This essay criticizes a Japan-related editorial by the Tokyo bureau chief of The New York Times, arguing that it merely echoes Asahi Shimbun–style thinking. It exposes how ignorance, dogmatism, and misplaced authority lead to distorted views of Japan.

May 16, 2016

The other day, I came across an utterly ridiculous article on goo and found myself wondering what on earth it was.

A man named Martin Fackler, the Tokyo bureau chief of The New York Times, who would more accurately be described as a lapsed leftist, was not writing about China or South Korea, where such remarks might at least be expected.
Instead, unbelievably, he made the following truly absurd editorial statements about Japan—a country that has achieved the world’s highest level of intellect and freedom, and a country in which, by God’s providence, the “turntable of civilization” turns, based on the three reasons I myself have discovered.
That he could proclaim such views so brazenly, unaware that his intellect is at a level below that of a kindergarten child, left me not only astonished but filled with anger that I can no longer tolerate.

This man’s understanding of Japan is nothing more than Asahi Shimbun’s editorial line itself.

The Tokyo bureau of The New York Times is located inside the headquarters of Asahi Shimbun.

Naturally, this man enjoys the privilege of reading Asahi free of charge.

But God is fair.
And that is precisely why such foolish editorials come into being.

What an astonishingly ill-educated journalist he is.

Martin Fackler—if only once, you should read the works of Masayuki Takayama before opening your mouth.
You would be so ashamed of your own foolishness and ignorance that you would never speak again.

This man, soaked to the core in Asahi Shimbun, likely knows nothing whatsoever about Masayuki Takayama, just as I myself did until last year.
He surely has never read Takayama’s books, because Asahi Shimbun has deliberately kept silent about him.

Someday, I intend to write the harshest critique imaginable of The New York Times.
For now, however, I will limit myself to this one article.

His remarks appeared in the tabloid Nikkan Gendai—and judging from the fact that it publishes such articles, one can only assume that the company is dominated by people resembling former Zenkyōtō radicals.

At the same time, the very fact that such idiotic opinions can be stated so openly and published without restraint only serves to prove, through their own actions, just how nonsensical the editorials of a man like Fackler truly are.

Their foolish, distorted, dogmatic, and authoritarian minds are likely completely unaware of this.

Below is the truly astonishing editorial by this man named Fackler—a name that sounds like “fuck you.”

[Omitted opening]

“In any case, this is the most abnormal one-party-dominated country among democratic states that I have ever known.
Some people say it resembles the prewar period, and in the sense that there is effectively no opposition and dissenting opinions against the government are not tolerated, it may indeed be similar.
Debate is indispensable to a healthy democracy, yet it seems to me that this has been forgotten.”

[Omitted conclusion]

▽ Martin Fackler, born in 1966.
After graduating from Dartmouth College, he earned master’s degrees at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley.
He worked at the Bloomberg Tokyo bureau, the AP Tokyo bureau, and the Wall Street Journal Tokyo bureau before becoming Tokyo bureau chief of The New York Times.
His recent book is A Precipice Nation: Japan’s Decision (Nihon Bungeisha).

The final book appears to be co-authored with a former official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—an institution for which it would not be an exaggeration to say that, over the past several decades, it has done virtually nothing that Japan truly needed to do.