After watching an NHK documentary on Tyrannosaurus in 2016, this essay examines the uniquely distorted structure of Japan’s media system.
It reveals how commercial broadcasters tied to major newspapers, celebrity-driven programming, and ideological reporting have continuously undermined Japan’s political and international standing.

2016-09-19

Many people must have watched the Tyrannosaurus documentary broadcast yesterday on NHK.
Global warming and meteor impacts were cited as factors in their rise and fall.
People around the world are probably completely unaware that Japan’s commercial television networks are subsidiaries of the country’s five major newspaper companies.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that these television networks exist primarily for the benefit of a handful of talent agencies.
This is a phenomenon unique to Japan.
I have repeatedly pointed out that this fact is also a major reason why Japan has failed to become a leader of the world.
In this regard as well, I was the first person in the world to make this observation.
Foolish entertainers appear on television at every possible time of day.
In between, the same broadcasters put on news programs wearing the iron mask of justice, continuously diminishing Japan, relentlessly attacking government policies, and insisting that all politicians are evil while portraying themselves as the guardians of democracy.
There was no possibility that such a grotesque arrangement could ever lead the world.
The principal architect of this structure was The Asahi Shimbun.
Even such a simple fact is completely unknown to correspondents of Süddeutsche Zeitung, who live in Tokyo—the world’s safest, most peaceful, and cleanest capital with the finest restaurants—and who have long adopted Asahi editorials as their own, as well as to bureau staff of The New York Times, which maintains its Japan office inside the Asahi Shimbun.
While watching TV Tokyo’s sports news, I saw Ichiro Furutachi, who had long served as the anchor of TV Asahi’s flagship program Hōdō Station and earned enormous sums of money, shouting in a commercial for SoftBank.
This is the very man who, for many years, influenced Japanese politics while wearing the face of a spokesman for Japanese democracy.
That I continued to watch such a news program until August of the year before last, without knowing their true nature, fills me with the deepest anger and regret.
To be continued.