Published on September 12, 2019.
This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s essay “A Country That Only Leeches,” published in Shukan Shincho, discussing the reality of the Korean envoys to Japan, the conflict between Amenomori Hoshu and Arai Hakuseki, and the background of the Japan-Korea co-hosted World Cup promoted by Wakamiya Yoshibumi.
Through the Asahi Shimbun, NHK, pro-Korean journalism, the fiction of Japan-Korea friendship, the comfort women agreement, and the removal of South Korea from Japan’s white list, it critically examines Korea and the Japanese media.

September 12, 2019.
A country that only leeches.
If one were to describe the scholar Amenomori Hoshu in one phrase, perhaps he would be “the Wakamiya Yoshibumi of the Genroku period.”
Wakamiya was the person who served as chief editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s essay titled “A Country That Only Leeches,” published in Shukan Shincho, which went on sale yesterday.
It is a splendid essay that makes anyone nod in complete agreement with my assessment that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
In this essay, he reveals the truth, which not only the Japanese people but people all over the world will learn for the first time, about why the World Cup of some years ago suddenly became a Japan-Korea co-hosted event.
The same is true of the truth about the Korean envoys to Japan.
Regarding the Korean envoys to Japan, in particular, those who control the news department of NHK Osaka must read this with eyes wide open.
That is because they have repeatedly broadcast reports that no true Japanese person could possibly make, claiming that the Korean envoys transmitted culture to Japan.
When the reshuffle of the Abe Cabinet was decided, NHK put on the air, under the name of a street interview, a middle-aged man with a typical expression saying things such as, “There are good people in Korea too, so we should work for Japan-Korea friendship.”
The awfulness of NHK is not merely beyond all common sense; every person of keen insight must have become convinced that those who control NHK’s news department are not, in fact, genuine Japanese.
A Country That Only Leeches.
If one were to describe the scholar Amenomori Hoshu in one phrase, perhaps he would be “the Wakamiya Yoshibumi of the Genroku period.”
Wakamiya was the person who served as chief editorial writer of the Asahi Shimbun.
People may remember him because he died mysteriously in a hotel in Beijing and because he wrote, “Why not give Takeshima to Korea and make it an island of friendship?”
At any rate, he loved that country.
The trigger for his falling into such madness was meeting the real Kim Il-sung.
As soon as he returned to the company, he requested permission and went to Seoul to study the language.
After that, he wrote nothing but pro-Korean material.
In 1995, he wrote in an editorial that the soccer World Cup, which had already been decided to be held in Japan, should be “co-hosted with Korea.”
Miyazawa Kiichi, who blindly followed the Asahi, nodded at this, and unbelievably, it became a co-hosted event.
However, Korea did not have the strength to hold the World Cup.
In the Asian currency crisis that came immediately after the decision, the country itself fell into default.
Wakamiya made a fuss, FIFA’s Chung Mong-joon also ran around, and in the end Japan provided financial support.
That was not all.
Just before the opening, the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred, and amid the ripple of recession that followed, Korea no longer had the money to build stadiums.
When it became clear after all that co-hosting was impossible, Wakamiya made a fuss again, and the former Export-Import Bank of Japan was forced to provide a 200 million dollar loan.
Thus the event was held, but because of Korean rough play and referee bribery, the only thing that remained was the disgraceful name of “the dirtiest World Cup.”
Wakamiya was as devoted to women as he was to Korea.
With that scandal as a parting gift, after leaving the company he finally settled into his long-desired position as a professor at a Korean university.
Until his mysterious death, it was a good life.
Amenomori Hoshu’s life trajectory was so similar that, except for the one point of male homosexuality, he seems almost like Wakamiya’s ancestor.
In his twenties, he was retained by the Tsushima domain, and at the age of 33 he was sent to the Japanese trading post in Busan, where he saw the real Korea.
It was about the same age at which Wakamiya met Kim Il-sung, and in the same way he became deeply absorbed.
At that time, Joseon Korea was in the depths of poverty.
Therefore, whenever there was a succession of Tokugawa shoguns, a mission of 400 envoys in total would come pressing in under the pretext of offering congratulations.
They stayed for a full year, indulged in pleasure, and because they were poor, stole everything from the tableware at their lodgings to bedding and even the hanging scrolls in the alcove.
Arai Hakuseki, who held the rank of senior councillor, was strict with such a band of leeches and ordered that the reception expenses and itinerary be cut in half.
In addition, he demanded that the Korean side flatter the Tokugawa shogun as “King of Japan.”
He treated them like jesters.
At this time, the person in charge of receiving the envoys was Hoshu.
Hoshu, who had said, like Wakamiya, that he had wanted to be born Korean, became furious at Hakuseki’s handling of the matter.
The exchange between the two was truly fierce, but anyone could see that Hakuseki was right.
In the end, the shogunate told the Korean side that they no longer needed to come all the way to Edo and that they would be received in Tsushima.
This is what is known as echihirei.
The envoys, who had leeched from the second shogun Hidetada to the tenth shogun Ieharu, came for the last time in 1811, when they received modest hospitality in Tsushima, and never came again.
The other day, Tensei Jingo took up this Amenomori Hoshu.
Based on the current Japan-Korea quarrel, it began by saying that Hoshu, “caught between the two countries that were particular about prestige and face,” suffered so much hardship that his hair became half white.
No, Japan did not care about face or anything of the kind; it was simply saying, stop coming in a huge group and leeching off us at a cost of one million ryo for reception.
The column also touched on the “King of Japan” matter and said that he “was obsessed with enhancing national prestige,” not even understanding the joke.
It seems to think it has made a sarcastic reference to the Abe administration, which removed South Korea from the white list.
Moreover, while the envoys were leeching, they had no gratitude, saying, “That Japanese people, like filthy beasts, prosper is something to lament and resent” Kim In-gyeom, Nitto Sōyūka.
It is the same as when Japan rescued them from default.
Here, everyone would surely praise Hakuseki’s response.
The column ends with Hoshu’s words: “Do not deceive one another, do not quarrel, and associate with one another through truth.”
Those are words that should be said to a country that trampled on the comfort women agreement, which Japan swallowed after yielding a hundred steps, and then simply pocketed the money.
Putting them in a newspaper read by Japanese people is an insult.