This chapter reveals how Asahi Shimbun labeled Shoichi Watanabe a “Hitler sympathizer,” exposing the newspaper’s long-standing pattern of fabrication and character attacks.

This chapter documents how a Japanese intellectual was branded a “Hitler sympathizer,” illustrating the Asahi Shimbun’s enduring pattern of distortion and political manipulation.

2017-06-25
This is a continuation of the previous chapter.

Watanabe

For forty-three years, I have been in conflict with the Asahi Shimbun.
I even have a book titled Asahi Shimbun and My Forty-Year War (published by PHP Institute) (laughs).
At first, I did not understand why I was so hated by Asahi Shimbun.

In fact, in 1976 I wrote a bestseller titled The Art of Intellectual Living, and I was once invited by Asahi Shimbun to give a lecture for its employees.
At that time, being completely unaware, I said something like, “Some of you may believe that Japan will become a socialist country…”
Only later, after reading certain books, did I realize that this must have been one of the things that angered Asahi the most.

Hasegawa

I too found The Art of Intellectual Living extremely interesting.
Many decades ago, I worked briefly in the economics department of the Osaka headquarters, and at one gathering a senior member of that department suddenly mentioned your name.
He said in front of everyone that he had been an avid reader of The Art of Intellectual Living and had thought highly of Mr. Watanabe Shoichi, but that recently he had been disappointed to learn that you were writing unacceptable right-wing things, and that he had not realized you were that kind of person.

Watanabe

That is entirely possible (laughs).
In fact, I was once criticized by Asahi Shimbun as a “Hitler sympathizer.”

This was in 1980.
I wrote an essay titled “A Sacred Duty” for Shukan Bunshun, in which I cited the case of the second son of Mr. Onishi Kyojin, who had hemophilia, and argued—based on Catholic ethics—that those who discover they carry a malignant hereditary disease should voluntarily refrain from having a second child.

In response, Asahi Shimbun devoted two-thirds of its social affairs page to a fabricated controversy between Mr. Onishi and myself over recessive genetic traits, and attacked me by equating me with Hitler, who sought to eliminate the weak through state power.

I had never met Mr. Onishi Kyojin, nor had I ever spoken with him.

*What kind of newspaper Asahi Shimbun truly is is clearly revealed by this fact alone.
It was this very disposition that led it to fabricate the comfort women reporting.
More recently, it opposed the security legislation by calling it “war legislation.”
Now, with the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen issues, it continues to repeat fabricated reporting in order to attack Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.

Just yesterday, it deliberately published a photograph showing Governor Onaga Takeshi, who can hardly be called anything other than a puppet of China and a traitor to the nation, wearing a confident expression, while Prime Minister Abe walking behind him appears to be looking downward.
This fact vividly exposes the true nature of Asahi Shimbun.
The facts in this chapter were something I myself learned for the first time, and therefore they are facts that people around the world are also learning for the first time.*