After Asahi Shimbun officially admitted in August 2014 that its long-running “comfort women” coverage was fabricated, a close friend—outraged by the truth—cancelled Asahi and turned to Sankei Shimbun. This essay exposes the deeper structure of postwar propaganda, self-abasing historical narratives shaped under GHQ, and the role of foreign media such as Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung in sustaining anti-Japan sentiment.

My close friend, outraged after learning the true nature of the Asahi Shimbun, cancelled his subscription and switched to the Sankei Shimbun.
2017-06-07
In August three years ago, when the Asahi Shimbun officially admitted that its “comfort women” coverage—published in sixteen special features over thirty-two years and disseminated worldwide—had been fabricated,
my close friend, angered by the reality of the Asahi Shimbun, cancelled his subscription and changed to the Sankei Shimbun.
What he brought me this morning were articles written by genuine journalists.
Those of us who had subscribed to and carefully read the Asahi Shimbun did not know until that August three years ago
that the Asahi Shimbun and the so-called scholars who echoed it had continued to speak and write to the world lies no different from those of Seiji Yoshida, a man who seemed born solely to fabricate falsehoods.
For them, if it serves to denigrate Japan,
if it serves to humiliate Japan,
if it serves to keep Japan a political prisoner in the international community,
they will do anything.
Under the occupation policies imposed by GHQ—policies that were in fact violations of international law and were carried out thoroughly to conceal crimes rivaling those of the Nazis,
people were pitifully brainwashed into a self-deprecating historical view constructed from lies.
Yet they remain unaware that they themselves are pitiable, that they are traitors to their nation, enemies of the state,
and with distorted thinking formed from pseudo-moralism and pseudo-Marxism,
they continue to slander Japan before the world.
Those who have exploited this are China and South Korea, countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” that persist in anti-Japan propaganda,
and Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, which, like the Nazis themselves or the Gestapo, seeks to portray Japan as a criminal state equivalent to Nazism in order to mitigate its own guilt.
This article also proves that my assertion regarding the Süddeutsche Zeitung was entirely correct.
Before introducing that article in the next chapter, I will state clearly here so that the people of the Süddeutsche Zeitung never forget it.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German citizens who believe it—
that is, people no different from Nazis or the Gestapo.
People who incite prejudice and hatred against other nations for the sake of their own vile schemes.
Listen carefully.
You are a nation and a people who committed the greatest crimes in human history.
Japan, and we Japanese, are a nation and a people against whom the greatest crimes in human history were committed.
One more thing must be added.
About half of you Germans apparently take pleasure in believing reports by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and surveys say that roughly half of the German public dislikes the Japanese,
yet almost all Japanese had never disliked or hated you.
Now that the true nature of the Süddeutsche Zeitung has become known, more Japanese may be saying “enough is enough” in anger.
But from the beginning, throughout recorded history, the Japanese have been a people who value harmony and have been entirely removed from hating or despising others or other nations.
Long before Germans appeared on the stage of world history,
the Japanese established the Seventeen-Article Constitution and upheld harmony as the highest virtue.