2019-12-29
I am bringing together and republishing the chapters that I deliberately published in several separate installments on November 27–28, 2017.
The following is from WiLL, one of the monthly magazines released yesterday that every Japanese citizen must read.
It is filled with genuine essays like this one.
Those who believe that, as people living in the twenty-first century, they must know the truth behind events should immediately go to their nearest bookstore to purchase a copy.
At the same time, people throughout the world must share my translation with everyone around them.
For no one can say that the disgraceful conduct of this Asahi Shimbun is not also occurring in journalism in your own countries.
Indeed, all the more so because the leading media in your countries have assumed that this Asahi Shimbun represents Japan’s intellect.
China, the Korean Peninsula, Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, America’s New York Times, and others have exploited this disgraceful conduct by the Asahi Shimbun, which it is no exaggeration whatsoever to call treasonous,
and they must understand that their unsurpassed wickedness in exploiting this foolish newspaper to belittle Japan and, for their own malicious purposes, keep it a political prisoner in the international community for seventy-two years after the war
came to an end when I appeared and clearly set forth the Turntable of Civilization, and that God’s hammer of judgment had fallen.
They should reflect on their actions, knowing that, for their unsurpassed evil deeds—the reasons need hardly be stated—Enma, the King of Hell, awaits them with the severest torments; in other words, the gates of heaven are completely closed to them.
How Far the Asahi Shimbun’s “Stupidity” Has Fallen
A Gallery of Idiotic, Foolish, and Lecherous Reporters
Yoshihisa Komori
Washington-Based Guest Correspondent, Sankei Shimbun
They hate Japan, hate Abe, and dislike the citizens who voted for Abe’s LDP.
They tell us to wipe our asses with newspaper.
You’ve got to be kidding—wipe with the Asahi, and even your ass will turn Red!!
Is the Asahi a Japanese Treasure?
The Asahi Shimbun is a “treasure” of Japan—
Having read the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting and commentary for many years, I often find myself thinking this.
In fact, I have published a detailed explanation of that impression and have even brought out a book with the same title.
Such a characterization of the Asahi Shimbun is, of course, paradoxical.
It could also be called ironic.
Yet, in a certain sense, it is an extremely serious observation.
It is also an assessment from inside the newspaper industry, based on what I myself have felt during more than forty years as an active, frontline newspaper reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun and the Sankei Shimbun.
Why is the Asahi Shimbun a Japanese treasure?
Because it is highly valuable to the Japanese people as an example of what not to do.
When Japan and its people are uncertain about their country’s direction or policies, they need only glance at an Asahi Shimbun editorial.
They need only examine its line of argument.
Then they should choose the exact opposite course from the one advocated there by the Asahi Shimbun.
Japan will, in all likelihood, be able to take the right course.
This is no joke.
Looking at postwar history, our country has, at critical national crossroads, chosen courses directly opposite to those advocated by the Asahi Shimbun.
As a result, the country prospered, and peace, freedom, and independence were preserved.
Had Japan followed the course demanded by the Asahi Shimbun, it would have faced a grave situation that could even have led to the nation’s destruction.
The first example is the peace treaty with Japan that Japan signed in September 1951.
As a defeated country, Japan had to conclude a peace treaty with the countries against which it had fought in order to regain its independence.
The world at the time was in the midst of the East–West Cold War arising from the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Japan sought to join the U.S.-led free-world camp and conclude a peace treaty with all its former wartime adversaries, but the Soviet Union and other countries opposed to the United States were not readily willing to agree.
Nevertheless, strongly motivated by the natural desire to bring six years of occupation to an early end, Japan chose to conclude a peace treaty with forty-eight countries of the free-world camp.
The Asahi Shimbun, however, deliberately labeled this “peace with the majority” a “separate peace” and fiercely opposed it.
It continued a major campaign demanding nothing less than a “comprehensive peace” that included the Soviet Union and others.
Had Japan followed the Asahi Shimbun’s position, it was clear that independence would have been greatly delayed, Japan would have been drawn toward the Soviet-led communist bloc, and its relations with the United States and the rest of the Western camp would have deteriorated.
It was precisely because Japan did not follow the Asahi Shimbun’s position that it achieved independence under freedom and democracy.
The second example is the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty that Japan concluded with the United States in January 1960.
A Campaign to Ruin the Nation
Needless to say, the security treaty is the foundation of the Japan–U.S. alliance, incorporating America’s military deterrent into Japan’s defense.
During the East–West Cold War, the Soviet military threat intensified, and pressure to bring Japan within its sphere of control never ceased.
Entrusting Japan’s defense to the United States was a rational policy.
Moreover, this Japan–U.S. Security Treaty revised the provisions of the old security treaty dating from 1951 in ways far more favorable to Japan.
The new treaty pledged that the United States would counter military attacks or threats against Japan with military force—in other words, defend Japan in an emergency.
In return, Japan would permit U.S. forces to be stationed within its territory: that was its basic framework.
The Japan–U.S. alliance based on this treaty was a tremendous success for Japan.
As of the present year, 2017, among Japan’s many political parties, only the Japanese Communist Party opposes this Japan–U.S. Security Treaty.
The vast majority of Japanese citizens today also express their support.
Yet the Asahi Shimbun mounted a campaign of fierce opposition to this treaty.
It prominently published propaganda-like assertions such as “An alliance with U.S. imperialism is dangerous.”
Although relatively few editorials directly opposed the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty, it mobilized the entire newspaper to publicize the arguments of political forces opposed to the treaty.
It also played up policies of disarmament and rapprochement with the Soviet Union.
As described above, the Asahi Shimbun opposed policies fundamental to Japan: its independence and its defense.
Had its arguments been followed, Japan’s independence would have been significantly delayed, it would have broken away from the United States, and it would have moved away from the foundations of democracy.
Japan would have drawn closer to the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union; then the Soviet Union itself would have collapsed, and Japan’s framework as an independent state would have been left in disarray.
Economically, too, leaving the free-world camp would have deprived Japan of the fruits of a market economy, leaving it in a miserable condition far removed from today’s prosperity.
A more recent example of the Asahi Shimbun’s value as a negative example is its opposition to missile defense.
Defensive missile defense, which destroys incoming missiles in the sky, is surely indispensable for Japan as it faces North Korea’s missile threat.
The threat from Chinese missiles is also serious.
Under these circumstances, the usefulness of missile defense itself—as a means of self-defense that functions only when enemy missiles are launched toward one’s own country, rather than as offensive missiles intended to destroy another country’s territory—is now recognized throughout the world.
In Japan, too, political parties and the vast majority of citizens have come to support it.
Yet the Asahi Shimbun has fiercely opposed Japan’s missile defense.
Citing misguided reasons such as “It will provoke China” and “It will promote Japan’s military expansion,” it launched a campaign declaring, “Do not allow missile defense!”
Here again, it was precisely because our country followed a course directly opposite to the Asahi Shimbun’s position that it was able to deploy its present missile-defense network, which, though inadequate, is clearly useful.
Viewed in this light, does my longstanding observation—“When Japan is uncertain about national policy, it should take the exact opposite course from that advocated by the Asahi Shimbun”—not begin to seem more than mere irony?
Disliking “Japan” and “the State”
Now, regarding the Asahi Shimbun’s fundamental stance, one cannot help concluding that it dislikes the very concepts of “Japan” and “the state.”
Where Japan is concerned, the Asahi Shimbun is, first of all, thoroughly critical of the Hinomaru flag and the national anthem, Kimigayo.
It even shuns the sense of Japanese identity through which citizens recognize themselves as Japanese.
Patriotism is treated as evil.
It also seeks to avoid the concepts of Japan’s national interests and its people as a nation.
For many years, regarding Takeshima and the Senkaku Islands, which are inherently Japanese territory, the Asahi Shimbun did not adopt a position of standing on Japan’s side.
“Takeshima, claimed by both Japan and South Korea (Korean name: Dokdo)”; “the Senkaku Islands, claimed by both Japan and China (Chinese name: Diaoyu Dao)”—the Asahi Shimbun used expressions like these for years.
In other words, it does not regard either Takeshima or the Senkaku Islands as Japanese territory, but treats them, as though the matter had nothing to do with itself, as disputed areas claimed by multiple countries.
This is not Japan’s position.
It is the position of an uninvolved third country or an international organization such as the United Nations.
The Asahi Shimbun does not have its own feet planted in Japan.
The Asahi Shimbun’s tendency to dislike “the state” has also been conspicuous for many years.
When all Japan was excited by the efforts of Japanese athletes at the London Olympics in the summer of 2012, an Asahi Shimbun article carried the following statement.
“The ‘banner’ individuals carry is no longer the state, but a borderless global society.”
No matter how enthusiastically Japanese citizens celebrate Japanese athletes’ achievements, it rejects the Japanese state and plays up global society.
Yet, in the real world, the principal actors among human communities remain individual sovereign states.
Every person belongs to some state.
But the Asahi Shimbun refuses to look at that reality.
It portrays the state as an entity entirely separate from its citizens.
It presents the existence of the state in Japan only in an extremely diminished or radicalized form.
Yet, strangely, when it comes to China or South Korea, the Asahi Shimbun fully and legitimately acknowledges the existence of the state.
Apparently, it dislikes the state called Japan.
The Asahi Shimbun also seems especially fond of the phrase “state power” in its everyday reporting.
The implication is that the state exists on a different plane from individuals and is there to control and oppress them.
In a democracy such as Japan, however, the central actors in the country are the people.
The people determine the state’s framework, its role, and the nature of its power.
The Asahi Shimbun is reluctant to recognize this unity of people and state where Japan is concerned.
It seems to want to ignore the reality of popular sovereignty, in which the people control the state.
This attitude toward the state also resembles communist doctrine.
Communism rejects the state under noncommunist political systems.
A state under communist rule, however, becomes absolute justice.
Overt Criticism of Abe
Now, these distortions and biases in the Asahi Shimbun have recently grown increasingly severe.
During its “national treasure” period, when it opposed Japan’s defense and affirmed communism, one could still detect a certain degree of superficial reasoning and consistency, however confused its foundations were.
Recently, however, there have been more and more examples in which even that supposed reasoning is incoherent, contradictory, and self-defeating.
First, let us look at the Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of the most recent general election.
This was the House of Representatives election held on October 22.
As usual, the Asahi Shimbun displayed extreme partisanship.
Before and during the election campaign, its opposition to the Liberal Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was consistent, both implicit and explicit.
Its criticism and denunciation of Abe personally were particularly overt.
Newspapers have two functions: “reporting” and “commentary.”
Reporting conveys news; it reports events that actually occurred as objectively and faithfully to the facts as possible.
Commentary, by contrast, presents opinions, including the newspaper’s own views.
Such commentary need not be objective.
One is expressing one’s own opinion subjectively.
In practice, however, the distinction between reporting and commentary is blurred in newspapers.
There are countless examples of newspaper articles in which highly subjective prejudice and discrimination are mixed into ostensibly objective news reports.
Even so, newspapers should make their best efforts to distinguish reporting from commentary and objectivity from subjectivity.
Viewed with such standards in mind, the Asahi Shimbun’s bias stood out in its coverage of this election.
An aversion to the LDP and a hatred of Abe that appeared almost pathological permeated the entire newspaper.
As a result, events that might favor the LDP or Prime Minister Abe were ignored or downplayed even when they were factual and important.
Interestingly, I felt this bias most overtly in a commentary representing the Asahi Shimbun that appeared after the general-election results had become clear.
Although it should have been written after the vast majority of Japanese citizens had delivered their verdict in support of Prime Minister Abe’s LDP, its content read as though that verdict had yet to be delivered.
It conveyed a childish refusal to admit defeat, an unwillingness to acknowledge that the election had not unfolded as they wished.
Bitter Feelings About “Abe’s Sole Dominance”
This article, prominently displayed on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun’s October 23 morning edition, bore the byline “Shiro Nakamura, General Editor and Director of the Tokyo Head Office’s Editorial Coordination Bureau.”
The bureau director can presumably be regarded as the person with ultimate responsibility for producing the newspaper’s pages.
Incidentally, I know Nakamura personally.
More than a decade ago, we were both correspondents stationed in Beijing.
He was a very pleasant and refreshing reporter.
Needless to say, however, that is a separate matter.
This article reviewing the general election began with the headline “An Opportunity to Reconsider ‘One-Dominant-Player’ Politics.”
That wording suggests an article written before the election.
Leaving aside whether it is appropriate to characterize the current LDP government’s politics as “one-dominant-player” politics, it presumably means an opportunity to reconsider the status quo.
Naturally, then, it suggests a stance of looking ahead to an upcoming election.
Yet, although it was actually a review written after the election, it spoke as though the opportunity to “reconsider” Japanese politics still lay ahead.
Its frustration at being unwilling to accept the election results plainly was blatant.
It even made me feel that this must be what being a sore loser means.
Let me introduce the article’s contents.
“Prime Minister Abe, who has been on a winning streak in national elections, won another landslide this time.
But might he not have been left with bitter feelings inwardly?
The prime minister acknowledged, ‘I am still aware that the LDP is being viewed critically.’
He must have sensed signs of a popular desire for change in ‘Abe’s sole dominance.’”
That was the opening.
Although Abe “won a landslide,” it says that he was left with “bitter feelings inwardly.”
How can such a thing be said?
Anyone would be happy to win a landslide.
Yet this is a self-enclosed description that conveys the “bitter feelings” of Nakamura, the reporter who insists otherwise.
It then speaks of “a popular desire for change in ‘Abe’s sole dominance.’”
Describing the current political situation as “Abe’s sole dominance” is a subjective characterization arising from the Asahi Shimbun’s anti-Abe, anti-LDP stance.
What was put to the electorate in this election was, naturally, the political status quo.
The vast majority of citizens endorsed that status quo.
A popular will that did not seek a change in the status quo was demonstrated.
In other words, the result of this general election expressed a popular will that did not seek a change in the situation called “Abe’s sole dominance.”
Despite this, emphasizing “a popular desire for change” is nothing more than the Asahi Shimbun’s wishful thinking.
There is no objective basis for it.
Let me quote further.
“This was an election in which Abe’s politics themselves were put to the test amid headwinds the prime minister had brought upon himself.
[Omission]
The ‘Abe brand’ no longer has its former strength.
[Omission]
Voters have once again entrusted government to the LDP and Komeito, but at the same time they feel weariness and distaste toward a long-serving administration.”
This, too, is full of contradictions.
Is the “Abe brand” not strong internationally as well today?
If voters feel “weariness and distaste toward a long-serving administration,” why did the vast majority vote for that long-serving administration?
What, in the first place, is the basis for the “weariness and distaste” among voters as a whole that Nakamura asserts?
Is this not a description based solely on his own wishes and frustration?
“The gap between the ruling parties’ overwhelming acquisition of seats and the balance and nuances of public opinion is widening.
The prime minister first needs to recognize that reality.
Will he continue ‘one-dominant-player’ politics, whose arrogance and distortions have repeatedly been pointed out?
Should he not make this an opportunity to reconsider his political stance?”
This, too, is a one-sided and groundless assertion.
In reality, the ruling parties’ acquisition of seats is the result of the popular will.
That is surely the truth of democratic elections.
But Nakamura refuses to acknowledge that truth.
Instead, he reverses the truth and arbitrarily asserts a “gap.”
If he wishes to discuss a gap, I would very much like him to consider the gap between the Asahi Shimbun and the popular will.
Defending the Nation Is Not Only a Military Matter
In external relations, including diplomacy and security, accumulating information is important.
No matter how much one criticizes China, the situation will not improve without knowledge of the Chinese Communist Party’s strategy and the history of its operations against Japan.
Unless we accurately understand what strategies the other side employs and what operations it launches, there is no way to protect our national interests.
In the United States, immediately after the end of the Cold War, Congress began studying Cold War history as a national project in 1992.
The CIA, America’s foreign intelligence agency, also published a book called Chinese Negotiating Behavior—published in Japanese by Bungeishunju in a translation by the Sankei Shimbun’s Foreign News Department—offering a detailed analysis of the operations the Chinese Communist Party had conducted.
Yet, despite being subjected to operations by the Chinese Communist Party to this extent, why do the Japanese government and the Diet not undertake research into the party’s operations against Japan?
Occupation policies helped distort postwar Japan, but the adverse effects of the Chinese Communist Party’s operations against Japan, dating from before the war, have been just as significant.
The distortions of postwar Japan cannot be understood by looking only at occupation policies.
In the United States, some intelligence professionals and conservatives are moving toward a comprehensive reassessment of U.S.–China relations during the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt.
We should like to study the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas operations in conjunction with these developments.
“Reflection, apology, humility, careful explanation….
The prime minister repeated these words, but from now on he will be judged on whether his actions match his words.
[Omission]
If the prime minister misreads the future course of public opinion, he will face even more bitter feelings.”
That was the article’s conclusion.
Nakamura persistently avoids discussing the results of this election and turns his attack toward “whether actions match words from now on.”
Immediately after public support for the prime minister has been demonstrated, he discusses only “the future course of public opinion.”
Although the election clearly reduced the prime minister’s bitter feelings, he emphasizes “even more bitter feelings” without any basis.
Is he so unwilling to acknowledge his own side’s errors and defeats?
Is he unwilling to acknowledge an opponent’s victory?
Does he not experience even a moment of self-reflection that it is the Asahi Shimbun itself that ought to experience “misreading public opinion” and “even more bitter feelings”?
There was another peculiar article discussing the same general-election results.
It is already widely known that the Asahi Shimbun frequently invokes the Nazis when presenting its own arguments.
This is a cunning but childish labeling technique: superimposing present-day political opponents it dislikes on Nazi Germany or Hitler, regarded as absolute evil, in order to make readers identify the two.
I was utterly astounded when the Asahi Shimbun adopted the extreme device of invoking “Reichsmarschall Göring” this time, among the figures of Nazi Germany, and superimposing him on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
It was simply too unrealistic and too distorted an exercise in “Abe-bashing.”
I also wondered whether it could not offer a somewhat more persuasive criticism of the LDP or Abe than this hackneyed method of exploiting the Nazis.
This latest instance of the Asahi Shimbun’s familiar “Prime Minister Abe equals the Nazis” formula appeared in the “Political Fragments” column in its October 30 morning edition.
This, too, was an article that purported to review the general election.
Its headline was “For Liberals Who Will Not Yield to ‘Threats,’” and its author was identified as editorial writer Hideo Matsushita.
Its purpose was, of course, to condemn the LDP, particularly Prime Minister Abe, in terms approaching outright abuse.
Let me introduce the highlight of that article.
“Nazi Germany’s Reichsmarschall Göring said the following.
If you declare, ‘We are about to be attacked,’ and denounce pacifists for ‘exposing the country to danger,’ people can be made to do as you wish.
This method works in any country—even in a free society, even without an insane leader, appealing to anxiety works.
Watching the scenes of the House of Representatives election, I remembered this and felt a bitterness like stomach acid rising.
In street speeches across the country, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appealed first and foremost to ‘the threat from North Korea.’
I do not recall hearing such speeches from an incumbent prime minister.
Of course, he probably did not want war; he calculated that it would increase his votes.
Finance Minister Taro Aso admitted that the LDP’s landslide election victory was ‘clearly thanks in part to North Korea.’”
Göring, though a Nazi, was a military man who distinguished himself as a German imperial military pilot in the First World War, which ended in 1918, a hundred years ago.
He later joined the Nazis and became a central figure in Hitler’s regime, but in any case, this is ancient history.
Yet Matsushita concludes that the words and actions of Prime Minister Abe in today’s democratic Japan are the same as those of a military man from Imperial Germany and the Nazis nearly a century ago.
Matsushita says that hearing Prime Minister Abe’s speeches during this general election reminded him of Göring’s words and made him feel “a bitterness like stomach acid rising.”
Really?
Does he always observe contemporary Japanese politics with Göring’s words in his heart?
Above all, this superimposition of Göring and Shinzo Abe is the height of folly.
Germany in Hitler’s time and Japan today differ far too greatly in both era and circumstances.
They have nothing in common.
Superimposing these two wholly unrelated people now seems attributable solely to the obsession—the delusion—of “hatred of Abe” in Matsushita’s mind.
It is presumably the result of a distortion in a reporter’s thinking that would invoke even the devil for the sake of attacking Abe.
Moreover, the meaning of the words of Göring quoted by Matsushita is that one whips up alarm about an “attack” or “danger” to one’s country that does not actually exist simply because one wants war.
He thereby suggests that the “North Korean threat” described by Prime Minister Abe does not exist either.
He is saying that Abe invokes that threat despite its nonexistence because he believes it will “increase his votes.”
Matsushita is effectively saying that, although no North Korean threat to Japan exists, Abe is lying for electoral gain by pretending that it does.
That presumably explains his “stomach acid rising.”
Then does Matsushita claim that North Korea’s nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles pose no threat to Japan?
Does he claim that the LDP won this general election in a landslide because it continued falsely to assert the existence of a nonexistent threat?
Matsushita’s column concluded with the following.
“Whatever his intention, if the prime minister cries out about ‘the North Korean threat,’ will Koreans living in Japan not become targets of hostility?
Has he forgotten them?”
“Self-centered politics of ‘our country first’ and ‘the majority first,’ resembling white supremacy, are spreading around the world.
Japan is much the same.
At times like these, we must cherish each person’s life, freedom, and human rights, regardless of whether they belong to the majority or a minority!
We must not let anxiety whip us up into relinquishing them!”
The foregoing can also only be called a confused expression of self-righteousness.
Are we not to mention the “North Korean crisis” confronting all Japan out of consideration for the existence of Koreans living in Japan?…
This is no joke.
Many of those described as Koreans living in Japan are surely of South Korean origin.
The present “North Korean nuclear threat” is also a threat to all people of Korean origin living in Japan.
Moreover, people of Korean origin include those with North Korean and South Korean backgrounds, and just as South Korea feels threatened by North Korea’s present nuclear armament, those of South Korean origin living in Japan surely also feel concern.
The assertion that individual freedom and human rights will be violated because “majority-first thinking resembling white supremacy” is spreading in Japan is also laughable.
Where in Japan is there anything analogous to white supremacy?
Matsushita also rejects the principle of majority rule, the foundation of democracy.
His words can even be read as suggesting that the iron rule of modern democratic politics—that the country and government are run according to the will of the majority of the people—automatically leads to suppression of the freedom and human rights of individuals belonging to minorities.
It is tantamount to insisting that the majority be ignored and minorities given priority.
The Asahi’s Foolish Arguments
In short, Matsushita and the Asahi Shimbun apparently cannot accept that a majority of Japanese citizens voted in this general election for the LDP led by Prime Minister Abe and clearly expressed their desire for the government to continue.
It still seems appropriate to call such an attitude a desecration of democracy’s verdict and an arbitrary, self-willed outlook on the part of a minority.
This kind of obsession—the delusion of hatred of Abe—appears frequently in the Asahi Shimbun in one form or another.
Its August 11 morning edition, about two months before the general election, carried an article with the following thrust.
Japan has begun to resemble North Korea.
Because Japanese people praise Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—
Was this a bad joke?
Was it North Korean propaganda?
Or was it the peculiar “analysis” of someone who had lost touch with reason?
I seriously wondered.
I could scarcely believe that a fellow Japanese newspaper reporter would openly write such an “opinion.”
It was a column on page ten, the opinion page, of that day’s morning edition.
It bore the recurring title “Editorial Afterthoughts,” so it was presumably a column written in rotation by the editorial writers who produce the paper’s editorials.
The author was identified as Tetsuya Hakoda, the editorial writer responsible for international editorials.
The headline was “Is Japan Becoming North Korea?”
Even with the question mark, the headline tells the whole story.
Its thrust is that Japan is becoming like North Korea.
The most important part of the article was its ending.
It was the article’s summation.
It read as follows.
“While I was in Seoul discussing such matters with a senior South Korean figure well versed in Japan, he countered:
‘Some top-level Japanese bureaucrats lavish praise on Prime Minister Abe whenever they open their mouths.
I wondered what it reminded me of, and then realized it was that line, “Our great leader, Comrade Kim Jong-il….”
Has Japan not already gone beyond South Korea?’”
From that passage comes the headline of the entire article: “Japan Becoming North Korea.”
It claims that Japan today resembles North Korea.
And specifically in its political system.
It quotes the words of a “senior South Korean figure” as the article’s conclusion and adds no words of its own afterward.
In other words, it uses them to sum up the argument of the entire article.
What a leap, what a distortion, what sophistry.
It says that present-day Japan is the same as North Korea.
No, it does not even deserve the term “reasoning.”
Should it be called a foolish or childish argument?
Its sole basis is a single remark by a “senior South Korean figure.”
Because Japanese bureaucrats praised their own prime minister, Japan is the same as North Korea.
Good grief—is this the sort of person, with this sort of thought process, who writes the Asahi Shimbun’s editorials?
The Asahi’s Peculiar Columns
There should be no need now to explain how greatly Japan and North Korea differ in their political systems and the nature of their national leadership.
The gulf is truly that between heaven and earth: Japan ranks among the world’s best in established democracy, the selection of leaders through popular sovereignty, fundamental individual rights, and freedom of speech and association, while North Korea has a cult-like personal dictatorship, deprivation of individual rights, mass repression in prison camps, and lawlessness in both domestic and foreign affairs.
Ignoring these fundamental differences, the article accepts a few words uttered by a “senior South Korean figure” as sacred doctrine and proclaims to Japanese readers that Japan is the same as North Korea.
What has happened to the judgment of Tetsuya Hakoda, the Asahi Shimbun’s editorial writer?
Incidentally, let me also briefly summarize the rest of this column.
Hakoda says that, while reporting in South Korea, he wondered why, although South Korea had “revolutionarily and nonviolently dragged an incumbent president from power,” “Japanese society is so peaceful.”
In other words, he is asking why the Japanese people do not drag Prime Minister Abe from power through revolution.
At the same time, it sounds as though he is urging the Japanese people to overthrow the Abe administration through revolution.
He then enthusiastically introduced the view that “Japan has become like South Korea.”
In South Korea, everything is criticized as “Japan’s fault.”
Recently, Japan has become like South Korea in that respect.
In other words, he says, a simplistic view of South Korea has spread, one that “blames South Korea for everything.”
This, too, is an assertion that ignores Japan’s reality.
According to this article, Japan has become like South Korea and, at the same time, like North Korea.
However one looks at it, such an analysis is not an ordinary Japanese perspective.
Is it diseased, or was its standpoint never on Japan’s side to begin with?
If the latter, that would seem to explain everything.
There is no end to examples of peculiar Asahi Shimbun articles attacking Abe.
One that struck me as peculiarity itself was an article categorically calling Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a “lecher.”
It was another column titled “Political Fragments,” on the politics page of the March 19, 2017, morning edition; its author was identified as Junko Takahashi, deputy editor of the political news department.
Clearly a woman.
Its headline was “I Have Lustful Desires Too, But….”
The “I” presumably refers to Takahashi, the author.
Yet the article’s content called Prime Minister Abe a lecher.
First, I was surprised to see the word “lecher” prominently used in a headline.
According to the dictionary, sukebe means “lecherousness: showing an abnormal curiosity toward the opposite sex, or a person who does so—in other words, lustfulness or a lecher who is abnormally fond of the opposite sex.”
Moreover, the word itself is vulgar and coarse.
Hardly anyone uses it in formal settings.
There may be subjective differences on this point, but it is also a somewhat dirty and nasty word.
Calling someone “a lecher” would amount to abuse or mockery.
In my long career as a newspaper reporter, I cannot recall seeing sukebe used as an ordinary description in an article in a major newspaper, much less in a headline.
Since it falls into the category of vulgar or slang expressions, it is hardly surprising that newspapers avoid it.
Yet Takahashi’s article contained the following.
“Human beings are basically lecherous.
You could say that my life has been a struggle against my own inner lust.
When I receive a little applause, I want louder applause.”
The article then moves on to criticism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Yasunori Kagoike of Moritomo Gakuen.
A Pathological Obsessiveness
It goes on to say that Prime Minister Abe is the supreme holder of power and enjoys being praised, while Kagoike becomes absorbed in pleasing those in power.
The description proceeds on the assumption that Abe and Kagoike had close ties.
Abe denies that, however.
The article then states, “One lecher attracts another,” categorically describing Abe and Kagoike as fellow lechers.
Much of this is unclear in logic and meaning, but it is unmistakably abusing Prime Minister Abe as a “lecher.”
It is not surprising in itself that Asahi Shimbun reporters disparage and attack Prime Minister Abe using every conceivable expression.
Yet deliberately slapping on the prime minister the dirty word “lecher,” rarely used in ordinary public discourse, like a sticky label, felt bizarre—indeed, suggestive of something pathological.
“Bizarre” and “pathological” are surely discourteous words with which to describe someone else’s article.
Yet that is the only impression I can form.
In fact, Junko Takahashi, the author, had previously written an extremely bizarre and pathological piece.
It was another column titled “Political Fragments,” on page four of the Asahi Shimbun’s February 28, 2016, morning edition.
Its headline read, “Shut Up and Clog the Toilet.”
Its thrust was that, to resist the Abe administration, one should deliberately use newspaper to wipe one’s bottom in public toilets and clog them.
I was therefore utterly astonished.
Even in my long newspaper career, I could not remember reading such a dreadful article.
It began as follows.
“‘Shut up and clog the toilet.’
Lately, these words have been echoing in my head at every opportunity, and it is troubling me.
I learned them from a book with the alluring title I Want to Eat My Fill Without Working, written by the up-and-coming political scientist Yasushi Kurihara.”
Takahashi first emphasizes her own mind, which is actually contemplating “clogging the toilet.”
She then says that the title I Want to Eat My Fill Without Working is alluring.
What is alluring about it?
This hardly seems like an ordinary sensibility.
The article further introduces a question from the book: what should workers do when factory management fails to provide toilet paper in the factory toilets?
Negotiations with management and direct action are possibilities, but it says the best approach is to “wipe your bottom with newspaper or the like and clog the toilet.”
It then goes on to say:
“If there is no toilet paper, you have no choice but to wipe with whatever is around, however hard it may be.
Without intending it, the toilet breaks, naturally.
Whether to pay repair costs or provide toilet paper is then for management to decide.”
In other words, it is telling people to destroy shared, public toilets inside a factory.
If done intentionally, this constitutes property damage under Article 261 of the Penal Code.
Read normally, therefore, this article also incites criminal conduct.
Is the Asahi Shimbun Sane?
At this point, the natural question is: for what purpose?
In the middle of the article, Takahashi develops her argument by saying, “What each person wipes their bottom with is fundamentally a matter of freedom [omission], and I do not want to relinquish that state of mind.”
Only at the end does she finally reveal her target.
“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said:
‘There is no other way.’
Regardless of the individual’s name, I dislike being told by a ruler, ‘There is no other way.’
Shortcuts, detours, animal trails—surely paths are, by their nature, things that form of their own accord as we walk on our own feet?
Yes, once more.
Shut up and clog the toilet.
We are all alive.”
Read normally, this passage is a call to clog toilets in order to oppose Prime Minister Abe, the “disagreeable ruler.”
To do so, it tells people to use newspaper after defecating.
That, it says, is the best way to oppose the Abe administration.
Even as metaphor or analogy, the insensitivity of a newspaper reporter telling people to use the newspaper—her very lifeblood—to wipe their bottoms, the lack of delicacy in discussing the aftermath of defecation in a newspaper read at the breakfast table, and the derangement of using everything, shit and all, to attack the Abe administration… one wants to ask: Asahi Shimbun, are you sane?
Yoshihisa Komori
Born in Tokyo in 1941.
Washington-based guest correspondent for the Sankei Shimbun.
Graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Keio University.
Studied at the University of Washington.
During his time at the Mainichi Shimbun, served as a correspondent in Saigon and Washington, among other posts.
In 1981, became a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States.
Joined the Sankei Shimbun in 1987 and, after serving as London bureau chief, Washington bureau chief, and chief of its China bureau, became active as an editorial writer and commentator on international affairs.
Special professor at Reitaku University.
His many books include The Chinese Threat That Even America Fears! (WAC), 1,300 Days Reporting on Vietnam (Kodansha Bunko), Trump Will Not Allow China’s Expansion (PHP Institute), and If You Hate War, Change the Constitution (Asuka Shinsha).