This essay argues that Japan and the Japanese people failed to respond decisively to sustained anti-Japan propaganda by China and South Korea, amplified by fabricated reporting from Asahi Shimbun.
It examines how historical issues have been exploited as Japan’s greatest vulnerability and why silence only strengthened hostile strategies against Japan.

March 7, 2017
Mr. Tetsuhide Yamaoka has published in the current issue of the monthly magazine Seiron a genuine and truly rare scholarly work, spanning eight pages in a three-column layout.
Mr. Tetsuhide Yamaoka was born in Tokyo in 1965.
In 2014, after learning of the movement to install a comfort woman statue in Strathfield, Australia, he founded the Australia-Japan Community Network (AJCN).
Overturning overwhelming odds, he successfully prevented the installation of the statue in that city in 2015.
[Opening passages omitted.]
Sections marked with asterisks are my own.
Of course, speaking the truth is important.
However, that alone is completely insufficient.
Since the so-called “textbook misreporting incident” of 1982, in which it was falsely reported that Japan’s Ministry of Education attempted to replace the word “invasion” with “advance,” China learned that Japan would readily yield when attacked over historical issues.
Since then, China has relentlessly assaulted Japan on historical issues while disregarding factual verification.
It was Asahi Shimbun that sensationalized this lie as a major scoop and splashed it across its front page.
Not only that, Asahi Shimbun also reported this matter to China, thereby inciting attacks against the Japanese government.
Three years ago in August, Asahi Shimbun held a press conference and officially apologized after admitting that two major stories were fabrications: the comfort women reports based on Seiji Yoshida’s lies, which were published sixteen times and spread internationally, and the article concerning Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Director Masao Yoshida.
Afterward, Asahi Shimbun formed a so-called committee composed of individuals it selected itself, and attempted to resolve the matter solely through the resignation of its president.
At that moment, Japan and the Japanese people should have made a firm decision to shut down this newspaper company.
China, a one-party communist dictatorship, and South Korea, which in reality functions as a Nazism-like state, have persistently conducted anti-Japan propaganda in the international arena.
Whether the United Nations, parts of the United States, and parts of Europe have taken this propaganda at face value, or whether they have sought to exploit it to extract money from Japan, in either case, their foolishness and malice should have been denounced loudly by Japan and the Japanese people to the world.
Asahi Shimbun is a newspaper company that has continuously engaged in fabricated reporting, inflicting enormous damage on the honor and credibility of Japan and the Japanese people, while repeatedly reporting to China and South Korea.
It is a newspaper company that is utterly unforgivable and may rightly be called traitorous.
Therefore, on that very day, Japan and the Japanese people should have declared to the world that Asahi Shimbun had been shut down.
Such a declaration should have been made loudly and proudly.
Had that been done, deflation would long since have been overcome.
China’s arrogance would never have reached its current extremes.
The reason is not, as naive Japanese believe, that Chinese people are angered by an unrepentant Japan.
Rather, historical issues represent Japan’s greatest weakness, and China has relentlessly exploited that vulnerability.
No matter how sincerely Japan apologizes, the situation will never improve.
The Chinese government’s objective is to force Japan to continue apologizing indefinitely.
Likewise, the movement to erect comfort woman statues around the world follows a strategy aimed at crushing Japanese self-respect, burying the Japanese people in guilt and self-loathing, and isolating Japan internationally.
South Korea is being completely used by China, yet intoxicated by resentment and emotion, it has lost itself and is deliberately dissolving its own nation.
The Chinese Communist Party’s strategy toward Japan is, in fact, astonishingly simple and consistent.
Therefore, once the Japanese people become independent, think for themselves, hold their own opinions, and escape from the postwar defeatist regime of self-abuse, that alone will shatter China’s strategy toward Japan.
Perhaps Chen wished to convey this truth to us quietly.
[End excerpt.]