The flaws exposed in the comfort women coverage were already present during the serialization of Journey to China: ignoring rebuttals, avoiding Japanese sources, and persisting in false narratives.

2016-05-04

The following continues from the previous section.

In reporting on the comfort women issue — including articles based on the false testimony of Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have hunted women on Jeju Island in South Korea — this posture of Asahi Shimbun came under severe criticism.

This was because the newspaper turned away from numerous questions and refutations, and continued spreading falsehoods for many years without admitting fault.

Regarding Yoshida’s false testimony, even the Japanese government has now stated that it was “widely reported by Asahi Shimbun as if it were factual, exerting a major influence not only on public opinion in Japan and South Korea, but also on the international community.”

Hiroshi Hasegawa, a journalist of the same generation as Honma and a former Asahi reporter, lamented as follows:

“Failing to consider criticism or rebuttals, and neglecting to interview Japanese parties involved, is not journalism. It is nothing more than an agitational leaflet. The pathology seen in the comfort women issue already existed at an earlier stage, during the serialization of Journey to China.”

The first article of Part Two, “Mass Graves,” in Journey to China, published in the evening edition of Asahi Shimbun on October 6, 1971, introduced the criticism and doubts raised during Part One of the series. Honma then began by stating that he wished to respond to the representative doubts, beginning with the question of “why dig up such matters now.”

He wrote that the attitude of dismissing the issue as “now?” would only deepen distrust and vigilance among Asian nations observing Japan, and that such thinking might itself reflect an attempt to avert one’s eyes and evade issues that should be addressed precisely now.

In response to Sankei Shimbun’s recent problem-raising regarding a series published more than forty years ago, Honma and Asahi may have thought, “why now?”

However, re-examining the distorted history created by Journey to China is surely an issue that must be addressed now, especially as Asahi has finally acknowledged its past false reporting on the comfort women issue.

(Honorifics omitted)

This project was handled by Abiiru Rupi, Arimoto Takashi, Kawasaki Masumi, Takita Makiko, Tanaka Issei, and Harakawa Takao.