Published on September 18, 2019.
This essay discusses the Asahi Shimbun’s editorial, the Moritomo and Kake issues, criticism of the Abe administration, democracy, Diet deliberations, the IR law, and opposition-party boycotts, while introducing an essay by Shinjuku Accountant that argues that the Asahi Shimbun itself is corroding Japan’s democracy and governance.

September 18, 2019.
If they call Moritomo and Kake “problems,” why has the Asahi Shimbun still not reported even one line of the basic information: “When, in what way, and which law did Prime Minister Abe himself violate?”
This is a chapter I published on this day last year, under the title, “China, North Korea, and Others Seem to Have a Mentality of Pretending That the Other Side Is Doing the Very Same Things They Themselves Are Doing.”
September 18, 2018.
Today, I wrote the following and published it.
Since August four years ago, I have stopped subscribing to the Asahi Shimbun.
At first, I continued to subscribe while casually watching it, in order to monitor its biased reporting.
But I thought that this was not my duty, but rather the work of public intellectuals, and so I stopped subscribing decisively.
Therefore, I now know nothing at all about what kind of reporting the Asahi is doing.
Omission.
It is no exaggeration to say that there is no role for Japanese public intellectuals other than to harshly criticize such outrageous articles by the Asahi Shimbun.
I wrote and published that, and just now, while searching the internet, I discovered a person who is fulfilling that role in the internet, the greatest library in human history.
Under the subtitle, “A specialist in financial regulation explains the truth about suspicious currency, the renminbi, and the dangerous reality of the South Korean economy,” a person publishing under the title Shinjuku Accountant’s Political and Economic Review has produced a painstaking work that brilliantly clarifies the strangeness and abnormality of the Asahi Shimbun based on its recent editorials.
It is an essay that all Japanese citizens and people throughout the world must read.
Emphasis in the text, apart from headings, is mine.
[Asahi Shimbun Criticism] It Is Rather the Asahi Shimbun That Causes Democracy to Rot at the Roots.
Recently, when reading Asahi Shimbun editorials, it somehow appears that the toppling campaign this newspaper company has carried out with all its might is coming back at them as a boomerang.
The Asahi Shimbun’s astonishing editorial.
For some time now, this website has begun “watching Asahi Shimbun editorials.”
The reason is not merely that I was influenced by the old saying, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear a hundred battles.”
It is because I feel that, as a web commentator, it is my role to properly monitor the Asahi Shimbun’s sophistry and convey it to people.
What I introduce today is this.
Editorial: The End Result of Abe’s One-Strong Politics — Worrying About the Root Rot of Democracy.
Asahi Shimbun Digital Japanese edition, July 22, 2018, 5:00 a.m.
The title contains the phrase “the root rot of democracy,” and this is not ordinary.
The reason is that democracy is the foundation of Japan, and if the Asahi Shimbun’s claim that it is rotting at the roots is true, then Japan itself is already rotting at the roots.
Specifically, the Asahi Shimbun states that “in the ordinary Diet session closing today, the ruling parties forcibly enacted one after another the work-style reform law, the revised Public Offices Election Law increasing the number of House of Councillors seats by six, and the casino implementation law,” and strongly criticizes this as “a crisis of democracy brought about by the arrogance of Abe’s one-strong politics.”
The phrase “one is left speechless with astonishment” surely applies precisely to this editorial.
There is no such thing as a “casino implementation law,” you know.
There are many things I would like to say to the person who wrote this Asahi Shimbun editorial, but one of them is the fact that there is no law called the “casino implementation law.”
The correct name is the Act on Development of Specified Integrated Resort Districts, commonly called the IR Law.
If it claims to be a news organization, it should at least call it the IR Law.
Also, the Asahi Shimbun editorial heavily criticizes the “forcible enactment of various bills one after another,” but what I would like to ask in return is this: why does the Asahi Shimbun not criticize the opposition parties for taking a self-imposed twenty-day holiday and causing a shortage of deliberation time?
Furthermore,
It says, “Meanwhile, the Moritomo and Kake problems, which deeply damaged administrative fairness and trust in politics, were left on the shelf without anyone taking political responsibility and without the truth being clarified.”
But if they call Moritomo and Kake “problems,” why has the Asahi Shimbun still not reported even one line of the basic information: “When, in what way, and which law did Prime Minister Abe himself violate?”
The culprit causing the nation’s governance to rot at the roots is rather the Asahi Shimbun.
By the way, when one looks at dictatorial states such as China and North Korea, they commonly construct sophistries that make it seem as though the other side is doing what they themselves are doing.
For example, “Japan is unjustly claiming sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, which are China’s inherent territory,” and so on.
So to speak, China, North Korea, and others seem to have a mentality of “pretending that the other side is doing the very same things they themselves are doing.”
The line that the Asahi Shimbun declares in its editorial is as follows.
“We can no longer overlook the current situation in which the harmful effects of a long-term administration backed by a giant ruling party are about to cause the nation’s governance to rot at the roots.”
I too do not deny the point that Japanese democracy is being caused to rot at the roots.
However, in this case, it is not the Abe administration that is trying to cause “the nation’s governance to rot at the roots.”
It is the Asahi Shimbun Company.
The Asahi Shimbun describes the Abe administration’s attitude as “the insincerity of an administration that does not explain,” but “insincerity that does not explain” applies directly to the Asahi Shimbun itself.
It pushes through the “Moritomo-Kake problem” by impression manipulation alone, creates a false image as though Prime Minister Abe were suspicious, and tries to overthrow a government chosen by the people through its own false reporting.
This is a full-fledged coup d’état, and also an act of terrorism.
And the first responsibility for turning the Diet into merely a place where the government and ruling parties are dragged down lies with the mass media, beginning with the Asahi Shimbun, and with the opposition parties, beginning with the Constitutional Democratic Party.
The Asahi Shimbun has entered a new phase.
However, it is also true that the “Moritomo-Kake problem,” over which the Asahi Shimbun and others have made a great fuss for a year and a half, is entering a new phase.
This “Moritomo-Kake problem,” in my view, is a company-staking campaign by the Asahi Shimbun to topple the administration through impression manipulation, but this campaign to topple the administration is now ending in a grand failure.
First, the Asahi Shimbun’s original reporting on the “Moritomo-Kake problem” began with Moritomo in February 2017 and Kake in May of the same year.
After that, in the House of Representatives general election held in October 2017, the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito together won an overwhelming victory, maintaining a force of more than two-thirds.
Is this not evidence that the false reporting being carried out all at once by the mass media is no longer functioning?
As I stated earlier in “Is It Natural to Disapprove of the Cabinet If You Swallow Newspapers and Television Whole?” the reality is that people who “trust newspapers and television most” as information sources have the highest rate of disapproval of the cabinet, while people who “trust SNS, the internet, and so on” have a very high rate of support for the cabinet.
Speaking of the Asahi Shimbun, until now it boasted overwhelming influence as a self-proclaimed “quality paper,” but is this not evidence that such “miraculous power” is peeling away?
In fact, on the internet, including Twitter and anonymous message boards, the Asahi Shimbun’s line of argument is strongly criticized, but perhaps this too can be called natural.
In any case, the Asahi Shimbun editorial says, “The problems surrounding the administration, which have continued to be pursued since last year’s ordinary Diet session, have entered a new phase since this spring,” but I would like to return these words exactly as they are to the Asahi Shimbun Company.
“The Asahi Shimbun’s management crisis will enter a new phase.”