Published on October 17, 2019.
This chapter, originally published on June 27, 2018, introduces an essay concerning The Disease Called “Anti-Japanese”: Undoing the Brainwashing of the Japanese People by GHQ and the Media.
It discusses the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting stance, the comfort women issue, the Nanjing Incident, and the textbook issue, arguing that reporting which places ideology above fact has worsened Japan’s relations with neighboring countries and gravely damaged Japan’s honor in the world.

October 17, 2019
It was my thought that perhaps I could psychoanalyze Japan’s left wing, including the Asahi Shimbun and progressive cultural figures, that led me to write The Disease Called “Anti-Japanese”: Undoing the Brainwashing of the Japanese People by GHQ and the Media, published by Gentosha.
It is a fact that the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting has complicated relations with neighboring countries and greatly damaged Japan’s honor in the world.
This is a chapter I published on June 27, 2018, under that title.
The following is the continuation of the previous chapter.
Emphasis in the text, other than headings, is mine.
The Disease Called “Anti-Japanese”
I worked as a reporter at the Yomiuri Shimbun for more than twenty years, but I had long harbored strong doubts about the reporting stance of the Asahi Shimbun, which gives priority to ideology over facts.
When I learned that an article concerning Article 9 had been fabricated by the Asahi Shimbun, a feeling close to anger welled up in me, because this was nothing other than a blasphemy against journalism.
At the same time, I also thought that there might be a “mental illness” behind the background in which a newspaper company systematically fabricates articles.
Why do they fabricate?
Or rather, why are they able to fabricate?
As I turned this over in my mind, I remembered what a German historian had once spoken of: “historical research through psychology.”
It was my thought that perhaps I could psychoanalyze Japan’s left wing, including the Asahi Shimbun and progressive cultural figures, that led me to write The Disease Called “Anti-Japanese”: Undoing the Brainwashing of the Japanese People by GHQ and the Media, published by Gentosha.
From Japanese conservatives, one hears voices criticizing the Asahi Shimbun as “masochistic.”
Certainly, even though it is a Japanese media organization, its continual reporting that damages the national interest may naturally appear that way.
However, paradoxical though it may sound, I thought that in fact it may have a stronger “narcissism” than any other organization.
In other words, I formed the hypothesis that the Asahi Shimbun is driven into fabrication by a self-defensive consciousness that says, “We are good Japanese,” different from the “bad Japanese” who do not reflect on the past war, and by a worldview of rewarding good and punishing evil.
When I read this hypothesis, I immediately thought that, for some reason, the mental structure of Tsujimoto Kiyomi—whom NHK broadcasts so often that one becomes sick of it, and who was originally an arrested criminal—makes sense if considered in this way.
When I asked a psychiatrist about this hypothesis, he said, “Certainly, the Asahi Shimbun has many points in common with narcissistic personality disorder.”
Its symptoms can indeed be rephrased as “the disease called anti-Japanese.”
Everyone has narcissism, but when narcissism becomes excessively swollen, it eventually creates friction with those around oneself.
In the case of the Asahi Shimbun, excessive narcissism is causing friction with Japanese society and the Japanese people.
The worst example is the comfort women reporting.
Where articles should have been written on the basis of facts obtained through reporting, the Asahi Shimbun continued for many years to write articles based on the false statements of Yoshida Seiji.
Since it began with lies in the first place, whatever is written can only become fiction.
The reporting concerning the Nanjing Incident and the textbook issue may also have been the result of excessive narcissism, but it is a fact that the Asahi Shimbun’s reporting has complicated relations with neighboring countries and greatly damaged Japan’s honor in the world.
This essay continues.