This essay condemns Asahi Shimbun and TV Asahi’s coverage of the Ise-Shima G7 Summit, arguing that their reporting persistently undermines Japan and its prime minister while remaining oblivious to the damage they have inflicted on the nation through decades of distortion and hostility.

2016-05-26

Because I could not watch the Ise-Shima Summit–related news from the beginning on NHK’s Watch 9, I thought that on a day like today, they would at least refrain from bizarre broadcasting and properly convey the state of the summit, so I switched the channel to TV Asahi’s Hōdō Station.
Rather than merely being astonished, I felt that Asahi Shimbun could no longer be described as anything other than abnormal. I was overcome by a sense of regret over the years in which I had subscribed to and read such a newspaper without any doubt.
Astonishingly, Asahi Shimbun has absolutely no awareness that it itself created Japan’s Lost Twenty Years. On the contrary, it even claimed that Japan’s long-term deflation was inevitable and that advanced countries would follow the same path from here on—there could be nothing more exasperating than this. The person speaking was a man named Makoto Hara, whom I had occasionally seen in the paper.
Those viewers who, since August of the year before last, had come to understand the true nature of Asahi Shimbun must have felt not merely astonishment but anger.
It must have been a truly deep and intense anger.
In any case, they continued to attack Prime Minister Abe with what could only be described as the childish malice of a kindergarten child.
One has to ask: is this really a Japanese newspaper company?
Japan was hosting the G7 as chair in Ise-Shima.
Far from wishing for its success, they were completely denying it.
I came to think that Asahi Shimbun was nothing more than a pack of thugs.
A man like Makoto Hara may be lording it over others in a very narrow world, but every sensible Japanese citizen must have been utterly appalled.
It is rare indeed to encounter such an abnormal program.
Making use of their own network of reporters, they were manipulating viewers by presenting their own voices as if they were the voice of the world.
They brought onto the screen reporters of the same ilk as that German newspaper reporter—journalists from Germany and Britain who, needless to say, read Asahi Shimbun for free and are its sympathizers.
I was also astonished by the sheer arrogance of Makoto Hara’s attitude.
The shame of serving as an editorial writer at a newspaper like Asahi Shimbun, or rather, remaining oblivious to the enormous damage it has inflicted on Japan and the Japanese state while still pressing on with efforts to demean the Prime Minister of Japan and Japan itself.
Just when I thought this man’s talk had ended, a woman with an appearance as if she were suffering from Basedow’s disease appeared (her gaze, too, was far from normal—she had the look, so to speak, of an irredeemable believer in the Asahi Shimbun cult) and began speaking about Asahi’s Okinawa narrative.
I could no longer continue watching such a bizarre program any further,
and since I had naturally reached the limit of my patience, I changed the channel, whereupon a comedian appeared.