Written on May 2, 2019, this text contrasts the welcoming mood among the Japanese public toward the new era name “Reiwa” with the negative tone of the Asahi Shimbun, while discussing the influence the newspaper exerted during the Heisei era and its subsequent decline.
Reviewing the comfort women issue, the abduction issue, the Kōno Statement, and the Moritomo-Kake reporting, it argues that as the Asahi’s false reports and bias were exposed one after another, the Japanese people ceased to listen to its criticism.

2019-05-02
Even if it criticizes the era name in an editorial, many of the people are accepting “Reiwa.”
Whatever Asahi may say, the people no longer lend it their ears.

The following is from this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, which is essential reading for every citizen of Japan.
Asahi,
What exactly is wrong with Reiwa!
Masayuki Takayama, Journalist.
Rubi Abiru, Editorial Writer, Sankei Shimbun.

At the same time as the announcement of “Reiwa,” Asahi reporters and alumni posted astonishing tweets.
Do they hate Reiwa too, simply because they hate Abe.
Is even the era name blamed on Abe?

Takayama.
The new era name turned out to be “Reiwa.”

Abiru.
Most Japanese people are in a welcoming mood toward this era name.
As proof of that, according to a Sankei-FNN opinion poll, 87% gave a favorable impression of “Reiwa”
(as of April 9).
As for the era name system itself, 82.7% answered that it “should be continued.”

Takayama.
Support for the Abe administration is also trending upward.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, “Uncle Reiwa,” is also soaring in popularity.

Abiru.
Among the people, there is a rising spirit of “welcoming a new age.”
“Reiwa” had the effect of renewing people’s hearts.
Last time, “Heisei” was announced in a period of mourning, but this time people were able to accept the announcement of the new era name in a bright atmosphere.

Takayama.
In the midst of that, foreign media were the first to pounce on “Reiwa.”
Reuters said that “rei” is mainly used in the sense of “command, order,” and pointed out that “its authoritarian nuance is giving discomfort to some.”
The English BBC online edition also explained it as the “rei” of command.
Most likely they circulated that on the basis of a “tattling” tip from either the Asahi Shimbun or Kyodo News, people who believe that reporting means finding fault.
In any case, the character rei is used in such words as “young lady” and “honorable wife.”
It carries meanings such as “well-ordered” and “beautiful.”
The government should have attached that sort of explanation to the character.
Then it would not have taken on a vulgar image of coldness and overbearing harshness, almost like the old Democratic Party
(laughter all around).

Abiru.
Quite different from the “nightmare” of the old Democratic Party administration
(laugh).
The linguist Hideho Kindaichi explains that “rei” originally also had the meaning of “the voice of the gods.”

Takayama.
And yet they picked out only the meaning of “command” and developed criticism from there.

Abiru.
As the era name was announced, Asahi reporter Hiroshi Samejima, who is said to have been involved in the false-reporting scandal over the Yoshida testimony concerning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, wrote on Twitter, “Command, directive, order, warrant, daughter, son, wife… words with ‘rei’ in them.
Somehow suffocating.
And when ‘wa’ is attached beneath it, even more suffocating,” offering an incomprehensible impression.
He is also close to Naoto Kan.

Takayama.
Even the era name becomes something the “Anything-is-Abe’s-fault crowd” wants desperately to criticize.

Abiru.
Omitted in the middle.
I can only think that the people at Asahi have gone mad out of their hatred of Abe.

The “filth” of Heisei.

Takayama.
So they are doing “fabrication” even on the internet
(laugh).
The people are already tired of “Heisei.”
Because it is the end of Heisei, people are looking back on it, but it feels as if they are rummaging through “filth,” somehow trying to find something good.

Abiru.
I do have that impression.

Takayama.
The first “filth” was the “high school girl concrete-encasing murder case.”
It was an extremely brutal crime committed by teenage boys, but one of the parents of the youths was Yasuhito Minato, a Communist Party official.
And so the Japan Federation of Bar Associations also took on an insider’s attitude and started saying that because they were juveniles, their opportunity for rehabilitation should not be taken away.
The high school girl had been confined for dozens of days on the second floor of Minato’s house and brutally murdered after abuse, yet even including the son, the sentence was the unbelievably light “indeterminate sentence of not less than three years and not more than four years.”

Abiru.
There were also incidents that shocked society, such as Aum’s “Tokyo subway sarin attack”
(Heisei 7)
and the “Kobe serial child murders”
(Heisei 9).

Takayama.
In between such incidents, Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress visited China
(Heisei 4).
The political use of the Emperor, something that should never happen, was openly carried out by a certain political force.
It was an event symbolizing the Heisei era, in which tradition and sound judgment were shamelessly trampled upon.

The era when Asahi held sway.

Abiru.
I think the first ten years of Heisei were the period when Japan tilted leftward the most.

Takayama.
Rather than leftward tilt, it was “irresponsibilization.”

Abiru.
From Heisei 2 onward, the Asahi Shimbun repeatedly ran comfort-women reporting as if it had gone mad.
Then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa visited South Korea and, not knowing what he was doing, apologized eight times.
Riding that flow, the “Kato Statement” and the “Kono Statement” were born, Morihiro Hosokawa made remarks about a war of aggression, and then the “Murayama Statement” followed after that.

Takayama.
It can be said that Heisei was the age in which Asahi held the greatest sway and monopolized Japan’s politics and diplomacy.

Abiru.
With the formation of the coalition government, Nikkyoso also entered into the interior of the administration, and moves also emerged to take up the comfort-women issue in school textbooks in unity with the Ministry of Education.
In such a setting, in Heisei 9, only then was the “Young Diet Members’ Group for Thinking About Japan’s Future and History Education”
(the history textbook caucus)
finally formed inside the Liberal Democratic Party, centered on Abe and Shoichi Nakagawa.

Takayama.
Then next, the abduction issue surfaced.
Yasuhiko Yoshida
(from NHK to professor at Saitama University)
and Hideo Den
(from Kyodo News to JNN caster)
were insisting that “there were absolutely no abductions.
It is a South Korean conspiracy.”
And then in Heisei 14, everything turned around 180 degrees.

Abiru.
When the abduction issue came to light, I thought, “At last, the opportunity has come for the people to awaken from the delusion of the Constitution of Japan represented by the words ‘the peace-loving peoples of the world and their good faith and justice.’ ”

Takayama.
Up to that point, all the newspapers had written not “North Korea” but “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

Abiru.
Before Koizumi’s visit to North Korea, the only paper that used the expression “North Korea” was the Sankei.
Even on the very day of Koizumi’s visit, Asahi was still using the term “missing persons” rather than “abduction victims,” constantly watching North Korea’s mood.

Takayama.
Before that, Asahi reporter Masakazu Honda wrote a baseless slanderous article claiming that Abe and Shoichi Nakagawa had intervened in an NHK program and drastically changed its contents.
What I found truly bizarre then was that the Asahi Shimbun gathered scholars and former bureaucrats under its patronage and set up a “fair third-party committee” to deliberate on whether the article had been correct.
If a newspaper company cannot make its own judgments, then it should stop being a newspaper.
Yet no such voices were heard, and sophistry was allowed to prevail.

Abiru.
Until Kim Jong-il admitted the abductions, Asahi had written that “the abduction issue is an obstacle to normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea.”
Even when it was protested by the association of victims’ families, it did not easily correct itself.
After Koizumi’s visit to North Korea, while the caucus on the abduction issue was raising the matter, I once witnessed a female Asahi reporter assigned to the Prime Minister’s Office refer to the abduction caucus as “those ruffians” inside the elevator at the Prime Minister’s Office.
I was appalled, thinking, so that truly is how they see it.

Takayama.
It was the media, beginning with Asahi, that created that distorted understanding of South Korea and North Korea.

Abiru.
Asahi also viewed the history textbook caucus as a target of hostility, as an existence that denied its own views and claims on the comfort-women issue.
But of course, on both the comfort-women issue and the abduction issue, it was Asahi that was wrong.

Defeating Asahi.

Takayama.
The First Abe Cabinet was launched in Heisei 18, but the existing left-leaning journalism crushed the administration in an instant.
After the darkness of Heisei’s first ten years, I had felt as though daybreak had at last begun faintly to come, only for dark clouds to hang over once more, and it left me in deep gloom.
The political world too was greatly bewildered, and there was an atmosphere spreading that Asahi might be a kingmaker.

Abiru.
It can also be said that the effect of Prime Minister Abe’s illness was large.
That is why, after the Democratic Party administration, the establishment of the Second Abe Cabinet in Heisei 24 was, in a sense, something miraculous.

Takayama.
I wrote in my column that it was “heaven’s blessing.”
Just before that, during the party leaders’ debate, when Asahi reporter Hiroshi Hoshi asked Abe, “What do you think of the comfort-women issue,” he answered, “Mr. Hoshi, is that not because your Asahi Shimbun spread the story of Yoshida Seiji, a fraud?”

Abiru.
With that one remark, Mr. Hoshi had no choice but to fall silent.

Takayama.
In front of all the newspaper and television companies lined up there, a man who was to become prime minister the next day pointed to the Asahi Shimbun by name and called it fake news.
When one recalls the postwar political world in which ministers’ heads flew off one after another with ease because of newspaper reporting, it was truly a world-shaking event.
That remark seemed to me like a single ray of the light of good sense shining into Japan’s future, which had been covered in darkness.
At that one remark, the Asahi Shimbun tried desperately to rebut him, but forced comfort-women recruitment was a complete fabrication of the Asahi Shimbun.
Unable even to make excuses, in the end it had to bow its head and delete Yoshida Seiji.
It was the beginning of Asahi’s end.

Abiru.
That exchange was broadcast nationwide.
Afterward, when Prime Minister Abe met Trump at Trump Tower and said, “I defeated Asahi,” I think those were words spoken with a strong real feeling born of a long accumulated struggle.
It can be said that the last ten years of Heisei were the era in which Asahi’s lies were exposed one after another.

Takayama.
It was precisely thanks to Abiru’s articles that the lies of the Yoshida testimony and the lies of the comfort-women testimonies were exposed.
It was like cutting Asahi’s two Achilles tendons.

Abiru.
They had long upheld the Kono Statement, which baselessly acknowledged coercion in recruiting comfort women, but it became clear that this too was a jointly written product of Japan and South Korea.
When Yōhei Kōno announced the founding declaration of the New Liberal Club, it is said that the actual wording was written by Wakamiya Yoshibumi and Takao Iwami of the Mainichi.
In fact, it is true that Mr. Kōno and Mr. Wakamiya were very close.
It is said that Mr. Kōno would read Asahi editorials in the car in the morning and think about how he should speak that day.
Asahi would skillfully use someone like Mr. Kōno and say, “Former Speaker of the House Mr. Kōno says this, does he not.”
According to the commentator Hisayuki Miyake, Mr. Wakamiya had said, “Asahi will pay for Abe’s funeral.”
Mr. Wakamiya himself denied that story.
The truth remained in the bushes, but a former Mainichi reporter who had long known Mr. Wakamiya asked him directly, “All sorts of things are being said, but what is the truth actually?”
Mr. Wakamiya replied, “Hmm, perhaps I said it as a joke.”
So after all he did say it
(laugh).

Takayama.
Asahi did not say it openly, but it was aggressive in the Mori-Kake reporting.
The Mori-Kake issue was, more than Trump’s Russia-gate, a fabricated suspicion without foundation.

Abiru.
There is no doubt of that.
Perhaps because of the influence of the internet, Asahi’s authority no longer carries weight now.
Even if it criticizes the era name in an editorial, many of the people are accepting “Reiwa.”
Whatever Asahi may say, the people no longer lend it their ears.

The rest omitted.