Revisiting a chapter first published on September 4, 2018.
Introducing Professor Hiroshi Furuta’s essay, this piece examines postwar Japanese media bias, propaganda operations, and historical narratives targeting Japan.
It explores the formation of anti-Japan historical discourse and the role of media in shaping public perception.

2019-01-15
Japan has been attacked with fabricated histories beginning with the so-called Nanjing Massacre.
At that time, by winning over Asahi Shimbun and NHK, this was carried out by a corrupt state whose sole reason for existence is propaganda operations.

This is from an essay by Professor Hiroshi Furuta of the University of Tsukuba Graduate School titled “History Has Neither ‘Progress’ Nor ‘Inevitability.”
The chapter I published on September 4, 2018 under that title entered Ameba’s official hashtag ranking for Spain at No.93 today.
The following is from Professor Furuta’s article published on page 13 of this morning’s Sankei Shimbun.
It is an essay that should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people around the world.
I first became aware of this extraordinary scholar and one of the world’s leading experts on Korea only four years ago.
Until then I had long subscribed to and carefully read Asahi Shimbun, and therefore knew nothing of him.
This demonstrates the extreme bias of Asahi’s reporting in deliberately excluding such a learned and exceptional scholar.
Asahi never informed readers about genuine scholars and journalists such as Furuta and Masayuki Takayama.
Instead, it continued to feature academics and cultural figures who repeated self-denigrating historical views and anti-Japan ideology under the guise of pseudo-morality and political correctness.
Looking down on Japan from a superior position—this was clearly evident in the criticism by Le Monde of Japan’s judicial treatment of the greedy Ghosn.
Such attitudes reflect a baseless sense of Western superiority and racial prejudice that still lingers in Europe and America.
That Japanese themselves—Asahi, NHK, Kenzaburō Ōe, Haruki Murakami and others—have imitated this mindset is an extreme folly.
Taking advantage of the discriminatory attitudes the United States openly showed toward Japan at the time of defeat, Korea—despite being fellow Asians—seized Takeshima, unilaterally declared the Syngman Rhee Line, and captured, killed, and detained Japanese fishing crews.
Korea, where children are taught from the beginning that Koreans are the world’s most superior people, has as a result spoken toward Japan with arrogance while spreading countless falsehoods and committing profound wrongs.
Attacking Japan with fabricated histories beginning with the Nanjing narrative—while winning over Asahi and NHK—was precisely the work of a state whose sole purpose is propaganda.
China and the Korean Peninsula continue to demonstrate this DNA of profound malice and plausible falsehoods to this day.
Readers have continued to be fed arguments aligned with Asahi’s intentions.
Or they have been made to read the plausible lies of those with self-denigrating historical views and anti-Japan ideology.
As a result, Asahi readers have had implanted even into their unconscious the baseless notion that, for example, one must never speak ill of Korea.
Because the counterpart was a country of profound malice and plausible lies, it is an undeniable fact that Japan and its people have suffered enormous losses to this day.
It is also an undeniable fact that Asahi Shimbun has still not informed the world that the comfort women and Nanjing narratives were fabrications in its own reporting.

Professor Furuta’s essay will continue in the next chapter.