An analysis of Japan’s labor statistics controversy, examining working conditions, media narratives, and political motives. This article explores the structure behind statistical criticism and public opinion manipulation.

2019-01-30.
At its core, the issue surrounding the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare stems from workers adopting practical measures to improve excessive working hours and life-threatening labor conditions.
The following continues from the previous chapter.
At its core, the issue surrounding the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare stems from workers adopting practical measures to improve excessive working hours and life-threatening labor conditions, and to claim that statistical figures themselves are the problem is, in truth, little more than a pretext.
Japan’s statistical data, unlike that of China or South Korea, has never been fabricated through plausible lies.
Yet opposition politicians, who could be described without exaggeration as agents of China or South Korea, or even traitors to the nation, have chosen to attack this issue relentlessly, which is the height of wrongdoing.
What was adopted was merely probabilistic methodology similar to that used in opinion polls and election forecasting.
Moreover, it was done only by slightly reducing full corporate surveys in order to resolve excessively harsh working hours, and therefore not something that warrants such uproar and condemnation.
If there is time to make such noise, then measures should instead be devised across ministries to resolve the worst working hours in government offices.
More importantly, newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun that continue the practice of oshigami—artificially inflating circulation to raise advertising rates—are engaging in outright fraudulent acts.
Television ratings based on rough surveys are similar in nature and could also be described as fraudulent.
Newspapers that continue such wrongdoing have absolutely no right to criticize Ministry officials who adopted a survey-style method in order to improve life-threatening labor conditions.
Furthermore, the constant government attacks conducted by outlets such as Asahi Shimbun and NHK through so-called opinion polls have inflicted incalculable damage upon Japan.
They fabricate narratives through their own reporting and continue attacking the prime minister, even inserting questions such as “the prime minister’s character cannot be trusted” into opinion surveys.
The time has come for all Japanese citizens to recognize that through such phrasing, these media figures act as agents equivalent to traitors, operating in line with the intentions of China and the Korean Peninsula.
Those who maliciously seek to weaken Prime Minister Abe and erode public trust in him consist globally of only a handful of individuals within Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Mainichi, and Nikkei, along with China and the Korean Peninsula.
Moreover, these opinion polls—until I raised criticism—were conducted on weekdays via landline surveys of merely about 2,000 samples, yet were treated as accurate figures and used to attack the government.
Meanwhile, in order to break the relentless cycle of life-threatening overtime work, non-career officials at the Ministry incorporated only a small element of probabilistic methodology—similar to opinion polling or election forecasting—into a far larger volume of research than any media survey.
In reality, there has been virtually no damage to the state, yet for Asahi, NHK, and opposition politicians to criticize this is itself an expression of “bottomless malice” and “plausible falsehood,” and constitutes the most shameful misconduct.
It is the very extreme of pseudo-moralistic evil.
Moreover, individuals such as Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who was arrested for falsifying secretary salaries—taxpayer money—have absolutely no standing to criticize the administration with self-righteous claims.
To be continued.