By labeling economic stagnation as the failure of “government-led wage talks,” Asahi Shimbun obscures the real causes of Japan’s long deflation. This essay exposes the historical and media responsibility behind that distortion.

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 Asahi and its subsidiary television stations, such as “Hōdō Station,” along with the so-called cultural figures who have echoed them, should face judgment.

Looking back, I now realize that Miyazawa Kiichi was also a politician who would readily do as Asahi suggested.
When he stated at an LDP training session in Karuizawa that a problem—distinct from ordinary business cycles—required an injection of around 15 trillion yen in public funds, Atsushi Yamada, then an economics reporter at Asahi, led the charge to crush it, reducing the response to a mere 800 billion yen.

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

What makes the deflation created by Asahi even more pernicious is that while it devastated the nation, Asahi employees’ salaries continued to rise—while a society emerged in which one in six children grows up in poverty.

Moreover, Honda Katsuichi spread anti-Japan propaganda internationally, publishing materials handed to him by Chinese authorities as major scoops.
Asahi went further, taking the lead in channeling as much as 30 trillion yen of Japanese taxpayers’ money to prolong one-party dictatorships—facts never disclosed to the Chinese public.

While this deflation still blankets Japan, providence brought forth Abe Shinzo and Haruhiko Kuroda, who correctly identified deflation as Japan’s urgent challenge.
Yet Asahi seizes on temporary stagnation to attack their efforts.

To allow a newspaper that calmly writes “Government-led wage talks lose momentum after three years” to continue existing is tantamount to proving that the Japanese people themselves are foolish, childish, and malicious.