This article argues that Japan’s exceptionally broad freedom of expression has been exploited by left-wing activist groups to suppress opposing voices. Using the cancellation of novelist Naoki Hyakuta’s lecture at Hitotsubashi University as a case study, it exposes how intimidation, minority pressure, and selective media coverage have normalized de facto censorship. The piece also criticizes the double standards of Japanese media and warns of future threats to free speech through arbitrarily enforced “human rights” legislation.

Publication date: 2017-06-29
The following facts prove that Japan is a country in which democracy has spread too far, and that leftists and people from the Korean Peninsula have been granted a freedom of speech so extensive as to be unbelievable.
I will deliver these facts—these facts that are precisely the reality of Japan—to the world, especially so that the UN Special Rapporteurs, Alexis Dudden and her clique—who, while being agents of the South Korean government in the United States, put on the face of champions of justice and attack Japan at every opportunity—and the reporters of The New York Times and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, may come to feel in their bones just how much evil they have continued to commit against Japan.
If even this does not make you understand, then you have no choice but to suffer the torments of Enma, the Great King of Hell.
Omitted above.
Abiru:
However, when it comes to obstructing, the leftists have a tendency not to choose their means.
The fact that you, Mr. Hyakuta, were driven to cancel your lecture at Hitotsubashi University is surely one example of that.
The truth about the Hitotsubashi University lecture cancellation
Hyakuta:
The cancellation of this lecture is truly an outrageous story.
They said, “Naoki Hyakuta is a racist, a leader of discrimination, and therefore it must not be permitted for him to give a lecture.”
The organizing committee does not write that it “yielded to threats.”
They merely excuse themselves by saying, “We held repeated deliberations and prepared a strict security system. However, because it grew far too large, (with multiple events being sacrificed), we reached the point where the very foundation of the KODAIRA Festival, ‘a campus festival for new students,’ was about to be shaken.”
Abiru:
Why did they have to provide security to such an extent?
Hyakuta:
Because there were quite strong threats.
Some girl reportedly said, “If I listen to Naoki Hyakuta’s lecture, I may be so shocked that I might commit suicide. If that happens, how will the organizing committee take responsibility?”
That is an extremely malicious kind of complainer.
Abiru:
It is exactly like yakuza harassment.
Hyakuta:
It’s the same as saying, “I won’t do anything. But I don’t know what my young guys might do,” (laughs).
Abiru:
The Sankei Shimbun wrote that it was “suppression of speech.”
Then cultural figures on the opposing side say, “If the authorities do it, it’s suppression of speech, but if it’s in the private sector, it isn’t.”
Hyakuta:
No, this is plainly the silencing of speech.
The central organization that promoted the cancellation of the lecture was the Anti-Racism Information Center (ARIC), whose representative is Eisei Ryo, thirty-four years old (currently in the master’s program of the Graduate School of Language and Society at Hitotsubashi University), a third-generation Zainichi Korean.
They are holding rallies under the slogan “We will not forgive Naoki Hyakuta,” and when you look at the images, you see writing in Hangul and Chinese, among other languages.
They boast that 120 people gathered.
I do not know what kind of students actually gathered, but considering that Hitotsubashi University has about 300 Chinese international students and about 150 Korean international students, plus other resident Chinese and Koreans, can this really be called a major opinion?
Abiru:
The 120 people who gathered at the rally amount to only 2% of Hitotsubashi University’s total student body of about 6,000.
Hyakuta:
And my tickets had already sold nearly 400.
In any case, when they want to crush someone, they attack by calling him “a racist.”
What is extremely concerning is that if this trend continues, it could eventually lead to the enactment of a human-rights protection law in the future.
Abiru:
If it is operated arbitrarily, it would be disastrous.
Hyakuta:
The Anti-Racism Information Center has created a database, collecting and posting nearly 3,000 past remarks that they regard as “hate speech” from more than a hundred people, including me and Prime Minister Abe.
But if you read them, they are full of remarks where you think, “How on earth is this hate?”
Abiru:
It is truly frightening.
Their argument is, “If the person feels it is hate, then it is hate.”
The leftist forces employ a variety of tactics to erase their opponents from society.
Hyakuta:
Incidents where lectures or autograph sessions are disrupted and forced to be canceled happen repeatedly, but they are always aimed only at conservative commentators.
There are no cases at all where left-wing commentators have been forced to cancel due to obstruction.
Abiru:
In the past, at the Nishi Library in Funabashi City, Chiba Prefecture, there was an incident in which books by Mr. Takeshi Saibu and members of the Society for History Textbooks Reform were discarded (2001).
Many librarians are from the Communist Party camp.
Hyakuta:
That’s terrible.
Abiru:
When an autograph session by the Zainichi Korean writer Miri Yu was forced to be canceled by people calling themselves right-wingers, the Asahi Shimbun ran a major campaign.
After that, when Ms. Yoshiko Sakurai’s lecture was forced into cancellation, it was to the point that you could not even tell who had reported it (laughs).
Hyakuta:
Even regarding the bomb threat at my autograph session last year, it was hardly reported at all.
Abiru:
Because obstructive operations are taken for granted, they are being justified.