Originally published on October 17, 2019.
Based on an essay by economist Nobuo Ikeda, this article examines the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, including stories about thyroid cancer, leukemia workers’ compensation, and its anti-nuclear campaign.
It criticizes the Asahi Shimbun for distorting facts and stirring fear, arguing that this resembles the false campaign it once conducted over the comfort women issue.

October 17, 2019.
The Asahi Shimbun waiting for “deaths from Fukushima”… the Asahi Shimbun that learns nothing… Asahi layering lies upon lies… there is no case anywhere in the world of someone developing leukemia one year later from a mere five millisieverts of radiation exposure.
I am republishing the chapter I originally posted on December 5, 2015, under the title:
This Is the Same as the False Campaign They Once Conducted over the Comfort Women Issue.
The black-letter emphasis other than the title, and the passages marked with —, are mine.
The Asahi Shimbun Waiting for “Deaths from Fukushima”
Nobuo Ikeda
Economist
Born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1953.
After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo, he joined NHK.
After leaving NHK in 1993, he served as professor at GLOCOM, International University of Japan.
After serving as a senior fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, among other posts, he became president of the Agora Institute, Inc.
His recent books include The Collapse of the “Danger Myth” of Nuclear Power (PHP Shinsho), The Asahi Shimbun’s Great Misinformation of the Century (Aspect), and The End of Postwar Liberalism (PHP Shinsho), among many others.
The Asahi Shimbun That Learns Nothing
There has been no radiation damage from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and evacuees have begun returning home.
It was fortunate that an accident caused by one of the largest earthquakes in history did not become a major catastrophe, but there are people who are not pleased by this outcome.
They are the members of the mass media who, immediately after the accident, made a great fuss, saying things such as “tens of thousands will die” and “thirty million people must evacuate.”
In particular, the Asahi Shimbun, which launched a “zero nuclear power plants” campaign in response to the accident, repeatedly carried absurd reports claiming that “people got nosebleeds because of the nuclear accident,” and even recently it has been adding lies upon lies by saying such things as “thyroid cancer has increased fiftyfold” and “someone developed leukemia.”
This is the same as the false campaign they once conducted over the comfort women issue.
What have they learned from history?
Omitted.
Asahi Layering Lies upon Lies
On October 8, the Japanese edition of The Huffington Post, which is affiliated with the Asahi Shimbun, reported on a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club by Toshihide Tsuda, professor at Okayama University, under the headline “The Incidence Rate of Thyroid Cancer among Fukushima Children Is 20 to 50 Times Higher.”
His paper was so sloppy that other major newspapers did not report it.
In the accident, radioactive iodine, which causes thyroid cancer, was carried by the wind to the northwest, so the values should have been higher in the northwestern area.
Yet in Tsuda’s paper, the incidence rate of thyroid cancer was about twenty times higher, while in the southern area, where the concentration was the lowest, it was more than forty times higher.
This shows that the incidence rate of cancer is unrelated to the accident.
As the article itself also states, Fukushima Prefecture’s review committee has revealed that a total of 104 people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the accident were confirmed to have thyroid cancer.
However, it said that “at the present time, it is difficult to think that this is an effect of the nuclear accident,” and cited as reasons the improved accuracy of screening tests and “overdiagnosis,” in which people are diagnosed as positive even though they do not require treatment.
The reporter who wrote this article, Taichiro Yoshino, is on assignment from the Asahi Shimbun.
It seems that after Asahi’s nosebleed stories became a laughingstock, it next wants to stir fear with thyroid cancer, but since even Asahi cannot publish such stories in its main newspaper, it reports them through affiliated media in this way.
Shukan Asahi and AERA write even more explicit anti-nuclear articles.
In the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun on October 20, in an article titled “Radiation Exposure after the Nuclear Accident: First Workers’ Compensation Recognition, Former Worker with Leukemia,” reporter Yuri Oiwa wrote that “there is a certain causal relationship between radiation exposure accompanying the response to the nuclear accident and the worker’s illness.”
Until August of last year, I had subscribed to AERA for a long time, and there too, there was a female reporter very much like this reporter Yuri Oiwa, who once wrote something that left me utterly astonished.
Some readers should remember that I criticized its sheer awfulness.
In other words, I too am convinced that this is the very nature of Asahi.
Readers who only read the lead would probably think, “At last, a victim has emerged from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.”
But if one reads carefully, the worker “worked from 2012 to 2013 as an employee of a subcontractor of Tokyo Electric Power Company, installing structures and performing welding work around Units 3 and 4, and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in January 2014.”
In other words, only a little more than one year had passed from the time he worked at the nuclear plant until the onset of the disease.
A victim of the nuclear accident?
Under the workers’ compensation standards, if leukemia develops one year or more after radiation-related work, it is recognized as an occupational accident.
However, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare explains:
“This recognition does not scientifically prove a relationship between radiation exposure and health effects.
‘Exposure of five millisieverts or more per year’ is not a threshold for developing leukemia.”
Nevertheless, reporter Oiwa writes that “there is a certain causal relationship.”
It is said that when the radiation dose exceeds one hundred millisieverts, the lifetime cancer incidence rate increases by 0.5 percent, but the average time until onset is twenty-five years.
Even in Chernobyl, it began five years after the accident.
There is no case anywhere in the world of someone developing leukemia one year later from a mere five millisieverts of radiation exposure.
This essay continues.