Written on May 20, 2019, this article criticizes the anti-imperial logic expressed in the Asahi Shimbun’s Tensei Jingo column, and sharply questions the paper’s lack of remorse over the enormous damage its fabricated reporting, including the comfort women issue, has inflicted on Japan’s honor and national interest.

2019-05-20
There must have been many Japanese citizens who were utterly appalled that the Asahi Shimbun’s Tensei Jingo＝all Asahi Shimbun employees, even now, are still saying such things.

The following is from yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
There must have been many Japanese citizens who were utterly appalled that the Asahi Shimbun’s Tensei Jingo＝all Asahi Shimbun employees, even now, are still saying such things.
They have inflicted astronomical damage on the taxes＝national wealth of Japan and the Japanese people, and through countless fabricated reports have damaged, to an unbelievable extent, the honor and credibility of Japan and the Japanese people throughout the world, while continuing to provide China and the Korean Peninsula, lands of bottomless evil and plausible lies, with ideal material for anti-Japan propaganda, and yet they have absolutely no remorse for any of this.
Five years ago, in August, we should have ordered the Asahi Shimbun to cease publication, confiscated all the assets of this company in order to compensate, even in part, for the astronomical damage they inflicted upon us, and used a portion of those assets for that compensation.
Not only did we do nothing, but even now, day after day, they continue reporting that demeans Japan, weakens Japan, divides Japan, and keeps Okinawa under the influence operations of China and the Korean Peninsula, so our own foolishness has reached an extreme as well.
Is Asahi’s true intention the “denial of the Emperor system”?
Kadota Ryusho, writer and journalist.
Amid the flood-like Imperial Household reporting spanning the Heisei and Reiwa eras, Asahi’s April 25 Tensei Jingo left me groaning in astonishment.
“Regarding the summer of the year of defeat, the writer Sakaguchi Ango wrote bitterly: ‘The people weep and say that because it is none other than His Majesty’s order, though it is unbearable, they will endure and accept defeat.
You lie.
You lie.
墟をつけ.
Did we, the people, not desperately want the war to end?’
(‘Zoku Darakuron’) ▼ Ango called such conduct of the Japanese people ‘a historical great shadow?’”
Beginning in this way, Tensei Jingo argues, by entrusting itself to Ango’s words, that the people, unable to speak for themselves and instead leaving themselves to the actions and values of authority, were engaging in nothing less than self-deception.
And it goes on to point out that even now, after the Emperor ceased to be the sovereign and became the symbol, that mental structure is still being “dragged along.”
It also arbitrarily infers that the Emperor’s visits to battle sites at the time “were probably attempts to ensure that Japan’s history of aggression would not be forgotten,” and states, “There is a phrase, ‘leave-it-to-others democracy.’
It refers to obeying politicians and bureaucrats without even going to vote.
In the same way, have we not neglected to think about extremely important matters by leaving them to the ‘duties of the symbol’?
Through the institution of the Emperor system, a mechanism somewhat different from democracy ▼ have we not vaguely revered and at times relied upon authority 田来する from heredity?
Might the time not have come when such an attitude should gradually be changed?” and thus it severely denounced the people.
It is quite a way of speaking.
Their Majesties certainly visited battle sites and bowed their heads deeply.
The people, thinking of the grief and frustration of those who lost their lives there, felt the spirit of mourning from their backs.
Yet according to the Tensei Jingo writer’s interpretation, that was supposedly done “so as not to forget the history of Japan’s aggression.”
It also says that we should stop revering and relying upon the authority derived from the “heredity” of the Emperor system.
I have scarcely seen such a severe criticism of the Emperor system in recent times.
The Emperor (at that time) fulfilled the duty of praying for the peace and happiness of the people.
Japan, which values order and tradition, preserved the Emperor system over a span of two thousand years, and before anyone knew it, Japan became “the oldest nation in the world.”
Yet Asahi now says that we should stop revering it.
Come to think of it, Asahi was also the one that most strongly objected when, for the first time, the source of a new era name was sought not in Chinese classics but in a Japanese text.
On the contrary, I would like to ask Asahi this.
If you dislike Japan that much, why do you remain in Japan forever?