Drawing on the preface of Nobuhiko Sakai’s work, this article analyzes how territorial disputes are reframed as historical guilt, how a masochistic narrative erodes national dignity, and how domestic actors—most notably Asahi Shimbun—enable attacks on Japan under the guise of conscience.

April 23, 2016

This is because there exist large numbers of people in Japan who side with the other party and enthusiastically engage in attacks on Japan.
What follows is the preface of a truly superb book by former University of Tokyo professor Nobuhiko Sakai, The Asahi Shimbun Gone Mad with Abusive Anti-Japan Hypocrisy: Asahi-Style Thinking and Mental Structures of Bias and Discrimination.
Bold emphasis is mine.
Last summer, following the Japanese government’s declaration of nationalization, so-called “anti-Japan demonstrations” occurred in the dispute with the Chinese Communist regime over the Senkaku Islands.
These were acts of terrorism staged by the Chinese state power itself, and in doing so they invoked September 18, the day the Manchurian Incident began.
Meanwhile, the former president of South Korea landed on Takeshima, and the new president stated unequivocally that the relationship between victim and perpetrator would not change even after a thousand years.
What is clearly revealed here is the tactic of forcibly linking territorial issues to historical issues, casting the Japanese as villains in order to conceal one’s own crimes.
Yet the Japanese people are still unable to accurately recognize the arrival of this grave and serious situation.
The clearest evidence is that even after suffering overt persecution and abuse—such as arson and looting of Japanese companies by Chinese state power—and even after being viciously insulted by the South Korean presidential office, no genuine anger wells up among the Japanese public.
This happens because a guilt-laden view of history has been implanted through historical issues, depriving the nation of pride and honor and invading its spirit.
It is the decline and absence of ethnic consciousness, a fundamental weakening of spiritual strength.
That Chinese and Koreans can carry out such acts without hesitation is because there exist large numbers of people in Japan who side with them and become engrossed in attacking Japan.
There are various such actors, but the one playing the most central role must be identified as the Asahi Shimbun.
Among conservatives, the reason Asahi and others engage in discourse that demeans Japan is often understood as being due to leftist ideology, but that is not correct.
As can be seen from the fact that it includes people other than leftists, such as politicians of the Liberal Democratic Party, the essence of their discourse is fundamentally hypocrisy; in short, they wish to be seen as conscientious individuals.
The historical view promoted by Asahi and others is often called a “masochistic view of history,” but since they themselves feel no pain and instead deliberately torment Japan as their chosen object, it should more accurately be called an “abusive anti-Japan view of history.”
In other words, the essence of Asahi’s discourse can be definitively characterized as “abusive anti-Japan hypocrisy.”
To be continued.