Published on October 29, 2019.
Based on an essay by Abiru Rui, this article examines the relationship between the Asahi Shimbun and former Lower House Speaker Yohei Kono, focusing on the Murayama Statement, constitutional revision, defense policy, and Kono’s connection with the late Wakamiya Yoshibumi, arguing that Asahi used Kono as a convenient political vehicle for spreading its own views.

October 29, 2019.
It is also a well-known story that the late Wakamiya Yoshibumi, who served as chief editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun, was an adviser to Mr. Kono.
For Asahi, Mr. Kono is probably also a convenient politician, easy to use in conveying its own views.
The following is from an essay by Abiru Rui, published in the separate edition of Sound Argument under the title “Asahi and Yohei Kono Are Birds of a Feather.”
As ever, the honeymoon, or rather the collusion and mutual dependence, between the Asahi Shimbun and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Yohei Kono continues.
That was my impression after reading the large interview with Mr. Kono by editorial board member Kokubu Takashi, published in the March 5 morning edition of Asahi.
The theme was “the stumbling of political reform,” but, as expected, the content drifted midway into Mr. Kono’s self-righteous boasting.
He praised former Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, who had come from the Socialist Party and whom they had carried into office, and said the following.
“Mr. Murayama was a special person, pure and possessed of a sense of mission. It was truly good that we carried him into the premiership at that moment. We were also able to issue the statement on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, which later became the basis of the government’s historical understanding.”
The statement on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war refers to the “Murayama Prime Minister’s Statement,” which expressed deep remorse and heartfelt apology for Japan’s colonial rule and aggression.
It was a statement in which a prime minister from the left wing of the Socialist Party strongly reflected his own ideological coloring, while the objects of its wording were ambiguous, and it was not even clear what they referred to.
It is surely a fact that this incomprehensible statement subsequently bound the hands and feet of Japanese diplomacy and was used by China, South Korea, and others as a diplomatic card.
However, that too was overwritten by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s clear message, the “Statement on the Seventieth Anniversary of the End of the War,” and today it can be said to have been almost neutralized.
Nevertheless, the reason Mr. Kono brings up the Murayama Statement is probably that he actually considers it his own achievement.
Mr. Kono made the following confession in the July 29, 2009 morning edition of Asahi.
“Murayama, Kono, and Takemura Masayoshi, representative of New Party Sakigake, joined hands and created the Murayama Prime Minister’s Statement for the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war.”
Mr. Murayama and Mr. Kono have repeatedly praised themselves, saying that this statement improved Japan-China and Japan-South Korea relations, but that is entirely different from the truth.
In reality, it can be said only that China and South Korea became more high-handed regarding historical issues on the basis of the statement.
An Anachronistic Theory of Defense.
Returning to the present interview, when Asahi’s Mr. Kokubu asked, “Have moderate doves disappeared from the Liberal Democratic Party?” Mr. Kono referred to Prime Minister Abe and answered as follows.
“For example, Mr. Abe has long been fixated on constitutional revision. Since the Heisei era, even when most LDP prime ministers did not touch on constitutional revision in their Diet speeches, there was not the slightest dissatisfaction from within the party. There is no doubt that forces for constitutional revision have always existed inside the party, but it is astonishing that Mr. Abe speaks of constitutional revision with such intensity.”
He seems almost to be saying that Prime Minister Abe’s advocacy of constitutional revision is an anomalous act in the history of the LDP, and that the forces for constitutional revision within the party are a minority, but is that really so?
Since its founding in 1955, has the LDP not upheld the autonomous revision of the Constitution as “the mission of the party”?
Rather, the abnormal situation was that a rigid defender of the Constitution like Mr. Kono entered the LDP and, incredibly, even served as its president.
The one trying to fulfill the party’s mission is Prime Minister Abe, and I find both the sight of Mr. Kono, who has ignored that mission, standing proudly, and Asahi, which gleefully conveys his words, ridiculous and grotesque.
In the interview, Mr. Kono also spoke as follows, offering an anachronistic theory of defense.
“What concerns me most in the current Diet deliberations is the rapidly piled-up defense budget. Based on the constitutional spirit of exclusively defensive defense, Japan is going to possess a ship resembling an aircraft carrier, something it has never possessed before.
(Omitted)
What we barely managed to hold back at the water’s edge during the thirty years of Heisei may possibly become a grave matter in the next generation.”
Can he not see at all the reality that the security environment surrounding Japan today is harsher than ever before?
Mr. Kono, regarded as a leading figure among pro-China politicians and conciliatory toward North Korea as well, closes his eyes to the rapid military buildup of both countries and watches only Japan’s defense spending.
While he was doing so, he seems to have no awareness at all of what happened to the situation in the Far East.
Far from that, the present reality is that even South Korea, an ally of the United States, cannot be trusted at all and is trying to enter the camp of China and North Korea.
Mr. Kono’s logic amounts to saying that the world will be peaceful as long as Japan alone remains quiet.
This also connects with the Preamble of the Constitution, but perhaps Mr. Kono believes in a kind of “geocentric theory” in which the world revolves around Japan.
And Asahi spreads such childish opinions to the public as though they were the weighty words of a sensible major statesman.
And the structure is that Mr. Kono rejoices that his own arguments are being disseminated.
Mr. Kono and Asahi are engaged in coordinated play, as though they were in a symbiotic relationship in which each complements the other.
According to a senior political reporter from another newspaper, when Mr. Kono was president of the LDP, he read Asahi editorials almost every morning in the car that came to pick him up, and quoted them in that day’s greetings and speeches.
It is also a well-known story that the late Wakamiya Yoshibumi, who served as chief editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun, was an adviser to Mr. Kono.
For Asahi, Mr. Kono is probably also a convenient politician, easy to use in conveying its own views.
This article continues.