Originally published on October 17, 2019.
This article argues that some foreign correspondents in Japan, lacking sufficient Japanese-language ability, have been sending biased anti-Japanese reports to the world, and proposes that Japan consider making Japanese-language proficiency a condition for issuing visas to foreign correspondents.

October 17, 2019.
Before taking up my post, I had joined the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and I felt bitterly dissatisfied to see foreign reporters who could not understand Japanese sending biased “anti-Japanese” articles out to the world.
Would it not be worth considering making Japanese-language ability a condition for issuing visas to foreign correspondents in Japan?
I am republishing a chapter originally posted on December 15, 2015, under the title: Would this lead to a correct understanding of Japan?
There was also the following article in the Sankei Shimbun.
Emphasis in the text is mine.
Give Language Tests to “Biased” Reporters.
It was a scene I had seen somewhere before.
When I took up my post in London on the 1st, what came to mind was New York, a city like a “salad bowl” filled with many kinds of vegetables, where people of many races and ethnicities exist in scattered clusters without truly mixing.
At present, 80 percent of London’s population is apparently made up of people who came from overseas, and according to the census, British-born whites account for only 44.9 percent of the total population.
After the war, the British disliked manual labor and accepted immigrants from former colonies in Asia, Africa, and the West Indies; more recently, large numbers have flowed in from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and British society has become increasingly multiethnic and multicultural.
The immigration issue is itself the history of the British Empire.
The English spoken by diverse races is also mixed with each group’s “national accent,” making it difficult to understand.
English, too, is highly diverse.
When I obtained my visa for the post, I was required to take an English test.
Since I had not been required to demonstrate language ability when I studied in the United States in the early 1990s or when I was stationed in Russia in the late 1990s, I found this strange.
However, once I took up my post, I keenly realized that to understand Britain, one must first acquire the language.
Before taking up my post, I had joined the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and I felt bitterly dissatisfied to see foreign reporters who could not understand Japanese sending biased “anti-Japanese” articles out to the world.
Would it not be worth considering making Japanese-language ability a condition for issuing visas to foreign correspondents in Japan?
It might lead to a correct understanding of Japan.