This essay examines how media-driven narratives—once consumed without suspicion—contributed to Japan’s long-term deflation and political distortion. Through firsthand experience and historical review, it challenges the legitimacy of entrenched media power.

2016-03-17

Until August of the year before last, I might have read it without giving it much thought.

But of course, now it is different.

The words splashed across the front page of this morning’s Asahi Shimbun read, “Government-led spring wage negotiations lose momentum after three years.”

What an immature and malicious newspaper.

It is only natural that those who make a living through this company and its subsidiary television stations—such as Hōdō Station—along with the so-called cultural figures who have echoed them, should all face the torments of Enma, the King of Hell.

Thinking back, Miyazawa Kiichi was also a politician who would immediately do as he was told whenever Asahi criticized him.

When he stated at a Liberal Democratic Party training session in Karuizawa that the problem—distinct from normal business cycles—required the injection of roughly 15 trillion yen in public funds, Atsushi Yamada, an economics reporter at Asahi, led a campaign claiming it was outrageous to use taxpayers’ money to clean up what banks, real estate, and construction industries had done on their own.
As a result, the plan was crushed and reduced to a mere 800 billion yen.

This marked the beginning of Japan’s long-term deflation, now despised worldwide—a historical fact.
I was the first to point this out, and because I made my living in the real estate industry, I recognized it clearly.

A close friend from my alma mater—a late bloomer who eventually ranked first in his entire school—was on track to become president of the leading bank in Tohoku.
When I once consulted him about arranging a loan for a mutual friend, he remarked, “The most unbelievable thing in the world is that Akutagawa is running a real estate business.”

To return to the main topic.

What makes the deflation created by Asahi even more pernicious is that while it devastated the nation, Asahi employees’ salaries continued to rise.
Even as they produced a society where one in six children grows up in households earning less than 1.8 million yen a year.

Moreover, Honda Katsuichi, then a prominent Asahi reporter, spread anti-Japan propaganda such as the “Nanjing Massacre” and “hundred-man killing contest” to the international community, publishing as a major scoop materials handed to him by Chinese authorities during an official invitation.

Asahi did not stop there.
It led the effort that resulted in 30 trillion yen of Japanese taxpayers’ money being provided to prolong the rule of one-party dictators.

Those dictators have never informed the Chinese people of this fact.

While the deflation created by Asahi still blankets Japan, providence fortunately brought forth Abe Shinzo, a genuine statesman rarely seen in modern times.
Together with Haruhiko Kuroda, he possessed the sound judgment to recognize that defeating deflation was Japan’s urgent priority.

Yet Asahi seizes upon signs of stagnation—caused by subsequent historical factors—to attack their efforts.
Such immaturity and malice are intolerable.

The consumption tax hike decided by the worst government in history, the Democratic Party of Japan administration, which Asahi helped bring to power.

Prime Minister Kan Naoto, who lacked both philosophy and experience in economic governance, followed advice from Ono Yoshiyasu, then a professor at Osaka University.

The result was the 8% consumption tax hike and global economic stagnation compounded by the economic chaos of one-party dictators emboldened by Asahi.

And yet Asahi calmly writes, “Government-led spring wage negotiations lose momentum after three years.”

To allow such a newspaper to continue existing is tantamount to proving that the Japanese people themselves are foolish, childish, and malicious.