truly foolish in Bungei Shunju, the September issue.
He writes, “Moon Jae-in, as someone from the legal profession, is strict about rules, while also being bound by rules, yet his eyes do not reach as far as Japan’s Supreme Court ruling or the international rule that ‘international law takes precedence over domestic law,’” and “This measure may also have a negative effect on Japan-U.S. relations.”
Moon Jae-in is a former lawyer.
How can anyone say that it cannot be helped because he is ignorant of international law?
Besides, Japan-U.S. relations will not worsen.
Rather, as Mr. Mabuchi also points out, it was at the request of the American side.
He has no grasp of the current situation at all.
Another Asahi-related example is that it carried an interview with Park Cheol-hee, a professor at the Graduate School of Seoul National University, dated August 8.
He said, “South Korea and Japan can be called ‘fraternal twins’ in East Asia, sharing such values as democracy, a market economy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.”
Mabuchi.
How absurd.
Japan shares no values at all with South Korea.
Prime Minister Abe also stopped using the phrase “South Korea, which shares our values” several years ago.
It is an argument not even worth taking seriously.
Takayama.
On what basis can he say such a thing?
It is an outrageous delusion.
Mabuchi.
Perhaps he can be called a person poisoned by Korean academia.
Takayama.
In The Origins of South Korea’s “Anti-Japanism” from Soshisha, Koji Matsumoto introduced the Korean way of thinking that says the Kojiki is “exactly the mythology of ancient Korea,” and that in the Manyoshu, “many of the poets were Koreans, and the scenes sung of are scenes of old Korea” by Kim Sa-bong.
I have judged such remarks to be “Korean Wave delusions,” but Koreans associate with Japan while harboring a certain kind of arrogance.
Unless one understands this Korean mentality, one ends up merely thinking, “What an unpleasant country.”
Mabuchi.
On the other hand, I feel that there are also people of Korean descent who are capable of objective analysis.
Professor Lee Sang-cheol of Ryukoku University stated what was truly a “sound argument” in the Sankei Shimbun dated August 6, saying, “Do not treat South Korea as a special country.”
Yet Asahi continues forever to publish stories like those of Park Cheol-hee, so nothing can be done.
Takayama.
Asahi also had the headline, “Japan and South Korea, Strong Bonds Beyond Conflict,” dated June 1.
What bonds are there!
Mabuchi.
No, they are the “bonds” between Asahi and South Korea.
Takayama.
Asahi’s chief editorial writer Nemoto Kiyoki holds the view that “anything that makes Japanese people happy must be denied.”
Rather than saying that Asahi is connected to South Korea, I think that is where Asahi’s company creed lies.
Mabuchi.
It is a way of thinking that does not seem Japanese.
In addition, in an article dated August 2, Asahi wrote that a senior official of the U.S. State Department would mediate Japan-South Korea relations.
It even wrote that the official would “make both sides sign an agreement to refrain from taking new measures.”
There is no way the United States would propose an agreement disadvantageous to Japan, with the prevention of South Korea’s removal from the whitelist in mind.
Such an absurd thing cannot be true.
In the first place, who exactly is this senior State Department official?
In Asahi’s distinctive way, it was probably trying to shake the Japanese government, but this time no one in the government has been shaken.
They are no longer influenced by Asahi.
The numbers in the public comment process show that vividly.
I think the times have changed, but Asahi itself has not caught up with the change of the times at all.
This article continues.