Written on June 26, 2019, this passage, drawing on the late Susumu Nishibe’s The Media and National Ruin, sharply probes the structure of agitation, excessive reporting, and distorted reporting repeatedly carried out by the Japanese mass media from the prewar era to the postwar period.
Using examples such as the Manchurian Incident, the 1960 security treaty protests, the Nanjing issue, and the textbook misreporting, it reveals how the media repeatedly failed to reckon with its own errors and continued the same kind of frenzied uproar.

2019-06-26
However, while some major newspapers conducted campaigns in the direction of criticizing the “great massacre,” they have never made clear that it was their own excessive reporting.

The following is from the late Susumu Nishibe’s book Mass Media National Ruin Theory.
All Japanese citizens who can read printed text should at once head to the nearest bookstore to purchase and read it.
People all over the world, through my translation, will come to know that the mass media in your countries are the same.
Why is it that the mass media’s outrageous frenzied uproars are repeated again and again?
If such rule-breaking frenzied uproars by the mass media had occurred for the first time, then it would have to be said that it could not be helped if the public went along with them.
However, if one looks back a little into Japan’s modern history, one finds that media uproars, and moreover uproars so absurd that before long everyone was left bewildered as to what they had even been for, had arisen many times.
For example, at the time of the Manchurian Incident, every newspaper sent cheers for the advance of the Japanese army.
I am neither a “pacifist” nor “anti-militarist,” so I do not wish to say that war is evil in general, but in any case, it is an undeniable fact that the mass media stirred up war.
Or again, when Representative Takao Saitō delivered his anti-military speech in complete isolation, it was also the mass media that joined the military men in clamoring that he should be driven out of the Diet.
Even from a brief glance at prewar history in this way, one can hardly think that war was caused merely by the high-handedness or schemes of a portion of the military.
There are countless cases in which the mass media played an important role as an agitational group for war, and one after another subjected the liberals who resisted it to collective lynching and burial.
About that, the mass media have almost completely wiped their mouths clean.
Nor is the postwar period any exception.
Taking myself as an example, when I was around twenty, as a very young leader among the left-wing extremists opposing the 1960 revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, I was arrested by the police and had to go to court.
After that, by thinking and judging for myself, I reached the conclusion that this revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was justified from Japan’s standpoint, and that neither the theory nor the actions of the left had any legitimacy.
I also expressed that in writing.
Now then, the media of the time also, to a greater or lesser extent,展开了批判 60年安保 のキャンペーンを展開した。
However, even after the historical evaluation that the 1960 security treaty had in fact been beneficial for the Japanese state and the Japanese people became established in Japanese society, the mass media showed no sign of reflecting on their own words and deeds.
There is no end to the examples of excessive reporting or distorted reporting by the postwar mass media.
There have also been many books criticizing that fact.
For example, the so-called Nanjing Massacre incident, in which the Japanese army is said to have massacred 300,000 Chinese, appears to be fabrication, or at the very least, it can no longer be denied that there is a strong possibility of that.
However, while some major newspapers conducted campaigns in the direction of criticizing the “great massacre,” they have never made clear that it was their own excessive reporting.
They do not even make it a subject of discussion.
As a more recent example, the so-called textbook issue was the same.
The mass media reported that in Japanese textbooks, the expression “invasion” had been rewritten as “advance.”
This became the trigger for the Chinese government to criticize Japan, and for Japanese ministers to apologize in response.
Immediately afterward, however, closer investigation revealed that there had in fact been no rewriting of “invasion” as “advance.”
Nevertheless, with the exception of some newspapers, the mass media did not admit that this had been their own false reporting.
There has been an accumulation of other such cases as well, in which the mass media made a great uproar, but once the uproar ended, it became clear that it had been nothing more than a foolish commotion, and indeed one that even included fabricated information.
To be continued in this section.