A detailed English summary of Takayama Masayuki’s explosive WiLL column (pp.84–93). The article exposes the true nature of Japan’s old media: Jiji Press’s “Let’s lower Takaichi’s approval rating” remark, the long history of Asahi Shimbun’s fabrications (coral vandalism, poison-gas lies, Yoshida Testimony false scoop), and the structural arrogance that prevents reform. Takayama recounts how Asahi’s authority is finally weakening—libraries now refuse their requests—and reveals why his 23-year “Henken Jizai” column ended after coordinated media attacks. A must-read analysis of Japanese media corruption.

Old media dissing Takaichi: “Let’s drag down her approval rating!”
The remark about “crushing Takaichi” reflects exactly how today’s Jiji Press political reporters think.

A sorrowful age.
Sanae Takaichi has been elected the new LDP president.
It is truly a cause for celebration, but the mass media have already begun attacking her.
On October 7, Takaichi arrived late to a press conference venue.
Voices from among the waiting press corps—“What the hell,” “Let’s lower her approval rating,” “We’ll only publish photos that make her numbers go down”—were picked up by mics that were still live and spread on social media.
The imprudent remarks were later identified as coming from a Jiji Press cameraman, and Jiji announced that he had been “severely reprimanded.”
Because it was a cameraman and not a reporter, public criticism seemed to end at a moderate level, but that is wrong.
Cameramen are easily influenced—absorbing the attitudes—of the reporters they always accompany.
A good example is the Asahi Shimbun’s fabricated coral-damage incident.
In 1989, Asahi cameraman Honda Yoshiro dived into the waters off Iriomote Island and carved “KY” into a colony of acropora coral.
It was part of a project to report on “villains who damage the environment.”
A reporter sought material that perfectly fit that theme, and Honda, fully understanding that desire, carried out the fabrication.
Delighted to see the perfect photo, reporter Furihata Kenichi sneered, “The Japanese may now be the world’s foremost people when it comes to scribbling on things,” and, “To damage something nurtured over a hundred years in an instant without shame—what a spiritually impoverished, degraded people.”
Asahi, whose trademark is anti-Japan sentiment, had long used execution photos of Manchurian bandits to claim “the Miyakonojo Regiment committed a massacre in Nanjing,” and whenever a photo of thick smoke appeared, they wrote, “The Japanese Army used poison gas in central China,” endlessly defaming and slandering the Japanese.
As the coral vandalism incident shows, cameramen are always aligned with what the reporters think.
Thus, Jiji Press cameramen also act according to the thinking of the reporters who accompany them.
When they bluff, they see themselves as political reporters.
This latest “Let’s crush Takaichi” remark expresses bluntly what current Jiji political reporters actually think.
I myself was a Sankei reporter until two decades ago and observed Jiji Press and Kyodo News closely.
To put it plainly, Kyodo is redder than the Communist Party.
It is the lowest kind of news agency, currying favor with China and North Korea.
If you read the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, for which Kyodo writes the editorials and columns, you immediately see how awful it is.
In contrast, Jiji once had people like Takubo Tadae and Yayama Taro.
Its articles were sound.
But now it competes with Kyodo in disparaging Takaichi and desperately trying to please China.
When Chinese-born actress Gao Yoko said on TV, “It’s fine even if China rules Japan,” it never became an issue.
Jiji is simply adjusting itself to such trends.
What a sorrowful age this has become.

No decent reporters remain.
In the coral fabrication incident, Asahi behaved disgracefully.
When a local diver said that “there were no carvings before Asahi came,” contradicting the article, Asahi shouted back, “How dare you speak like that to the great Asahi!”
The Asahi is not delivered in the Yaeyama region.
Locals had no awe toward Asahi’s prestige, so they simply repeated that Asahi had written lies.
Asahi puffed itself up and kept whining excuses.
A few years prior, Asahi had run a front-page spread titled “This is the Japanese Army’s poison-gas operation,” but Sankei exposed it as fake.
Asahi’s bureau chief Satake Akimi stormed into Sankei’s newsroom and tried to intimidate them, but Sankei’s criticism was proven correct.
It turned out Asahi had used a photo of a smoke screen lit on a battlefield and, with the cooperation of Prof. Fujiwara Akira of Hitotsubashi University, who lied, claimed “Yes, this is poison gas,” to defame the Japanese Army.
Asahi President Watanabe Seiki lost his job for that.
With the aftereffects still lingering, when it became known that Asahi had again fabricated anti-Japanese reporting, other newspapers began to denounce it.
After a month of disgraceful excuses, Asahi finally admitted the self-fabrication and both the cameraman and President Ichiyanagi Toichiro resigned.
Oddly, Furihata—who had insulted innocent Japanese people—was not punished.
He continued to revile Japanese people over nuclear-power issues.
Two successive presidents resigned over maliciously false reporting.
Under normal circumstances, Asahi would change its credo of “lies don’t matter,” but it never reflects.
That is because Asahi has no decent reporters.

Arrogant Asahi.
Reporters at newspapers other than Asahi learn from their rookie years to respect field reporting and value humility and sincerity.
The first step is “face-collection”—visiting the family of a child who died in an accident to request a photo for publication.
If you speak carelessly, you are thrown out.
One must mind manners, consider the family, and push through gently—arrogance is impossible.
But Asahi reporters were different.
They simply called and said, “It will appear in the Asahi.”
Families wept with gratitude and waited with photos in hand.
There was indeed a time when society revered Asahi’s authority.
Because of that, Asahi reporters never learned manners and grew up arrogant.
A personal story: when I, as a bureau reporter, was rushing by car to meet a deadline, I was pulled over by police.
No matter what I said, the officer took his time and issued the ticket.
But if an Asahi car was stopped under similar circumstances, the officer, upon seeing the Asahi flag fluttering on the car, “would escort them with the patrol car,” as described in Nagasaka Kiyoshi’s book Thirty-Six Years of a Reporter’s Life (Shincho Bunko).
The book also contains the story of the “Hokuriku Electric Power Incident.”
The labor union of Hokuriku Electric Power whispered to the Asahi bureau that “the company is investigating reporters’ political leanings (anti-nuclear, etc.).”
Asahi reporters did not verify a thing.
They ran it verbatim on the national front page: “Hokuriku Electric Power discriminates among reporters by ideology.”
In reality, it was only to distinguish whether a reporter belonged to the electric-power press club.
Club reporters study thoroughly; otherwise they have to be taught from scratch.
The distinction matters.
Hokuriku Electric protested, but Asahi replied arrogantly, “It’s already published, too bad.”
They even forced Hokuriku Electric to apologize for “using confusing labels.”
Arrogant, barely reporting, full of lies—and when exposed, they never apologize.
During the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, a Hitachi affiliate brought the “Yoshida Testimony” to Asahi.
It was an exclusive scoop; they could have simply printed it.
Instead, without any investigation, they wrote “700 TEPCO workers fled,” a fabricated exclusive.
While the world was praising the TEPCO workers who stayed with courage at a dangerous nuclear plant, Asahi’s priority was “to smear the Japanese.”
Asahi even submitted the piece for the Newspaper Association Award, but Sankei quickly exposed the lies; the “scoop” was declared a false report and the reporter resigned.
This was the epitome of “Asahi reporters who do not investigate,” and “If the facts are insufficient, fill the gap with lies.”
Those who made Asahi reporters so arrogant are the people who overestimated the Asahi—symbolized by the figure who brought the Yoshida testimony.

The Asahi’s divine authority no longer works.
But even society, which once trembled before Asahi, is changing.
Asahi editorial writer Tadama Emi wrote a column seething with anger that she had been “refused access to materials.”
Asahi, as Watanabe Shoichi once said, “writes as if Koreans are writing it”—a newspaper with a quasi-religious anti-Japanese belief.
Tadama went to Niigata to investigate the Korean claim that “Koreans were forcibly mobilized at the Sado Gold Mine,” which aims for World Heritage status.
At the prefectural library, she said, “I’m from Asahi. Bring me such-and-such documents.”
After a long wait, she was told, “We cannot say whether such materials exist.”
They knew Asahi would just fabricate another Korean-abuse story.
Tadama was shocked and enraged that Asahi’s demands had been rejected.
She retaliated by attacking these “foolish people” in her column.
She likely believes the librarian who refused her has already been fired.
Just like the Satake bureau chief in the poison-gas scandal—almost yakuza-like behavior.
But the very fact that such an authoritative Asahi had “never been refused at a counter before” says a lot.
Asahi’s divine authority has stopped working.
It felt like hearing something very encouraging.

This time, even my own column “Henken Jizai” in Weekly Shincho ended because of Asahi.
For 23 years I told Asahi, “Stop being stupid and lying,” admonishing reporters by name who wrote lies without shame, and repeatedly stressed the importance of factual reporting.
“Creation of Soshi-Kaimei 2.0” (July 31, 2025 issue) was written for the same purpose, dealing with “alias names” often used by Asahi.
People who aren’t even Japanese pretend to be Japanese and spread malicious lies.
I warned Asahi to “make writers reveal their true identities.”
Asahi then attacked me mercilessly in an editorial, calling it “discrimination.”
They even argued that aliases are “self-defense because Zainichi Koreans will be bullied if discovered.”
I have never once heard of such bullying.
The Mainichi and Tokyo Shimbun—always following Asahi’s lead—also joined in and attacked me in their editorials.
Zainichi-related groups also made noise.
When Asahi picked a fight with Watanabe Shoichi, strange “human-rights groups” stormed into Sophia University classrooms and shut down his lectures.
As long as one follows Asahi’s authority, people believe any violent act is permitted.
Such people eventually stormed Shinchosha, and the magazine asked me if the column could be suspended.
For 23 years I had sacrificed every weekend—Saturday for manuscript submission, Sunday for proofreading.
My remaining youth was short, so instead of suspension I requested the column be ended.
Shinchosha has published 18 volumes of Henken Jizai, but due to these circumstances, even the 19th book scheduled for this fall was left in limbo.
Fortunately, WAC will publish it, and it will be released in mid-November.
The title is To You, Despicable Liars!—effectively the final volume.
Asahi knows very well who the “despicable ones” are.
(To be continued.)