The retreat of long-term foreign investors from Japanese equities is portrayed as the natural outcome of decades of national diminishment and credibility erosion.
Drawing on a Nikkei column, this essay exposes the structural consequences of distorted discourse.

2016-04-05
The following is from the “Scramble” column on page 16 of today’s Nikkei newspaper.
All emphasis other than the headline, and all passages marked with –, are mine.
Even long-term investors are turning away from Japan.
Foreign investors’ retreat from Japanese equities shows no sign of stopping.
On the 4th, shares of large-capitalization automobile companies were sold off, and the Nikkei Average fell for the fifth consecutive day.
Overseas investors had been net sellers for twelve straight weeks through the fourth week of March.
On the 4th as well, the main sellers were foreigners, believed to be long-term holders.
Although Japanese stocks had moved in tandem with U.S. and European markets since last year, over the past month they alone have lagged behind.
The possibility that money flows have changed has also emerged.
“This decline seems excessive,” murmured Mamoru Shimoide of Resona Bank on the 4th as he watched automobile stocks collapse across the board.
Toyota Motor shares fell 3 percent, marking a new year-to-date low.
Nissan shares dropped 3 percent, while Honda ended down 1 percent.
The Nikkei Average, which had been turning upward, fell again, dragged down by automobile stocks.
Hopes for a rebound following the sharp drop at the end of the previous week were swiftly dashed.
A domestic securities sales trader complained, “Demand for core stocks such as automobiles and machinery is weak.
The only market showing strength is Mothers.”
After visiting U.S. institutional investors last week, Chisato Haganuma of Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities sensed a change in attitudes toward Japanese equities.
Risks of downward revisions to earnings forecasts due to the strong yen, and the absence of a driver for profit growth.
In the United States, voices expressing concern about the Japanese market were heard one after another.
Selling by oil money, which had triggered the turbulent market since the beginning of the year, has finally subsided.
Stepping in as sellers now are long-term investors such as European and American pension funds.
Yasuya Okazawa of BNP Paribas Securities said, “Overseas investors’ interest in Japanese stocks is declining.”
Given that Asahi Shimbun has for decades dominated Japan while continually diminishing the nation and eroding the international credibility of Japan and its people, this outcome is only natural.
A diminished, small country, and a market where 70 percent of daily trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is conducted by foreign capital.
It is only natural that interest in such a market would decline.
For the world, or the international community, always gravitates toward what is large.
Yet the true reality is that Japan is a country where the turntable of civilization continues to rotate, still in substance the world’s second-largest economic superpower, and a great nation that has long far outstripped others in contributions to the United Nations.
That is the true face of Japan.
How Asahi Shimbun has been a traitorous newspaper, nothing less than a national betrayer, need no longer be stated.
If Japan, like many countries in the world, had institutions such as the FBI and CIA, and treated crimes of treason or attempts to overthrow the state as serious offenses, Asahi Shimbun could not possibly exist.
Whether they have long groveled or been manipulated is unclear, but simply imagining what would happen if they were a Chinese newspaper makes the correctness of my argument immediately evident.
To be continued.