2024-02-16
For example, there is not a shred of truth in Katsuichi Honda’s Travels in China.
February 16, 2024
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column in the latter part of Shukan Shincho, published yesterday.
This piece, too, proves that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people around the world.
Who Do You Think You Are?
Asahi Shimbun reporters pay little attention to facts.
For example, there is not a shred of truth in Katsuichi Honda’s Travels in China.
The company was awash in lies because its president at the time, Tomoo Hirooka, had said something along the lines of “Do not write anything that would cause trouble for China,” much like Yasuo Fukuda.
The same was true under the next president, Seiki Watanabe.
Against that backdrop, the Miyazaki bureau chief wrote a sloppy article claiming that “the Miyakonojo 23rd Infantry Regiment carried out the Nanjing Massacre.”
When people who knew the facts protested, he sent them away, saying, “How dare you challenge the mighty Asahi?”
Akimi Satake, head of the arts and culture department at the Tokyo head office, also published a photograph of rising smoke, reporting, “This is the poison gas operation in Nanchang.”
The Sankei Shimbun pointed out Asahi’s erroneous reporting: “If poison gas rises into the sky, it can kill only crows. This is a smoke screen.”
Satake flew into a rage and lashed out at Sankei: “What do you think you are doing to the mighty Asahi?”
Yet no one had known that Asahi was “the mighty Asahi.”
When the two articles were exposed as false, Watanabe was forced to resign.
“The mighty Asahi” was not pleased.
So, in retaliation, a photographer carved “KY” into coral and manufactured an article declaring that “the Japanese are among the world’s most prolific graffiti vandals.”
Local residents, however, suspected that Asahi had staged the incident itself.
When they questioned Asahi, it initially threatened them.
When confronted again with circumstantial evidence, it offered the plausible-sounding excuse that it had “traced old graffiti with a finger to make it clearer.”
When it was pointed out that this could not be done with a finger, it adjusted its story to say, “With the handle of a flash unit.”
Only when other newspapers began making an issue of it did Asahi finally admit that it had carved the coral itself.
The admission came after a succession of disgraceful evasions.
This forced President Toichiro Hitotsuyanagi to resign.
The next president, Toshitada Nakae, vowed revenge and first had Takashi Uemura write lies about the comfort women, disparaging the Japanese people.
He then vilified political and business leaders over the Recruit scandal, but resigned when it emerged that he himself had also been sponging off Recruit.
Shinichi Hakoshima, who became president after one intervening presidency, singled out Shinzo Abe as Asahi’s enemy and had Masakazu Honda write that “Abe had NHK alter a communist program.”
The program featured a sham tribunal to put the Emperor on trial, orchestrated by former Asahi journalist Yayori Matsui and North Korean operatives.
Honda thought that if he wrote that “Abe intervened,” his fellow reds at NHK would back him up and they could destroy Abe politically.
NHK, however, did not fall into line and instead said the exact opposite: “Asahi is reporting falsehoods.”
When such a malicious fabrication is exposed, it would hardly be surprising for the newspaper to cease publication.
Hakoshima promptly resigned, ostensibly taking responsibility for a fabricated meeting between Yasuo Tanaka and Shizuka Kamei that had been reported around the same time as Honda’s article.
Kotaro Akiyama, entrusted with cleaning up the mess, considered his options and decided to leave the matter to a “fair third-party committee.”
But it was not fair in the slightest.
Its members included Yasuo Hasebe, a constitutional scholar whom Asahi had promoted, and Uichiro Niwa, who had ties to China.
Asahi spent money like water on honoraria and other expenses.
Nine months later, when the uproar had subsided, the reporter was cleared of blame, just as planned, on the grounds that “the article resulted from insufficient reporting.”
No apology was required, either.
Asahi subsequently continued to make extensive use of third-party committees that would rescue it behind a plausible facade.
The comfort women lies that had disparaged the Japanese people for thirty years likewise went unpunished, leaving only the resentment of the Japanese people.
A portion of the proceeds from fundraising party tickets had been funneled back to members of the Abe faction, which Asahi loathes, and spent without being entered in political funds reports.
Asahi is now making an uproar over this, calling it “slush funds.”
When Jun Azumi of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan created a slush fund of 300,000 yen, Asahi described it as an “omission.”
But in the case of Tatsuyoshi Kato of the Abe faction, even 100,000 yen was labeled a “slush fund,” and he was forced to resign as parliamentary vice-minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism.
Asahi also addressed the issue in an editorial.
Its headline was “Stop the Piecemeal Deception.”
Was “piecemeal deception” not precisely what Asahi had engaged in during the coral graffiti incident?
That was a serious crime involving damage to a designated natural monument.
The Abe faction’s issue, meanwhile, concerns how its members handled their own political organizations’ money.
What is being questioned is their failure to report it.
Asahi, by contrast, committed a crime and then repeatedly gave false accounts.
The editorial says, “Uncovering the truth cannot simply be left to a third party.”
How could it say that without a trace of shame?
What right does Asahi have to say this, when it has concealed the truth behind the cover of “third-party investigations”?
If it wishes to lecture the public, it should first reflect on its own conduct.
It is a hundred years too soon for it to write with such self-importance.