This installment of the Hanada Selection roundtable dissects the Asahi Shimbun’s “Yoshida Testimony” scandal as a textbook case of straight news being bent to fit a preconceived narrative.
Journalist Ryūshō Kadota recounts how his own reporting on Fukushima Daiichi workers—later confirmed when the full testimony was obtained—contradicted Asahi’s 2014 front-page claim that “ninety percent” of staff fled against orders, and how Asahi responded with a legal threat rather than factual debate, allegedly to serve an anti-restart agenda and a deeper, long-standing impulse to disparage Japan.
The speakers argue that a journalist’s core mission is fact-finding, not self-congratulatory “power monitoring,” and condemn what they call “self-intoxicated journalism” that attacks elected governments while shrinking from other powerful actors such as large religious or pressure groups.
They then describe how the internet’s “information Big Bang” has shattered the old Asahi-style monopoly of reporter-club leaks, empowering both sources and readers to challenge distortions in real time and forcing weeklies and magazines to reclaim their proper role as dissenting voices that say, “Is this really true?”
Finally, they liken Asahi’s postwar record—from Cultural Revolution apologetics to comfort-women and Nanjing narratives—to that of an “anti-social force,” concluding that the real issue is not editorial line but the very existence of a mass-circulation newspaper that “lies and deceives people,” which they insist should have no place in a healthy society.

Behind the Yoshida Testimony Issue
Kadota:
What is problematic about the Asahi Shimbun is the way it mixes straight news and commentary.
In the Sankei Shimbun or the Yomiuri Shimbun, straight news and opinion pieces are clearly separated, so whether one agrees with the opinion is up to the reader, but the straight news itself can be accepted as fact.
By contrast, the liberal media centered on the Asahi Shimbun do not operate that way.
They begin with the stance, “We want to report it in this way,” and then, based on that prior agenda, they twist even straight news.
The prime example of this is the so-called “Yoshida Testimony” issue.
In 2014, then president Kimura Tadakazu resigned, ostensibly taking responsibility for two matters: the “Seiji Yoshida testimony issue in the so-called ‘comfort women’ problem” and the reporting on the “Fukushima Daiichi Yoshida Testimony issue.”
In regard to this “Yoshida Testimony issue,” I myself am, so to speak, one of the parties involved.
On May 20, 2014, Asahi ran a front-page story with the headline, “Violation of plant manager’s order, withdrawal from plant” and “Ninety percent of Fukushima Daiichi staff.”
However, in order to write my book The Man Who Saw the Edge of Death: Masao Yoshida and the 500 Days at Fukushima Daiichi (PHP), I had actually interviewed nearly one hundred members of the Fukushima Daiichi staff.
What they told me was totally different from Asahi’s reporting, so I was astonished and posted a blog article pointing out that “(although I had not yet seen the testimony at that point) Asahi’s reporting is not consistent with the facts.”
That caused an uproar, and I also wrote an article in Weekly Post titled “Asahi Shimbun’s Yoshida Testimony ‘Scoop’ Is the Same as Its Comfort Women False Reporting” (reprinted on page 178).
Then I received a content-certified letter from the Asahi Shimbun saying, “You have seriously damaged the honor and credibility of Asahi Shimbun as a news organization.
Apologize and correct your statements.
If you do not, we will consider legal action.”
Later, the Sankei Shimbun obtained the Yoshida testimony, and I was also allowed to read it, and I found that what was written there was completely different in tone from Asahi’s article.
It turned out that Asahi had picked out and stitched together snippets of language that could be read that way if one were inclined, and constructed an article that gave the impression that “ninety percent of the staff fled in defiance of the plant manager’s orders.”
In the end, Asahi itself acknowledged that there were problems with this article, and it ultimately led to the resignation of the president.

What Was Asahi’s Motive?
Suda:
Why did the Asahi Shimbun twist the contents of the Yoshida testimony to write that article?
Kadota:
If you look at the Asahi Shimbun of May 20, 2014, the day the “Yoshida Testimony report” appeared on the front page, you find on the city news page an article titled “Tōkai Dai-ni to File for Safety Screening Today: Japan Atomic Power Aims at Restart.”
In other words, they created that article in order to block the restart.
Suda:
So the Asahi Shimbun considered that “in order to block restarts”—which they see as their version of social justice—bias and fabrication are acceptable, and for that purpose they ran the “Yoshida Testimony” article.
Kadota:
In the front-page column “Tensei Jingo” on May 21, the day after, they took up the Yoshida Testimony article and wrote, “About 650 people—ninety percent of the staff—evacuated to Fukushima Daini, about ten kilometers away, in violation of the plant manager’s orders.
There is said to be a possibility that this made the response to the accident inadequate,” and then concluded as follows:
“Three years have passed since the accident.
Has a new safety myth taken root—‘there won’t be a second time’—now that the memory is fading?
In old China, they say drums were beaten for an advance and gongs for a retreat.
In defiance of the drumbeats of politicians, bureaucrats, and business leaders for restarts, the gong of anti-nuclear power continues to sound.
We must not forget.”
As for myself, I am neither pro-nuclear nor anti-nuclear.
Both sides have arguments with some validity.
However, whichever line of argument one wishes to support, the iron rule is that it must be grounded in fact.
Asahi, however, will change the facts themselves for the sake of its purpose.
Abiru:
You may wonder, “Why would they go that far?”
But Asahi’s motive has been consistent from beginning to end.
In the comfort women issue, in the “KY coral” incident, and in the Yoshida Testimony issue as well, the motive is the same.
They want to disparage Japan.
In the Yoshida Testimony issue, too, the staff of Fukushima Daiichi did not flee but confronted the nuclear accident, and their stance was being evaluated and praised even by foreign media under the label “Fukushima Fifty.”
Asahi could not stand that.
If they can say, “In reality, ninety percent withdrew,” then they can drag Japan down.
The “Tensei Jingo” column that Mr. Kadota quoted earlier also said, “Those who struggled at the dangerous site were praised as ‘the last line of defense.’
It has now been discovered that behind that, there was another fact.”
So what do they hope to achieve by disparaging Japan?
I suspect that at bottom the psychology is extremely simple: they merely want to proclaim and advertise, “We alone are conscientious and noble people.”

The Pursuit of Facts Is the Real Job
Ogawa:
For the media, it is above all essential to report on the basis of facts.
Naturally, as citizens it is our duty to monitor whether the government—acting in place of us, the sovereign people—is doing its job properly, but the final judgment on the results is something that should be made by the people, not by the media.
Therefore, the media’s role comes down to this single point: are they properly conveying the facts to the public?
They must separate straight news from commentary, first reporting the facts as facts and then saying, “However, we think as follows.”
That is the natural attitude.
The Asahi Shimbun, however, distorted the facts and reported its straight news in that form, and went so far as to do things that border on fabrication in order to lead the coverage.
That is why, in anger, I wrote A Thorough Examination of the ‘Moritomo and Kake Incidents’: The Postwar–Era’s Biggest Reporting Crime by the Asahi Shimbun.
In truth, there are far more important problems piling up at home and abroad, and to put it bluntly, we have no time for playing house with the Asahi Shimbun.
Suda:
The Asahi Shimbun is described as a media outlet that “stands against power” and “monitors power,” but how do you see this, Mr. Abiru from the Sankei Shimbun, which is probably considered “cozy with power”?
Abiru:
Are we really seen that way? (laughs)
Many people say, “The media’s job is to monitor power,” but I believe the media’s job is the pursuit of facts.
In the course of pursuing facts, one ends up monitoring power or pointing out problems.
“Monitoring” and “criticizing” as such are not the purpose.
Kadota:
I have the deepest contempt for those who define the role of journalism as “monitoring power.”
Because, without exception, such people see everything only through the lens of their own ideology.
For example, I would like to ask, “Did the Asahi Shimbun monitor the government during the Democratic Party administration?”
Far from monitoring it, the paper was so “cozy with power” that at one point there was even talk that the editor-in-chief, who oversaw both Asahi’s news articles and its editorials, might be appointed foreign minister.
When I see reporters and journalists who say things like “The press’s job is to monitor power,” I think of them as “self-intoxicated journalism.”
Just by saying, “We are monitoring power and criticizing Abe,” they become intoxicated with themselves and feel as if they are important.
There are many forms of power in the world.
There are numerous pressure groups that are like power itself, including huge religious organizations.
If they were monitoring all such forms of power and fighting them, that would be one thing, but it is precisely the journalists who tuck their tails and run from such forces who shout the loudest about “monitoring power.”
They are nothing more than people suffering from a “self-intoxication shutter syndrome.”

The “Anxiety” of Media Professionals
Abiru:
The media are sometimes called “the fourth estate,” but I think the media themselves lack awareness of this.
Who monitors the media that claim to be monitoring power?
In the end, it can only be their colleagues in the same industry and their readers.
Certainly, thanks to the internet, readers have begun to “monitor” the media.
Prime Minister Abe has also said, “Unlike before, the internet now exists, so voters are not easily misled by media reports, and that is likely one reason the administration has been able to hold on.”
Kadota:
The collapse and anxiety of the Asahi Shimbun are also the result of the internet.
I describe the internet age as an “information Big Bang.”
Information can now be transmitted in real time not only by reporters and journalists as in the past but also by readers, who until now had always been on the receiving end of information.
Newspapers like Asahi had monopolized information.
They had reporters’ clubs, where they monopolized announcements from government ministries and other agencies, processed them in ways convenient to themselves, and handed them down to us, their readers.
Suda:
So that kind of thing went on for a long time.
Kadota:
It was practically a traditional craft.
The Asahi Shimbun has long done things like distorting the statements of those involved to fit its own political line.
But the advent of the internet radically altered this situation.
If there is a problem with their “processing,” the people involved can themselves issue statements saying, “This is not consistent with the facts,” and readers can compare a variety of information sources to check whether the “handed-down” information is really true or not.
In short, they can no longer get away with writing sloppy lies.
The collapse of Asahi’s Yoshida Testimony reporting also began when I first exposed the issue on my blog.
Suda:
Let me add my own view of the media.
I don’t think there are many young people today who do not use the internet.
Even if they say they do not read news or newspapers, they probably look at the news distributed online.
Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking services are also, in a sense, media, and many people use them.
People often obtain information through them, but I doubt there are many who believe that everything that flows across Twitter is true.
As a result, debates on Twitter and lofty pronouncements in the newspapers all end up side by side on the same line, as material for readers’ judgments.
I think we can say that the media are beginning to dissolve.

The Work of Magazines Is Different from That of Newspapers
Kadota:
Speaking of weekly magazines, my own line of work, if the newspapers are reporting so egregiously, then magazines like Weekly Bunshun or Weekly Shincho ought to be going into the field, checking the facts, and explaining clearly to readers, “This is the true story of the Moritomo Gakuen affair.”
Instead, both magazines were swept up in the same flood of information and were frittering away their energy on things like exposing affairs and pop-idol romances.
As I also said in my dialogue book with Mr. Hanada, “Weekly Bunshun” and “Weekly Shincho”: The Whole Inside Story of Fighting Media (PHP Shinsho), I have to ask: what on earth are the weeklies doing?
Hanada:
I think the role of magazines is not to go along with the flow of reporting created by the major media but rather to raise questions like, “Isn’t there something wrong here?” or “Nobody has answered this particular doubt, have they?”
In other words, our job is to register “objections.”
Suda:
Mr. Hanada, even back in your Weekly Bunshun days, you consistently took a harsh stance toward the Asahi Shimbun, didn’t you?
Hanada:
This year marks my fiftieth year as an editor, and for about forty-five of those years I have been criticizing the Asahi Shimbun, to the point that I have been called “Asahi’s nemesis.”
Since Asahi is a giant media outlet with a peak circulation of eight million copies, it is part of a magazine’s job to challenge its reporting by asking, “Is that really true?”
Until now, no matter how much we criticized it, the Asahi Shimbun remained unshaken, but with the 2017–18 coverage of “MoriKake,” I feel that Asahi’s “reporting” has begun to be shaken to its very foundations.
In the first year of the Heisei era there was the so-called coral incident.
In Okinawa a photographer from the Asahi Shimbun carved “KY” into the coral himself, photographed it, and wrote an article lamenting, “How foolish it is that Japanese people do such things.”
When it came to light that this was staged, then president Ichiyanagi Tōichirō resigned.
The Heisei era will end after thirty-one years, but if President Watanabe of Asahi resigns over the fabricated MoriKake reporting, then Asahi’s president will have resigned in both the first and last years of the Heisei era.
The “MoriKake” reporting is truly a “postwar-era reporting crime of the highest order,” and I think it is a grave problem for which Asahi’s top management should be held responsible.

We Don’t Need Newspapers That Deceive People
Abiru:
I personally think the Asahi Shimbun is now very nearly a kind of anti-social force.
Perhaps we should call it “a force that does harm to society.”
Just look back at history.
Before the war, it forced Japan into war.
Without any real reflection afterward, in the postwar era it praised China’s Cultural Revolution, lauded Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, and extolled North Korea as an “earthly paradise.”
All of it was false.
On top of that, it fabricated the comfort women issue and spread the lies about the Nanjing Massacre.
It was Asahi that turned the Yasukuni issue into an international controversy.
Does Japan really need a newspaper like this?
When I see Asahi reporters introducing themselves with “I’m from Asahi,” I cannot help wondering how they are not ashamed.
Ogawa:
An entity that “lies and deceives people” should not exist even as a villain.
It is nothing more than a public nuisance.
I am not saying that Asahi’s editorial line as such is bad.
What I am saying is that it is unacceptable for a liar to be selling six million copies of a newspaper every day with a straight face.
In the end, what we call “criticism of the Asahi Shimbun” is nothing more than saying, “Newspapers that lie and deceive people must not exist.”