Published on February 22, 2020.
While regarding Sankei Shimbun as the most decent newspaper at present, this essay argues that not all of its articles or reporters are excellent, and criticizes an article by Kuroda that overpraised South Korea’s response to the Wuhan virus while looking down on Japan’s measures.
In light of the sudden increase in infections in South Korea, it discusses the danger of articles written from assumptions without proper investigation or verification, and the problem of Japanese society being misled by academic background and titles.

February 22, 2020
I am convinced that this reporter is a person who, from his youth, has written articles based on assumptions while doing almost no proper investigation or verification.
In general, nothing in this world is 100 percent, and even if Sankei Shimbun is now the most decent newspaper, that does not, of course, mean that everything about it is good or that all of its reporters are the best.
The article the day before yesterday by a certain Kuroda, who is like a permanently stationed correspondent in South Korea, was terrible.
In a fairly large space, he wrote an article that criticized and looked down on Japan, saying that South Korea had succeeded in complete quarantine against the Wuhan virus this time, while he swallowed whole the words of a former high-ranking military officer who is his acquaintance, and probably a close one, and claimed that Japan was no good because it was taking countermeasures only in small installments.
Moreover, the conclusion was terrible.
He proudly wrote to Prime Minister Abe, saying something like, why not learn from President Moon regarding this response?
I am convinced that this reporter is a person who, from his youth, has written articles based on assumptions while doing almost no proper investigation or verification.
Everyone is probably deceived by this man’s only selling point, his graduation from Kyoto University.
There are mountains of people who enter and graduate from Kyoto University.
Just as every world contains both gems and stones, Kyoto University is in fact the same.
I have mentioned several times the inadequacy that appeared in the face of the governor of Niigata Prefecture, who continued to torment insidiously the chairman and president of TEPCO, which had once been one of the companies where Japan’s finest minds found employment.
This man resigned after it was revealed that every time he went to Tokyo, he had made women in the sex industry engage in prostitution.
He too is a graduate of Kyoto University.
The day after Kuroda’s article appeared, television reported news that dozens of infections had occurred in South Korea, that this had become a major negative factor for President Moon’s presidential election in the spring, and that he was now desperately taking countermeasures, so it was truly a poor article.
Today, infections are appearing all at once in the hundreds.
This is no situation in which South Korea can be lecturing Japan.
In the first place, every person of clear insight who read Kuroda’s article must have thought, with what kind of mind is he saying that South Korea, of all countries, has a better quarantine system or sense of hygiene than Japan?
He is suspicious to begin with… a well-read friend said, “In the first place, it is strange that he has remained in South Korea for so long.
Normally, he would have been replaced after several years…”