Published on July 15, 2019.
Through Yoshiko Sakurai’s serialized column, this article criticizes The Asahi Shimbun’s attacks on the Abe administration, its reporting on Japan’s stricter export controls toward South Korea, and its anti-Abe campaign before the House of Councillors election. It records the author’s strong warning that continuing to subscribe to Asahi damages Japan’s national interest and has helped permit the arrogance of China and the Korean Peninsula.

July 15, 2019.
It is precisely the people who subscribe to this newspaper who have been holding Japan back…and not only have they continued to permit the arrogance of China and the Korean Peninsula.
After reading the following serialized column by Yoshiko Sakurai, I truly cannot help feeling ashamed that I subscribed to The Asahi Shimbun until August five years ago.
The behavior of The Asahi Shimbun that Ms. Sakurai teaches us below exposes to the whole world that this company is populated only by the lowest kind of vulgar men and vulgar women.
At the same time, even now, it is precisely the people who subscribe to this newspaper who have been holding Japan back…
Not only have they continued to permit the arrogance of China and the Korean Peninsula,
They are people about whom it is no exaggeration at all to say that they are traitors who have continued to sell Japan to them,
And they are people who have gone along with “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
They are the people who have stopped the progress of The Turntable of Civilization,
And who have created today’s extremely dangerous and unstable world.
If you do not want to suffer the torments of King Enma in hell,
You should immediately stop subscribing to The Asahi Shimbun,
And switch to regular subscriptions to the four monthly magazines that are required reading,
And to a subscription to The Sankei Shimbun.
For a person living in the twenty-first century to know the truth,
There is no other path.
As the election approaches, Asahi’s criticism of Abe intensifies.
On July 4, the House of Councillors election was officially announced, and the whole world is filled with election news.
Amid this, the anti-Abe reporting of The Asahi Shimbun stands out.
On the front page of the July 7 edition, an article bearing the byline of Matsuda Kyōhei, deputy editor of the political news department, appeared.
Under the title, “Will We Continue the Politics of Mockery?” it criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as follows.
The content was that “Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mocks and disparages the opposition by comparing it with the failures of the Democratic Party administration. Gathering only with his own circle, he sneers. There emerges a consciousness that he stands above the other side, looks down on them, and excludes them,” that “the ‘politics of mockery’ has been allowed to prevail for six and a half years,” and that “if the ‘politics of mockery’ continues as it is, democracy will not function.”
It seems that the emotion of hatred toward Abe is blazing fiercely.
But if one looks at reality, is it not the case that many citizens feel that the three years or so of the Democratic Party administration were a “nightmare”?
It is not that the prime minister is “gathering only with his own circle and sneering.”
As proof of this, after losing power, the Democratic Party’s support rate only continued to fall.
That is why, before the House of Representatives election in October 2017, they finally all tried to flee under Yuriko Koike.
However, after being excluded, the Constitutional Democratic Party was born, and after many twists and turns, the Democratic Party for the People was also born.
Precisely because the people feel deeply in their bones that they do not want the “nightmare” of the Democratic Party administration to return, the Liberal Democratic Party continued to receive the support of the people in multiple elections afterward.
Nevertheless, if these six and a half years had merely been a period in which the Abe administration practiced “politics of mocking” the Democratic Party, there is no way the people would support Abe.
It is Asahi’s excessively distorted view itself that “mocks” the will of the people and shows its arrogance.
At any time, an election is an important matter that determines the course of national politics, but the House of Councillors election on the 21st of this month carries special importance.
That is because, depending on the result, it will be decided whether the constitutional revision expected of the prime minister will become possible, or whether it will be postponed and in effect become impossible.
Besides the Constitution, important issues such as the economy, pensions, North Korea and the abductions, and the Imperial Household are piled up.
The Asahi Shimbun probably dislikes the idea of Prime Minister Abe tackling these issues, especially constitutional revision.
It is fair to see this as leading to its abnormal criticism of Prime Minister Abe.
The July 3 “Tensei Jingo” is a tremendous example of this.
Comparing the prime minister to a dog.
In that column, the Tensei Jingo writer wrote that “yawning is contagious.”
It then connected this to the statement that “just like the trade war the United States has launched against China, the Japanese government has embarked on export restrictions against South Korea.”
While saying that “there are problems on the South Korean side as well,” it dismissed the Abe administration’s measure as “misdirected” and developed the following vulgar criticism.
“Incidentally, human yawns apparently spread to dogs as well. There is research showing that dogs are especially easily influenced by owners to whom they are loyal. In the case of the Japanese government, is it closer to this?”
Is it comparing the Abe administration, that is, Prime Minister Abe, to a dog?
Such discourtesy is not permissible toward anyone.
But Asahi probably thinks that any vulgar criticism is permissible when directed at the prime minister.
Is this very sensibility not the gaze of someone who believes that “he stands above the other person and looks down” on him?
On the same day as this discourteous Tensei Jingo, Asahi carried an editorial titled “Immediately Withdraw the ‘Retaliatory’ Export Restrictions Against South Korea.”
It wrote as follows.
“Is Japan also going to join the foolishness brandished by the United States and China in recent years? Measures that distort the principles of free trade should be withdrawn immediately.”
The Asahi editorial writer places the “strengthening of export restrictions” against South Korea on the same level as the case in which China once stopped exports of rare earths over the Senkaku issue, and the case in which the Trump administration raised tariffs on steel and other goods on national-security grounds, and then condemns Prime Minister Abe’s measure.
The order has become reversed, but it was on July 1 that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced that, “from the standpoint of appropriately implementing export controls, it will apply strict operation of the system to exports bound for the Republic of Korea.”
First, although South Korea had until now been regarded as a “white country,” procedures would begin to remove South Korea from that list.
Second, from the 4th, three items—fluorinated polyimide, resist, and hydrogen fluoride—would be excluded from the comprehensive export permission system and subjected to individual export screening.
On July 1, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Sekō cited as the reason for these measures that “inappropriate cases had occurred in export control,” but regarding the details of the “inappropriate cases,” he said there was a “duty of confidentiality” and did not provide a concrete explanation.
The METI announcement immediately drew reactions from many quarters.
One of these was an explanation by Masahiko Hosokawa, specially appointed professor at Chubu University and former director of METI’s Trade Control Department.
He explained that this was not “the invocation of export restrictions,” but merely a return to the ordinary procedures that existed until 2003, reversing the simplified procedures that had favored South Korea since 2004.
Originally, individual permission is required for each contract, but if a country is regarded as reliable in terms of export control, it is designated a “white country” and export procedures are simplified.
In that case, it becomes possible to obtain a comprehensive permission valid for three years, allowing exports at any time.
Unreasonable criticism of the government.
Prime Minister Abe has also stated repeatedly.
“This is not an export ban. It has nothing to do with the issue of former requisitioned workers, or Korean wartime laborers. We have merely returned to the original form the preferential measures that had been granted to South Korea until now. EU countries did not originally treat South Korea as a white country, and Japan is taking the same policy toward South Korea as the EU.”
The prime minister emphasized this, but as of the 7th, he had still not explained the “inappropriate cases” that Sekō spoke about at his press conference.
On the other hand, Hosokawa clearly states that cases in which the aforementioned items exported to South Korea are diverted to North Korea are occurring frequently, or rather have become routine, according to “Nichiyō Hōdō THE PRIME” on July 7.
If the aforementioned substances, which can also be diverted to military purposes, are being diverted to North Korea, it is only natural to remove South Korea from the white-country list.
What I want to emphasize again is that this measure merely returned the procedure from comprehensive permission to individual permission.
In its editorial on the 3rd, Asahi compared it with China’s export ban on rare earths, but that comparison itself is off the mark.
Another mistake in Asahi’s editorial is that it regards this measure as retaliation by the Japanese government for the issue of Korean wartime laborers.
This measure has no relation whatsoever to the so-called requisitioned workers issue.
Therefore, Asahi’s accusation that the Abe administration “brought political conflict into economic exchange” does not apply.
Its claim that “efforts should be hastened to seek a breakthrough through senior-level consultations between diplomatic authorities” is also off the mark.
First of all, the Japanese side has continued to call for talks on the requisitioned workers issue, but the South Korean side has not responded.
Asahi’s unreasonable criticism of the government is probably nothing more than the product of Asahi’s biased ideology, intended to block an Abe LDP victory because it sees such a victory as leading to constitutional revision.