This essay examines the structural origins of anti-Japan sentiment embedded in Asahi Shimbun editorials and TV Asahi programming, drawing on Lee Sang-chul’s analysis and linking it to Okinawa, the comfort women narrative, and institutional pipelines shaping editorial culture.

2017-04-05
Hostility toward Japan in major media does not emerge spontaneously; it is cultivated through institutional pipelines, editorial incentives, and ideological reinforcement.
When newsrooms recycle the same narratives, train personnel within the same networks, and reward conformity, bias becomes policy.
The case examined here shows how narrative persistence outlives retractions and apologies.
Understanding who shapes the editors explains why the editorials read the way they do.

2017-04-05
Reading the previous chapter with Okinawa in mind makes the local reality immediately clear.
Former Prime Minister 安倍晋三 was the first politician to state in the Diet, around his first administration, that the so-called “comfort women issue” was built on the false testimony of Seiji Yoshida amplified by 朝日新聞.
Journalist 高山正之 has written that this acknowledgment triggered Asahi Shimbun’s formal admission of erroneous reporting in August three years ago and the resignation of its president, after which the company’s hostility toward Abe intensified dramatically.
In other words, Lee Sang-chul’s analysis applies directly—without alteration—to the realities of Okinawa and Asahi Shimbun itself.
The implications require no elaboration.
Recalling that a senior desk editor in TV Asahi’s foreign news division has been identified as an elite member of 朝鮮総連 is chilling.
Moreover, Asahi Shimbun has repeatedly sent employees—beginning with its former editor-in-chief who died under suspicious circumstances in Beijing—to 延世大学, a hub widely regarded as a center of anti-Japan propaganda.
Individuals responsible for the fabricated comfort women reporting, including senior figures in the Osaka bureau, were among those sent there.
Given this background, the peculiar tone of editorials and the abnormal rhetoric found in columns are hardly surprising.
Just as TV Asahi’s flagship program reveals animosity toward Japan, Asahi Shimbun’s editorials do as well—and Lee Sang-chul’s work explains precisely why.