The preface of Masayuki Takayama’s latest book published on November 27, 2025. A powerful reflection on more than twenty years of journalistic writing, exposing what newspapers cannot cover, criticizing falsification by major media, and conveying his quiet resolve as he brings his long-running column to a close.

From the prologue of Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, Sanae Takaichi Silences Xi Jinping and the Asahi Shimbun, published by WAC on November 27, 2025.
A close friend told me that upon reading this prologue, something struck deeply in his chest.
I felt exactly the same way.
Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, and also the writer most deserving of the Nobel Prize in Literature, or even the Peace Prize, revealed his true feelings for the first time.
And he did so with the simplicity, nobility, and purity that are uniquely his.
Because in the final short sentence, there was the unmistakable tone of a death poem from a man who has worked tirelessly, purely for Japan and for the world, doing the work of 100 million—no, of 7.5 billion people.
Even at this very moment, as I reread it to confirm that truth, I find myself moved to tears.
This is a work that must be read not only by the Japanese people, but by people all over the world.
Preface — Continuing to Write the World That Newspapers Do Not Portray

I began writing “Henken Jizai” in Shukan Shincho in May 2002, fully two decades ago.
There were few rules.
The themes were free.
The length was fixed at 1,500 characters.
I finished writing on Saturdays, and on Sundays the red edits were added and the work concluded.
I also attached the titles to the columns myself.
The title of the 1,144th installment, “Forced Name-Change 2.0,” which the Asahi Shimbun attacked in an editorial as “trampling on human rights,” was also my own choice.
Reaching that point brought a brief sense of relief, but in other words, my weekends had been completely consumed by this routine for over twenty years.
After a short sleep, Monday would arrive, and I would begin thinking about what to write that week.
If I wrote about China one week, I would avoid writing about China the next.
Should I write about the United States, the Middle East, or occasionally Korea?
I would decide the order.
Once the topic was chosen, I would search for material suited to it.
I read newspapers, sorted through clippings, and sometimes met people in order to prepare for the next submission.

Perhaps fortunately, ever since joining the Sankei Shimbun, I remained a rank-and-file reporter for 36 years without ever being promoted.
During my years in the metropolitan desk I covered what could be called the “madness of the 1960s.”
From the All Nippon Airways crash in Tokyo Bay to the 300 million yen robbery, the Kin Ki-ro case, the Yodo-go hijacking, Yukio Mishima’s ritual suicide, Shoichi Yokoi, the United Red Army, and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries bombing, I was involved with nearly all of them.
Later, despite speaking neither English nor Persian, I was assigned to the foreign desk and stationed in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq War.
I traveled the Asian Highway, ate kebabs, and learned the differences among Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism.
My notebooks became stuffed with notes, but in truth, there were many things that could not be written in a newspaper.
In short, matters of race and religion could not be written.
If one even lightly touched upon Jewish issues, a magazine could be abolished, as happened to Marco Polo.
There exist dark realms beyond the comprehension of the monoethnic Japanese, and newspapers have consistently avoided such darkness.
And if one cannot write even after elucidating it, many reporters choose not to investigate it at all but rather to avoid it.

That is why Japanese newspapers could offer no real explanation when NATO bombed Serbia.
The same applies to today’s war in Ukraine.
The cause lies in the division between the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.
Although both are Christian, Western Europe of Catholic–Protestant lineage dislikes the Greek Orthodox East and Russia even more than it dislikes Islam.
Moreover, the root of that grave conflict ultimately traces back to nothing more than whether the bread used in Mass is leavened or unleavened — something indeed hard for Japanese to comprehend.
Yet for them, it is deadly serious.
When Eastern Orthodox Serbia moved to expel the Albanian Muslims residing in Kosovo, Western Catholic–Protestant NATO forces bombed Serbia under the pretext of “persecuting Muslims,” and now, supported by the West, Kosovo has become an independent Islamic state.
In Japan’s terms, it would be like resident Chinese and Koreans occupying Kyoto, declaring independence, and when Japanese citizens attempted to expel them in anger, U.S. forces came and bombed Japan.
Such absurdity is permitted there today.
Ukraine likewise is split roughly in half between West and East, and Russia, sensing a threat, launched the war.
That is the basis for Putin’s claim of a “defensive war.”
For these reasons, the column always had abundant material, and thus managed to continue for more than twenty years.

Yet as I continued writing, the lies scattered by the Asahi Shimbun, which I read as reference material, became impossible to ignore.
Asahi’s reporters neither study nor investigate.
They make do with tips for material, and when gaps remain, they fill them with convenient lies.
Yet they posture as opinion leaders.
Their arguments are always banal, chanting things like nuclear abolition, which any so-called progressive might say.
Not content with that, they assert anti-nuclear power as well, claiming “it is all nuclear.”
Nitroglycerin can be an explosive, but it is also a remedy for myocardial infarction.
Nuclear power is the same: it can be used for medicine, treatment, and electricity generation.
Yet the fools stubbornly insist that “nuclear power alone must be rejected.”
Why?
Because they repeatedly write in editorials that “6,000 nuclear bombs can be made from the plutonium produced in reprocessing light-water reactors.”
The anti-nuclear activists believe this and even display it on placards.
But from spent fuel of light-water reactors, nuclear bombs cannot be made even if one stood on one’s head.
Even an amateur knows that.
It is elementary nuclear physics.

The United States values that particular foolishness of Asahi.
Japan is a people exceptionally skilled in warfare.
For two thousand years, the white powers believed naval combat consisted of ramming warships into one another.
Japan proved in the Battle of the Sea of Japan that ships could be sunk without ramming.
The world followed Japan’s example and favored big-gun battleships.
Britain deployed the super-dreadnought Prince of Wales, but Japan sank it with aircraft and demonstrated that naval warfare had entered the age of aviation dominance.
In the final phase of the war, Japan achieved unprecedented results with “bombs with eyes,” namely kamikaze aircraft.
After the war, the United States learned from this and developed cruise missiles with engines that “fly while reading the terrain with their own eyes.”
Even today’s attack submarines draw from the ideas of Japan’s I-class submarines.
Thus the United States fears Japan’s resurgence.
Those who serve as its advance guard are the foolish Asahi Shimbun, which uses the last war as material to demean Japan and even fabricated the comfort women falsehoods to drag Japan down.

For that reason, “Henken Jizai” also took on the role of admonishing Asahi to “stop being foolish,” and of chastising, by name, reporters who had become insensitive to lies.
“Forced Name-Change 2.0” was written with that intention, addressing the abuse of aliases frequently employed by Asahi.
Non-Japanese masquerade as Japanese and spread pernicious falsehoods.
I urged Asahi to “make them write under their real identities.”
They reacted as though they had seized a criminal’s head, clamoring that it was discrimination, and offering the sophistry that aliases were “self-defense to avoid bullying if their resident status were exposed.”
I have never heard of such bullying.
The Tokyo Shimbun eagerly followed Asahi’s lead.
I wondered what business it had in the matter, but then remembered that since the Tokyo Shimbun became a subsidiary of the regional Chunichi Shimbun, reporters speaking the Nagoya dialect had entered the Metropolitan Police press club, mewing away.
They should have been expelled, but were permitted on condition of becoming Asahi’s underlings.
I had written about that before.
Perhaps they still resented it.

As the uproar spread, Shincho requested a “temporary suspension until matters cooled.”
For my part, I was exhausted after more than twenty years of writing without weekends.
I had long since passed the age of seventy-nine.
Wishing to enjoy the small portion of youth that remained, I chose not a suspension but to bring the series to a complete end.
Fortuitously, Sanae Takaichi, who clearly sees through the misdeeds of China, Korea, and Asahi, became prime minister.
It seemed acceptable for me to quietly step down from the stage.
I have continued to write the world that newspapers do not portray.
Thank you very much for your long years of readership.

Masayuki Takayama

(259) John Lennon – Help Me to Help Myself – YouTube