Published on March 9, 2017.
While Nikkei reported and journalist Hoshi Hiroshi openly criticized remarks made by China’s foreign minister, Asahi Shimbun deleted them.
This essay examines what that omission reveals about Asahi Shimbun’s alignment and its hostility toward Japan and its people.

2017-03-09
For some reason, the Asahi Shimbun deleted the remarks that even the Nikkei had properly published and that even Hoshi Hiroshi had criticized.
Last night, the moment I switched the channel to News 23, footage of a press conference by China’s Foreign Minister Wang appeared, along with the astonishing words he uttered, “First, the Japanese must cure their mental illness.”
Hoshi Hiroshi, the newscaster, demonstrated through his criticism of these remarks that he is no mere graduate of Fukushima High School but a man of Tohoku, from a neighboring prefecture to mine.
He stated that these were words no Japanese could afford to ignore, and that if anyone should be accused of lagging behind, it was China itself with its delayed democratization.
I raised my evaluation of him slightly because of this.
This morning, all discerning readers who read both the Nikkei and the Asahi must have reached a firm conclusion.
Even though the Nikkei properly carried the remarks and even Hoshi Hiroshi criticized them, the Asahi Shimbun published its article with those remarks removed.
In the past, there were people who appeared in my work-related encounters and spoke as if Japan were merely a lapdog of the United States.
At the very least, the staff of the Asahi Shimbun’s China bureau are lapdogs of China, whether they published the deletion as is or whether headquarters ordered it.
If the latter is the case, then discerning readers must have concluded that the entire Asahi Shimbun company is a lapdog of China.
At the same time, the time has long since come for all Japanese citizens to know just how vicious and malicious this newspaper company is toward Japan and the Japanese people.
Three years ago, in August, we should have already pronounced the final judgment on this newspaper.