In his regular Themis column “Nihon Keisei,” Masayuki Takayama criticizes successive presidents of the Asahi Shimbun and the paper’s long-standing culture of fabrication.
Using examples such as poison gas reporting, Nanjing coverage, plutonium claims, and the “40-year nuclear rule,” he exposes the structure of calculated falsehoods that distorted postwar Japan.

2020-12-31
He further went on to say, “You’ve got some nerve defying the great Asahi,” and, “We’ll crush Sankei Shimbun.”
The following is from “Nihon Keisei,” the regular column Masayuki Takayama writes for the monthly magazine Themis, which arrived today.
It is an essay worthy of bringing 2020 to its close.
This essay again proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people all over the world.
◎Successive presidents of the Asahi Shimbun have spread calculated lies.
After “the Japanese military was evil,” they now sought to attack Japan with the theme of “aging nuclear plants.”
◎They lied that a photograph of smoke showed a poison gas operation.
It was customary for the president of the Asahi Shimbun to step down in June, when the shareholders’ meeting was held, but Seiki Watanabe resigned in December 1984.
To be precise, he was forced to resign because he had reporters write lies, and those lies were exposed.
The lie in question was the front-page article of the October 31 issue that same year, accompanied by a billowing-smoke photograph, titled “This Is a Poison Gas Operation.”
The Japanese military was indeed brutal.
Japan had done every evil imaginable in China.
Therefore Japan must repent to China and repent to the world.
It was as if the Asahi Shimbun had finally brought to light a “hidden truth” that perfectly illustrated its everyday argument.
It even came with what seemed to be irrefutable photographic evidence.
One can almost see Seiki Watanabe sitting back smugly as if to say, “Impressed now?”
In fact, there was a reason Watanabe was so eager.
Following his predecessor Tomoo Hirooka, he had already been spreading all sorts of sloppy self-denigrating historical tales, such as the story that 7,000 Koreans involved in constructing the underground Imperial Headquarters in Matsushiro had been disposed of.
Just before this poison gas story, on September 22, the paper had also reported that “the Nanjing Massacre was real,” adding a photograph of severed heads and claiming that the Miyakonojo Regiment of the 6th Division, which led the charge into Nanjing, had “brutally gone on killing Nanjing civilians day after day.”
Those concerned were shocked that the Miyakonojo Regiment, renowned for its distinguished service in both the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, had been slandered and smeared in this way, and they protested both to the Miyazaki bureau and to the Asahi headquarters.
It was later found that the severed-heads photograph had actually been taken in Lingyuan, Manchuria, when Chinese troops executed bandits.
It also became clear that the “private diary of a first-class soldier,” which served as the basis of the account, had been fabricated after the war.
Yet Daisuke Nakamura, the Miyazaki bureau chief, reportedly shouted back, “How dare you say such things to the great Asahi?” and, “Get out.”
Still, the situation was unfavorable for them.
Then an ex-military officer of firmly established identity brought in the billowing-smoke photograph and said, “There is no doubt this was poison gas warfare I saw in central China.”
Akira Fujiwara, a Hitotsubashi University professor who had graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and had commanded troops in the Ichigo Operation in China, also testified, “Yes, this is poison gas.”
Whether Watanabe actually said, “There, you see? The Japanese military really was brutal,” I do not know.
In any event, it was an article confidently condemning the Japanese military as brutal.
◎They themselves spoke of “the great Asahi.”
However, Sankei Shimbun ridiculed it, saying, “Poison gas is colorless and odorless and drifts along the ground,” and, “If it rises in thick black billows, it couldn’t kill even a crow.”
They mocked it as a lie that could fool only babies.
In those days, newspapers did not report one another’s scandals.
Criticizing an article in another paper was taboo among taboos.
Watanabe was stunned, and Akimi Satake, the department head responsible for the article, stormed into Sankei and hurled abuse at Masayuki Takayama, the desk editor in charge, saying, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” and then added, “You’ve got some nerve defying the great Asahi,” and, “We’ll crush Sankei Shimbun.”
“The great Asahi,” indeed.
The same line as bureau chief Nakamura in Miyazaki.
It is slightly comical.
Yet despite Satake’s angry visit, the billowing-smoke photograph carried by Asahi was, just as Sankei had reported, merely a smoke screen used during the river-crossing operation at the Shin’an River south of Dongting Lake.
If it serves self-denigration, they will even abandon the honor of having graduated from the Army Academy and tell lies.
It became very clear how much Akira Fujiwara wanted to enter the Science Council run by the Communists.
That amusing backstory may be revealing, but for Watanabe of Asahi it was no laughing matter.
For the paper’s signature “the Japanese military was evil” line, having two fabricated stories exposed in quick succession was a major disgrace.
Thus Watanabe was forced to resign for publishing lies that could be exposed.
His successor, Toichiro Ichiyanagi, ordered that they should at least write lies that could never be exposed, but he failed to enforce that even in the photo department.
As a result, a photographer, as usual, scratched “KY” onto coral in Iriomote Island, and an article about “shameless Japanese people today” was published, costing Ichiyanagi his position as well.
After that, Asahi placed “lies that will not be exposed” at the top of its editorial policy and warned its reporters accordingly.
But Asahi reporters do not conduct interviews in the first place.
Because they do not report, they write from imagination.
Whatever the president may say, it is a constitution that can produce nothing but lies.
That is why they fabricated a fictitious conversation between Yasuo Tanaka and Shizuka Kamei, claimed that Shinzo Abe had pressured an NHK program, and even plagiarized Yomiuri articles because they could not write their own.
The only thing that changed from before was this.
If presidents resigned over false articles, there would have to be a new president every day.
So it was decided that from then on, no president would ever resign over mere false reporting.
◎They brandish the “40-year principle” for nuclear plants.
There was another method as well.
If they wrote something outright, it would become a lie, so they began having reporters write everything as a “suspicion.”
Moritomo and Kake Gakuen were all simply “suspicions,” so no matter what they wrote, it would not count as a lie.
Another trick was to write articles that were half false, in order to deceive foolish readers.
For example, plutonium obtained from spent fuel from light-water reactors does not cause a nuclear explosion.
That is why there was the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, KEDO, which was to make North Korea scrap its “graphite reactors that produce Pu for nuclear weapons” and instead provide it with two light-water reactors.
But because “foolish readers do not know this,” Asahi kept writing in editorials and articles that “Japan possesses enough Pu for 6,000 nuclear bombs.”
This column pointed that out.
It had quite an effect.
The lie of “6,000 nuclear bombs” disappeared from Asahi’s pages.
I hear that Kiyoki Nemoto, the editorial chief, ordered that “once a lie is exposed, do not use it.”
And so now they have switched to a new lie.
That is the “aging nuclear plants, 40-year principle” line.
It appeared in the editorial of November 26, 2020.
It is true that 40 years had indeed been treated internationally as the service life of light-water reactors.
However, the local community of Takahama Nuclear Power Plant agreed to operation beyond 40 years.
The editorial harshly condemned that.
But the world is moving beyond a 40-year limit, toward 60 or even 80 years.
Asahi does not write that, and instead brandishes the “40-year principle” to frighten readers into thinking this is extremely dangerous.
It is an outright lie.
There is one more point Asahi never touches.
Since they were built, Japan’s reactors have repeatedly been shut down not only for periodic inspections, but also for minor malfunctions, for earthquakes, and whenever Asahi made a great uproar.
So even after 40 years, their actual operating time amounts to less than five years.
They are like new cars.
And yet Asahi calls them “aging nuclear plants.”
Such calculated lies must not be tolerated.