May 1, 2016

The other day, news broke that a man whose abnormal behavior when he appeared on Hōdō Station I had written about before had suddenly died in Beijing.
It was Hirofumi Wakamiya, one of the most abnormal journalists in the history of the Asahi Shimbun.
I could not take at face value the news that he had been found dead in the bathroom of the room where he was staying in Beijing and that he had apparently died of illness.
As my friends and readers know, I am not a contrary person at all.
There must be many people who, like me, wondered whether he had been eliminated.
Kazuo Asami, a Mainichi Shimbun reporter, was the first person to embolden China to this extent—or to grant absolution to China’s lies.
At a time when it was beginning to become clear that the articles he had written were fabrications, and when he had lost his place within his own company and was finding it difficult to remain in Japan, his entire family was allowed to live in Beijing, provided with a life lacking nothing, and his beloved daughter was admitted to Peking University.
After her graduation, she was allowed to conduct business with the support of the government and enjoy a prosperous life.
This was done by the Chinese government to ensure that he would never admit in his own words that his reporting had been fabricated.
Since August two years ago, the Asahi Shimbun had maintained its approach of saying virtually nothing critical of South Korea, but its tone toward China had begun to change.
It had begun, however inadequately, to publish articles containing criticism.
There was that, and there was the fact that Xi Jinping had begun tightening his control over speech.
Or perhaps Wakamiya knew some decisive fact about the relationship between the Chinese government and the Asahi Shimbun, or was himself involved, and it was necessary to prevent him from confessing it or writing a book about it.
Needless to say, that would have been fatally inconvenient for the Chinese government.
Or perhaps China’s equivalent of the CIA and FBI had detected that Wakamiya had already begun saying something.
Or perhaps a threat was issued to the Asahi, which had begun publishing criticism of China, in a form its editorial writers would understand immediately.
I could only read this news in that way—by looking at it in reverse.