The following is from a book published on February 15, 2022, by Ryusho Kadota, a spirited critic, and Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
It is a must-read for the Japanese people and people around the world.
It is a must-read for all intelligent people living in the 21st century.
All Japanese citizens who can read should go to the nearest bookstore and subscribe right away.
I will let the world know as much as I can.
Reclaiming Japan
Takayama
I believe that Shinzo Abe is the one who is trying to break away from the post-war era that has created a lack of awareness among the people.
In 2002, as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, Shinzo Abe accompanied then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on his visit to North Korea.
According to journalist Gyo Tsutsumi, Shinzo Abe is a brilliant and quick-witted person who knew he was being listened to by the North Koreans and made various attempts to get Kim Jong-il to confess to the abduction of Japanese nationals.
When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs insisted that the abductees brought back from North Korea must be returned as agreed, he resolutely refused, over the heads of the government officials, saying that there was no need to return them.
It is a terrible blow to the Asahi Shimbun, glorifying North Korea.
In the name of the repatriation project, the Asahi Shimbun ran a campaign in the paper saying that North Korea is a paradise on earth.
Over more than ten years from the 1950s, nearly 100,000 people were sent back from Maizuru in Kyoto by ship.
Unfortunately, about 3,000 Japanese wives were among them, and most died in hell.
It became clear that North Korea was not a paradise but a hell, but even so, the Asahi Shimbun continued to say that it was a paradise.
Shinzo Abe has exposed the reality of North Korea to the fullest extent.
He let everyone know that North Korea was a kidnapping nation.
However, the Asahi Shimbun is a newspaper that crushes anyone who opposes it, no matter who they are.
In the case of the North Korean abduction issue, Asahi focused on Abe.
It made Abe the enemy, saying that it would never tolerate any claim to destroy the so-called postwar democracy.
Any claim would deviate from the point that Japan is a lousy aggressor nation.
During the first Abe administration, Abe was forced to retire due to an incurable stress-related illness.
But Abe will be back in 2012.
Kadota
Abe's resurrection is actually not a surprise or anything.
At that time, Nobutaka Machimura, the chairman of the Seiwa-kai, was set to leave the party, and Abe was initially aiming to be the next in line.
However, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had been in power for more than three years, and the relationship between Japan and the U.S. had become the worst in the postwar era.
"Japan will not be able to survive as it is," so it decided to ask Mr. Abe to "stand up."
One of the leading players was Birei Kin and the late Hisayuki Miyake.
These people were very supportive.
Mr. Miyake wrote a letter of support for Mr. Abe in ink.
He took it to Mr. Abe's room in the Diet building.
When Mr. Abe received it, Ms. Kim Mi-ling said, "Now read it aloud.
As she read it, Abe's voice began to tremble.
As he read Mr. Miyake's heartfelt statement on why we must stand up now, his emotions rose, and his voice began to tremble.
Mr. Abe must have felt that he had to stand up.
At that time, Yoshihide Suga and his colleagues worked very hard to persuade Mr. Abe to be a candidate.
However, since Mr. Machimura, the faction chairman, was scheduled to be a candidate, there was no way to split the faction.
Just as it was thinking this, Mr. Hashimoto, then mayor of Osaka City, who was at the peak of his popularity, said that the only person in the LDP who could talk to him was Mr. Abe and Mr. Abe was suddenly being reevaluated.
Takayama
After the bubble burst, the economy continued to be sluggish, and there were still many opinions that Japan was the wrong country.
When he became the prime minister for the second time, the Japan Press Club hosted the usual party leaders meeting.
In the meeting, Abe told Hoshi Hiroshi of the Asahi Shimbun, "The comfort women issue is fake news spread by your Asahi Shimbun.
For the first time after the war, NG was struck against postwar democracy, which can be said to be the editorial policy of the Asahi Shimbun.
I think that was a fantastic thing.
Kadota
Newspaper reporters have always had the self‐conceit that "I am creating public opinion" and "we can do whatever we want with the government."
Such people walked with a swagger at Nagata-cho.
Initially, during the first Abe administration, the administration was almost out of patience.
Even when Wakamiya Yoshibumi, the editorial director of the Asahi Shimbun, famously said, "We will pay for Abe's funeral," the first administration was not able to fight back clearly.
But I think Mr. Abe realized while he was out of power that he had to say it for the sake of Japan.
Takayama.
The Japan Press Club meeting of party leaders was in November 2012. A year and a half later, in 2014, there was a confrontation between Mr. Kadota and the Asahi Shimbun over the "Yoshida Report" (the record of the Government Accident Independent Investigation Commission's interview with the late Masao Yoshida, former head of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant).
Kadota.
On the 5th and 6th of August, Asahi published an article correcting its past articles on comfort women.
The following week, the Sankei Shimbun, which had obtained the record, began its campaign. On the first day, I contributed an article titled "Why does Asahi use falsehoods to undermine Japan? It was an extensive article with my picture.
Sankei ran a week-long campaign, but Asahi still refused to acknowledge it.
On the Friday of the last week of August, Yomiuri also obtained the report, and later Kyodo News got it and distributed it.
We have a complete picture of "Asahi vs. all other mass media."
On September 11, the president of Asahi, Tadakazu Kimura, made a full apology and retracted the article.
From that point on, there was no stopping the decline in circulation of the Asahi Shimbun.
Takayama
After all, it all started with a single word from Abe.
It became a big banner for the breakaway from postwar democracy.
Just when I thought this would work, Asahi now brought up the Moritomo/Kake Gakuen issue against Abe's long-term administration.
Kadota
The Toyonaka City Councilor of the Communist Party and an independent city councilor started a campaign because they could not tolerate the arrival of a kindergarten called Moritomo Gakuen, which would make the Imperial Rescript on Education look bad. The Asahi Shimbun got on the bandwagon.
When the budget committee meeting started, Nobuhisa Sagawa, Director General of the Financial Bureau, made a mistake in his answer. To cover it up, they had him falsify the documents.
The original document before the falsification did not have any "Abe" in it.
However, the opposition parties kangaroo courted the officials of the Ministry of Finance.
The day before the Kinki Finance Bureau official died, DPP's Hideya Sugio and Hiroyuki Konishi stormed into the Ministry of Finance.
Mizuho Fukushima, Hiroko Mori, and several others had raided the Kinki Finance Bureau on the day before that.
It pushed them further and further into a corner, and the staff member in question committed suicide, but the media never said a word about these circumstances.
Takayama
They say that Akagi documents will be released, but nothing is wrong.
Akagi himself has said that he did not discount the price.
Even if it turns out that there is not even a suspicion, they will say, "No, the truth has not been revealed yet. As for Abe, they think all they have to do is say "suspicion."
Kadota
People like me, born in the 1950s and living during Japan's rapid economic growth, did not have the same hardships as those born in the Meiji era, Taisho era, or the first decade of the Showa era.
We are clearly different from those who have repeatedly been rushed and rushed by the war.
Moreover, in postwar democracy education, "Japan colonized Asia," "Japan caused trouble to Asian people" ...
Only such things are imprinted.
People who do not know the nation's view or Japan are becoming politicians, bureaucrats, and media as elites.
