Originally published on April 21, 2019.
Triggered by a deeply suspicious Yomiuri TV program dealing with the Nanjing Incident, this essay argues that Japan’s mass media, because it exists in an oligopolistic state, has become structurally vulnerable to manipulation by countries such as China and South Korea, which stake their political fortunes on anti-Japan propaganda.
Using the author’s strong sense of unease toward the program’s tone, staging, witnesses, and use of photographs as a starting point, it sharply warns that leaving Japan’s current media structure untouched poses grave dangers to national honor, national credibility, and national security.

2019-04-21
…To manipulate Japan’s mass media, which exists in an oligopolistic condition…。
Is, for countries such as China and South Korea…。
Countries that stake the fate of their regimes on anti-Japan propaganda…。
Easier than twisting a baby’s hand.

What follows is from a chapter I published on October 8, 2015.
A short while ago, I came across a strange blog on the internet.
What astonished me first was that there still exists a person who, even now, can shamelessly call himself a member of the Shirakaba school…。
The blog was written by a man whose appearance made him, without exaggeration, a representative specimen of the scholastic opportunist…。
A man resembling Hasebe of Waseda.

What was strange about it was this…。
At a moment like the present one…。
He was writing things to the effect that the Nanjing Incident really had happened, and that we Japanese must be deeply ashamed.

He said that, a few days before, he had happened to watch a Yomiuri TV broadcast, and then showed what he said was that Yomiuri TV program in a YouTube-like window, but it was an extraordinarily suspicious program.
To begin with, even the narration had a strange tone, as though it belonged to another age.
(It was like the manner of those North Korean female announcers, turned 180 degrees, but spoken in an unnaturally slow way.)

Apparently, a man whom no Japanese citizen had ever heard of had written the book on which the program was based…。
He was a man with a very strange air about him.
Indeed, he struck me as the sort of man Yoshida Seiji too must have been like.

Even the bookshelf behind him was strange.
This man, who in no way looked like a prosperous scholar, gave rise to the suspicion of how on earth he had managed to acquire such a vast library…。
And he had the appearance of someone who could hardly have read so many books.
He looked rather like Genichirō Takahashi.
In the world of business…。
He was the sort of man whose face alone made one think he would pile up betrayals and lies without limit.

The claim was that this man had written the book after interviewing 200 former soldiers…。
Yet this too seemed profoundly dubious.
Their faces were blurred out, and their names never appeared…。
These men, again introduced as former soldiers and again possessed of a strange air…。
Spoke of the Nanjing Massacre, something Mao Zedong himself never spoke of…。
It was Jiang Zemin who began using that claim after Tiananmen…。
And it has already been proven that most of the photographs China presented as evidence were fake.

Even to me…。
The program showed photographs that I could instantly tell were suspicious.
After that, it played the voices of the people whom the supposed original author claimed to have interviewed…。
And this was truly laughable…。
One could hear plainly that they were speaking…。
Or being made to speak…。
To match that strange photograph of corpses piled up along a riverbank.

It was so awful that I felt sick, and I had no desire to keep watching any further…。
But if this really was something Yomiuri TV had made…。
Then it proves once again, 100 percent, the correctness of my own argument.
In other words…。
That to manipulate Japan’s mass media, which exists in an oligopolistic condition…。
Is, for countries such as China and South Korea…。
Countries that stake the fate of their regimes on anti-Japan propaganda…。
Easier than twisting a baby’s hand…。
This proves that my argument was entirely correct.

But government, and people of Japan.
You must immediately realize that the present condition in which the mass media is left in an oligopolistic state。
Is extremely dangerous from the standpoint of the nation’s honor, the nation’s credibility, and national security…。