This article examines how territorial and historical issues have been manipulated to portray Japan as a perpetual offender, focusing on the central role played by the Asahi Shimbun. Drawing from Professor Nobuhiko Sakai’s work, it analyzes moral hypocrisy, historical narratives, and the erosion of Japanese national consciousness.

April 23, 2016

The following is the preface of the truly outstanding book Asahi Shimbun Gone Mad with Anti-Japan Hypocrisy: Asahi-Style Thought and Mental Structure of Prejudice and Discrimination by former University of Tokyo professor Nobuhiko Sakai.
Bold emphasis is mine.

Last summer, following the Japanese government’s declaration of nationalization, so-called “anti-Japan demonstrations” occurred amid the dispute with the Chinese Communist regime over the Senkaku Islands.
These were acts of terrorism staged entirely by the Chinese state power itself, and on that occasion, September 18—the date marking the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident—was deliberately invoked.

Furthermore, the former president of South Korea landed on Takeshima, and the new president explicitly stated that the relationship between victim and perpetrator would not change even after a thousand years.

What is clearly revealed here is a method of forcibly linking territorial issues to historical issues, portraying the Japanese as villains in order to conceal their own crimes.

However, the Japanese people are still unable to accurately recognize the arrival of this grave and serious situation.

Even after suffering blatant persecution and abuse—such as arson and looting of Japanese companies by Chinese state power, and vicious verbal attacks by the South Korean presidential office—hardly any anger rises among the Japanese people, which is the clearest proof of this condition.

This happens because a sense of guilt has been implanted through historical issues, stripping the nation of its pride and honor and resulting in a spiritual invasion.

It is the decline and absence of ethnic consciousness, and a fundamental weakening of spiritual strength.

The reason Chinese and Koreans can commit such acts without hesitation is that there exists a large number of people within Japan who side with them and enthusiastically participate in attacking Japan.

There are various types of such people, but it must be said that the one playing the most central role is, without question, the Asahi Shimbun.

Among conservatives, the cause of Asahi’s Japan-demeaning discourse is often explained as being due to left-wing ideology, but this understanding is not correct.

As can be seen from the fact that it includes people other than leftists, such as politicians from the Liberal Democratic Party, the essence of their discourse is fundamentally hypocrisy—in short, a desire to be seen as morally righteous individuals.

The historical view advocated by Asahi is often called a “masochistic view of history,” but since they feel no pain themselves and instead deliberately bully and torment Japan as their target, it should more accurately be called an “anti-Japan abusive view of history.”

In other words, the essence of Asahi’s discourse can be conclusively defined as “anti-Japan hypocrisy.”

To be continued.