Written on May 8, 2019, this essay sharply examines the coordination between the Asahi Shimbun and South Korean media, the manufacturing of the comfort women issue as an established fact, and the Asahi Shimbun’s own responsibility for it.
Drawing on a Sankei Shimbun column by Rui Abiru, it argues that the roots of the deterioration in Japan–South Korea relations lay in Asahi’s reporting, from the Seiji Yoshida testimony to the coverage before Prime Minister Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea and the subsequent shifting of editorial arguments.

2019-05-08
If the Asahi is going to criticize Japan’s past in an explanatory article as though it were someone else’s affair, then should it not rather write this instead?
“The comfort women issue itself would never have arisen without Asahi’s reporting.”

This is the continuation of the chapter I published on 2019-03-01 under the title:
“Just before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea in January 1992, the Asahi placed on its front page an article titled ‘Materials Showing Military Involvement in Comfort Stations,’ and ran alongside it an explanatory article containing the following descriptions that were later found to be false.”
As I have mentioned many times, Rui Abiru is one of the very few active newspaper reporters = journalists who possess the highest level of insight in Japan.
The following is from his article published in yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun.
The parts marked with ～ are mine.
South Korea and the Asahi Shimbun.
Strikingly similar methods.
I was impressed by what a splendid piece of coordinated play it was.
I mean the Asahi Shimbun and South Korea.
In its explanatory article in the “Let’s Understand from the Beginning!” column in the morning edition of the 23rd, the Asahi declared the following concerning the March First Independence Movement of 1919, which arose in resistance to Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula.
Toss and attack.
“The issues of former wartime laborers and former comfort women would not have arisen in the first place had there been no Japanese rule.”
Then, on the 25th, the Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo Japanese edition distributed an article with the headline, “Asahi Shimbun: ‘Without Japanese rule, the wartime labor and comfort women issues would not have arisen,’” excerpting that portion from the Asahi article.
Instantly, a scene came to mind of the Asahi skillfully tossing up a volleyball, and South Korea cleanly smashing it.
The two sides are reinforcing one another in the argument that when problems arise between the two countries and South Korea’s criticism of Japan intensifies, Japan is to blame.
But is that really so?
Several years ago, the author parodied a waka poem by Ariwara no Narihira and composed this poor verse.
If only there were no Asahi at all in this world, Japan–South Korea relations would be calm and peaceful.
I replaced “cherry blossoms” in the original poem with “Asahi,” and “the heart of spring” with “Japan–South Korea relations,” but in fact I truly think so.
The reason Japan–South Korea relations have deteriorated this far must lie to a great degree in Asahi’s responsibility for igniting the comfort women issue and for repeatedly, no fewer than eighteen times, publishing and spreading to the world Seiji Yoshida’s falsehood that women were forcibly taken from the Korean Peninsula and made into comfort women.
Based on false articles.
Just before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea in January 1992, the Asahi placed on its front page an article titled “Materials Showing Military Involvement in Comfort Stations,” and ran alongside it an explanatory article containing the following descriptions that were later found to be false.
“It is said that about 80 percent were Korean women.”
“Korean women were forcibly taken under the name of the Women’s Volunteer Corps.”
“The number is said to have been anywhere from 80,000 to 200,000.”
All of these were baseless fabrications, but the shaken Miyazawa Cabinet, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōichi Katō issuing a statement of “apology and reflection,” apologized without even investigating the facts.
Overseas, it was reported that the Japanese government had acknowledged coercion, and Prime Minister Miyazawa, upon visiting South Korea, apologized as many as eight times.
Because the government repeatedly apologized on the premise of Asahi’s false articles, it can be said that the issue was turned into an established fact.
Repeated shifting of the issue.
In the radar lock-on incident involving a Maritime Self-Defense Force patrol aircraft, South Korea denied that the radar lock-on had targeted the patrol plane, and when that became difficult to maintain, it then shifted the issue and claimed that the patrol plane’s low-altitude flight was an act of intimidation.
This South Korean method closely resembles the argument made in Asahi editorials regarding the comfort women issue.
This was what every Japanese citizen with true discernment was thinking, just as Mr. Abiru was.
In the editorial of January 12, 1992, “Let Us Not Turn Our Eyes from History,” the paper flatly asserted forced recruitment as fact, but in the editorial of March 20, 1993, “Japan’s Moral Sense Is Being Tested,” because the forced recruitment theory was beginning to lose ground, it quietly retreated to the conjecture that forced recruitment probably had existed.
In the editorial of March 31, 1997, “Let Us Not Turn Away from History,” it shifted the issue and claimed that whether forced recruitment had occurred was not the point, and in the editorial of June 21, 2014, “Return to the Starting Point for Solving the Problem,” it did not even touch on forced recruitment itself.
Then, in a front-page article dated August 5 of that same year, it went so far as to evade the issue by saying that the focus was women’s human rights.
In this way, it ignored what issue it had originally raised, what arguments it had developed, and how it had influenced Japan–South Korea relations.
If the Asahi is going to criticize Japan’s past in an explanatory article as though it were someone else’s affair, then should it not rather write this instead?
“The comfort women issue itself would never have arisen without Asahi’s reporting.”
(Editorial Board Member and Political Desk Editing Committee Member)