This article exposes the glaring double standards of Japan’s major media outlets, opposition parties, and so-called civic groups in their selective use of “justice.” While loudly condemning the Toyosu Market relocation over unfounded soil contamination fears, the same actors ignored or reversed their stance in the Toyonaka elementary school land scandal, despite clear evidence of serious contamination. By contrasting these two cases, the essay reveals how political expediency, ideological bias, and international image manipulation drive their narratives—unmasking a profound hypocrisy at the core of Japan’s media and political discourse.

How Far Does Their Mask of Justice Go—How Much Expediency, How Much Double-Dealing Is It Made Of?
2017-03-01

What we are witnessing today is a textbook case of a legal shyster cloaked in moral righteousness—a phenomenon that Japanese television networks are reporting day after day, without realizing that this is precisely what it is.

The moment the appalling conduct of South Korea, beginning with the behavior of Park Geun-hye, was laid bare before the world, forces eager to degrade Japan’s standing in the international arena—Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, so-called cultural figures, the Democratic Party, the Communist Party, and so-called civic groups (many closely connected to resident Koreans in Japan)—set out to insist that Japan is no different from South Korea.
In order to broadcast that claim to the world, they began stirring up matters such as the elementary school issue in Toyonaka.

When it comes to Toyosu—the relocation site for the aging Tsukiji Market, decided upon by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government after many years and already fully constructed—any competent scientist can see from the numerical data that there is no problem whatsoever.
And yet, for example, a female Communist Party assembly member declared in front of television cameras that it constituted a serious health hazard.

Regarding Toyosu, they continued to shout loudly—and still do—that the prospect of losses amounting to hundreds of billions of yen was irrelevant, that the presence or absence of soil contamination was a grave matter that could not be reduced to monetary terms.

And yet, in the Toyonaka elementary school case, despite the fact—acknowledged even in Diet testimony by the Democratic Party lawmaker who acted as the accuser—that local workers were unable even to eat due to the overpowering stench of ammonia caused by massive soil contamination, they now erupt in outrage, insisting that it is outrageous and corrupt that the value of national land was reduced and sold because of soil contamination.

How far, then, does their mask of justice truly extend?
How much sheer expediency, how much blatant double-talk, is it really made of?