This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s celebrated column Henken Jizai, which exposes fatal defects in Japan’s postwar diplomacy through the 1987 Korean Air bombing, North Korea’s abductions, and the Bangladesh terror attack.
It sharply questions how Yasuo Fukuda’s posture and the Foreign Ministry’s habitual evasiveness undermined the safety and lives of Japanese citizens.

2019-06-20
One of the customers cried out, “I am Japanese.”
It carried the sense that this had to be some kind of mistake, because it was a pro-Japan country and there were no religious problems there.
But the assailant laughed and shot him dead.

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s renowned column “Henken Jizai,” published in this week’s issue of Shukan Shincho, released today.
I have referred more than once to the stupidity and incompetence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Its foolishness and its utterly lawless way of doing things are too numerous to count, such as recommending to the United Nations those people and groups who go out of their way to travel there and slander Japan in line with anti-Japan propaganda, people who can without exaggeration be called agents of China and the Korean Peninsula…
Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, proves that what I have said is entirely correct.
The Sin of Yasuo Fukuda.
In November 1987, a Korean Air plane flying from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok disappeared over the Indian Ocean.
It was learned that a suspicious Japanese parent and child had gotten off in Abu Dhabi, and the matter became a minor topic even in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
The minister in charge answered, “Korean Air planes often lose their way.
Last time one strayed over Sakhalin and was shot down, and before that one violated airspace on the polar route, was fired upon by Soviet aircraft, and made an emergency landing.”
He did not seem to think it was an act of airline bombing terrorism, but Masayori Sunagawa, a third secretary at the embassy in Bahrain, sensed it immediately.
If that parent and child were suspicious, they would flee abroad at once.
If so, they should come to Bahrain, where one could enter without a visa and from which one could fly anywhere.
He went to the airport and checked the immigration records, and sure enough found that Shinichi and Mayumi Hachiya had entered the country and were staying at a hotel in the city.
He immediately visited the two and checked their passports.
When he contacted the home ministry, it was confirmed in the return reply that the passports were forged.
At midnight, the two left the hotel and were heading for the airport.
He asked his superior to request the local authorities to secure them, but was told, “Leave them alone.”
Sunagawa rushed to the airport and asked the airport police to detain the two.
It was at that time that Kim Seung-il, known as Shinichi, drank poison and died.
Kim Hyon-hui, known as Mayumi, was subdued and secured by police officers.
At that time South Korea was in the middle of a presidential election campaign, with voting only two weeks away.
Roh Tae-woo wanted a Northern terrorist.
If he got one, he could defeat the pro-communist Kim Dae-jung and the others.
Someone, out of consideration, soon had it announced that “Japan has abandoned its claim for custody of Mayumi” (Foreign Affairs Committee, December 8).
Kim Hyon-hui was escorted to South Korea, and Roh Tae-woo was elected.
Two months later, by way of thanks, they informed Japan of the existence of the Japanese-language teacher, Lee Eun-hye.
The North really had been abducting Japanese people.
But South Korea said nothing more than that.
That continued until Koizumi’s visit to North Korea fifteen years later.
In the meantime, a letter from Keiko Arimoto, who had been abducted, reached Japan.
Her family carelessly consulted Takako Doi about it.
After that, all news of Ms. Arimoto abruptly ceased.
If Japan had taken Kim Hyon-hui at that time, the Arimoto family would not have made the mistake of relying on Takako Doi.
Nor would they have been deceived by the Asahi Shimbun or Haruki Wada.
Shortly before Koizumi’s visit to North Korea, Kim Jong-nam came rolling in.
If Japan had obtained testimony from Kim Hyon-hui, then even Makiko Tanaka would not have quietly let him go, and Jong-nam might also have escaped the fate of being murdered by his half-brother.
It was four years after the Korean Air incident that Associate Professor Igarashi of Tsukuba University, who translated Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, was beheaded and killed.
There was a short-term foreign student who returned from Narita to Bangladesh the day after the incident.
He was unquestionably the culprit.
But if that had been said openly, the image of a pro-Japan country would have vanished, and it would have become seen as a dangerous country of extremists.
So the facts were concealed on the grounds that they would hinder friendship between the two countries.
By the time that had been forgotten, armed Islamic fanatics attacked a restaurant in Dhaka and killed eighteen foreigners, including seven Japanese.
One of the customers cried out, “I am Japanese.”
It carried the sense that this had to be some kind of mistake, because it was a pro-Japan country and there were no religious problems there.
But the assailant laughed and shot him dead.
The Sankei Shimbun reported that a Bangladeshi man who had settled into a position as an associate professor at Ritsumeikan University and married a Japanese woman had, before anyone knew it, become a commander of the Islamic State.
If the true nature of that country had been brought into the open, at the very least one Japanese woman could have been saved.
Yasuo Fukuda said, “We do not do things the other side dislikes.”
The government is the same as Fukuda.
It thinks first about the other country.
For thirty years, the chairman of the Japan-China Youth Exchange Association kept saying that China was a good country.
At worst, its misconduct was merely extorting pillow money from Japanese people seeking connections.
And yet China slapped a spy charge on him and sentenced him to six years in prison.
A corner of tofu suits Yasuo Fukuda well.
The government should have been putting out information at every opportunity that China cannot be trusted and that Bangladesh is dangerous.
That is what would have protected Japanese people.