This article examines Diet questioning over the abduction issue, highlighting Prime Minister Abe’s restrained responses and the media’s selective silence.

This chapter highlights how selective reporting and “anti-Abe” sentiment shaped political discourse over Japan’s abduction issue.

2017-06-24
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.

Watanabe

It is a strange book written by the elder brother of Mr. Kaoru Hasuike, one of the abduction victims.

Hasegawa

Yes.
That book states, in essence, that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who was then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, did not try to stop the five abducted victims who had managed to return to Japan from being sent back to North Korea, but that because the five refused to change their intention to remain in Japan, they were ultimately allowed to stay.
A Diet member named Ogata Rintaro took this up and questioned Prime Minister Abe as to whether it was true or not, to which Prime Minister Abe responded as follows.

At that time, the flow was to send the five victims who had returned back to North Korea, but I resolutely opposed it.
In the end, those concerned gathered in the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary’s office, and I decided that they would not be sent back.

He then went so far as to say, “I do not want to say that anyone is lying, but I stake my Diet member’s badge on the truth of what I am saying.
If it is not true, I will resign as a member of the Diet.”
For a sitting Prime Minister to say that he would resign as a Diet member is something that happens only in the gravest of circumstances.

He must have felt a tremendous surge of anger.
Even so, I believe he endured it well and answered each question one by one.

However, the only newspaper that reported this matter in detail was the Sankei Shimbun; for some reason, other papers either barely touched on it or ignored it altogether.

In fact, though this may sound self-serving, I wrote an article in the February 10, 1997 issue of AERA stating that a girl in Niigata City, Yokota Megumi, who had disappeared twenty years earlier, had been abducted by North Korea.

Watanabe

That would be among the earliest reports.

Hasegawa

Of course, in writing that article I conducted extensive research.
As I pursued that research, it became clear how little interest Japanese politicians had in this grave incident of Japanese citizens being abducted by North Korea, and how they simply ignored it.
Some Diet members even engaged in obstructive behavior.

Under such circumstances, one of the very few politicians who worked desperately to resolve the abduction issue, despite being completely isolated, was Mr. Abe.
I am not saying this to flatter Prime Minister Abe in any way; I am stating it as a matter of fact, and it is fair to say that even the return of those five people was thanks to Prime Minister Abe’s efforts.

Nevertheless, based solely on a single passage written by someone else, without thorough study, a question of that nature was posed to the Prime Minister of the country in the public forum of the House of Representatives Budget Committee.
It left me with a feeling of despair.

Watanabe

As long as it is “anti-Abe,” there is a prevailing tendency among opposition parties, their supporters, and major mass media such as the Asahi Shimbun to think that it is acceptable to criticize without proper investigation.
That is exactly the same as saying that it is fine to criticize Japan’s prewar era or its military without looking into the facts.
It is the same stance taken by Asahi Shimbun in its comfort women reporting.