This article examines how Asahi Shimbun’s comfort women reporting dishonored the Japanese people, focusing on the absence of genuine apology and the misuse of “historical revisionism” to evade responsibility.

This text argues that the gravest offense of Asahi Shimbun’s comfort women reporting was not factual error alone, but the collective shame imposed on the Japanese people, compounded by the paper’s refusal to acknowledge or apologize for that dishonor.

2017-06-22
There is one thing that felt profoundly wrong to me in connection with Asahi Shimbun’s so-called “verification” of its comfort women reporting in the summer of 2014.
That is the complete absence of the word “shame.”
Many people pointed out that the reports were false, erroneous, or intentionally misleading, but what should have been asked most forcefully of Asahi Shimbun was this: that its lies caused shame to be inflicted upon the Japanese people.
And yet, Asahi Shimbun has shown not the slightest sense of shame regarding this fact.
On January 26, 2015, the Citizens’ Council to Rectify Asahi Shimbun, which I chair, filed a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court, demanding compensation and an apology advertisement on the grounds that Asahi Shimbun had damaged the honor of the nation.
At the time of filing, the plaintiffs numbered 8,749 people, both inside and outside Japan.
When plaintiffs were recruited online, an overwhelming number of people immediately stepped forward, and after the lawsuit was announced, the office began receiving around one thousand letters of authorization every single day.
The volume was so great that postal workers reportedly had to deliver them in two separate trips.
I myself received letters saying, “I would like to participate together with my friends.”
Although the initiative was originally organized by figures such as Mizushima Satoshi of Channel Sakura, the unending stream of Japanese people joining as plaintiffs clearly shows how many felt that their own honor, and the honor of Japan, had been damaged by Asahi Shimbun’s reporting.
Ideally, I would even like to see the number of plaintiffs swell to one hundred million.
When I once remarked to someone that “Asahi Shimbun smeared mud on the face of the Japanese people,” the reply was, “Not mud—excrement. They smeared excrement on the faces of the Japanese people, from ancestors to descendants.”
I believe that expression is, regrettably, more accurate.
Asahi Shimbun did retract the articles based on Seiji Yoshida’s testimony, but its apology was directed only toward its readers.
It has never apologized for the shame it inflicted upon the Japanese people as a whole.
Instead, it has attempted to deflect the issue by claiming that the comfort women problem is merely a matter of women’s human rights.
Defenders of Asahi Shimbun uniformly echo arguments such as “the issue has not been resolved” or “this is historical revisionism,” but what they fail to understand is the weight of “shame.”
The term “historical revisionism” has become a treasured weapon for forces that wish to preserve the postwar order—namely the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, and Asahi Shimbun itself—used to bind those Japanese who seek to break free from the Tokyo Trial view of history.
I have discussed this in detail in this month’s serialized essay, but the logic of labeling and denigration employed to debase one’s own country without the slightest sense of shame makes Asahi Shimbun truly beyond redemption.
That neither Asahi Shimbun nor its defenders utter a single word about “shame” is, to me, profoundly abnormal.
Asahi Shimbun should sincerely apologize to the Japanese people and work to restore Japan’s honor before the world.
To be continued.