Through the Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of the 2003 murders of a family of four in Fukuoka, this piece questions the pathology of a newspaper culture that leaned more toward excusing the perpetrators than confronting the brutality of the crime.
When reporting that should accurately warn readers of danger is distorted by ideology, public understanding is distorted as well.
Drawing on Masayuki Takayama’s argument, this article sharply criticizes the Asahi’s unreflective reporting on China and the danger it poses to Japanese readers.

2019-03-07
China is still a dangerous place for Japanese people, whether to associate with or to travel to.
If one keeps reading an unrepentant Asahi, even one’s life may be put at risk.

A chapter I posted on 2018-07-15 under the title, “In the 2003 murder of a family of four in Fukuoka, three Chinese exchange students subjected the 40-year-old mother to lingchi in order to decide who would kill the eight-year-old eldest daughter,” has now entered goo’s top ten search rankings.
What follows is a continuation from Masayuki Takayama’s latest book, and Japanese citizens who are able to read print should go at once to the nearest bookstore and buy it.
If you keep reading the Asahi, even your life is at risk.
Their cruelty has not changed either.
In the 2003 murder of a family of four in Fukuoka, three Chinese exchange students subjected the 40-year-old mother to lingchi in order to decide who would kill the eight-year-old eldest daughter.
It was a cruel punishment in which they took turns slicing flesh away with a knife, and the man who caused her to die on his turn killed the eldest daughter as punishment.
And yet the Asahi at the time continued to shield such brutal men by saying that “their families were well-off and they had received a good education,” and that “it was only a momentary impulse.”
That was because its editorial argued that one should stop, since “anti-China arguments would only stimulate their nationalism and rebound against us.”
That is wrong.
To write that “Chinese are cruel” is not an anti-China argument.
It is correct news that tells Japanese people where danger lies.
China is still a dangerous place for Japanese people, whether to associate with or to travel to.
If one keeps reading an unrepentant Asahi, even one’s life may be put at risk.
(February 2015 issue)