In this continuation of the Hanada Selection roundtable, the speakers argue that the Asahi Shimbun has “denied its own raison d’être” as a newspaper by abandoning the “power of words” it once championed and resorting to a SLAPP-style defamation lawsuit against critic Eitarō Ogawa and his publisher.
They describe how the suit effectively strips the book of advertising opportunities—functioning as a de facto sales blockade—and frame it as an attempt to intimidate and silence dissent rather than to answer criticism with counter-argument.
The discussion then widens to condemn the year-long political obsession with Moritomo, Kake, and a supercomputer subsidy case as a contentless, media-driven scandal that consumed Diet time while North Korea, demographic collapse, and defense legislation went largely undiscussed, a situation the participants call “tantamount to national self-destruction.”
Finally, they warn that both media and opposition parties have abandoned multi-faceted fact-finding and serious policy debate in favor of one-dimensional anti-Abe narratives and television-friendly theatrics, leading to what they term the dangerous “single-celled” simplification of Japanese public discourse.

“Asahi, You’ve Really Done It Now”
Attempt to Silence Free Speech
A Year Wasted on a Nonexistent Scandal
The “Single-Celled” Mind of the Media Is Serious

May 23, 2024

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.

“Asahi, You’ve Really Done It Now”

Suda:
Mr. Abiru, in the March issue of Monthly Hanada you wrote, “Asahi Shimbun, you’ve really done it now,” didn’t you?

Abiru:
I can only think that the Asahi Shimbun has now denied its own very raison d’être as an organ of opinion.

Suda:
Isn’t that too extreme a statement coming from someone in the same profession?

Abiru:
Not at all.
In the same piece I wrote that Asahi used to run a major advertising campaign saying things like, “We believe in the power of words,” “Words pushed us forward,” “Words brought us to tears.”
In short, they themselves proclaimed that, as a press organization, they valued the power of words and issued a “Journalist’s Declaration.”
But this time, the Asahi Shimbun did not rely on the “power of words” but fled to the judicial arena.
This case has made it clear that they never trusted words at all.
The Asahi Shimbun, whose circulation is several times that of the Sankei Shimbun, has now exposed its own impotence.
In a way it is pitiful—one might even say they have entered the realm of “simply pathetic.”

Ogawa:
Originally, lawsuits are for people who, when dishonorable things are written about them, have no opportunity to explain and find it difficult to restore their honor, so they appeal to the courts and seek a judicial ruling.
In other words, the weak resort to legal means because they have no other recourse.
However, the Asahi Shimbun has a power of transmission that cannot even be compared with mine.
It has social credibility.
It is a quality paper known throughout the world.
With such social credibility and power to disseminate information, if they used their pages three times or so to criticize my book, they could easily beat me to a pulp.
If their claims were persuasive, that would be quite possible—so why don’t they do it?

Attempt to Silence Free Speech

Kadota:
What the Asahi Shimbun is doing is exactly a SLAPP lawsuit.
A SLAPP lawsuit is an “intimidatory lawsuit” in which a large corporation or major newspaper that can rebut criticism without resorting to the courts sues an individual in order to stifle speech and chill expression.

Abiru:
Asahi itself once said, “It is wrong to handle matters of speech through legal means.”
This was in connection with the case of Tamotsu Sugano’s book Nihon Kaigi no Kenkyū (A Study of Nippon Kaigi, Fusosha Shinsho), which became a huge bestseller but in which more than one hundred errors were pointed out by those involved, leading the Tokyo District Court to issue a provisional injunction halting sales.
On January 12, 2017, in an editorial titled “Halting Publication Lacks Understanding of Freedom of Expression,” Asahi wrote the following:
“Measures that do not permit the sale of a book not only cause damage to the author and publisher and create a chilling effect, but also mean that people are no longer able to know what the book says and lose the opportunity to deepen their thinking and engage in discussion on that basis.
It is an act that undermines the extremely important freedom of expression essential to building a democratic society, and great caution is required when it comes to injunctions.”

Hanada:
It is different from a sales injunction, but as a result of the lawsuit, Mr. Ogawa and Asuka Shinsha have been significantly deprived of opportunities to sell the book on “MoriKake.”
Because they have been sued, Mr. Ogawa’s book can no longer be advertised in newspapers.
Each newspaper company has its own advertising standards.
One of those standards says that advertisements for books currently involved in legal disputes will not be accepted.
Ordinarily we would want to advertise by saying, “This is the controversial book—please compare it with Asahi’s side of the story,” but the newspapers are refusing to run the ads.

Suda:
Isn’t that perhaps exactly what they were aiming at?

Hanada:
There is no way the Asahi Shimbun is unaware of these advertising standards, so it is only natural people suspect that this was their aim.

A Year Wasted on a Nonexistent Scandal

Suda:
Within one year we had Moritomo, then Kake, and now “Supercomputer” has been added.
This refers to the suspected fraudulent receipt of subsidies for supercomputer development, in which Saito Motoaki, president of PEZY Computing, was arrested by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office’s Special Investigation Department on suspicion of fraud.
Because he reportedly had political connections, there were voices saying, “Is this yet another scandal involving friends of Abe or Aso?”

Abiru:
As far as I have heard, Prime Minister Abe himself seems to have no involvement whatsoever with the supercomputer matter, but once the shadows of people around him begin to flicker, the opposition parties will pursue it.
However, one has to ask whether it is really all right to go on doing only this sort of thing.
The same was true in 2017—while the situation on the Korean Peninsula was becoming increasingly tense, the Diet as well as the media spent the entire year on “MoriKake.”
I have serious doubts about this way of politics.

Ogawa:
No, it is a huge problem.
If you read Prime Minister Abe’s policy address of January 22, 2018, it is obvious that he placed emphasis on the North Korean situation and domestic issues.
The problem of population decline, in particular, has in fact been in free fall since 2016.
If the current birthrate continues, Japan’s population will fall to forty million in one hundred years, and in two hundred years the Japanese will face the risk of extinction.
At that point, the argument “Let’s make Japan an immigrant society” will be put forward, but the Prime Minister is desperately trying to hold that back.
However, in order to hold it back, policies to increase the population have to be adopted.
What happens when the population declines?
There will not be enough Self-Defense Force personnel.
Lonely deaths among the elderly will increase sharply.
We may have to increase the number of corpse-recovery businesses rather than caregiving services.
A future in which we must think seriously about such things is just around the corner.
At such a time, what is the meaning of a movement to bring down the cabinet?
It is nothing less than a movement to destroy the nation.
At a time when we should be considering what Japan’s future ought to be, people who are making a fuss over the completely contentless MoriKake issue that began with false reporting make me feel, I must confess, almost murderous.

The “Single-Celled” Mind of the Media Is Serious

Kadota:
When I think that this year will once again be all about “Mori, Kake, Supercomputer,” my vision really does grow dark.
I would like everyone to recall the situation in the Diet: as was the case during the security legislation debates, we now have a situation where bills submitted by the Liberal Democratic Party pass without any amendments at all.
The opposition parties do not engage in proper debate; they simply hold up placards for the television cameras saying, “Oppose the forced passage!” “War legislation!” “We will not tolerate Abe’s politics!”
Doesn’t it make you angry to see this?
In the old days, opposition parties would argue on the floor, of course, but they would also fight behind the scenes, and even if a bill were going to pass, they would strive to have at least some of their amendments reflected in it.
Today’s opposition parties, however, make no such effort and think only of appealing to television.
One cannot help but feel deeply depressed.
Especially in 2017, when it was being said that the risk of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula was becoming concrete.
There were countless things that had to be addressed, such as how to design the legal framework so that, in an emergency, the Self-Defense Forces could rescue Japanese nationals in South Korea.
Nevertheless, the media and the opposition parties did nothing but shout, “Summon Mrs. Akie to testify in the Diet.”
Watching this situation, one cannot help but think that the Japanese have truly become stupid.

Abiru:
Perhaps we have lost the ability to see things from multiple angles.
Even when we say “reporting based on facts,” as Walter Lippmann, who wrote Public Opinion, noted, a fact is “a multifaceted solid with a complex shape,” so to speak.
What newspapers and television can do is to shine several searchlights on that solid and bring its actual shape as close as possible into relief, and that is the work closest to “unearthing facts.”
Left-leaning journalists blithely say things like, “The mass media pursues the truth,” but truth is something that can more or less only be expressed in literature or metaphor.
When I hear people say they can “pursue truth through reporting,” I cannot help but suspect that they are people who have never actually conducted reporting.
This piece will be continued.