The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Testimony from the scene
SAKURAI
Mr. Hiroshi Hasegawa, an Asahi Shimbun alumnus, wrote an interesting article about Mr. Kitabatake in "Collapsed Asahi Shimbun" (Wack).
Mr. Kitabatake was in the magazine "Aera" publishing office at the beginning before he was assigned to the Osaka headquarters.
Mr. Kitabatake was sitting at the desk across from Mr. Hasegawa and was whispering to someone on the phone.
The person on the other end of the line was Mr. Seiji Yoshida.
Mr. Kitabatake also said something to the effect that "Mr. Yoshida tends to shy away when public pressure becomes strong," and that "we, the interviewers, must always hold the reins tightly.
Abiru
Mr. Hasegawa also told us an interesting episode about his colleague, Yayori Matsui.
Sakurai
When Ms. Matsui was a member of the Singapore Asia Bureau, he wrote an article accusing the former Japanese military of "massacring the people" deep in Malaysia's mountains.
A few years later, Mr. Hasegawa decided to follow Mr. Matsui's footsteps in writing his article on the 50th anniversary of the start of Japan's war with the United States.
He came across an incredible story in the province of Negeri Sembilan.
A middle-aged Chinese man told Mr. Hasegawa, "A female reporter from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan, who is in Singapore, said to me that it was okay to pretend that the Japanese military committed the massacre.
And the female reporter said her name was Matsui.
Abiru
In 2014, the Asahi Shimbun rescinded 16 articles that featured Seiji Yoshida.
However, it has not formally corrected the articles on Matsui and Uemura.
I hope that the newspaper will take this ruling seriously and change its reporting attitude.
It may be a faint hope, but this may be their last chance.
Sakurai
Unless things change here, the Asahi Shimbun will continue to lose the public's trust, and its circulation will further decline.
It used to boast a circulation of over 8 million, but now it has a circulation of less than 5 million, and I have heard that its actual circulation is around 3.5 million.
The other day, it was reported in the news that the company had posted its first loss since its establishment.
Testimony from the scene
SAKURAI
Mr. Hiroshi Hasegawa, an Asahi Shimbun alumnus, wrote an interesting article about Mr. Kitabatake in "Collapsed Asahi Shimbun" (Wack).
Mr. Kitabatake was in the magazine "Aera" publishing office at the beginning before he was assigned to the Osaka headquarters.
Mr. Kitabatake was sitting at the desk across from Mr. Hasegawa and was whispering to someone on the phone.
The person on the other end of the line was Mr. Seiji Yoshida.
Mr. Kitabatake also said something to the effect that "Mr. Yoshida tends to shy away when public pressure becomes strong," and that "we, the interviewers, must always hold the reins tightly.
Abiru
Mr. Hasegawa also told us an interesting episode about his colleague, Yayori Matsui.
Sakurai
When Ms. Matsui was a member of the Singapore Asia Bureau, he wrote an article accusing the former Japanese military of "massacring the people" deep in Malaysia's mountains.
A few years later, Mr. Hasegawa decided to follow Mr. Matsui's footsteps in writing his article on the 50th anniversary of the start of Japan's war with the United States.
He came across an incredible story in the province of Negeri Sembilan.
A middle-aged Chinese man told Mr. Hasegawa, "A female reporter from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in Japan, who is in Singapore, said to me that it was okay to pretend that the Japanese military committed the massacre.
And the female reporter said her name was Matsui.
Abiru
In 2014, the Asahi Shimbun rescinded 16 articles that featured Seiji Yoshida.
However, it has not formally corrected the articles on Matsui and Uemura.
I hope that the newspaper will take this ruling seriously and change its reporting attitude.
It may be a faint hope, but this may be their last chance.
Sakurai
Unless things change here, the Asahi Shimbun will continue to lose the public's trust, and its circulation will further decline.
It used to boast a circulation of over 8 million, but now it has a circulation of less than 5 million, and I have heard that its actual circulation is around 3.5 million.
The other day, it was reported in the news that the company had posted its first loss since its establishment.
Abiru
The real estate division is making up for the decline in newspaper sales.
Yoichi Takahashi, a former finance bureaucrat, told me that if it showed him only the Asahi Shimbun's financial statements, he would get the impression that it was a real estate company doing related business on the side (laughs).
The Asahi Shimbun and the National Interest
Abiru
I have looked back to see if the Asahi Shimbun's reporting has ever had a positive effect on Japan's national interest, but I can't think of any.
At least since the beginning of the Heisei era, it has done nothing but brings down Japan with its coverage of the KY coral incident, comfort women, and the Yoshida Report .......
Sakurai
If you go back to before the war, he criticized the government for being "weak-kneed" over the Manchurian Incident and encouraged the military to expand its war fronts.
Even after the outbreak of war with the U.S., it consistently continued to agitate for war. For example, in an editorial on August 14, the day before the war ended, it said, "It cannot extinguish the fireball of 100 million people's entrenched beliefs. We only need to know that the more fierce the enemy's plot, the greater the retribution.
However, when GHQ arrived, it changed its tone 180 degrees and focused on weakening Japan.
Before, during, and after the war, they did nothing for the people.
Abiru.
In the case of the "Morikake" report, they kept writing the same thing every day to stir up the "anti-Abe" sentiment among readers.
I wondered if this was how newspapers instigated militarization before the war.
Sakurai
In 1994, a book entitled "Read and Be Amazed: Asahi Shimbun's Pacific War Articles" (written by Shozo Yasuda and Kotaro Ishibashi, published by Lyon) was published.
It is a compilation of articles and editorials from the Asahi Shimbun during the war.
However, the Asahi Shimbun effectively banned the book because the copyright would expire 50 years after the articles were published.
The following year, Ota Shuppan published a revised edition of the book as "Asahi Shimbun's War Responsibility." Still, for the Asahi Shimbun, the prewar and wartime periods are a shameful past.
The land of "fate
Abiru
When I was covering the comfort women issue, the article by Mr. Sakurai that appeared in Bungeishunju in 1997 made me think, "I've been hit.
Based on an interview Ms. Sakurai conducted with former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara, he revealed that it conducted no corroborative research on the 16 comfort women interviewed in South Korea and that the Kono Statement was issued without any documentary evidence.
Sakurai
That was a long time ago.
From the starting point that the Kono Statement was wrong, I applied for interviews with all the people I could think of no matter how I look at it.
Kiichi Miyazawa turned me down, but I also interviewed Yohei Kono and the South Korean ambassador at the time, and finally, I heard a surprising testimony from Ishihara.
Abiru
I was a reporter in the Social Affairs Department, and I remember reading this with my boss and rushing to Mr. Ishihara's home.
At the time, the comfort women issue was entirely dominated by society's tendency to believe that Japan was evil.
Ms. Sakurai and Mr. Nishioka were the ones who questioned that.
I have watched how society's perception of the issue gradually changed through a series of steady speech activities.
As a result, Asahi admitted that it had misreported the story, and this complete victory is the culmination of their efforts.
Sakurai
I can't help but feel that a long time has passed.
More than 20 years ago, It enounced me for stating in a lecture that "comfort women were not forced to work together.
Since there were not as many people aware of the lies about the comfort women as there are now, I was fleeted under a tremendous storm of bashing at the time.
We received many protest letters at work, it sent faxes until we ran out of paper, and the protest phone calls never stopped ringing.
One of the most conspicuous was a protest that originated in Hokkaido.
I remember receiving protests with almost the same wording, mainly from the Hokkaido Teachers' Union.
Abiru
In a battle fought in the land of "fate," the truth has finally triumphed over fabrication.
This verdict will be a big step in the fight back.
The real estate division is making up for the decline in newspaper sales.
Yoichi Takahashi, a former finance bureaucrat, told me that if it showed him only the Asahi Shimbun's financial statements, he would get the impression that it was a real estate company doing related business on the side (laughs).
The Asahi Shimbun and the National Interest
Abiru
I have looked back to see if the Asahi Shimbun's reporting has ever had a positive effect on Japan's national interest, but I can't think of any.
At least since the beginning of the Heisei era, it has done nothing but brings down Japan with its coverage of the KY coral incident, comfort women, and the Yoshida Report .......
Sakurai
If you go back to before the war, he criticized the government for being "weak-kneed" over the Manchurian Incident and encouraged the military to expand its war fronts.
Even after the outbreak of war with the U.S., it consistently continued to agitate for war. For example, in an editorial on August 14, the day before the war ended, it said, "It cannot extinguish the fireball of 100 million people's entrenched beliefs. We only need to know that the more fierce the enemy's plot, the greater the retribution.
However, when GHQ arrived, it changed its tone 180 degrees and focused on weakening Japan.
Before, during, and after the war, they did nothing for the people.
Abiru.
In the case of the "Morikake" report, they kept writing the same thing every day to stir up the "anti-Abe" sentiment among readers.
I wondered if this was how newspapers instigated militarization before the war.
Sakurai
In 1994, a book entitled "Read and Be Amazed: Asahi Shimbun's Pacific War Articles" (written by Shozo Yasuda and Kotaro Ishibashi, published by Lyon) was published.
It is a compilation of articles and editorials from the Asahi Shimbun during the war.
However, the Asahi Shimbun effectively banned the book because the copyright would expire 50 years after the articles were published.
The following year, Ota Shuppan published a revised edition of the book as "Asahi Shimbun's War Responsibility." Still, for the Asahi Shimbun, the prewar and wartime periods are a shameful past.
The land of "fate
Abiru
When I was covering the comfort women issue, the article by Mr. Sakurai that appeared in Bungeishunju in 1997 made me think, "I've been hit.
Based on an interview Ms. Sakurai conducted with former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobuo Ishihara, he revealed that it conducted no corroborative research on the 16 comfort women interviewed in South Korea and that the Kono Statement was issued without any documentary evidence.
Sakurai
That was a long time ago.
From the starting point that the Kono Statement was wrong, I applied for interviews with all the people I could think of no matter how I look at it.
Kiichi Miyazawa turned me down, but I also interviewed Yohei Kono and the South Korean ambassador at the time, and finally, I heard a surprising testimony from Ishihara.
Abiru
I was a reporter in the Social Affairs Department, and I remember reading this with my boss and rushing to Mr. Ishihara's home.
At the time, the comfort women issue was entirely dominated by society's tendency to believe that Japan was evil.
Ms. Sakurai and Mr. Nishioka were the ones who questioned that.
I have watched how society's perception of the issue gradually changed through a series of steady speech activities.
As a result, Asahi admitted that it had misreported the story, and this complete victory is the culmination of their efforts.
Sakurai
I can't help but feel that a long time has passed.
More than 20 years ago, It enounced me for stating in a lecture that "comfort women were not forced to work together.
Since there were not as many people aware of the lies about the comfort women as there are now, I was fleeted under a tremendous storm of bashing at the time.
We received many protest letters at work, it sent faxes until we ran out of paper, and the protest phone calls never stopped ringing.
One of the most conspicuous was a protest that originated in Hokkaido.
I remember receiving protests with almost the same wording, mainly from the Hokkaido Teachers' Union.
Abiru
In a battle fought in the land of "fate," the truth has finally triumphed over fabrication.
This verdict will be a big step in the fight back.
