Published on March 10, 2017.
Based on a recent essay by Kase Hideaki, this article exposes how Asahi Shimbun has long manipulated not only its editorials but even its readers’ letters to fit a single ideological line, revealing a media structure that undermines democracy while masquerading as its guardian.

2017-03-10
Although democracy rests on diverse opinions, even the letters-to-the-editor column is aligned with Asahi Shimbun’s editorial line.
Last night, I read an essay by Kase Hideaki published in the latest issue of the monthly magazine Hanada and burst into hearty laughter.
It was precisely because everything he wrote was exactly right.
Like me, those who had long subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun must have had the impression that he was a right-leaning figure.
Above all, because Asahi Shimbun rarely published his essays, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Asahi readers knew virtually nothing about him.
I knew that he belonged to a distinguished family, so I checked again.
He comes from a lineage connected to the Yasuda zaibatsu, and Yoko Ono is his cousin.
I also learned for the first time that after graduating from Keio University, he studied at Yale University and Columbia University, and that he was the first editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica Japan.
He has delivered many lectures around the world, including at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania.
I also learned, almost as if for the first time, that he had been deeply involved in political and business circles, serving as special advisor to Prime Ministers Fukuda Takeo and Nakasone Yasuhiro, and as special advisor to the foreign ministers under the cabinets of Fukuda Takeo, Ohira Masayoshi, and Suzuki Zenko.

Grand Feature, The Lies, Hate, and Prejudice of the Major Media.
Asahi Shimbun Is a Pornographic Newspaper.
Kase Hideaki.
Semi-professional contributors in the “Voice” column.
My relationship with Asahi Shimbun is long-standing.
I was also indebted to Mr. Hanada during his time at Bungeishunju, and he was one of the pioneers of criticism against Asahi Shimbun.
When Tanaka Kengo was editor-in-chief of Shokun!, I frequently wrote media criticism for the magazine.
Eventually, I wrote more than eighty 400-character pages criticizing Asahi Shimbun in the main Bungeishunju magazine in November 1975.
At that time, Tanaka titled it “Asahi Shimbunology in Recent Years,” an excellent title.
Asahi Shimbun immediately featured it prominently on its social affairs pages as “groundless slander” and sent a certified letter demanding an apology.
I was close to Fukuda Tsuneari, who strongly encouraged me to take the matter to court.
Madara Toshiro, Muramatsu Go, and Kayama Kenichi also offered to join the support group.
It would have become a groundbreaking “newspaper trial” contesting everything from sales competition to editorial bias, and I wanted that.
However, influential figures in the business world and prominent individuals such as Sato Masatada of Keizaikai stepped in on Asahi’s side and urged mediation.
In the end, neither Asahi Shimbun nor Bungeishunju wanted a fight, and the matter was settled in an extremely ambiguous manner.
Thirty or forty years ago, if you peeked into certain clubs in Ginza, you would find editors from Shinchosha, Bungeishunju, Kodansha, writers, and Asahi reporters all gathered together.
There was also a small bar called Ciao in Shinjuku Sanchome, frequented by Mr. Sassa Katsuaki, who was in charge of the “Voice” letters column at Asahi Shimbun.
I was very close to him.
His father had been an editorial writer at Asahi during and after the war, known for writing an editorial titled “Defeat the Brutish Americans and British” on August 14, and “Be a Model of Peace” just two days later.
Since December 8 of last year, I resumed subscribing to Asahi Shimbun after more than twenty years, and the letters column is still called “Voice.”
Mr. Sassa’s job was to commission letters from regular contributors.
There were, and perhaps still are, semi-professional contributors favored by Asahi Shimbun.
I have personally witnessed Mr. Sassa telephoning regular contributors to commission letters.
From that time, the content of “Voice” has remained unchanged to this day.
Although democracy rests on diverse opinions, even the letters column is aligned with Asahi Shimbun’s editorial line.
This blinds the readers.

Only opinions that suit their glasses.

The January 3 “Voice” column of this year also immediately set about blindfolding the readers.
As if to say, “Contribute to the world through peace and environmental fields,” “Think of ways to protect the country without war,” “Japan should take the lead in abolishing nuclear weapons,” and “Protect citizens’ lives from the threat of the U.S. military,” only assertions that suit the Asahi Shimbun’s “glasses” are lined up.
A letter from an 82-year-old man under the heading “In the fields of peace and the environment” states, “Fighting continues in Syria and South Sudan, and terrorist attacks in Europe by Islamic extremists also continue.
At the end of the year, there was also the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey.
(omitted) It is nothing but heartbreaking,” and then recommends, “The government should now contribute in the fields of international peace, human rights, and global environmental protection, and I would like to hope for diplomacy that can earn praise from all over the world.”
Human rights and environmental protection cannot counter war or terrorism.
The other letters, too, are nothing but things that close their eyes to reality.
There is absolutely no way they would ever publish voices saying that Japan should strengthen the Self-Defense Forces to deter war, or questioning whether it is acceptable to leave China targeting Japan with nuclear missiles.
Articles that read as if the writer had been gulping down cheap liquor.
Today, because Japan has become more conservative and the left has become isolated, I can laugh pleasantly every time I read the Asahi Shimbun, but in the 1970s, I was seriously worried, because Asahi Shimbun might have destroyed Japan.
Even looking back now, I recall it as if remembering a nightmare, but when diplomatic normalization between Japan and China took place in 1972, the Asahi Shimbun could not be read without blushing.
The evening edition on the day Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei stepped down at Beijing Airport carried a huge headline across the front page: “Japan and China Now Shake Hands.”
[Beijing, 25th = Correspondent Nishimura] How could one describe that heavy, piercing silence at that moment.
A stillness as if all sound had been lost descended upon the vast Beijing Airport.
At 11:40 a.m. on September 25, 1972, down the aircraft stairs laid with a red carpet, Prime Minister Tanaka, dressed in black, came down, swaying his body slightly from side to side.
He looked up at the sky as if dazzled, firmly drew his mouth into a straight line, and advanced toward Premier Zhou.
“…Is this a dream.
No, it is not a dream.
Now, beyond any doubt, the hands of the prime ministers of Japan and China have been tightly clasped.”
“In reality, that time must have been less than a minute.
The unrestrained voices of Western reporters mixed in among the press corps may also have been heard.
However, that time felt longer.
I think there was no sound at all.
The bitter flow of time that had continued and continued for forty years finally stopped at this moment.
In that long span of years, the blood and tears of the peoples of Japan and China, rising like a mirage in the overflowing sunlight, made me feel as though I might be drawn into a sudden dizziness……”
I worried that this Asahi correspondent might have been drinking cheap liquor until the prime minister arrived at Beijing Airport.
Already, it is the sort of thing that belongs in a comic book.
I wrote in a magazine, “A newspaper reporter must not become dizzy no matter what situation he encounters.
Besides, whether in Japan or abroad, aren’t reporters always raising unrestrained voices.”
When one opened the social affairs pages, across two full pages, headlines were scattered such as, “The long-awaited morning, Tokyo, Beijing, broad and high blue sky,” and, “Nihao, hello, flying into a new era of Japan-China relations, the prime minister tense amid calm, carrying the encouragement of a suprapartisan group, ‘Kaku-san, we’re counting on you!,’ citizens’ eyes glued to the TV.”
In an editorial three days earlier, Asahi Shimbun, under the title “Prime Minister Tanaka’s Visit to China Opens a New Era of Japan-China Relations,” asserted that Tanaka’s visit to China made it possible for Japan, China, and the Soviet Union to conclude a “non-aggression pact.”
“……The normalization of Japan-China relations must become the starting point for our country’s new diplomacy and defense policy.
From a stance that seeks unstable security upon a balance of power through the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, conclude a non-aggression pact between Japan and China, and further expand that ring to include the Soviet Union.
Or set a permanent neutral zone in the Asia–Far East region.
Such diplomatic choices have become possible.”
Even at the time, this made me burst out laughing.
At that time, China, frightened by the Sino-Soviet war and fearing a Soviet invasion, had, across the entire country, mobilized the people for years, forcing them to take up shovels and continue digging air-raid shelters.
From that point on, I came to believe that Asahi Shimbun’s bound volumes should be classified as comic books.
Like the daytime fantasy of “Constitution-kun,” the absurdity of “laughing stories” that have absolutely no footing in reality is still firmly being inherited even now.
Even now, I remain close with Asahi Shimbun reporters and editorial executives.
After they leave the company, we meet up and, while having a light drink, talk about domestic and international affairs, and they are all decent people.
Their opinions are hardly different from mine.
And yet, when you pick up the paper, it is nothing but the same unchanging “Asahi tune,” such as “Protect the peace constitution,” or “Japan is a war-criminal nation, so it must show consideration to China and South Korea.”

Asahi is a “pornographic newspaper.”
I had been troubled, wondering why decent reporters and editors would produce such pages.
Then one day, the answer flashed into my mind.
Asahi Shimbun is a “pornographic newspaper.”
In the same way, Asahi Shimbun reporters and editorial executives, while at work, must write sensational pornographic articles.
Before and during the war, they worked diligently to boost the fighting spirit of the readers.
Thanks to that, circulation increased, but when the war ended, two people at Asahi Shimbun were imprisoned as Class-A war-crimes suspects.
They were Ogata Taketora, the editor-in-chief and vice president, and Shimomura Kainan, who after serving as vice president became NHK president and director-general of the Cabinet Information Bureau.
Of course, for me the Tokyo Trial was a grotesque lynching by the victorious powers, but Asahi acknowledges the legitimacy of the Tokyo Trial.
In regaining independence, Japan was forced to accept carrying out the sentences of the Tokyo Trial, but it did not recognize the trial itself.
One cannot hold only Japan responsible for the war, yet Asahi says, “Even so, we must not forget that Japan accepted this trial and took its first step as a peaceful nation.”
During the last war, Asahi Shimbun shouted “The divine land is imperishable” and “One hundred million total suicide attacks,” preaching that Japan could win if only it had the Yamato spirit, but the kind of spiritualism today that says “If only the Constitution of Japan exists, Japan will be imperishable” is not one bit different from the prewar period.
After the war, as seen so far, it sometimes became intoxicated with Marxism and, with articles full of exhilaration, stirred up the readers’ base passions, and now it even cites picture books that personify the constitution and appeals to the lust of constitutionalists by asking, “So you are saying it is fine if Constitution-kun disappears.”
There is neither reason nor logic there.
It is simply a matter of arousing and stimulating naked instincts in order to obtain sales.
There are people who rage that Asahi Shimbun is traitorous, but if one thinks of it as a pornographic newspaper, one cannot possibly be angry.

＊All discerning readers must be laughing out loud.