Triggered by a Nikkei column on wartime labor, this essay criticizes Japan’s postwar masochistic historical narrative and the media’s responsibility in leading the nation into war.
It argues that one-sided condemnation of Japan has become the foundation of the “justice” rhetoric wielded by China and Korea.

January 24, 2019
He is such a fool that he cannot even recognize how perfectly he himself embodies the profound sin of pseudo-moralists.
The following is from yesterday’s Nikkei column “Oiso Koiso.”
It had been a long time since I last read that column, but I did so because its title concerned the wartime labor issue and Korea’s “justice.”
The writer is surely someone who grew up reading and studying the Asahi Shimbun, and who has had a masochistic view of history and the resulting anti-Japan ideology planted even in the unconscious layers of his mind.
At first glance, it appears to be a paper attempting to admonish Korea gently and moderately, yet at a crucial point it reveals its true nature…without even realizing that this very weakness is one of the roots through which “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” insinuate themselves.
Omitted introduction.
In truth, Japan too was once a country that waged a foolish war under the name of “justice,” called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Omitted conclusion.
It is an undeniable fact that one of the defining features of twentieth-century history was that it was a century of wars.
It is also an undeniable fact that World War II was an extension of World War I…that is, that the wars of the twentieth century originated in Europe.
Neither individuals who lived in that era nor the nations that comprised them could remain untouched by war.
Yet this writer does not see it that way.
Within the present moment and era, he unhesitatingly declares that Japan waged a foolish war, judging solely from a single aspect.
But the truth is…that the very media and commentariat through which this writer now earns his living drove Japan toward war.
It is a clear historical fact that the media, led by the Asahi Shimbun, inflamed the nation’s war spirit to a point where even the military could no longer turn back.
Japan too was drawn into war…and, moreover, ended up on the losing side, in complete contrast to World War I.
To put it bluntly, the Asahi Shimbun, which dominated the commentariat from which this writer now earns his livelihood…contained at least five percent or more of individuals under Comintern influence, as represented by Ozaki Hotsumi, and as a result of being an organization controlled by such people…Japan was dragged into the quagmire of the Sino-Japanese War instead of directing its defense toward the Soviet Union.
There was also a correlation between this and the rapid shift of American public opinion from pro-Japan to anti-Japan—from anti-China to pro-China…and genuine researchers have revealed, based on Soviet documents and testimonies of those involved, that Soviet spies had penetrated the U.S. government in positions capable of influencing policy.
In the first place, the young military officers who carried out the February 26 Incident and the May 15 Incident—events that became the trigger for military domination in Japan—were themselves likely readers of the Asahi Shimbun and influenced by its tone and by commentators aligned with it, leading them into rebellion.
These very writers are the ones who have fostered and amplified the “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” of China and the Korean Peninsula…yet this foolish writer remains completely unaware of that fact.
Your masochistic historical view, and the anti-Japan ideology that springs from it…that Japan committed evil…that is precisely the source of the “justice” brandished by the outrageous nation of Korea.
And yet, without even realizing this, the writer earns his living perhaps as a professor at the University of Tokyo or the like.
In truth, the greatest fools of all are people like the writer of this column.
He is a fool who cannot even recognize how perfectly he embodies the profound sin of pseudo-moralists.