Unlike any other country, Japan’s media treats its world-leading corporations with cold indifference or hostility. From the suppression of TRON to the Toyota bashing, this reveals a deeply distorted national media culture.

2016-05-03

I recently came to reaffirm something.

Japan’s media is extraordinarily cold toward the large corporations that Japan proudly presents to the world—cold to a degree unimaginable in any other country.

When the Japanese government decided to distribute computers running TRON, invented by Sakamura Ken, to elementary and junior high schools nationwide for computer education, Bill Gates launched an intense campaign to block the plan, using Son Masayoshi as his spearhead.

Ultimately, the United States government intervened on behalf of Microsoft, threatening Japan with heavy tariffs on automobiles and consumer electronics unless the decision was reversed, forcing Japan to abandon the plan.

Years later, when American automakers such as General Motors began to falter, fabricated testimony was used to carry out Toyota-bashing, extracting enormous compensation payments. Even after those claims were revealed to be false, the U.S. government returned not a single yen to Toyota.

It is common knowledge that the South Korea government provides every conceivable advantage to Samsung, from currency manipulation to electricity supply and pricing.

China, being a state-owned enterprise economy, needs no explanation regarding state involvement.

During various Japan–U.S. trade negotiations, when Japanese bureaucrats criticized American officials for their extreme favoritism toward private companies, the Americans responded with puzzled expressions: Government exists for the people; if it does not work for private companies, whom does it serve?

Even now, I think about this—with anger.

Japan’s globally competitive corporations, which possess outstanding technologies and command majority market shares across many fields, must be protected. If they are not valued, then what is?

While these corporations decline and their engineers are scooped up effortlessly by South Korea and China, media outlets like the Asahi Shimbun, whose thinking is a toxic mix of GHQ-era indoctrination, leftist ideology, and superficial moralism, continue to wield enormous influence despite possessing reasoning abilities below that of kindergarten children.

What kind of country allows this?

It is an outrageous situation.