Published on April 17, 2019.
This piece criticizes the anti-Japan reporting structure of postwar Japanese media by examining coverage of alleged poison gas weapons, the uncritical acceptance of Chinese claims, and the refusal of Asahi Shimbun reporters and editors to verify Keiko Ochiai’s remarks about family registration.
Pointing to the same pattern seen in the Seiji Yoshida reporting, it questions the responsibility of journalism that has harmed both Japanese taxpayers and the national interest.

2019-04-17
The reason why Chinese who entered the country illegally can casually send their children to school is that Japan did not examine such matters.
The article says it was handled by reporter Misako Takahashi, but why did she not investigate it and point out the lie.
I am republishing the chapter I originally posted on 2018-10-22 under that title.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
False reporting seen in poison gas weapons coverage.
After the last war, the Japanese military surrendered, was disarmed, and handed over all its weapons to the Allied forces.
The same was true on the Chinese mainland.
Materials unearthed by Masanori Mizuma in 2007 and also confirmed by the Ministry of Defense state that “tear gas shells and other weapons were handed over in Shanghai to Chinese Army First Lieutenant Chen Yonglu,” and similar documents showing the transfer of weapons to the Allied forces on the continent have also been found in the Siberia Museum in Yamagata Prefecture.
Nevertheless, the Mainichi Shimbun runs articles along the lines of, “A lawsuit was filed in the Tokyo District Court claiming that 44 Chinese were killed or injured by poison gas weapons abandoned by the Japanese military in Qiqihar.”
They were neither poison gas nor abandoned weapons.
By pandering to such groundless claims made by Chinese, the Asahi and the Mainichi have ultimately steered the Japanese government, that is to say Japanese taxpayers, into paying as much as 60 trillion yen for the disposal of so-called abandoned poison gas weapons.
They report with intent while knowing it is false.
This is not the sort of thing that can be called a mere error in reporting.
It may rightly be called a malicious anti-Japan act of terror carried out in the name of journalism.
That kind of malicious poison is also hidden in columns that appear harmless and friendly.
One such example was the interview with Keiko Ochiai that appeared in the Asahi last month.
She came from being a Bunka Hoso personality with the nickname “Lemon-chan.”
She marketed her cuteness, and when that began to fade, she quickly shifted to Shukan Kinyobi.
Perhaps her role was that of the silly big sister of the baby-boomer generation.
What she talks about is anti-war peace, anti-nuclear weapons, and anti-nuclear power.
No thought at all is required.
If she simply repeated the same things, she could pass as a progressive cultural figure.
The same was true in this interview.
She speaks of love, and she speaks of anti-war and peace.
For 50 years she has gone on repeating the same lines without change.
What a carefree thing that is.
It also connects to the major false reporting of Seiji Yoshida.
But there was a passage like this in it.
“At that time public schools, junior high schools and high schools, required the submission of a family register.”
“My mother searched for a school that did not.”
For a moment I thought she might have been an illegal entrant with no family register, or someone who grew up in a household that concealed its origins like Renho, but then I remembered that she was what used to be called a child born to a kept woman.
At that time, children of mistresses of the sort evoked in the phrase “a pine tree seen over a stylish black fence” were actually quite common even in public schools.
Such a thing was not an issue at all.
And yet she says, “Public schools required submission of the family register.”
If that were so, it would expose the fact that she had a different surname from her father and was the child of a mistress.
Then she continues by saying that her mother struggled and sent her to a private school.
But this is strange.
A little checking would make it clear.
Back then as now, to enter a public school all one needed was a resident certificate showing the school district.
The reason why Chinese who entered the country illegally can casually send their children to school is that Japan did not examine such matters.
Why does she tell such an obvious lie.
The article says it was handled by reporter Misako Takahashi, but why did she not investigate it and point out the lie.
And any desk editor in charge would normally think that something was odd about it.
If so, that person should have pointed it out and had it checked.
At the Asahi, since the days of Seiji Yoshida, they did not do the work of verifying things.
That is how they committed a major false report, and Kimura Tadakazu offered up his head.
The current Masataka Watanabe said that he would swear before God to verify things.
But this time again, neither the reporter nor the desk did so, and they let Keiko Ochiai’s lie pass through.
This article will continue.