The Yoshida Report Campaign, identical in composition to the comfort women report

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Yoshida Report Campaign, identical in composition to the comfort women report
Kadota: If you cover the scene, you'll know immediately that there was no way they would have disobeyed orders and pulled out. And I wasn't the only one who thought so. The reporters and journalists at NHK and Kyodo News knew the Asahi report was a lie with a single shot. Of course, the people on the ground are the same. When asked in person, many of those involved in the field said they did not want to talk to Asahi. Both Kyodo and NHK - both of which are harsh media when it comes to their anti-nuclear reporting - are still willing to listen to the facts and our testimony. But they know that the Asahi Shimbun won't take the story seriously from the start, so they are afraid of the Asahi reporters and don't want to meet with them. I thought it was the same as the "comfort women" being moved forcibly, issue.
Sakurai: The Sankei Shimbun reported on the Yoshida Report in its August 18 morning edition. And it denied the Asahi Shimbun report that 90 percent of the staff had fled to the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant (2F) in violation of Mr. Yoshida's orders.
Kadota: There is no testimony that 90 percent of the employees withdrew from the plant in violation of his orders. On the contrary, Yoshida said things like, "Who told you to pull out?" "I don't use words like a retreat." "I just said that we would evacuate people who had nothing to do with it," "I arranged for a bus to take them to the second floor," and "I evacuated them by bus to the second floor. 
I've already said it many times. So I have said repeatedly that "I made them go to 2F in violation of my orders"; I can see that it is a made-up story that they went to 2F in violation of my orders.
Abiru: That's right.  The composition is no different from that of the comfort women.
Sakurai: I can't help but say that it's the same as the comfort women.
Abiru: Mr. Kadota, I wondered why in the commentary on the "Yoshida Report" campaign, Asahi is pressing for "full disclosure" of the Yoshida Report.
When we read the report we obtained this time, we felt that Asahi would be in trouble if the entire story were opened to the public.
What did Asahi mean when it said, "Open to the public"?
Kadota: I think Asahi knew that the government couldn't and wouldn't release the information, so they were deliberately pressing for it to be released.  Asahi itself did not promise Mr. Yoshida that it would not disclose the information. When the government refused to release the report after promising Mr. Yoshida that it would, Asahi chased them down by saying that they had to release the entire story.
Conversely, when I told them to release the "Yoshida Report" in its entirety, and that Asahi could do it tomorrow, they stopped saying anything.
Abiru: So you're saying that you should do it yourself.
Kadota: You can't do it yourself, but if you do, the way you made the article, how intentionally you made it, will be revealed. I think that Asahi would be in trouble if the report were made public.
Even the testimonies of comfort women would be troubled if they were made public.
Sakurai: The same was true of the comfort women's testimony, which bothers Asahi when released.
I think it was the premise that the Asahi Shimbun was under the assumption that the Japanese and Korean governments had agreed to keep the testimony private, which is why they were able to say "being moved forcibly" without worrying about it.  It's the same with this one. The government can't do that. If they did, it would mean that the government would go back on its promise to Mr. Yoshida.
Kadota: The Asahi Shimbun knows the government can't do it, and they insist on it, so it's really troubling.

The Asahi Shimbun, which also disgraced Japan over the nuclear accident

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
The Asahi Shimbun, which also disgraced Japan over the nuclear accident
Kadota: I would like to point out that the Asahi Shimbun's campaign for the Yoshida Report on TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is very similar to the comfort women issue. The Asahi Shimbun reported in its May 20 morning edition that 90 percent of TEPCO employees at Fukushima Daiichi had withdrawn from the plant on the morning of March 15, 2011, in "violation of the plant manager's order," according to the "Yoshida Report" by the government's accident investigation commission, which the Asahi Shimbun had obtained.

I was the only journalist to interview Mr. Yoshida at length. Not only did I interview Mr. Yoshida, but I also interviewed many people involved in the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Motohisa Ikeda, the head of the nuclear emergency response headquarters (a senior vice minister of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry), as well as people on the government side and researchers who were involved in the accident countermeasures. Madarame Haruki, chairman of the Nuclear Safety Commission, or a plant engineer who worked for Mr. Yoshida, or a plant engineer who worked for one of his subordinate companies, or even a local reporter and the former mayor of the town - all of them testified under their own names. It was published as "The Man Who Saw the Edge of Death: 500 Days of Masao Yoshida and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant" (PHP).
When I saw the Asahi news, I was surprised and astonished, and immediately thought, "That's not true. However, Asahi's report quickly went around the world.

The New York Times reported that "In 2011, panicked workers fled from the Fukushima nuclear power plant despite orders to do so." The BBC reported that "The Asahi Shimbun reported that about 90% of the workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant had fled under the threat of meltdown.
Some in the South Korean media said, 'It was a shock to the Japanese press and intellectuals who had despised Korea and praised the Japanese samurai spirit of sacrificing individuals for the sake of the group, saying that the Sewol incident began with the selfishness of Koreans and that it showed that Korea was Still a backward country.'
Foreign media, which had previously praised the Japanese's courage in the aftermath of the nuclear accident, changed their stance in response to the report. 
The late Mr. Yoshida had praised his men and women who fought desperately against the worst of the disaster.
The Asahi Shimbun has dismayed those who struggled to save Japan as being ridiculed from all over the world.
This articles contineus.

this means that people who know Japan can understand the good qualities of Japan.

Comfort women, the Yoshida Report...the cardinal sin of anti-Japanese reporting that has not gone away

Sound Argument Monthly, October 2014

URGENT DISCUSSION

Journalist Yoshiko Sakurai

Journalist Kadota Ryusho

Rui Abiru, Editor, Sankei Shimbun Political Science Department

It is true that not only the people of Japan but also people worldwide, especially those involved in the U.N., need to know.

It is a truth that Hillary Clinton especially needs to know.

An enormous amount of well-founded criticism is "unfounded criticism"...

Abiru: Mr. Sugiura, who has just come up for discussion, wrote the following on his front page.

'There have been unfounded criticism in some circles and on the Internet that the comfort women issue is a fabrication by the Asahi Shimbun.'

There is more than enough evidence and reason to believe that it is unfounded. Nevertheless, the Asahi wrote as if they were the victims. And they wrote that they were going to retract the article about Mr. Yoshida Seiji, but they wrote it in small print on the inside page and nothing on the front page. There is no headline. It seems to me that they wanted to cover up the story from the beginning.

Kadota: It is not Asahi that is receiving unfounded criticism, but the Japanese. Statues of comfort women have been erected around the world, and condemnation resolutions are being discussed in parliaments all over the world.

I wondered how the Asahi Shimbun would answer here, but on the contrary, it became defiant.

Sakurai: 'Unfounded criticism' means that I am surprised that you insist so much. 

It is precisely the problem that the Asahi Shimbun fabricated, first of all, being moved forcibly and secondly, linking the Women's Volunteer Corps and the comfort women, which are two very different things. The Women's Volunteer Corps women were moved forcibly is shocking to the world, and the Asahi Shimbun was the flag bearer.

Imagine the reality of 'Volunteer Corps = Comfort Women,' which is a tremendous thing.

The Japanese military forcibly took girls who may or may not have graduated from elementary school to young women in their early 20s and turned them into " military comfort women," according to the Asahi newspaper.

Writing this kind of thing would enrage South Korean public opinion.

It would be strange for the Koreans not to be angry, and it's natural for them to be angry. Between Japan and South Korea, which could have been better, it was severely damaged. In that sense, Asahi needs to apologize to the Korean people as well.

Abiru: Asahi admitted to conflating comfort women and Volunteer Corps, but wrote that this was unreasonable and that there was little research. But that's not right.

You could ask your parents or grandparents, "What was the Volunteer Corps?" It's the kind of thing you can easily find out if you ask.

Kadota: It's common sense, you know because it is already at the level of a common reason for the female volunteer corps.

How on earth did they evaluate the information in "selling oneself for prostitutes"?

Sakurai: The feature article on Uemura's report says, 'We have discovered that there was a factual error in one part of the article,' and 'We regret the lack of corroborative reporting. 

However, this is not the kind of story that can be put to rest with insufficient reporting.

In Uemura's August 11, 1991, article, the woman's name was withheld. But three days later, in Seoul on August 14, she gave her real name, Kim Hak-sun

, at a press conference, where she reveals, "My parents sold me for ￥40." "I was sold by my stepfather three years later. When I was 17," she said.

She later filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, and in her complaint, she clearly states that she was sold to Kisaeng because of her poverty. It is the kind of statement that the Uemura reporter must have seen. I wonder how he would have assessed this critical piece of information that she was sold by her parents, even though he wrote a lot about it in his feature article.

On December 25, 1991, after the lawsuit was filed, Uemura wrote a widely reported interview with Kim.

In that article, Uemura did not write that she was sold out because of her poverty.

Looking closely at the context, I think it's safe to say that Uemura intentionally dropped the information that Kim was sold out.

The same is true of the Volunteer Corps.

He did not report the critical information that the Volunteer Corps had nothing to do with the comfort women.

That's how it has to be said.

Abiru: I'd like to say a word about this. In the Asahi special report, it is stated that there was no mention of "being sold to Kisaeng" in the tape that Mr. Uemura heard. Even if this were true, Uemura's article in August 1991 states that he was "taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps." 

So, did Mr. Uemura hear on the tape that she was taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps? 

Probably not. 

I would have to say that there was a fabrication, after all. If this is not a fabrication, I don't know what it is. Asahi's feature article does not make that clear.

The expression "being moved forcibly" has been changed one after another in the Asahi editorial.

Kadota: In the particular feature, it is mentioned that the Seoul Bureau Chief initially provided the information, but I wonder why did Mr. Uemura of the Osaka Social Affairs Department take the trouble to travel overseas to cover the story in Seoul? It's different from a domestic business trip. It's unreasonable to expect us to believe that he didn't have a special relationship with his mother-in-law.

Sakurai: I have my doubts about that, too. It's an exclusive news story, isn't it? From a journalist's point of view, it's unthinkable for a reporter to hand over the Seoul Bureau Chief's exclusive story to another reporter. The feature article about Mr. Uemura says that he "did not use his relationship with his mother-in-law to obtain any special information." Still, the article he wrote was favorable to his mother-in-law's claims. With that in mind, the question of why he didn't write the information about being "sold by his parents" and why he wrote the article linking it to Volunteer Corps comes up even more strongly. There is no explanation of these points in the feature article.

Kadota: I think Asahi understands that being moved forcibly is the root of the problem. Is there being moved forcibly or not? It is the crux of Sex Slaves. As long as they are called "sex slaves," they must be forced to take a woman where she doesn't want to go, or confine her, or force her to have sex with someone she doesn't like by rape.

Without 'being moved forcibly,' it would not be 'sex slave' at all.

If that collapses, it will be 'What was the Asahi Shimbun's coverage so far?'

If there was no being moved forcibly, then I think the Asahi Shimbun would disappear.

So I think they're still trying desperately to defend this place and even haven't lowered the flag that there was a compulsion to do so.

The feature article does not include much in the way of live testimony from Mr. Uemura himself or the Seoul Bureau Chief. On the other hand, this kind of summary reflects Asahi's intention to settle the situation somehow and get through it.

Abiru: Looking at the Asahi editorial, around 1992, the article treated "being moved forcibly" as a specific premise. However, as being moved forcibly became more and more suspicious, the editorial regressed to 'being moved forcibly must have existed.' Eventually, they began to write that 'being moved forcibly' didn't matter, and finally, the term 'being moved forcibly' itself is no longer used these days.

Sakurai: It became coercion.

Abiru: This was a misrepresentation. I also think it is a taunt of Asahi's readers. They don't try to tell the truth. It has dramatically inconvenienced the people of Japan, but I think it's a genuinely insincere response.

The Fatal Logical Fallacy of the Verified Article on the Asahi Comfort Women Report

Sakurai: So that's precisely what Asahi's 'lowly skill' is.

The Asahi's verification article on the comfort women is also very cunning.

Let's take a look at the article on the front page of the morning edition of January 11, 1992, titled "Material showing military involvement in comfort stations.

In the verification, Asahi stressed that it was not intended to make a political issue out of the article by reporting it just before "Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's visit to South Korea." However, the timing was right before the visit. I still remember it. The headline on the front page was a big, black one: "Military Involvement Materials Found.

Abiru: There were six headlines on the front page.

Kadota: That was quite a sight.

Abiru: Normally, you don't get articles that big.

Sakurai: However, when I read the "military involvement" article carefully, I found that it was about things like making people aware of hygiene and cracking down on bad businesses.

Abiru: As Mr. Nishioka Tsutomu often says, it was "benevolent involvement.

Sakurai: Mr. Ikuhiko Hata also said, "This is good involvement. Without this kind of commitment, the comfort station could not have been managed. However, when we look at the actual paper, the way it's written seems to overlap with the image of that involvement in the forced removals.

Abiru: That's right. On the bottom of the front page of that day, it says, "Military comfort women, mostly Korean women, said to number between 80,000 and 200,000...were forcibly taken away in the name of the Women's Volunteer Corps. There are three or four errors in the short, little-ten-line manuscript.

Sakurai: But the verification says that the government was aware of the existence of the documents before Asahi's report, so it wasn't the first time Asahi informed the government that the military was involved, and therefore the Japanese government knew that such documents existed, so it's not Asahi's fault that Mr. Miyazawa went to South Korea and apologized eight times for being upset about it.

It is a really cunning way to get away with it.

Abiru: The documents from the Cabinet's Foreign Policy Council at the time say that the Asahi report caused an uproar that it was as if someone had stirred up a hornet's nest.

Perhaps some people in the government grasped such documents as a matter of course.

But there is no doubt that the way the Asahi article wrote caused a great deal of commotion.

Sakurai: About Mr. Yoshida Seiji, who claimed to have done the "Forced Removal on Jeju Island," Asahi wrote that they could not corroborate his testimony in Jeju Island and said that they had no proof that Yoshida was false.

The Asahi Shimbun says, "That's why we marked it as unverifiable.

But the fact that none of the locals say "that happened" about Yoshida Seiji's testimony is proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony is not true.

It may not have said, "What Yoshida Seiji said is a lie," but it said that there was no such thing as "a woman was taken, or a truck came and snatched 200 people by force.

That means that what Yoshida Seiji wrote did not exist, so it is false.

But here again, Asahi made a very painful excuse: "There was no proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony was false at that time.

On the other hand, they have now concluded that the testimony is false, and they are retracting the article. So when did the Asahi determine that it was fake? 

If it wasn't this August 5, how many years ago was it, how many decades ago was it, and what were they doing in the meantime?

There is no mention of it at all, and I have no idea.

Abiru: What's more, what's cunning about this article is that they wrote at least 16 items and said they were going to rescind them, but which sections exactly are they canceling? There's almost no mention of which articles they're taking down. What kind of reporting have they done? What do they rescind, and what do they leave out? So they're secretly taking back articles in a way that the current readers don't understand.

Sakurai: They don't want their mistakes to be known as much as possible. I can see how they want to hide it as much as possible.

Kadota: One of the characteristics of the Asahi Shimbun is that they do their best to write about things that can be said to be the fault of Japan alone, but when it comes to the case of the 122 comfort women who filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government on June 25 against the U.S. military, for example - and I think this is a huge deal - they didn't do much about it.

There have been comforting women in various countries' militaries throughout history. In fact, they have existed in all ages and places, even to the point that the Crusaders were accompanied by a unit of prostitutes in the old days. The Asahi Shimbun has been reporting on this, leading its readers to believe that it is unique to Japan and that only Japan is to blame.

Abiru: However, in this feature article, Asahi has made a fatal logical error. What is it? They have written in their editorials that even if similar cases had occurred in other countries, Japan would not be allowed to get away with it just because other countries had not apologized. But this time, in the column titled "What about the reports in other newspapers?" they went out of their way to list all the reports in other newspapers, trying to say, "It's not just us.

Kadota: But in this special edition, they say, "It's not just me," don't they?

Abiru: That's right. It's like saying in an editorial that "the theory of 'It's not just me' is incomprehensible," but then saying, "It's not just me" when it comes to their own mistakes.

Asahi journalists conspicuous for their egotism in "power watchdog

Sakurai: Before the Asahi's two-day article on comfort women came out, the National Institute for Basic Studies put out an opinion ad in all the national newspapers saying that the process of preparing the comfort women, the Kono Statement, was insufficiently verified. I wrote a few points, and in that article, the misinformation about being moved forcibly was left to itself. Mr. Miyazawa apologized eight times during his visit to Korea in January of 1992. I wrote that this started because of misinformation from the Asahi Shimbun. Then I received two questions from the Asahi Shimbun through its advertising agency.

'Do you have proof that Miyazawa apologized eight times? Do you have the documents?' was one.

The other one was, 'You say Asahi misreported the news, but please show me the misreporting documents.'

Regarding the first point, the Asahi Shimbun reported it eight times in its "from time to time" column. That's why I responded, "It's your article. The second point is that there is already a lot of evidence of this, so I provided it.

Then it has since become NOT getting a reply.

Asahi was criticized in many places, and I believe that this led to the verification of its coverage of the comfort women - as was the case with the exchange of advertisements - but the company made no attempt to explain itself. They are high-handed and put themselves in the victim's shoes. It must be challenging to demand remorse from this newspaper. The only way to get them to reflect is for their readers to give up on the Asahi. I think it would be better for everyone to part ways with the Asahi Shimbun.

Kadota: When I talk to Asahi journalists, they often say that we have to monitor the power. 

Monitor power. It is one of the roles of journalism, which is fine, but in the case of Asahi, I feel that many reporters are self-absorbed or drunk with themselves. 

For example, when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, they didn't monitor the power, they just stuck to it, and as a result, it did nothing but undermine Japan and the Japanese people. In their minds, they conveniently rewrite their minds to say that they are confronting the power and monitoring it. There are many such interesting journalists.

Asahi not facing their responsibilities

Sakurai: There's one more thing in this special report that cannot be overlooked. For example, the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, which was reported and disseminated by Asahi, was cited as the basis for the U.N. Coomaraswamy Report and the U.S. House of Representatives' resolution condemning Japan. Nevertheless, I think that Asahi has no awareness that it has spread Japan's disgrace to the international community. It doesn't seem to have an attitude that it bears a grave responsibility.

In the United States, State Department spokesman Saki referred Japan's comfort women issue at a press conference, and there have been incidents in the U.S. where he blamed Japan for this. 

 The Congressional Research Service prepares materials for Congress, and the House of Representatives passes resolutions based on those materials.

This primary data compiled by the Congressional Research Service shows that 200,000 people were forcibly taken, sex slaves, and most of them killed, which makes us wonder when and where they were.

The Congressional Research Service did not gather this information with any prejudice. 

They gathered all kinds of Material and handed it to members of Congress. These materials include biased and erroneous reporting by the Asahi Shimbun. However, the Asahi Shimbun acted as if its reporting had nothing to do with the international community's criticism toward Japan. As Mr. Abiru said, it is not communicating at all in English because it does not confront its responsibilities. They have replaced this issue with one of the women's rights violations.

I find it strange that the Asahi's verification of this article must first be translated into English, Chinese and Korean to make sure there are no mistakes, and then sent out to the rest of the world. Asahi should announce the errors in its article to the international community, but that alone is not enough. It is a phase in which the government must put a lot of effort into communicating information.

This article continues.

Abiru: I would like to say one more thing about the nature of the Asahi Shimbun. I agree with the point that it's not fair, but at the same time, looking at the reporters in the field, I can't help but say that they don't know anything about the comfort women issue because they don't know anything about it. A symbolic event occurred during the first Abe administration when the comfort women issue became a major political issue. Prime Minister Abe made a statement to the effect that there was no coercion in a narrow sense, let alone in a broad sense. It was a deliberate backhanded remark, which was based on the arguments advanced by the Asahi Shimbun and the assertions of Professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi of Chuo University. However, at the press conference of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a reporter from the Asahi Shimbun stood up to a question and loudly and angrily said, "The Prime Minister says it's narrowly defined or broadly defined, but I don't know what he means. But I don't understand." But I thought it was you guys who started saying "narrowly defined" and "broadly defined."

Sakurai: That's a division they made up in the first place.

Abiru: That's right. After studying objectively, they don't think they are correct, but instead, it speaks to the a priori from the premise that they are righteous and just.

Kadota: It's clear that Japan-Korea relations have been destroyed. It has left a big problem for the future, but I think that Asahi has a great deal of responsibility for Japan-China relations as well. I believe that Japan-China relations before August 1985 and Japan-China relations after that time have become entirely different, but what happened in August 1985? To prevent then Prime Minister Nakasone from making an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which was a grand summation of post-war politics, Asahi launched a big campaign. Finally, the People's Daily published an article, "We are watching Japan's movements on the Yasukuni issue." And on August 14, a spokesman officially said, "Prime Minister Nakasone's visit to Yasukuni hurts our Asian neighbors' feelings.

The visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which had been going on since the end of the war, began to be a problem from there. In other words, this is the moment when the Yasukuni issue became a "diplomatic card." After that, the question became more prominent because of the Asahi Shimbun's "making a report." The fact that the Asahi's reporting worsened diplomatic relations and caused problems is not only actual of Japan-South Korea relations but also Japan-China relations.

Abiru: In the Nanjing Incident case, it was the Asahi Shimbun that made a big deal out of it. They repeated propaganda all the time, including Katsuichi Honda's "Journey to China," and so on. Interestingly, Asahi criticized Yasukuni like crazy afterward, but the Asahi article in October 1951 says that a young man who came to Japan with GHQ and returned to the U.S. kept visiting Yasukuni and wrote, "I am going back to the U.S., but I will ask my friends in Japan to visit the shrine and pray to the spirits of the dead" and so on. It is a great article. Asahi wasn't anti-Yasukuni from the beginning.

They must have had some intention to do so from the middle of the story.

Kadota: I think they thought they could use it as Material.

Sakurai: They had the so-called Class A war criminal enshrinement in mind. In Japan's diplomacy, China and the Korean Peninsula are anti-Japanese. The Asahi Shimbun sowed the seeds of anti-Japanese sentiment to China and the Korean Peninsula. The Asahi Shimbun is the root of all evil.

Kadota: Most Chinese people are not anti-Japanese at all; they are kind. The Chinese I experienced in the 1980s was very fond of the Japanese and were very kind to us. However, that is changing nowadays. The Asahi Shimbun is not an ally of those people, but a partner of the Communist Party dictatorship.

Sakurai: I think Mr. Kadota's point is crucial. There are all kinds of people in China. Some people have a clear understanding of Japan and are lovely human beings. The National Institute for Research on Japan (NRI) gives out awards for Japanese studies. This year, in its first year, we selected Liu Jianwei of the Tokyo Institute of Technology as an individual awardee. He is a scholar studying Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun's younger brother. When I asked him to give a commemorative lecture, he said, 'There is no Chinese who has studied Japan and has no negative things to say about Japan.' I think this means that people who know Japan can understand the good qualities of Japan. I believe this is a crucial thing he said. People who see Japan correctly cannot dislike Japan, and they don't.

It is not the Chinese who have been stirred into anti-Japanese consciousness by the Asahi Shimbun, but the honest, factual people who are always at the bottom of China, who can see the facts as facts.

Those leaders of democracy who object to the current communist rule, who think it's strange, and who object to the current communist rule

It is younger generations that are leaning towards democratization.

I think we have to make sure that we interact with them.

Kadota: True friendship between Japan and China begins with the "abolition" of the Asahi Shimbun.

 

 

 

 

There is no Chinese who has studied Japan and has no negative things to say about Japan

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Abiru: I would like to say one more thing about the nature of the Asahi Shimbun. I agree with the point that it's not fair, but at the same time, looking at the reporters in the field, I can't help but say that they don't know anything about the comfort women issue because they don't know anything about it. A symbolic event occurred during the first Abe administration when the comfort women issue became a major political issue. Prime Minister Abe made a statement to the effect that there was no coercion in a narrow sense, let alone in a broad sense. It was a deliberate backhanded remark, which was based on the arguments advanced by the Asahi Shimbun and the assertions of Professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi of Chuo University. However, at the press conference of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a reporter from the Asahi Shimbun stood up to a question and loudly and angrily said, "The Prime Minister says it's narrowly defined or broadly defined, but I don't know what he means. But I don't understand." But I thought it was you guys who started saying "narrowly defined" and "broadly defined."
Sakurai: That's a division they made up in the first place.
Abiru: That's right. After studying objectively, they don't think they are correct, but instead, it speaks to the a priori from the premise that they are righteous and just.
Kadota: It's clear that Japan-Korea relations have been destroyed. It has left a big problem for the future, but I think that Asahi has a great deal of responsibility for Japan-China relations as well. I believe that Japan-China relations before August 1985 and Japan-China relations after that time have become entirely different, but what happened in August 1985? To prevent then Prime Minister Nakasone from making an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which was a grand summation of post-war politics, Asahi launched a big campaign. Finally, the People's Daily published an article, "We are watching Japan's movements on the Yasukuni issue." And on August 14, a spokesman officially said, "Prime Minister Nakasone's visit to Yasukuni hurts our Asian neighbors' feelings.
The visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which had been going on since the end of the war, began to be a problem from there. In other words, this is the moment when the Yasukuni issue became a "diplomatic card." After that, the question became more prominent because of the Asahi Shimbun's "making a report."  The fact that the Asahi's reporting worsened diplomatic relations and caused problems is not only actual of Japan-South Korea relations but also Japan-China relations.
Abiru: In the Nanjing Incident case, it was the Asahi Shimbun that made a big deal out of it. They repeated propaganda all the time, including Katsuichi Honda's "Journey to China," and so on. Interestingly, Asahi criticized Yasukuni like crazy afterward, but the Asahi article in October 1951 says that a young man who came to Japan with GHQ and returned to the U.S. kept visiting Yasukuni and wrote, "I am going back to the U.S., but I will ask my friends in Japan to visit the shrine and pray to the spirits of the dead" and so on. It is a great article. Asahi wasn't anti-Yasukuni from the beginning.
They must have had some intention to do so from the middle of the story.
Kadota: I think they thought they could use it as material.
Sakurai: They had the so-called Class A war criminal enshrinement in mind. In Japan's diplomacy, China and the Korean Peninsula are anti-Japanese. The Asahi Shimbun sowed the seeds of anti-Japanese sentiment to China and the Korean Peninsula. The Asahi Shimbun is the root of all evil.
Kadota: Most Chinese people are not anti-Japanese at all; they are kind. The Chinese I experienced in the 1980s was very fond of the Japanese and were very kind to us. However, that is changing nowadays. The Asahi Shimbun is not an ally of those people, but a partner of the Communist Party dictatorship.
Sakurai: I think Mr. Kadota's point is crucial. There are all kinds of people in China. Some people have a clear understanding of Japan and are lovely human beings. The National Institute for Research on Japan (NRI) gives out awards for Japanese studies. This year, in its first year, we selected Liu Jianwei of the Tokyo Institute of Technology as an individual awardee. He is a scholar studying Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun's younger brother.  When I asked him to give a commemorative lecture, he said, 'There is no Chinese who has studied Japan and has no negative things to say about Japan.' I think this means that people who know Japan can understand the good qualities of Japan. I believe this is a crucial thing he said. People who see Japan correctly cannot dislike Japan, and they don't.
It is not the Chinese who have been stirred into anti-Japanese consciousness by the Asahi Shimbun, but the honest, factual people who are always at the bottom of China, who can see the facts as facts.
Those leaders of democracy who object to the current communist rule, who think it's strange, and who object to the current communist rule
It is younger generations that are leaning towards democratization.
I think we have to make sure that we interact with them.
Kadota: True friendship between Japan and China begins with the "abolition" of the Asahi Shimbun.

 

 

They have replaced this issue with one of the women's rights violations.

Comfort women, the Yoshida Report...the cardinal sin of anti-Japanese reporting that has not gone away
Sound Argument Monthly, October 2014
URGENT DISCUSSION
Journalist Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist Kadota Ryusho
Rui Abiru, Editor, Sankei Shimbun Political Science Department
It is true that not only the people of Japan but also people worldwide, especially those involved in the U.N., need to know.
It is a truth that Hillary Clinton especially needs to know.
An enormous amount of well-founded criticism is "unfounded criticism"...
Abiru: Mr. Sugiura, who has just come up for discussion, wrote the following on his front page.
'There have been unfounded criticism in some circles and on the Internet that the comfort women issue is a fabrication by the Asahi Shimbun.'
There is more than enough evidence and reason to believe that it is unfounded. Nevertheless, the Asahi wrote as if they were the victims. And they wrote that they were going to retract the article about Mr. Yoshida Seiji, but they wrote it in small print on the inside page and nothing on the front page. There is no headline. It seems to me that they wanted to cover up the story from the beginning.
Kadota: It is not Asahi that is receiving unfounded criticism, but the Japanese. Statues of comfort women have been erected around the world, and condemnation resolutions are being discussed in parliaments all over the world.
I wondered how the Asahi Shimbun would answer here, but on the contrary, it became defiant.
Sakurai: 'Unfounded criticism' means that I am surprised that you insist so much.　
It is precisely the problem that the Asahi Shimbun fabricated, first of all, being moved forcibly and secondly, linking the Women's Volunteer Corps and the comfort women, which are two very different things. The Women's Volunteer Corps women were moved forcibly is shocking to the world, and the Asahi Shimbun was the flag bearer.
Imagine the reality of 'Volunteer Corps = Comfort Women,' which is a tremendous thing.
The Japanese military forcibly took girls who may or may not have graduated from elementary school to young women in their early 20s and turned them into " military comfort women," according to the Asahi newspaper.
Writing this kind of thing would enrage South Korean public opinion.
It would be strange for the Koreans not to be angry, and it's natural for them to be angry. Between Japan and South Korea, which could have been better, it was severely damaged.  In that sense, Asahi needs to apologize to the Korean people as well.
Abiru: Asahi admitted to conflating comfort women and Volunteer Corps, but wrote that this was unreasonable and that there was little research. But that's not right.
You could ask your parents or grandparents, "What was the Volunteer Corps?" It's the kind of thing you can easily find out if you ask.
Kadota: It's common sense, you know because it is already at the level of a common reason for the female volunteer corps.
How on earth did they evaluate the information in "selling oneself for prostitutes"?
Sakurai: The feature article on Uemura's report says, 'We have discovered that there was a factual error in one part of the article,' and 'We regret the lack of corroborative reporting. 
However, this is not the kind of story that can be put to rest with insufficient reporting.
In Uemura's August 11, 1991, article, the woman's name was withheld. But three days later, in Seoul on August 14, she gave her real name, Kim Hak-sun
, at a press conference, where she reveals, "My parents sold me for ￥40." "I was sold by my stepfather three years later. When I was 17," she said.
She later filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, and in her complaint, she clearly states that she was sold to Kisaeng because of her poverty.  It is the kind of statement that the Uemura reporter must have seen. I wonder how he would have assessed this critical piece of information that she was sold by her parents, even though he wrote a lot about it in his feature article.
On December 25, 1991, after the lawsuit was filed, Uemura wrote a widely reported interview with Kim.
In that article, Uemura did not write that she was sold out because of her poverty.
Looking closely at the context, I think it's safe to say that Uemura intentionally dropped the information that Kim was sold out.
The same is true of the Volunteer Corps.
He did not report the critical information that the Volunteer Corps had nothing to do with the comfort women.
That's how it has to be said.
Abiru: I'd like to say a word about this. In the Asahi special report, it is stated that there was no mention of "being sold to Kisaeng" in the tape that Mr. Uemura heard.  Even if this were true, Uemura's article in August 1991 states that he was "taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps." 
So, did Mr. Uemura hear on the tape that she was taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps? 
Probably not. 
I would have to say that there was a fabrication, after all. If this is not a fabrication, I don't know what it is. Asahi's feature article does not make that clear.
The expression "being moved forcibly" has been changed one after another in the Asahi editorial.
Kadota: In the particular feature, it is mentioned that the Seoul Bureau Chief initially provided the information, but I wonder why did Mr. Uemura of the Osaka Social Affairs Department take the trouble to travel overseas to cover the story in Seoul? It's different from a domestic business trip. It's unreasonable to expect us to believe that he didn't have a special relationship with his mother-in-law.
Sakurai: I have my doubts about that, too. It's an exclusive news story, isn't it? From a journalist's point of view, it's unthinkable for a reporter to hand over the Seoul Bureau Chief's exclusive story to another reporter. The feature article about Mr. Uemura says that he "did not use his relationship with his mother-in-law to obtain any special information." Still, the article he wrote was favorable to his mother-in-law's claims. With that in mind, the question of why he didn't write the information about being "sold by his parents" and why he wrote the article linking it to Volunteer Corps comes up even more strongly.  There is no explanation of these points in the feature article.
Kadota: I think Asahi understands that being moved forcibly is the root of the problem. Is there being moved forcibly or not? It is the crux of Sex Slaves. As long as they are called "sex slaves," they must be forced to take a woman where she doesn't want to go, or confine her, or force her to have sex with someone she doesn't like by rape.
Without 'being moved forcibly,' it would not be 'sex slave' at all.
If that collapses, it will be 'What was the Asahi Shimbun's coverage so far?'
If there was no being moved forcibly, then I think the Asahi Shimbun would disappear.
So I think they're still trying desperately to defend this place and even haven't lowered the flag that there was a compulsion to do so.
The feature article does not include much in the way of live testimony from Mr. Uemura himself or the Seoul Bureau Chief. On the other hand, this kind of summary reflects Asahi's intention to settle the situation somehow and get through it.
Abiru: Looking at the Asahi editorial, around 1992, the article treated "being moved forcibly" as a specific premise. However, as being moved forcibly became more and more suspicious, the editorial regressed to 'being moved forcibly must have existed.' Eventually, they began to write that 'being moved forcibly' didn't matter, and finally, the term 'being moved forcibly' itself is no longer used these days.
Sakurai: It became coercion.
Abiru: This was a misrepresentation. I also think it is a taunt of Asahi's readers. They don't try to tell the truth. It has dramatically inconvenienced the people of Japan, but I think it's a genuinely insincere response.
The Fatal Logical Fallacy of the Verified Article on the Asahi Comfort Women Report
Sakurai: So that's precisely what Asahi's 'lowly skill' is.
The Asahi's verification article on the comfort women is also very cunning.
Let's take a look at the article on the front page of the morning edition of January 11, 1992, titled "Material showing military involvement in comfort stations.
In the verification, Asahi stressed that it was not intended to make a political issue out of the article by reporting it just before "Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's visit to South Korea." However, the timing was right before the visit. I still remember it. The headline on the front page was a big, black one: "Military Involvement Materials Found.
Abiru: There were six headlines on the front page.
Kadota: That was quite a sight.
Abiru: Normally, you don't get articles that big.
Sakurai: However, when I read the "military involvement" article carefully, I found that it was about things like making people aware of hygiene and cracking down on bad businesses.
Abiru: As Mr. Nishioka Tsutomu often says, it was "benevolent involvement.
Sakurai: Mr. Ikuhiko Hata also said, "This is good involvement. Without this kind of commitment, the comfort station could not have been managed. However, when we look at the actual paper, the way it's written seems to overlap with the image of that involvement in the forced removals.
Abiru: That's right. On the bottom of the front page of that day, it says, "Military comfort women, mostly Korean women, said to number between 80,000 and 200,000...were forcibly taken away in the name of the Women's Volunteer Corps. There are three or four errors in the short, little-ten-line manuscript.
Sakurai: But the verification says that the government was aware of the existence of the documents before Asahi's report, so it wasn't the first time Asahi informed the government that the military was involved, and therefore the Japanese government knew that such documents existed, so it's not Asahi's fault that Mr. Miyazawa went to South Korea and apologized eight times for being upset about it.
It is a really cunning way to get away with it.
Abiru: The documents from the Cabinet's Foreign Policy Council at the time say that the Asahi report caused an uproar that it was as if someone had stirred up a hornet's nest.
Perhaps some people in the government grasped such documents as a matter of course.
But there is no doubt that the way the Asahi article wrote caused a great deal of commotion.
Sakurai: About Mr. Yoshida Seiji, who claimed to have done the "Forced Removal on Jeju Island," Asahi wrote that they could not corroborate his testimony in Jeju Island and said that they had no proof that Yoshida was false.
The Asahi Shimbun says, "That's why we marked it as unverifiable.
But the fact that none of the locals say "that happened" about Yoshida Seiji's testimony is proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony is not true.
It may not have said, "What Yoshida Seiji said is a lie," but it said that there was no such thing as "a woman was taken, or a truck came and snatched 200 people by force.
That means that what Yoshida Seiji wrote did not exist, so it is false.
But here again, Asahi made a very painful excuse: "There was no proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony was false at that time.
On the other hand, they have now concluded that the testimony is false, and they are retracting the article. So when did the Asahi determine that it was fake? 
If it wasn't this August 5, how many years ago was it, how many decades ago was it, and what were they doing in the meantime?
There is no mention of it at all, and I have no idea.
Abiru: What's more, what's cunning about this article is that they wrote at least 16 articles and said they were going to rescind them, but which articles exactly are they canceling? There's almost no mention of which articles they're taking down. What kind of reporting have they done? What do they rescind, and what do they leave out? So they're secretly taking back articles in a way that the current readers don't understand.
Sakurai: They don't want their mistakes to be known as much as possible. I can see how they want to hide it as much as possible.
Kadota: One of the characteristics of the Asahi Shimbun is that they do their best to write about things that can be said to be the fault of Japan alone, but when it comes to the case of the 122 comfort women who filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government on June 25 against the U.S. military, for example - and I think this is a huge deal - they didn't do much about it.
There have been comforting women in various countries' militaries throughout history. In fact, they have existed in all ages and places, even to the point that the Crusaders were accompanied by a unit of prostitutes in the old days. The Asahi Shimbun has been reporting on this, leading its readers to believe that it is unique to Japan and that only Japan is to blame.
Abiru: However, in this feature article, Asahi has made a fatal logical error. What is it? They have written in their editorials that even if similar cases had occurred in other countries, Japan would not be allowed to get away with it just because other countries had not apologized. But this time, in the column titled "What about the reports in other newspapers?" they went out of their way to list all the reports in other newspapers, trying to say, "It's not just us.
Kadota: But in this special edition, they say, "It's not just me," don't they?
Abiru: That's right. It's like saying in an editorial that "the theory of 'It's not just me' is incomprehensible," but then saying, "It's not just me" when it comes to their own mistakes.
Asahi journalists conspicuous for their egotism in "power watchdog
Sakurai: Before the Asahi's two-day article on comfort women came out, the National Institute for Basic Studies put out an opinion ad in all the national newspapers saying that the process of preparing the comfort women, the Kono Statement, was insufficiently verified. I wrote a few points, and in that article, the misinformation about being moved forcibly was left to itself. Mr. Miyazawa apologized eight times during his visit to Korea in January of 1992.  I wrote that this started because of misinformation from the Asahi Shimbun. Then I received two questions from the Asahi Shimbun through its advertising agency.
'Do you have proof that Miyazawa apologized eight times? Do you have the documents?' was one.
The other one was, 'You say Asahi misreported the news, but please show me the misreporting documents.'
Regarding the first point, the Asahi Shimbun reported it eight times in its "from time to time" column.  That's why I responded, "It's your article. The second point is that there is already a lot of evidence of this, so I provided it.
Then it has since become NOT getting a reply.
Asahi was criticized in many places, and I believe that this led to the verification of its coverage of the comfort women - as was the case with the exchange of advertisements - but the company made no attempt to explain itself. They are high-handed and put themselves in the victim's shoes. It must be very difficult to demand remorse from this newspaper. The only way to get them to reflect is for their readers to give up on the Asahi. I think it would be better for everyone to part ways with the Asahi Shimbun.
Kadota: When I talk to Asahi journalists, they often say that we have to monitor the power. 
Monitor power. It is one of the roles of journalism, which is fine, but in the case of Asahi, I feel that many reporters are self-absorbed or drunk with themselves. 
For example, when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, they didn't monitor the power, they just stuck to it, and as a result, it did nothing but undermine Japan and the Japanese people. In their minds, they conveniently rewrite their minds to say that they are confronting the power and monitoring it. There are many such interesting journalists.
Asahi not facing their responsibilities
Sakurai: There's one more thing in this special report that cannot be overlooked. For example, the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, which was reported and disseminated by Asahi, was cited as the basis for the U.N. Coomaraswamy Report and the U.S. House of Representatives' resolution condemning Japan.  Nevertheless, I think that Asahi has no awareness that it has spread Japan's disgrace to the international community. It doesn't seem to have an attitude that it bears a grave responsibility.
In the United States, State Department spokesman Saki referred Japan's comfort women issue at a press conference, and there have been incidents in the U.S. where he blamed Japan for this. 
 The Congressional Research Service prepares materials for Congress, and the House of Representatives passes resolutions based on those materials.
This primary data compiled by the Congressional Research Service shows that 200,000 people were forcibly taken, sex slaves, and most of them killed, which makes us wonder when and where they were.
The Congressional Research Service did not gather this information with any prejudice. 
They gathered all kinds of Material and handed it to members of Congress. These materials include biased and erroneous reporting by the Asahi Shimbun. However, the Asahi Shimbun acted as if its reporting had nothing to do with the international community's criticism toward Japan. As Mr. Abiru said, the fact that it is not communicating at all in English is because it does not confront its responsibilities. They have replaced this issue with one of the women's rights violations.
I find it strange that the Asahi's verification of this article must first be translated into English, Chinese and Korean to make sure there are no mistakes, and then sent out to the rest of the world. Asahi should announce the errors in its article to the international community, but that alone is not enough. It is a phase in which the government must put a lot of effort into communicating information.
This article continues.

Asahi should announce the errors in its article to the international community,

Comfort women, the Yoshida Report...the cardinal sin of anti-Japanese reporting that has not gone away
Sound Argument Monthly, October 2014
URGENT DISCUSSION
Journalist Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist Kadota Ryusho
Rui Abiru, Editor, Sankei Shimbun Political Science Department
It is true that not only the people of Japan but also people worldwide, especially those involved in the U.N., need to know.
It is a truth that Hillary Clinton especially needs to know.
An enormous amount of well-founded criticism is "unfounded criticism"...
Abiru: Mr. Sugiura, who has just come up for discussion, wrote the following on his front page.
'There have been unfounded criticism in some circles and on the Internet that the comfort women issue is a fabrication by the Asahi Shimbun.'
There is more than enough evidence and reason to believe that it is unfounded. Nevertheless, the Asahi wrote as if they were the victims. And they wrote that they were going to retract the article about Mr. Yoshida Seiji, but they wrote it in small print on the inside page and nothing on the front page. There is no headline. It seems to me that they wanted to cover up the story from the beginning.
Kadota: It is not Asahi that is receiving unfounded criticism, but the Japanese. Statues of comfort women have been erected around the world, and condemnation resolutions are being discussed in parliaments all over the world.
I wondered how the Asahi Shimbun would answer here, but on the contrary, it became defiant.
Sakurai: 'Unfounded criticism' means that I am surprised that you insist so much.　
It is precisely the problem that the Asahi Shimbun fabricated, first of all, being moved forcibly and secondly, linking the Women's Volunteer Corps and the comfort women, which are two very different things. The Women's Volunteer Corps women were moved forcibly is shocking to the world, and the Asahi Shimbun was the flag bearer.
Imagine the reality of 'Volunteer Corps = Comfort Women,' which is a tremendous thing.
The Japanese military forcibly took girls who may or may not have graduated from elementary school to young women in their early 20s and turned them into " military comfort women," according to the Asahi newspaper.
Writing this kind of thing would enrage South Korean public opinion.
It would be strange for the Koreans not to be angry, and it's natural for them to be angry. Between Japan and South Korea, which could have been better, it was severely damaged.  In that sense, Asahi needs to apologize to the Korean people as well.
Abiru: Asahi admitted to conflating comfort women and Volunteer Corps, but wrote that this was unreasonable and that there was little research. But that's not right.
You could ask your parents or grandparents, "What was the Volunteer Corps?" It's the kind of thing you can easily find out if you ask.
Kadota: It's common sense, you know because it is already at the level of a common reason for the female volunteer corps.
How on earth did they evaluate the information in "selling oneself for prostitutes"?
Sakurai: The feature article on Uemura's report says, 'We have discovered that there was a factual error in one part of the article,' and 'We regret the lack of corroborative reporting. 
However, this is not the kind of story that can be put to rest with insufficient reporting.
In Uemura's August 11, 1991, article, the woman's name was withheld. But three days later, in Seoul on August 14, she gave her real name, Kim Hak-sun
, at a press conference, where she reveals, "My parents sold me for ￥40." "I was sold by my stepfather three years later. When I was 17," she said.
She later filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, and in her complaint, she clearly states that she was sold to Kisaeng because of her poverty.  It is the kind of statement that the Uemura reporter must have seen. I wonder how he would have assessed this critical piece of information that she was sold by her parents, even though he wrote a lot about it in his feature article.
On December 25, 1991, after the lawsuit was filed, Uemura wrote a widely reported interview with Kim.
In that article, Uemura did not write that she was sold out because of her poverty.
Looking closely at the context, I think it's safe to say that Uemura intentionally dropped the information that Kim was sold out.
The same is true of the Volunteer Corps.
He did not report the critical information that the Volunteer Corps had nothing to do with the comfort women.
That's how it has to be said.
Abiru: I'd like to say a word about this. In the Asahi special report, it is stated that there was no mention of "being sold to Kisaeng" in the tape that Mr. Uemura heard.  Even if this were true, Uemura's article in August 1991 states that he was "taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps." 
So, did Mr. Uemura hear on the tape that she was taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps? 
Probably not. 
I would have to say that there was a fabrication, after all. If this is not a fabrication, I don't know what it is. Asahi's feature article does not make that clear.
The expression "being moved forcibly" has been changed one after another in the Asahi editorial.
Kadota: In the particular feature, it is mentioned that the Seoul Bureau Chief initially provided the information, but I wonder why did Mr. Uemura of the Osaka Social Affairs Department take the trouble to travel overseas to cover the story in Seoul? It's different from a domestic business trip. It's unreasonable to expect us to believe that he didn't have a special relationship with his mother-in-law.
Sakurai: I have my doubts about that, too. It's an exclusive news story, isn't it? From a journalist's point of view, it's unthinkable for a reporter to hand over the Seoul Bureau Chief's exclusive story to another reporter. The feature article about Mr. Uemura says that he "did not use his relationship with his mother-in-law to obtain any special information." Still, the article he wrote was favorable to his mother-in-law's claims. With that in mind, the question of why he didn't write the information about being "sold by his parents" and why he wrote the article linking it to Volunteer Corps comes up even more strongly.  There is no explanation of these points in the feature article.
Kadota: I think Asahi understands that being moved forcibly is the root of the problem. Is there being moved forcibly or not? It is the crux of Sex Slaves. As long as they are called "sex slaves," they must be forced to take a woman where she doesn't want to go, or confine her, or force her to have sex with someone she doesn't like by rape.
Without 'being moved forcibly,' it would not be 'sex slave' at all.
If that collapses, it will be 'What was the Asahi Shimbun's coverage so far?'
If there was no being moved forcibly, then I think the Asahi Shimbun would disappear.
So I think they're still trying desperately to defend this place and even haven't lowered the flag that there was a compulsion to do so.
The feature article does not include much in the way of live testimony from Mr. Uemura himself or the Seoul Bureau Chief. On the other hand, this kind of summary reflects Asahi's intention to settle the situation somehow and get through it.
Abiru: Looking at the Asahi editorial, around 1992, the article treated "being moved forcibly" as a specific premise. However, as being moved forcibly became more and more suspicious, the editorial regressed to 'being moved forcibly must have existed.' Eventually, they began to write that 'being moved forcibly' didn't matter, and finally, the term 'being moved forcibly' itself is no longer used these days.
Sakurai: It became coercion.
Abiru: This was a misrepresentation. I also think it is a taunt of Asahi's readers. They don't try to tell the truth. It has dramatically inconvenienced the people of Japan, but I think it's a genuinely insincere response.
The Fatal Logical Fallacy of the Verified Article on the Asahi Comfort Women Report
Sakurai: So that's precisely what Asahi's 'lowly skill' is.
The Asahi's verification article on the comfort women is also very cunning.
Let's take a look at the article on the front page of the morning edition of January 11, 1992, titled "Material showing military involvement in comfort stations.
In the verification, Asahi stressed that it was not intended to make a political issue out of the article by reporting it just before "Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's visit to South Korea." However, the timing was right before the visit. I still remember it. The headline on the front page was a big, black one: "Military Involvement Materials Found.
Abiru: There were six headlines on the front page.
Kadota: That was quite a sight.
Abiru: Normally, you don't get articles that big.
Sakurai: However, when I read the "military involvement" article carefully, I found that it was about things like making people aware of hygiene and cracking down on bad businesses.
Abiru: As Mr. Nishioka Tsutomu often says, it was "benevolent involvement.
Sakurai: Mr. Ikuhiko Hata also said, "This is good involvement. Without this kind of commitment, the comfort station could not have been managed. However, when we look at the actual paper, the way it's written seems to overlap with the image of that involvement in the forced removals.
Abiru: That's right. On the bottom of the front page of that day, it says, "Military comfort women, mostly Korean women, said to number between 80,000 and 200,000...were forcibly taken away in the name of the Women's Volunteer Corps. There are three or four errors in the short, little-ten-line manuscript.
Sakurai: But the verification says that the government was aware of the existence of the documents before Asahi's report, so it wasn't the first time Asahi informed the government that the military was involved, and therefore the Japanese government knew that such documents existed, so it's not Asahi's fault that Mr. Miyazawa went to South Korea and apologized eight times for being upset about it.
It is a really cunning way to get away with it.
Abiru: The documents from the Cabinet's Foreign Policy Council at the time say that the Asahi report caused an uproar that it was as if someone had stirred up a hornet's nest.
Perhaps some people in the government grasped such documents as a matter of course.
But there is no doubt that the way the Asahi article wrote caused a great deal of commotion.
Sakurai: About Mr. Yoshida Seiji, who claimed to have done the "Forced Removal on Jeju Island," Asahi wrote that they could not corroborate his testimony in Jeju Island and said that they had no proof that Yoshida was false.
The Asahi Shimbun says, "That's why we marked it as unverifiable.
But the fact that none of the locals say "that happened" about Yoshida Seiji's testimony is proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony is not true.
It may not have said, "What Yoshida Seiji said is a lie," but it said that there was no such thing as "a woman was taken, or a truck came and snatched 200 people by force.
That means that what Yoshida Seiji wrote did not exist, so it is false.
But here again, Asahi made a very painful excuse: "There was no proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony was false at that time.
On the other hand, they have now concluded that the testimony is false, and they are retracting the article. So when did the Asahi determine that it was fake? 
If it wasn't this August 5, how many years ago was it, how many decades ago was it, and what were they doing in the meantime?
There is no mention of it at all, and I have no idea.
Abiru: What's more, what's cunning about this article is that they wrote at least 16 articles and said they were going to rescind them, but which articles exactly are they canceling? There's almost no mention of which articles they're taking down. What kind of reporting have they done? What do they rescind, and what do they leave out? So they're secretly taking back articles in a way that the current readers don't understand.
Sakurai: They don't want their mistakes to be known as much as possible. I can see how they want to hide it as much as possible.
Kadota: One of the characteristics of the Asahi Shimbun is that they do their best to write about things that can be said to be the fault of Japan alone, but when it comes to the case of the 122 comfort women who filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government on June 25 against the U.S. military, for example - and I think this is a huge deal - they didn't do much about it.
There have been comforting women in various countries' militaries throughout history. In fact, they have existed in all ages and places, even to the point that the Crusaders were accompanied by a unit of prostitutes in the old days. The Asahi Shimbun has been reporting on this, leading its readers to believe that it is unique to Japan and that only Japan is to blame.
Abiru: However, in this feature article, Asahi has made a fatal logical error. What is it? They have written in their editorials that even if similar cases had occurred in other countries, Japan would not be allowed to get away with it just because other countries had not apologized. But this time, in the column titled "What about the reports in other newspapers?" they went out of their way to list all the reports in other newspapers, trying to say, "It's not just us.
Kadota: But in this special edition, they say, "It's not just me," don't they?
Abiru: That's right. It's like saying in an editorial that "the theory of 'It's not just me' is incomprehensible," but then saying, "It's not just me" when it comes to their own mistakes.
Asahi journalists conspicuous for their egotism in "power watchdog
Sakurai: Before the Asahi's two-day article on comfort women came out, the National Institute for Basic Studies put out an opinion ad in all the national newspapers saying that the process of preparing the comfort women, the Kono Statement, was insufficiently verified. I wrote a few points, and in that article, the misinformation about being moved forcibly was left to itself. Mr. Miyazawa apologized eight times during his visit to Korea in January of 1992.  I wrote that this started because of misinformation from the Asahi Shimbun. Then I received two questions from the Asahi Shimbun through its advertising agency.
'Do you have proof that Miyazawa apologized eight times? Do you have the documents?' was one.
The other one was, 'You say Asahi misreported the news, but please show me the misreporting documents.'
Regarding the first point, the Asahi Shimbun reported it eight times in its "from time to time" column.  That's why I responded, "It's your article. The second point is that there is already a lot of evidence of this, so I provided it.
Then it has since become NOT getting a reply.
Asahi was criticized in many places, and I believe that this led to the verification of its coverage of the comfort women - as was the case with the exchange of advertisements - but the company made no attempt to explain itself. They are high-handed and put themselves in the victim's shoes. It must be very difficult to demand remorse from this newspaper. The only way to get them to reflect is for their readers to give up on the Asahi. I think it would be better for everyone to part ways with the Asahi Shimbun.
Kadota: When I talk to Asahi journalists, they often say that we have to monitor the power. 
Monitor power. It is one of the roles of journalism, which is fine, but in the case of Asahi, I feel that many reporters are self-absorbed or drunk with themselves. 
For example, when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, they didn't monitor the power, they just stuck to it, and as a result, it did nothing but undermine Japan and the Japanese people. In their minds, they conveniently rewrite their minds to say that they are confronting the power and monitoring it. There are many such interesting journalists.
Asahi not facing their responsibilities
Sakurai: There's one more thing in this special report that cannot be overlooked. For example, the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, which was reported and disseminated by Asahi, was cited as the basis for the U.N. Coomaraswamy Report and the U.S. House of Representatives' resolution condemning Japan.  Nevertheless, I think that Asahi has no awareness that it has spread Japan's disgrace to the international community. It doesn't seem to have an attitude that it bears a grave responsibility.
In the United States, State Department spokesman Saki referred Japan's comfort women issue at a press conference, and there have been incidents in the U.S. where he blamed Japan for this. 
 The Congressional Research Service prepares materials for Congress, and the House of Representatives passes resolutions based on those materials.
This primary data compiled by the Congressional Research Service shows that 200,000 people were forcibly taken, sex slaves, and most of them killed, which makes us wonder when and where they were.
The Congressional Research Service did not gather this information with any prejudice. 
They gathered all kinds of Material and handed it to members of Congress. These materials include biased and erroneous reporting by the Asahi Shimbun. However, the Asahi Shimbun acted as if its reporting had nothing to do with the international community's criticism toward Japan. As Mr. Abiru said, the fact that it is not communicating at all in English is because it does not confront its responsibilities. They have replaced this issue with one of the women's rights violations.
I find it strange that the Asahi's verification of this article must first be translated into English, Chinese and Korean to make sure there are no mistakes, and then sent out to the rest of the world. Asahi should announce the errors in its article to the international community, but that alone is not enough. It is a phase in which the government must put a lot of effort into communicating information.
This article continues.

These materials include biased and erroneous reporting by the Asahi Shimbun.

Comfort women, the Yoshida Report...the cardinal sin of anti-Japanese reporting that has not gone away
Sound Argument Monthly, October 2014
URGENT DISCUSSION
Journalist Yoshiko Sakurai
Journalist Kadota Ryusho
Rui Abiru, Editor, Sankei Shimbun Political Science Department
It is true that not only the people of Japan but also people worldwide, especially those involved in the U.N., need to know.
It is a truth that Hillary Clinton especially needs to know.
An enormous amount of well-founded criticism is "unfounded criticism"...
Abiru: Mr. Sugiura, who has just come up for discussion, wrote the following on his front page.
'There have been unfounded criticism in some circles and on the Internet that the comfort women issue is a fabrication by the Asahi Shimbun.'
There is more than enough evidence and reason to believe that it is unfounded. Nevertheless, the Asahi wrote as if they were the victims. And they wrote that they were going to retract the article about Mr. Yoshida Seiji, but they wrote it in small print on the inside page and nothing on the front page. There is no headline. It seems to me that they wanted to cover up the story from the beginning.
Kadota: It is not Asahi that is receiving unfounded criticism, but the Japanese. Statues of comfort women have been erected around the world, and condemnation resolutions are being discussed in parliaments all over the world.
I wondered how the Asahi Shimbun would answer here, but on the contrary, it became defiant.
Sakurai: 'Unfounded criticism' means that I am surprised that you insist so much.　
It is precisely the problem that the Asahi Shimbun fabricated, first of all, being moved forcibly and secondly, linking the Women's Volunteer Corps and the comfort women, which are two very different things. The Women's Volunteer Corps women were moved forcibly is shocking to the world, and the Asahi Shimbun was the flag bearer.
Imagine the reality of 'Volunteer Corps = Comfort Women,' which is a tremendous thing.
The Japanese military forcibly took girls who may or may not have graduated from elementary school to young women in their early 20s and turned them into " military comfort women," according to the Asahi newspaper.
Writing this kind of thing would enrage South Korean public opinion.
It would be strange for the Koreans not to be angry, and it's natural for them to be angry. Between Japan and South Korea, which could have been better, it was severely damaged.  In that sense, Asahi needs to apologize to the Korean people as well.
Abiru: Asahi admitted to conflating comfort women and Volunteer Corps, but wrote that this was unreasonable and that there was little research. But that's not right.
You could ask your parents or grandparents, "What was the Volunteer Corps?" It's the kind of thing you can easily find out if you ask.
Kadota: It's common sense, you know because it is already at the level of a common reason for the female volunteer corps.
How on earth did they evaluate the information in "selling oneself for prostitutes"?
Sakurai: The feature article on Uemura's report says, 'We have discovered that there was a factual error in one part of the article,' and 'We regret the lack of corroborative reporting. 
However, this is not the kind of story that can be put to rest with insufficient reporting.
In Uemura's August 11, 1991, article, the woman's name was withheld. But three days later, in Seoul on August 14, she gave her real name, Kim Hak-sun
, at a press conference, where she reveals, "My parents sold me for ￥40." "I was sold by my stepfather three years later. When I was 17," she said.
She later filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government, and in her complaint, she clearly states that she was sold to Kisaeng because of her poverty.  It is the kind of statement that the Uemura reporter must have seen. I wonder how he would have assessed this critical piece of information that she was sold by her parents, even though he wrote a lot about it in his feature article.
On December 25, 1991, after the lawsuit was filed, Uemura wrote a widely reported interview with Kim.
In that article, Uemura did not write that she was sold out because of her poverty.
Looking closely at the context, I think it's safe to say that Uemura intentionally dropped the information that Kim was sold out.
The same is true of the Volunteer Corps.
He did not report the critical information that the Volunteer Corps had nothing to do with the comfort women.
That's how it has to be said.
Abiru: I'd like to say a word about this. In the Asahi special report, it is stated that there was no mention of "being sold to Kisaeng" in the tape that Mr. Uemura heard.  Even if this were true, Uemura's article in August 1991 states that he was "taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps." 
So, did Mr. Uemura hear on the tape that she was taken to the battlefield in the name of the volunteer corps? 
Probably not. 
I would have to say that there was a fabrication, after all. If this is not a fabrication, I don't know what it is. Asahi's feature article does not make that clear.
The expression "being moved forcibly" has been changed one after another in the Asahi editorial.
Kadota: In the particular feature, it is mentioned that the Seoul Bureau Chief initially provided the information, but I wonder why did Mr. Uemura of the Osaka Social Affairs Department take the trouble to travel overseas to cover the story in Seoul? It's different from a domestic business trip. It's unreasonable to expect us to believe that he didn't have a special relationship with his mother-in-law.
Sakurai: I have my doubts about that, too. It's an exclusive news story, isn't it? From a journalist's point of view, it's unthinkable for a reporter to hand over the Seoul Bureau Chief's exclusive story to another reporter. The feature article about Mr. Uemura says that he "did not use his relationship with his mother-in-law to obtain any special information." Still, the article he wrote was favorable to his mother-in-law's claims. With that in mind, the question of why he didn't write the information about being "sold by his parents" and why he wrote the article linking it to Volunteer Corps comes up even more strongly.  There is no explanation of these points in the feature article.
Kadota: I think Asahi understands that being moved forcibly is the root of the problem. Is there being moved forcibly or not? It is the crux of Sex Slaves. As long as they are called "sex slaves," they must be forced to take a woman where she doesn't want to go, or confine her, or force her to have sex with someone she doesn't like by rape.
Without 'being moved forcibly,' it would not be 'sex slave' at all.
If that collapses, it will be 'What was the Asahi Shimbun's coverage so far?'
If there was no being moved forcibly, then I think the Asahi Shimbun would disappear.
So I think they're still trying desperately to defend this place and even haven't lowered the flag that there was a compulsion to do so.
The feature article does not include much in the way of live testimony from Mr. Uemura himself or the Seoul Bureau Chief. On the other hand, this kind of summary reflects Asahi's intention to settle the situation somehow and get through it.
Abiru: Looking at the Asahi editorial, around 1992, the article treated "being moved forcibly" as a specific premise. However, as being moved forcibly became more and more suspicious, the editorial regressed to 'being moved forcibly must have existed.' Eventually, they began to write that 'being moved forcibly' didn't matter, and finally, the term 'being moved forcibly' itself is no longer used these days.
Sakurai: It became coercion.
Abiru: This was a misrepresentation. I also think it is a taunt of Asahi's readers. They don't try to tell the truth. It has dramatically inconvenienced the people of Japan, but I think it's a genuinely insincere response.
The Fatal Logical Fallacy of the Verified Article on the Asahi Comfort Women Report
Sakurai: So that's precisely what Asahi's 'lowly skill' is.
The Asahi's verification article on the comfort women is also very cunning.
Let's take a look at the article on the front page of the morning edition of January 11, 1992, titled "Material showing military involvement in comfort stations.
In the verification, Asahi stressed that it was not intended to make a political issue out of the article by reporting it just before "Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's visit to South Korea." However, the timing was right before the visit. I still remember it. The headline on the front page was a big, black one: "Military Involvement Materials Found.
Abiru: There were six headlines on the front page.
Kadota: That was quite a sight.
Abiru: Normally, you don't get articles that big.
Sakurai: However, when I read the "military involvement" article carefully, I found that it was about things like making people aware of hygiene and cracking down on bad businesses.
Abiru: As Mr. Nishioka Tsutomu often says, it was "benevolent involvement.
Sakurai: Mr. Ikuhiko Hata also said, "This is good involvement. Without this kind of commitment, the comfort station could not have been managed. However, when we look at the actual paper, the way it's written seems to overlap with the image of that involvement in the forced removals.
Abiru: That's right. On the bottom of the front page of that day, it says, "Military comfort women, mostly Korean women, said to number between 80,000 and 200,000...were forcibly taken away in the name of the Women's Volunteer Corps. There are three or four errors in the short, little-ten-line manuscript.
Sakurai: But the verification says that the government was aware of the existence of the documents before Asahi's report, so it wasn't the first time Asahi informed the government that the military was involved, and therefore the Japanese government knew that such documents existed, so it's not Asahi's fault that Mr. Miyazawa went to South Korea and apologized eight times for being upset about it.
It is a really cunning way to get away with it.
Abiru: The documents from the Cabinet's Foreign Policy Council at the time say that the Asahi report caused an uproar that it was as if someone had stirred up a hornet's nest.
Perhaps some people in the government grasped such documents as a matter of course.
But there is no doubt that the way the Asahi article wrote caused a great deal of commotion.
Sakurai: About Mr. Yoshida Seiji, who claimed to have done the "Forced Removal on Jeju Island," Asahi wrote that they could not corroborate his testimony in Jeju Island and said that they had no proof that Yoshida was false.
The Asahi Shimbun says, "That's why we marked it as unverifiable.
But the fact that none of the locals say "that happened" about Yoshida Seiji's testimony is proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony is not true.
It may not have said, "What Yoshida Seiji said is a lie," but it said that there was no such thing as "a woman was taken, or a truck came and snatched 200 people by force.
That means that what Yoshida Seiji wrote did not exist, so it is false.
But here again, Asahi made a very painful excuse: "There was no proof that Yoshida Seiji's testimony was false at that time.
On the other hand, they have now concluded that the testimony is false, and they are retracting the article. So when did the Asahi determine that it was fake? 
If it wasn't this August 5, how many years ago was it, how many decades ago was it, and what were they doing in the meantime?
There is no mention of it at all, and I have no idea.
Abiru: What's more, what's cunning about this article is that they wrote at least 16 articles and said they were going to rescind them, but which articles exactly are they canceling? There's almost no mention of which articles they're taking down. What kind of reporting have they done? What do they rescind, and what do they leave out? So they're secretly taking back articles in a way that the current readers don't understand.
Sakurai: They don't want their mistakes to be known as much as possible. I can see how they want to hide it as much as possible.
Kadota: One of the characteristics of the Asahi Shimbun is that they do their best to write about things that can be said to be the fault of Japan alone, but when it comes to the case of the 122 comfort women who filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government on June 25 against the U.S. military, for example - and I think this is a huge deal - they didn't do much about it.
There have been comforting women in various countries' militaries throughout history. In fact, they have existed in all ages and places, even to the point that the Crusaders were accompanied by a unit of prostitutes in the old days. The Asahi Shimbun has been reporting on this, leading its readers to believe that it is unique to Japan and that only Japan is to blame.
Abiru: However, in this feature article, Asahi has made a fatal logical error. What is it? They have written in their editorials that even if similar cases had occurred in other countries, Japan would not be allowed to get away with it just because other countries had not apologized. But this time, in the column titled "What about the reports in other newspapers?" they went out of their way to list all the reports in other newspapers, trying to say, "It's not just us.
Kadota: But in this special edition, they say, "It's not just me," don't they?
Abiru: That's right. It's like saying in an editorial that "the theory of 'It's not just me' is incomprehensible," but then saying, "It's not just me" when it comes to their own mistakes.
Asahi journalists conspicuous for their egotism in "power watchdog
Sakurai: Before the Asahi's two-day article on comfort women came out, the National Institute for Basic Studies put out an opinion ad in all the national newspapers saying that the process of preparing the comfort women, the Kono Statement, was insufficiently verified. I wrote a few points, and in that article, the misinformation about being moved forcibly was left to itself. Mr. Miyazawa apologized eight times during his visit to Korea in January of 1992.  I wrote that this started because of misinformation from the Asahi Shimbun. Then I received two questions from the Asahi Shimbun through its advertising agency.
'Do you have proof that Miyazawa apologized eight times? Do you have the documents?' was one.
The other one was, 'You say Asahi misreported the news, but please show me the misreporting documents.'
Regarding the first point, the Asahi Shimbun reported it eight times in its "from time to time" column.  That's why I responded, "It's your article. The second point is that there is already a lot of evidence of this, so I provided it.
Then it has since become NOT getting a reply.
Asahi was criticized in many places, and I believe that this led to the verification of its coverage of the comfort women - as was the case with the exchange of advertisements - but the company made no attempt to explain itself. They are high-handed and put themselves in the victim's shoes. It must be very difficult to demand remorse from this newspaper. The only way to get them to reflect is for their readers to give up on the Asahi. I think it would be better for everyone to part ways with the Asahi Shimbun.
Kadota: When I talk to Asahi journalists, they often say that we have to monitor the power. 
Monitor power. It is one of the roles of journalism, which is fine, but in the case of Asahi, I feel that many reporters are self-absorbed or drunk with themselves. 
For example, when the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, they didn't monitor the power, they just stuck to it, and as a result, it did nothing but undermine Japan and the Japanese people. In their minds, they conveniently rewrite their minds to say that they are confronting the power and monitoring it. There are many such interesting journalists.
Asahi not facing their responsibilities
Sakurai: There's one more thing in this special report that cannot be overlooked. For example, the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, which was reported and disseminated by Asahi, was cited as the basis for the U.N. Coomaraswamy Report and the U.S. House of Representatives' resolution condemning Japan.  Nevertheless, I think that Asahi has no awareness that it has spread Japan's disgrace to the international community. It doesn't seem to have an attitude that it bears a grave responsibility.
In the United States, State Department spokesman Saki referred Japan's comfort women issue at a press conference, and there have been incidents in the U.S. where he blamed Japan for this. 
 The Congressional Research Service prepares materials for Congress, and the House of Representatives passes resolutions based on those materials.
This primary data compiled by the Congressional Research Service shows that 200,000 people were forcibly taken, sex slaves, and most of them killed, which makes us wonder when and where they were.
The Congressional Research Service did not gather this information with any prejudice. 
They gathered all kinds of Material and handed it to members of Congress. These materials include biased and erroneous reporting by the Asahi Shimbun. However, the Asahi Shimbun acted as if its reporting had nothing to do with the international community's criticism toward Japan. As Mr. Abiru said, the fact that it is not communicating at all in English is because it does not confront its responsibilities. They have replaced this issue with one of the women's rights violations.
I find it strange that the Asahi's verification of this article must first be translated into English, Chinese and Korean to make sure there are no mistakes, and then sent out to the rest of the world. Asahi should announce the errors in its article to the international community, but that alone is not enough. It is a phase in which the government must put a lot of effort into communicating information.
This article continues.

公開されて困るのは慰安婦の証言だってそうでした。朝日新聞は日韓の政府の合意で非公開という前提があったからこそ、安心して強制連行と言えたのだと思いますよ。

原発事故でも日本を貶めた朝日新聞

　門田　慰安婦問題とよく似た図式なのですが私は東京電力福島第一原発をめぐる朝日新聞による吉田調書キャンペーンを挙げたいと思います。これは5月20日の朝日朝刊で、福島第一の東電職員の9割が2011年3月15日朝、「所長命令に違反」して、「原発から撤退」していたことが朝日新聞が入手した政府事故調による「吉田調書」によって明らかになった─というものでした。

　私は、ジャーナリストとして唯一、吉田氏に長時間インタビューをおこなっています。吉田氏に取材しただけでなく、あの事故の際、福島第一原発で何があったのか、現場の人間はどう闘ったのか、をテーマに多くの当事者たち─当時の菅直人首相や池田元久・原子力災害現地対策本部長（経産副大臣）をはじめ政府サイドの人々、また研究者として事故対策にかかわった班目春樹・原子力安全委員会委員長、あるいは吉田氏の部下だった現場のプラントエンジニア、また協力企業の面々、さらには、地元記者や元町長に至るまで─100名近い人々にすべて「実名」で証言してもらい、それは『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の500日』（ＰＨＰ）として上梓しています。朝日の一報を見たときはびっくり仰天し、すぐに「そんな事実はない」と思いました。しかし、朝日の報道は忽ち世界中へ駆け抜けていきました。

 

『ニューヨーク・タイムズ』は〈2011年、命令にも関わらず、パニックに陥った作業員たちは福島原発から逃げ去っていた〉と報じ、英のＢＢＣも、〈福島原発の労働者の約90％がメルトダウンの危機が目前に迫った状況で逃げた、と朝日新聞は報じた〉とし、韓国メディアのなかには〈これまで〝セウォル号事件〟が「韓国人の利己的な民族性から始まった」、「相変わらず後進国であることを示してくれた」などと韓国を卑下し、集団のために個人を犠牲にする日本のサムライ精神を自画自賛した日本の報道機関と知識人たちは、大きな衝撃に包まれた〉と報じました。それまで原発事故で発揮された日本人の勇気を讃えていた外国メディアは、報道を受けて姿勢を一変させました。最悪の事態と必死で闘った部下たちを、今は亡き吉田氏は心から称賛していましたが、朝日新聞は日本を救うために奮闘したそんな人々を世界中から嘲笑される存在に貶めてしまったのです。

慰安婦報道と同一構図の吉田調書キャンペーン

　門田　現場を取材すれば命令に反して撤退することなどあり得なかったことはすぐわかります。そして、そう思ったのは私だけではありません。ＮＨＫにしても共同通信にしても現場に食い込んでいる記者、ジャーナリストは一発で朝日報道が嘘だとわかっていました。現場の人たちはもちろん、そうです。直接会っていろいろ聞いても、多くの現場関係者が口を揃えるのは、朝日には話をしたくないということでした。要するに共同もＮＨＫも─どちらも反原発報道では厳しいメディアだが─それでも事実やこちらの証言は聞いてくれる姿勢がある。しかし朝日新聞は、はじめからまともに報じてくれないことがわかっているから、朝日新聞の記者が怖いし、会いたくないと言うわけですね。私は、ああ、「従軍慰安婦」の強制連行問題と同じだなと思いました。

　櫻井　産経新聞が八月十八日付朝刊で吉田調書について報じましたね。そして、吉田氏の命令に違反して九割の職員が福島第二原発（二Ｆ）に逃げた─という朝日報道を否定しましたね。

 

　門田　自分の命令に違反して九割の職員が撤退したなんてどこにも証言がないわけです。それどころか吉田氏は「誰が撤退と言ったのか」とか、「使わないです、撤退みたいな言葉は」とか、それから「関係ない人間は退避させますからと言っただけです」「二Ｆまで退避させようとバスを手配したんです」「バスで退避させました、二Ｆのほうに」と、もう何度も言っているのです。だから「自分の命令で二Ｆに行かせた」ということを繰り返し言っている。命令に違反して二Ｆに行ったなんて、つくられた話だとわかります。

 

　阿比留　そうですね。構図は慰安婦と変わらない。

 

　櫻井　と言わざるを得ないですよ。

 

　阿比留　門田さん、私が不思議だったのは、「吉田調書」キャンペーンの解説記事で吉田調書について「全面公開しろ」と、朝日は迫っていますね、今回われわれが入手した調書を読んで感じたのは、全面公開されたら朝日は困るのではないかということです。すべてを詳らかにすると、ここを隠していた、ここを書いてないとあちこち突っ込まれてしまう。どういうつもりで「全面公開を」などと書いたのでしょう。

 

　門田　政府は公開できない、しないだろうと朝日はわかっているからわざと公開を迫っているのだと思います。朝日自身は吉田さんと約束したわけではありません。非公開を約束したわけではない。だから自分はすぐにでもできる。吉田氏と約束して絶対公開できない政府に向かっては全面公開しろと言って追い詰める。逆に私が「吉田調書」を全文公開せよ、朝日なら明日にでもできるでしょ、と言うと、朝日は何も言わなくなりましたね。

 

　阿比留　じゃあ、自分でやれよという話ですね。

 

　門田　自分ではできないわけで、それをやったら自分の記事のつくり方、いかに意図的な記事をつくったかというのがわかってしまう。実は公開されたら困るのではないか、と思うんですよね。

 

　櫻井　公開されて困るのは慰安婦の証言だってそうでした。朝日新聞は日韓の政府の合意で非公開という前提があったからこそ、安心して強制連行と言えたのだと思いますよ。これだってそうでしょ。政府はできない。それをやったら政府が吉田氏との約束を反故にするということですから。

 

　門田　できないことがわかっていて、それを主張するのですから本当に困ったものですね。

 

　櫻井よしこ氏　ハワイ州立大学歴史学部卒業。日本テレビ・ニュースキャスターなどを経てフリー・ジャーナリストに。第26回大宅壮一ノンフィクション賞、第46回菊池寛賞、第26回正論大賞を受賞。平成19年、国家基本問題研究所を設立し理事長に就任。著書に『宰相の資格』『日本の試練』『甦れ、日本』『明治人の姿』など多数。

 

　門田隆将氏　昭和33（1958）年、高知県生まれ。中央大学法学部卒。ジャーナリスト。政治・経済・歴史・司法・事件など幅広いジャンルで活躍中。著書に『太平洋戦争最後の証言』（集英社）、『甲子園への遺言』（講談社）、『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の五〇〇日』（ＰＨＰ）などがある。

 

　阿比留瑠比氏　昭和41年、福岡県出身。早稲田大学政治経済学部を卒業後、平成２年、産経新聞社入社。仙台総局、文化部、社会部を経て政治部へ。首相官邸キャップや外務省兼遊軍担当などを務め、現在政治部編集委員。

しかし朝日新聞は、はじめからまともに報じてくれないことがわかっているから、朝日新聞の記者が怖いし、会いたくないと言うわけですね。

原発事故でも日本を貶めた朝日新聞

　門田　慰安婦問題とよく似た図式なのですが私は東京電力福島第一原発をめぐる朝日新聞による吉田調書キャンペーンを挙げたいと思います。これは5月20日の朝日朝刊で、福島第一の東電職員の9割が2011年3月15日朝、「所長命令に違反」して、「原発から撤退」していたことが朝日新聞が入手した政府事故調による「吉田調書」によって明らかになった─というものでした。

　私は、ジャーナリストとして唯一、吉田氏に長時間インタビューをおこなっています。吉田氏に取材しただけでなく、あの事故の際、福島第一原発で何があったのか、現場の人間はどう闘ったのか、をテーマに多くの当事者たち─当時の菅直人首相や池田元久・原子力災害現地対策本部長（経産副大臣）をはじめ政府サイドの人々、また研究者として事故対策にかかわった班目春樹・原子力安全委員会委員長、あるいは吉田氏の部下だった現場のプラントエンジニア、また協力企業の面々、さらには、地元記者や元町長に至るまで─100名近い人々にすべて「実名」で証言してもらい、それは『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の500日』（ＰＨＰ）として上梓しています。朝日の一報を見たときはびっくり仰天し、すぐに「そんな事実はない」と思いました。しかし、朝日の報道は忽ち世界中へ駆け抜けていきました。

 

『ニューヨーク・タイムズ』は〈2011年、命令にも関わらず、パニックに陥った作業員たちは福島原発から逃げ去っていた〉と報じ、英のＢＢＣも、〈福島原発の労働者の約90％がメルトダウンの危機が目前に迫った状況で逃げた、と朝日新聞は報じた〉とし、韓国メディアのなかには〈これまで〝セウォル号事件〟が「韓国人の利己的な民族性から始まった」、「相変わらず後進国であることを示してくれた」などと韓国を卑下し、集団のために個人を犠牲にする日本のサムライ精神を自画自賛した日本の報道機関と知識人たちは、大きな衝撃に包まれた〉と報じました。それまで原発事故で発揮された日本人の勇気を讃えていた外国メディアは、報道を受けて姿勢を一変させました。最悪の事態と必死で闘った部下たちを、今は亡き吉田氏は心から称賛していましたが、朝日新聞は日本を救うために奮闘したそんな人々を世界中から嘲笑される存在に貶めてしまったのです。

慰安婦報道と同一構図の吉田調書キャンペーン

　門田　現場を取材すれば命令に反して撤退することなどあり得なかったことはすぐわかります。そして、そう思ったのは私だけではありません。ＮＨＫにしても共同通信にしても現場に食い込んでいる記者、ジャーナリストは一発で朝日報道が嘘だとわかっていました。現場の人たちはもちろん、そうです。直接会っていろいろ聞いても、多くの現場関係者が口を揃えるのは、朝日には話をしたくないということでした。要するに共同もＮＨＫも─どちらも反原発報道では厳しいメディアだが─それでも事実やこちらの証言は聞いてくれる姿勢がある。しかし朝日新聞は、はじめからまともに報じてくれないことがわかっているから、朝日新聞の記者が怖いし、会いたくないと言うわけですね。私は、ああ、「従軍慰安婦」の強制連行問題と同じだなと思いました。

　櫻井　産経新聞が八月十八日付朝刊で吉田調書について報じましたね。そして、吉田氏の命令に違反して九割の職員が福島第二原発（二Ｆ）に逃げた─という朝日報道を否定しましたね。

 

　門田　自分の命令に違反して九割の職員が撤退したなんてどこにも証言がないわけです。それどころか吉田氏は「誰が撤退と言ったのか」とか、「使わないです、撤退みたいな言葉は」とか、それから「関係ない人間は退避させますからと言っただけです」「二Ｆまで退避させようとバスを手配したんです」「バスで退避させました、二Ｆのほうに」と、もう何度も言っているのです。だから「自分の命令で二Ｆに行かせた」ということを繰り返し言っている。命令に違反して二Ｆに行ったなんて、つくられた話だとわかります。

 

　阿比留　そうですね。構図は慰安婦と変わらない。

 

　櫻井　と言わざるを得ないですよ。

 

　阿比留　門田さん、私が不思議だったのは、「吉田調書」キャンペーンの解説記事で吉田調書について「全面公開しろ」と、朝日は迫っていますね、今回われわれが入手した調書を読んで感じたのは、全面公開されたら朝日は困るのではないかということです。すべてを詳らかにすると、ここを隠していた、ここを書いてないとあちこち突っ込まれてしまう。どういうつもりで「全面公開を」などと書いたのでしょう。

 

　門田　政府は公開できない、しないだろうと朝日はわかっているからわざと公開を迫っているのだと思います。朝日自身は吉田さんと約束したわけではありません。非公開を約束したわけではない。だから自分はすぐにでもできる。吉田氏と約束して絶対公開できない政府に向かっては全面公開しろと言って追い詰める。逆に私が「吉田調書」を全文公開せよ、朝日なら明日にでもできるでしょ、と言うと、朝日は何も言わなくなりましたね。

 

　阿比留　じゃあ、自分でやれよという話ですね。

 

　門田　自分ではできないわけで、それをやったら自分の記事のつくり方、いかに意図的な記事をつくったかというのがわかってしまう。実は公開されたら困るのではないか、と思うんですよね。

 

　櫻井　公開されて困るのは慰安婦の証言だってそうでした。朝日新聞は日韓の政府の合意で非公開という前提があったからこそ、安心して強制連行と言えたのだと思いますよ。これだってそうでしょ。政府はできない。それをやったら政府が吉田氏との約束を反故にするということですから。

 

　門田　できないことがわかっていて、それを主張するのですから本当に困ったものですね。

 

　櫻井よしこ氏　ハワイ州立大学歴史学部卒業。日本テレビ・ニュースキャスターなどを経てフリー・ジャーナリストに。第26回大宅壮一ノンフィクション賞、第46回菊池寛賞、第26回正論大賞を受賞。平成19年、国家基本問題研究所を設立し理事長に就任。著書に『宰相の資格』『日本の試練』『甦れ、日本』『明治人の姿』など多数。

 

　門田隆将氏　昭和33（1958）年、高知県生まれ。中央大学法学部卒。ジャーナリスト。政治・経済・歴史・司法・事件など幅広いジャンルで活躍中。著書に『太平洋戦争最後の証言』（集英社）、『甲子園への遺言』（講談社）、『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の五〇〇日』（ＰＨＰ）などがある。

 

　阿比留瑠比氏　昭和41年、福岡県出身。早稲田大学政治経済学部を卒業後、平成２年、産経新聞社入社。仙台総局、文化部、社会部を経て政治部へ。首相官邸キャップや外務省兼遊軍担当などを務め、現在政治部編集委員。

朝日の報道は忽ち世界中へ駆け抜けて…『ニューヨーク・タイムズ』は〈2011年、命令にも関わらず、パニックに陥った作業員たちは福島原発から逃げ去っていた〉と報じ、英のＢＢＣも、

原発事故でも日本を貶めた朝日新聞

　門田　慰安婦問題とよく似た図式なのですが私は東京電力福島第一原発をめぐる朝日新聞による吉田調書キャンペーンを挙げたいと思います。これは5月20日の朝日朝刊で、福島第一の東電職員の9割が2011年3月15日朝、「所長命令に違反」して、「原発から撤退」していたことが朝日新聞が入手した政府事故調による「吉田調書」によって明らかになった─というものでした。

　私は、ジャーナリストとして唯一、吉田氏に長時間インタビューをおこなっています。吉田氏に取材しただけでなく、あの事故の際、福島第一原発で何があったのか、現場の人間はどう闘ったのか、をテーマに多くの当事者たち─当時の菅直人首相や池田元久・原子力災害現地対策本部長（経産副大臣）をはじめ政府サイドの人々、また研究者として事故対策にかかわった班目春樹・原子力安全委員会委員長、あるいは吉田氏の部下だった現場のプラントエンジニア、また協力企業の面々、さらには、地元記者や元町長に至るまで─100名近い人々にすべて「実名」で証言してもらい、それは『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の500日』（ＰＨＰ）として上梓しています。朝日の一報を見たときはびっくり仰天し、すぐに「そんな事実はない」と思いました。しかし、朝日の報道は忽ち世界中へ駆け抜けていきました。

 

『ニューヨーク・タイムズ』は〈2011年、命令にも関わらず、パニックに陥った作業員たちは福島原発から逃げ去っていた〉と報じ、英のＢＢＣも、〈福島原発の労働者の約90％がメルトダウンの危機が目前に迫った状況で逃げた、と朝日新聞は報じた〉とし、韓国メディアのなかには〈これまで〝セウォル号事件〟が「韓国人の利己的な民族性から始まった」、「相変わらず後進国であることを示してくれた」などと韓国を卑下し、集団のために個人を犠牲にする日本のサムライ精神を自画自賛した日本の報道機関と知識人たちは、大きな衝撃に包まれた〉と報じました。それまで原発事故で発揮された日本人の勇気を讃えていた外国メディアは、報道を受けて姿勢を一変させました。最悪の事態と必死で闘った部下たちを、今は亡き吉田氏は心から称賛していましたが、朝日新聞は日本を救うために奮闘したそんな人々を世界中から嘲笑される存在に貶めてしまったのです。

慰安婦報道と同一構図の吉田調書キャンペーン

　門田　現場を取材すれば命令に反して撤退することなどあり得なかったことはすぐわかります。そして、そう思ったのは私だけではありません。ＮＨＫにしても共同通信にしても現場に食い込んでいる記者、ジャーナリストは一発で朝日報道が嘘だとわかっていました。現場の人たちはもちろん、そうです。直接会っていろいろ聞いても、多くの現場関係者が口を揃えるのは、朝日には話をしたくないということでした。要するに共同もＮＨＫも─どちらも反原発報道では厳しいメディアだが─それでも事実やこちらの証言は聞いてくれる姿勢がある。しかし朝日新聞は、はじめからまともに報じてくれないことがわかっているから、朝日新聞の記者が怖いし、会いたくないと言うわけですね。私は、ああ、「従軍慰安婦」の強制連行問題と同じだなと思いました。

　櫻井　産経新聞が八月十八日付朝刊で吉田調書について報じましたね。そして、吉田氏の命令に違反して九割の職員が福島第二原発（二Ｆ）に逃げた─という朝日報道を否定しましたね。

 

　門田　自分の命令に違反して九割の職員が撤退したなんてどこにも証言がないわけです。それどころか吉田氏は「誰が撤退と言ったのか」とか、「使わないです、撤退みたいな言葉は」とか、それから「関係ない人間は退避させますからと言っただけです」「二Ｆまで退避させようとバスを手配したんです」「バスで退避させました、二Ｆのほうに」と、もう何度も言っているのです。だから「自分の命令で二Ｆに行かせた」ということを繰り返し言っている。命令に違反して二Ｆに行ったなんて、つくられた話だとわかります。

 

　阿比留　そうですね。構図は慰安婦と変わらない。

 

　櫻井　と言わざるを得ないですよ。

 

　阿比留　門田さん、私が不思議だったのは、「吉田調書」キャンペーンの解説記事で吉田調書について「全面公開しろ」と、朝日は迫っていますね、今回われわれが入手した調書を読んで感じたのは、全面公開されたら朝日は困るのではないかということです。すべてを詳らかにすると、ここを隠していた、ここを書いてないとあちこち突っ込まれてしまう。どういうつもりで「全面公開を」などと書いたのでしょう。

 

　門田　政府は公開できない、しないだろうと朝日はわかっているからわざと公開を迫っているのだと思います。朝日自身は吉田さんと約束したわけではありません。非公開を約束したわけではない。だから自分はすぐにでもできる。吉田氏と約束して絶対公開できない政府に向かっては全面公開しろと言って追い詰める。逆に私が「吉田調書」を全文公開せよ、朝日なら明日にでもできるでしょ、と言うと、朝日は何も言わなくなりましたね。

 

　阿比留　じゃあ、自分でやれよという話ですね。

 

　門田　自分ではできないわけで、それをやったら自分の記事のつくり方、いかに意図的な記事をつくったかというのがわかってしまう。実は公開されたら困るのではないか、と思うんですよね。

 

　櫻井　公開されて困るのは慰安婦の証言だってそうでした。朝日新聞は日韓の政府の合意で非公開という前提があったからこそ、安心して強制連行と言えたのだと思いますよ。これだってそうでしょ。政府はできない。それをやったら政府が吉田氏との約束を反故にするということですから。

 

　門田　できないことがわかっていて、それを主張するのですから本当に困ったものですね。

 

　櫻井よしこ氏　ハワイ州立大学歴史学部卒業。日本テレビ・ニュースキャスターなどを経てフリー・ジャーナリストに。第26回大宅壮一ノンフィクション賞、第46回菊池寛賞、第26回正論大賞を受賞。平成19年、国家基本問題研究所を設立し理事長に就任。著書に『宰相の資格』『日本の試練』『甦れ、日本』『明治人の姿』など多数。

 

　門田隆将氏　昭和33（1958）年、高知県生まれ。中央大学法学部卒。ジャーナリスト。政治・経済・歴史・司法・事件など幅広いジャンルで活躍中。著書に『太平洋戦争最後の証言』（集英社）、『甲子園への遺言』（講談社）、『死の淵を見た男─吉田昌郎と福島第一原発の五〇〇日』（ＰＨＰ）などがある。

 

　阿比留瑠比氏　昭和41年、福岡県出身。早稲田大学政治経済学部を卒業後、平成２年、産経新聞社入社。仙台総局、文化部、社会部を経て政治部へ。首相官邸キャップや外務省兼遊軍担当などを務め、現在政治部編集委員。

日本最高級の高給を得ているだけでなく好きに長い休みを取っているのがNHKの職員達…特にwatch９は朝日新聞や立憲民主党と一緒になってモリカケで安倍首相を批判（攻撃）し続けた

以下は、「首相、体調管理に万全期す」日帰り検診、と題して、今日の日経新聞に掲載された記事である。
麻生太郎副総理・財務相は17日、首相が１～６月に１４７日間連続で執務したことを指摘し「普通なら体調はおかしくなるのではないか」と述べた。
体調管理のため休んだ方がよいと伝えたとも明らかにした。
財務省で記者団の質問に答えた。
自民党内でも首相の体調を懸念する声がある。
甘利明氏は16日、首相の体調に関し「ちょっと休んでもらいたい。責任感が強く、自分が休むことは罪だとの意識までもっている」と語った。
首相は18日も休暇を取る予定だという。
首相は新型コロナウイルスの対応で連続勤務が続き、今夏は例年訪れていた山梨県鳴沢村の別荘での静養を見送った。

安倍首相は最澄が定義した国宝そのものであり、しかも最上級の国宝である。
この至上の国宝に対して、日本最高級の高給を得ているだけではなく好きに長い休みを取っているのがNHKの職員達である。
特にwatch９は朝日新聞や立憲民主党と一緒になってモリカケで安倍首相を批判（攻撃）し続けた。
あの下種の極みの前川が持ち込んだだけの資料を、NHKの総力を挙げて手に入れた等と、捏造報道まで行って。
何故かは知らぬが、NHKは頻繁に世論調査を行う。
その世論調査の項目に、モリカケ以降、NHKは、ずっと、「安倍首相を支持しない」、項目のトップに、首相の人柄が信用できない、と言う項目を、いまだに入れている。
会長の前田も、本当の下種である事を実証している。
NHKの職員全員は、会長以下、自分達が善良な市民であると考えているだけではなく、正しい人間であると思い込んでいる。
今を生きる信長は大音声で彼らに告げる…お前たち以上に悪質な人間達はいない、事を。
お前たちは天国に行けると勝手に思っているだろうが、とんでもない、お前達は習近平等の類と同等、同様の悪人として、地獄の閻魔大王が、最大の責め苦を用意して待っている存在に過ぎない。
習近平以上に、ある面で、最も悪質な人間達だからだ。

本当に日本をきちんと見ている人たちは、日本を嫌いになるはずがないし、なっていない…朝日新聞に反日的な意識を掻き立てられた中国人ではなく、

「権力の監視役」への自己陶酔目立つ朝日記者

　櫻井　実は、朝日の慰安婦の二日に渡る記事が出る前に、国家基本問題研究所ではすべての全国紙に慰安婦、河野談話作成のプロセスの検証が不十分だという意見広告を出しました。いくつかのポイントを書いたのですが、その中で強制連行という間違った情報が独り歩きして、宮澤さんは九二年の一月の訪韓で八回謝った。朝日の誤報でこれが始まったと書いた。すると朝日新聞から広告代理店を通じて二つ質問が来ました。「宮澤が八回謝ったという確証はあるのか。資料はあるのか」というのが一つ。もう一つは「朝日の誤報と言うけれど、誤報の資料を示してほしい」という内容でした。

第一点については、朝日新聞の「時々刻々」というコラムで八回と朝日が報道しているんですね。ですから「おたくの記事ですよ」と回答しました。第二点は、これはもう山ほど証拠があるわけですから、その証拠を出しました。すると、それ以降、梨のつぶてになってしまいました。

　いろんなところで朝日は批判され、それが今回の慰安婦報道の検証につながったと思うのですが─広告をめぐるやりとりもそうでしたが─朝日は、まったく説明しようとしないのです。高飛車で、被害者の立場に自分たちを置く。この新聞に反省を求めることは、とても難しいのではないか。反省させる唯一の道は、読者が朝日を見限ってしまうことではないか。みんなが朝日と訣別するのがよいのではないかと思います。

 

　門田　朝日の記者と話すと、俺たちが権力を監視しなければいけないという、そういう意味の話をよくしますね。権力を監視する。これは確かにジャーナリズムの役割の一つでもあるので、それはそれで構わないのですが、朝日の場合、そういう自分に自己陶酔しているというか、酔っているような記者が非常に多い気がします。例えば彼らは民主党政権のときは権力を監視するどころか、もうべったりでしたし、結果的には日本と日本人を貶めることばかりやっていながら、自分の頭の中では、俺たちは権力と対峙している、監視していると頭の中を都合よく塗り替えている。そんな興味深い記者たちが多いですね。

自分達の責任と向き合っていない朝日

　櫻井　もうひとつ今回の特集記事で見逃せないことがあります。例えば朝日が報道して広げていった吉田清治の証言は国連のクマラスワミ報告や米国下院の対日非難決議の基本資料として引用されているのです。にもかかわらず、朝日には国際社会に日本の汚辱を広げたという自覚がまったくないのではないか。自分たちに重大な責任があるというような姿勢は見えませんね。

 

　今米国では国務省のサキ報道官が記者会見の席上、日本の慰安婦問題について言及し、日本を非難する出来事も起きています。議会の調査局は議会のために資料を用意し、その資料に基づいて下院が決議をするわけです。この議会調査局がまとめた基礎資料には、二〇万人強制連行、性奴隷、大部分を殺した、といったどこの国のいつの時代の話かと思うようなことが書かれています。議会調査局が偏見を持って集めたのではありません。彼らはありとあらゆる資料を集めて、それをまとめて議員に渡すわけです。それらの大本に朝日新聞の偏った、間違った報道が含まれている。ところが当の朝日は国際社会の対日批判と自分たちの報道は無関係であるかのように振る舞っている。阿比留さんがおっしゃったように、英文で全然発信していないのも、自分達の責任と向き合っていないからではないでしょうか。この問題は女性の権利侵害の問題だとすり替えてしまっています。

 

　私は朝日の今回の検証を、まず全文、間違いのないように英語や中国語、ハングルに訳し、海外に発信しないとおかしい。朝日は自ら国際社会に自社記事の間違いを発表すべきですが、それだけでは不十分です。ここは政府も情報発信に大いに力を入れなければならない局面です。

 

　阿比留　朝日の体質についてもう一言だけ。卑怯だという指摘に私も同感ですが、同時に現場クラスの記者を見ていると、基本的に彼らは慰安婦問題について不勉強で何もわかっていないといわざるを得ません。象徴的な出来事は第一次安倍政権のとき、慰安婦問題が大きな政治問題となって当時の安倍首相が「広義の強制性はともかく、狭義の強制性はなかった」という趣旨の発言をしたことがありました。これはもともと、朝日新聞が展開してきた論議や中央大学の吉見義明教授の主張などをわざと逆手にとって発言したものでした。ところが塩崎恭久官房長官の記者会見の場で朝日新聞の記者が質問に立ち怒ったような大声で「総理は狭義だの広義だの言っていますけど、意味がわかりません」と質問しはじめたのです。でも狭義だの広義だの言い出したのはあんたたちだろうと。

 

　櫻井　そもそも彼らがつくり出した区分けですね。

 

　阿比留　そう。ですから客観的に勉強した結果、自分が正しいと思うのではなく、アプリオリに自分たちは正義で正しいという前提から、ものを申すという感じです。

 

　門田　日韓関係が破壊され、将来的に大きな禍根を残したことは明らかですが、私は日中関係でも朝日の責任は大きいと思う。私は昭和60年8月以前の日中関係と、それ以降の日中関係は、まったく異なったものになったと思っています。85年の8月に何があったのか。戦後政治の総決算を掲げた当時の中曽根首相の靖国公式参拝を阻止すべく、朝日は大キャンペーンを張りました。そして、ついに人民日報が「靖国問題について日本の動きを注視している」という記事を出すのです。さらに8月14日に正式にスポークスマンが「中曽根首相の靖国参拝はアジアの隣人の感情を傷つける」といいだした。

 

　戦後ずっと続いてきた靖国神社への参拝が、あそこから問題にされ始めたのです。つまり、靖国問題が〝外交カード〟になった瞬間です。朝日新聞の「ご注進報道」によってそれ以降も、どんどん、この問題が大きくなってくるわけです。朝日の報道で外交関係が悪化したり、禍根がもたらされたのは日韓関係だけでなく、日中関係にもいえると思うのです。

 

　阿比留　南京事件にしてもこれを大きな騒ぎにしたのも朝日でした。本多勝一さんの『中国の旅』をはじめ、プロパガンダをずっと繰り返してきましたからね。おもしろいことに、朝日は靖国については後に狂ったように批判していますが、確か昭和二十六年十月の朝日の記事には、ＧＨＱで日本に来て米国に帰る青年がずうっと靖国参拝を続けており「自分は米国に帰るけれども、日本の友人に参拝をお願いして、御霊へ祈りを」といった話を大きく記事に取り上げています。朝日は初めから反靖国だったわけじゃないのです。途中からやっぱり何らかの意図があったのでしょう。

 

　門田　材料にできると思ったのではないでしょうか。

 

　櫻井　いわゆるＡ級戦犯合祀を念頭にしたのですね。日本の外交で反日的なところは中国と朝鮮半島です。この中国と朝鮮半島に反日の種を蒔いたのは朝日です。朝日新聞が本当に諸悪の根源になっています。

 

　門田　多くの中国人は決して反日ではなくて、やさしいのです。やさしくて人がよくて、私が経験している八〇年代の中国人は、非常に日本人のことが好きでやさしい存在だった。けれども、それが今、どんどん変わってきている。朝日新聞はそういう人たちの味方ではなく、必ず共産党独裁政権の味方なのです。

 

　櫻井　門田さんの御指摘はすごく大切だと私も思います。中国にはいろんな人たちがいます。日本をきちんと理解していて、人間的にも素晴らしい方がいるのです。実は国基研で日本研究賞を出しているのですが、初年度の今年、その特別賞に東工大の劉岸偉さんを選びました。この人は魯迅の実弟の周作人の研究をしている学者です。彼に記念講演をお願いしましたさい、彼は「日本研究をした中国人で日本を悪く言う人はいません」と語ったのです。これは日本を知っている人たちは、日本のよさをきちんと理解することができるということでしょう。ほんとに大事なことを言ってくださったと思います。本当に日本をきちんと見ている人たちは、日本を嫌いになるはずがないし、なっていないのです。

 

　朝日新聞に反日的な意識を掻き立てられた中国人ではなく、中国の底辺に必ずいる誠実で、事実を事実として見ることができる人たち、今の共産党支配におかしいと思って異を唱えている民主化のリーダーの人たち、民主化に傾いている若い世代たちとの交流をしっかりとやっていかなければいけないと思いますね。

 

　門田　真の日中友好というのは朝日新聞〝廃刊〟から始まるということですね。

 

「日本研究をした中国人で日本を悪く言う人はいません」と語った…これは日本を知っている人たちは、日本のよさをきちんと理解することができるということでしょう

「権力の監視役」への自己陶酔目立つ朝日記者

　櫻井　実は、朝日の慰安婦の二日に渡る記事が出る前に、国家基本問題研究所ではすべての全国紙に慰安婦、河野談話作成のプロセスの検証が不十分だという意見広告を出しました。いくつかのポイントを書いたのですが、その中で強制連行という間違った情報が独り歩きして、宮澤さんは九二年の一月の訪韓で八回謝った。朝日の誤報でこれが始まったと書いた。すると朝日新聞から広告代理店を通じて二つ質問が来ました。「宮澤が八回謝ったという確証はあるのか。資料はあるのか」というのが一つ。もう一つは「朝日の誤報と言うけれど、誤報の資料を示してほしい」という内容でした。

第一点については、朝日新聞の「時々刻々」というコラムで八回と朝日が報道しているんですね。ですから「おたくの記事ですよ」と回答しました。第二点は、これはもう山ほど証拠があるわけですから、その証拠を出しました。すると、それ以降、梨のつぶてになってしまいました。

　いろんなところで朝日は批判され、それが今回の慰安婦報道の検証につながったと思うのですが─広告をめぐるやりとりもそうでしたが─朝日は、まったく説明しようとしないのです。高飛車で、被害者の立場に自分たちを置く。この新聞に反省を求めることは、とても難しいのではないか。反省させる唯一の道は、読者が朝日を見限ってしまうことではないか。みんなが朝日と訣別するのがよいのではないかと思います。

 

　門田　朝日の記者と話すと、俺たちが権力を監視しなければいけないという、そういう意味の話をよくしますね。権力を監視する。これは確かにジャーナリズムの役割の一つでもあるので、それはそれで構わないのですが、朝日の場合、そういう自分に自己陶酔しているというか、酔っているような記者が非常に多い気がします。例えば彼らは民主党政権のときは権力を監視するどころか、もうべったりでしたし、結果的には日本と日本人を貶めることばかりやっていながら、自分の頭の中では、俺たちは権力と対峙している、監視していると頭の中を都合よく塗り替えている。そんな興味深い記者たちが多いですね。

自分達の責任と向き合っていない朝日

　櫻井　もうひとつ今回の特集記事で見逃せないことがあります。例えば朝日が報道して広げていった吉田清治の証言は国連のクマラスワミ報告や米国下院の対日非難決議の基本資料として引用されているのです。にもかかわらず、朝日には国際社会に日本の汚辱を広げたという自覚がまったくないのではないか。自分たちに重大な責任があるというような姿勢は見えませんね。

 

　今米国では国務省のサキ報道官が記者会見の席上、日本の慰安婦問題について言及し、日本を非難する出来事も起きています。議会の調査局は議会のために資料を用意し、その資料に基づいて下院が決議をするわけです。この議会調査局がまとめた基礎資料には、二〇万人強制連行、性奴隷、大部分を殺した、といったどこの国のいつの時代の話かと思うようなことが書かれています。議会調査局が偏見を持って集めたのではありません。彼らはありとあらゆる資料を集めて、それをまとめて議員に渡すわけです。それらの大本に朝日新聞の偏った、間違った報道が含まれている。ところが当の朝日は国際社会の対日批判と自分たちの報道は無関係であるかのように振る舞っている。阿比留さんがおっしゃったように、英文で全然発信していないのも、自分達の責任と向き合っていないからではないでしょうか。この問題は女性の権利侵害の問題だとすり替えてしまっています。

 

　私は朝日の今回の検証を、まず全文、間違いのないように英語や中国語、ハングルに訳し、海外に発信しないとおかしい。朝日は自ら国際社会に自社記事の間違いを発表すべきですが、それだけでは不十分です。ここは政府も情報発信に大いに力を入れなければならない局面です。

 

　阿比留　朝日の体質についてもう一言だけ。卑怯だという指摘に私も同感ですが、同時に現場クラスの記者を見ていると、基本的に彼らは慰安婦問題について不勉強で何もわかっていないといわざるを得ません。象徴的な出来事は第一次安倍政権のとき、慰安婦問題が大きな政治問題となって当時の安倍首相が「広義の強制性はともかく、狭義の強制性はなかった」という趣旨の発言をしたことがありました。これはもともと、朝日新聞が展開してきた論議や中央大学の吉見義明教授の主張などをわざと逆手にとって発言したものでした。ところが塩崎恭久官房長官の記者会見の場で朝日新聞の記者が質問に立ち怒ったような大声で「総理は狭義だの広義だの言っていますけど、意味がわかりません」と質問しはじめたのです。でも狭義だの広義だの言い出したのはあんたたちだろうと。

 

　櫻井　そもそも彼らがつくり出した区分けですね。

 

　阿比留　そう。ですから客観的に勉強した結果、自分が正しいと思うのではなく、アプリオリに自分たちは正義で正しいという前提から、ものを申すという感じです。

 

　門田　日韓関係が破壊され、将来的に大きな禍根を残したことは明らかですが、私は日中関係でも朝日の責任は大きいと思う。私は昭和60年8月以前の日中関係と、それ以降の日中関係は、まったく異なったものになったと思っています。85年の8月に何があったのか。戦後政治の総決算を掲げた当時の中曽根首相の靖国公式参拝を阻止すべく、朝日は大キャンペーンを張りました。そして、ついに人民日報が「靖国問題について日本の動きを注視している」という記事を出すのです。さらに8月14日に正式にスポークスマンが「中曽根首相の靖国参拝はアジアの隣人の感情を傷つける」といいだした。

 

　戦後ずっと続いてきた靖国神社への参拝が、あそこから問題にされ始めたのです。つまり、靖国問題が〝外交カード〟になった瞬間です。朝日新聞の「ご注進報道」によってそれ以降も、どんどん、この問題が大きくなってくるわけです。朝日の報道で外交関係が悪化したり、禍根がもたらされたのは日韓関係だけでなく、日中関係にもいえると思うのです。

 

　阿比留　南京事件にしてもこれを大きな騒ぎにしたのも朝日でした。本多勝一さんの『中国の旅』をはじめ、プロパガンダをずっと繰り返してきましたからね。おもしろいことに、朝日は靖国については後に狂ったように批判していますが、確か昭和二十六年十月の朝日の記事には、ＧＨＱで日本に来て米国に帰る青年がずうっと靖国参拝を続けており「自分は米国に帰るけれども、日本の友人に参拝をお願いして、御霊へ祈りを」といった話を大きく記事に取り上げています。朝日は初めから反靖国だったわけじゃないのです。途中からやっぱり何らかの意図があったのでしょう。

 

　門田　材料にできると思ったのではないでしょうか。

 

　櫻井　いわゆるＡ級戦犯合祀を念頭にしたのですね。日本の外交で反日的なところは中国と朝鮮半島です。この中国と朝鮮半島に反日の種を蒔いたのは朝日です。朝日新聞が本当に諸悪の根源になっています。

 

　門田　多くの中国人は決して反日ではなくて、やさしいのです。やさしくて人がよくて、私が経験している八〇年代の中国人は、非常に日本人のことが好きでやさしい存在だった。けれども、それが今、どんどん変わってきている。朝日新聞はそういう人たちの味方ではなく、必ず共産党独裁政権の味方なのです。

 

　櫻井　門田さんの御指摘はすごく大切だと私も思います。中国にはいろんな人たちがいます。日本をきちんと理解していて、人間的にも素晴らしい方がいるのです。実は国基研で日本研究賞を出しているのですが、初年度の今年、その特別賞に東工大の劉岸偉さんを選びました。この人は魯迅の実弟の周作人の研究をしている学者です。彼に記念講演をお願いしましたさい、彼は「日本研究をした中国人で日本を悪く言う人はいません」と語ったのです。これは日本を知っている人たちは、日本のよさをきちんと理解することができるということでしょう。ほんとに大事なことを言ってくださったと思います。本当に日本をきちんと見ている人たちは、日本を嫌いになるはずがないし、なっていないのです。

 

　朝日新聞に反日的な意識を掻き立てられた中国人ではなく、中国の底辺に必ずいる誠実で、事実を事実として見ることができる人たち、今の共産党支配におかしいと思って異を唱えている民主化のリーダーの人たち、民主化に傾いている若い世代たちとの交流をしっかりとやっていかなければいけないと思いますね。

 

　門田　真の日中友好というのは朝日新聞〝廃刊〟から始まるということですね。

 

日本の外交で反日的なところは中国と朝鮮半島です。この中国と朝鮮半島に反日の種を蒔いたのは朝日です。朝日新聞が本当に諸悪の根源になっています。

「権力の監視役」への自己陶酔目立つ朝日記者

　櫻井　実は、朝日の慰安婦の二日に渡る記事が出る前に、国家基本問題研究所ではすべての全国紙に慰安婦、河野談話作成のプロセスの検証が不十分だという意見広告を出しました。いくつかのポイントを書いたのですが、その中で強制連行という間違った情報が独り歩きして、宮澤さんは九二年の一月の訪韓で八回謝った。朝日の誤報でこれが始まったと書いた。すると朝日新聞から広告代理店を通じて二つ質問が来ました。「宮澤が八回謝ったという確証はあるのか。資料はあるのか」というのが一つ。もう一つは「朝日の誤報と言うけれど、誤報の資料を示してほしい」という内容でした。

第一点については、朝日新聞の「時々刻々」というコラムで八回と朝日が報道しているんですね。ですから「おたくの記事ですよ」と回答しました。第二点は、これはもう山ほど証拠があるわけですから、その証拠を出しました。すると、それ以降、梨のつぶてになってしまいました。

　いろんなところで朝日は批判され、それが今回の慰安婦報道の検証につながったと思うのですが─広告をめぐるやりとりもそうでしたが─朝日は、まったく説明しようとしないのです。高飛車で、被害者の立場に自分たちを置く。この新聞に反省を求めることは、とても難しいのではないか。反省させる唯一の道は、読者が朝日を見限ってしまうことではないか。みんなが朝日と訣別するのがよいのではないかと思います。

 

　門田　朝日の記者と話すと、俺たちが権力を監視しなければいけないという、そういう意味の話をよくしますね。権力を監視する。これは確かにジャーナリズムの役割の一つでもあるので、それはそれで構わないのですが、朝日の場合、そういう自分に自己陶酔しているというか、酔っているような記者が非常に多い気がします。例えば彼らは民主党政権のときは権力を監視するどころか、もうべったりでしたし、結果的には日本と日本人を貶めることばかりやっていながら、自分の頭の中では、俺たちは権力と対峙している、監視していると頭の中を都合よく塗り替えている。そんな興味深い記者たちが多いですね。

自分達の責任と向き合っていない朝日

　櫻井　もうひとつ今回の特集記事で見逃せないことがあります。例えば朝日が報道して広げていった吉田清治の証言は国連のクマラスワミ報告や米国下院の対日非難決議の基本資料として引用されているのです。にもかかわらず、朝日には国際社会に日本の汚辱を広げたという自覚がまったくないのではないか。自分たちに重大な責任があるというような姿勢は見えませんね。

 

　今米国では国務省のサキ報道官が記者会見の席上、日本の慰安婦問題について言及し、日本を非難する出来事も起きています。議会の調査局は議会のために資料を用意し、その資料に基づいて下院が決議をするわけです。この議会調査局がまとめた基礎資料には、二〇万人強制連行、性奴隷、大部分を殺した、といったどこの国のいつの時代の話かと思うようなことが書かれています。議会調査局が偏見を持って集めたのではありません。彼らはありとあらゆる資料を集めて、それをまとめて議員に渡すわけです。それらの大本に朝日新聞の偏った、間違った報道が含まれている。ところが当の朝日は国際社会の対日批判と自分たちの報道は無関係であるかのように振る舞っている。阿比留さんがおっしゃったように、英文で全然発信していないのも、自分達の責任と向き合っていないからではないでしょうか。この問題は女性の権利侵害の問題だとすり替えてしまっています。

 

　私は朝日の今回の検証を、まず全文、間違いのないように英語や中国語、ハングルに訳し、海外に発信しないとおかしい。朝日は自ら国際社会に自社記事の間違いを発表すべきですが、それだけでは不十分です。ここは政府も情報発信に大いに力を入れなければならない局面です。

 

　阿比留　朝日の体質についてもう一言だけ。卑怯だという指摘に私も同感ですが、同時に現場クラスの記者を見ていると、基本的に彼らは慰安婦問題について不勉強で何もわかっていないといわざるを得ません。象徴的な出来事は第一次安倍政権のとき、慰安婦問題が大きな政治問題となって当時の安倍首相が「広義の強制性はともかく、狭義の強制性はなかった」という趣旨の発言をしたことがありました。これはもともと、朝日新聞が展開してきた論議や中央大学の吉見義明教授の主張などをわざと逆手にとって発言したものでした。ところが塩崎恭久官房長官の記者会見の場で朝日新聞の記者が質問に立ち怒ったような大声で「総理は狭義だの広義だの言っていますけど、意味がわかりません」と質問しはじめたのです。でも狭義だの広義だの言い出したのはあんたたちだろうと。

 

　櫻井　そもそも彼らがつくり出した区分けですね。

 

　阿比留　そう。ですから客観的に勉強した結果、自分が正しいと思うのではなく、アプリオリに自分たちは正義で正しいという前提から、ものを申すという感じです。

 

　門田　日韓関係が破壊され、将来的に大きな禍根を残したことは明らかですが、私は日中関係でも朝日の責任は大きいと思う。私は昭和60年8月以前の日中関係と、それ以降の日中関係は、まったく異なったものになったと思っています。85年の8月に何があったのか。戦後政治の総決算を掲げた当時の中曽根首相の靖国公式参拝を阻止すべく、朝日は大キャンペーンを張りました。そして、ついに人民日報が「靖国問題について日本の動きを注視している」という記事を出すのです。さらに8月14日に正式にスポークスマンが「中曽根首相の靖国参拝はアジアの隣人の感情を傷つける」といいだした。

 

　戦後ずっと続いてきた靖国神社への参拝が、あそこから問題にされ始めたのです。つまり、靖国問題が〝外交カード〟になった瞬間です。朝日新聞の「ご注進報道」によってそれ以降も、どんどん、この問題が大きくなってくるわけです。朝日の報道で外交関係が悪化したり、禍根がもたらされたのは日韓関係だけでなく、日中関係にもいえると思うのです。

 

　阿比留　南京事件にしてもこれを大きな騒ぎにしたのも朝日でした。本多勝一さんの『中国の旅』をはじめ、プロパガンダをずっと繰り返してきましたからね。おもしろいことに、朝日は靖国については後に狂ったように批判していますが、確か昭和二十六年十月の朝日の記事には、ＧＨＱで日本に来て米国に帰る青年がずうっと靖国参拝を続けており「自分は米国に帰るけれども、日本の友人に参拝をお願いして、御霊へ祈りを」といった話を大きく記事に取り上げています。朝日は初めから反靖国だったわけじゃないのです。途中からやっぱり何らかの意図があったのでしょう。

 

　門田　材料にできると思ったのではないでしょうか。

 

　櫻井　いわゆるＡ級戦犯合祀を念頭にしたのですね。日本の外交で反日的なところは中国と朝鮮半島です。この中国と朝鮮半島に反日の種を蒔いたのは朝日です。朝日新聞が本当に諸悪の根源になっています。

 

　門田　多くの中国人は決して反日ではなくて、やさしいのです。やさしくて人がよくて、私が経験している八〇年代の中国人は、非常に日本人のことが好きでやさしい存在だった。けれども、それが今、どんどん変わってきている。朝日新聞はそういう人たちの味方ではなく、必ず共産党独裁政権の味方なのです。

 

　櫻井　門田さんの御指摘はすごく大切だと私も思います。中国にはいろんな人たちがいます。日本をきちんと理解していて、人間的にも素晴らしい方がいるのです。実は国基研で日本研究賞を出しているのですが、初年度の今年、その特別賞に東工大の劉岸偉さんを選びました。この人は魯迅の実弟の周作人の研究をしている学者です。彼に記念講演をお願いしましたさい、彼は「日本研究をした中国人で日本を悪く言う人はいません」と語ったのです。これは日本を知っている人たちは、日本のよさをきちんと理解することができるということでしょう。ほんとに大事なことを言ってくださったと思います。本当に日本をきちんと見ている人たちは、日本を嫌いになるはずがないし、なっていないのです。

 

　朝日新聞に反日的な意識を掻き立てられた中国人ではなく、中国の底辺に必ずいる誠実で、事実を事実として見ることができる人たち、今の共産党支配におかしいと思って異を唱えている民主化のリーダーの人たち、民主化に傾いている若い世代たちとの交流をしっかりとやっていかなければいけないと思いますね。

 

　門田　真の日中友好というのは朝日新聞〝廃刊〟から始まるということですね。

 

85年の8月に何があったのか。戦後政治の総決算を掲げた当時の中曽根首相の靖国公式参拝を阻止すべく、朝日は大キャンペーンを張りました。そして、ついに人民日報が

「権力の監視役」への自己陶酔目立つ朝日記者

　櫻井　実は、朝日の慰安婦の二日に渡る記事が出る前に、国家基本問題研究所ではすべての全国紙に慰安婦、河野談話作成のプロセスの検証が不十分だという意見広告を出しました。いくつかのポイントを書いたのですが、その中で強制連行という間違った情報が独り歩きして、宮澤さんは九二年の一月の訪韓で八回謝った。朝日の誤報でこれが始まったと書いた。すると朝日新聞から広告代理店を通じて二つ質問が来ました。「宮澤が八回謝ったという確証はあるのか。資料はあるのか」というのが一つ。もう一つは「朝日の誤報と言うけれど、誤報の資料を示してほしい」という内容でした。

第一点については、朝日新聞の「時々刻々」というコラムで八回と朝日が報道しているんですね。ですから「おたくの記事ですよ」と回答しました。第二点は、これはもう山ほど証拠があるわけですから、その証拠を出しました。すると、それ以降、梨のつぶてになってしまいました。

　いろんなところで朝日は批判され、それが今回の慰安婦報道の検証につながったと思うのですが─広告をめぐるやりとりもそうでしたが─朝日は、まったく説明しようとしないのです。高飛車で、被害者の立場に自分たちを置く。この新聞に反省を求めることは、とても難しいのではないか。反省させる唯一の道は、読者が朝日を見限ってしまうことではないか。みんなが朝日と訣別するのがよいのではないかと思います。

 

　門田　朝日の記者と話すと、俺たちが権力を監視しなければいけないという、そういう意味の話をよくしますね。権力を監視する。これは確かにジャーナリズムの役割の一つでもあるので、それはそれで構わないのですが、朝日の場合、そういう自分に自己陶酔しているというか、酔っているような記者が非常に多い気がします。例えば彼らは民主党政権のときは権力を監視するどころか、もうべったりでしたし、結果的には日本と日本人を貶めることばかりやっていながら、自分の頭の中では、俺たちは権力と対峙している、監視していると頭の中を都合よく塗り替えている。そんな興味深い記者たちが多いですね。

自分達の責任と向き合っていない朝日

　櫻井　もうひとつ今回の特集記事で見逃せないことがあります。例えば朝日が報道して広げていった吉田清治の証言は国連のクマラスワミ報告や米国下院の対日非難決議の基本資料として引用されているのです。にもかかわらず、朝日には国際社会に日本の汚辱を広げたという自覚がまったくないのではないか。自分たちに重大な責任があるというような姿勢は見えませんね。

 

　今米国では国務省のサキ報道官が記者会見の席上、日本の慰安婦問題について言及し、日本を非難する出来事も起きています。議会の調査局は議会のために資料を用意し、その資料に基づいて下院が決議をするわけです。この議会調査局がまとめた基礎資料には、二〇万人強制連行、性奴隷、大部分を殺した、といったどこの国のいつの時代の話かと思うようなことが書かれています。議会調査局が偏見を持って集めたのではありません。彼らはありとあらゆる資料を集めて、それをまとめて議員に渡すわけです。それらの大本に朝日新聞の偏った、間違った報道が含まれている。ところが当の朝日は国際社会の対日批判と自分たちの報道は無関係であるかのように振る舞っている。阿比留さんがおっしゃったように、英文で全然発信していないのも、自分達の責任と向き合っていないからではないでしょうか。この問題は女性の権利侵害の問題だとすり替えてしまっています。

 

　私は朝日の今回の検証を、まず全文、間違いのないように英語や中国語、ハングルに訳し、海外に発信しないとおかしい。朝日は自ら国際社会に自社記事の間違いを発表すべきですが、それだけでは不十分です。ここは政府も情報発信に大いに力を入れなければならない局面です。

 

　阿比留　朝日の体質についてもう一言だけ。卑怯だという指摘に私も同感ですが、同時に現場クラスの記者を見ていると、基本的に彼らは慰安婦問題について不勉強で何もわかっていないといわざるを得ません。象徴的な出来事は第一次安倍政権のとき、慰安婦問題が大きな政治問題となって当時の安倍首相が「広義の強制性はともかく、狭義の強制性はなかった」という趣旨の発言をしたことがありました。これはもともと、朝日新聞が展開してきた論議や中央大学の吉見義明教授の主張などをわざと逆手にとって発言したものでした。ところが塩崎恭久官房長官の記者会見の場で朝日新聞の記者が質問に立ち怒ったような大声で「総理は狭義だの広義だの言っていますけど、意味がわかりません」と質問しはじめたのです。でも狭義だの広義だの言い出したのはあんたたちだろうと。

 

　櫻井　そもそも彼らがつくり出した区分けですね。

 

　阿比留　そう。ですから客観的に勉強した結果、自分が正しいと思うのではなく、アプリオリに自分たちは正義で正しいという前提から、ものを申すという感じです。

 

　門田　日韓関係が破壊され、将来的に大きな禍根を残したことは明らかですが、私は日中関係でも朝日の責任は大きいと思う。私は昭和60年8月以前の日中関係と、それ以降の日中関係は、まったく異なったものになったと思っています。85年の8月に何があったのか。戦後政治の総決算を掲げた当時の中曽根首相の靖国公式参拝を阻止すべく、朝日は大キャンペーンを張りました。そして、ついに人民日報が「靖国問題について日本の動きを注視している」という記事を出すのです。さらに8月14日に正式にスポークスマンが「中曽根首相の靖国参拝はアジアの隣人の感情を傷つける」といいだした。

 

　戦後ずっと続いてきた靖国神社への参拝が、あそこから問題にされ始めたのです。つまり、靖国問題が〝外交カード〟になった瞬間です。朝日新聞の「ご注進報道」によってそれ以降も、どんどん、この問題が大きくなってくるわけです。朝日の報道で外交関係が悪化したり、禍根がもたらされたのは日韓関係だけでなく、日中関係にもいえると思うのです。

 

　阿比留　南京事件にしてもこれを大きな騒ぎにしたのも朝日でした。本多勝一さんの『中国の旅』をはじめ、プロパガンダをずっと繰り返してきましたからね。おもしろいことに、朝日は靖国については後に狂ったように批判していますが、確か昭和二十六年十月の朝日の記事には、ＧＨＱで日本に来て米国に帰る青年がずうっと靖国参拝を続けており「自分は米国に帰るけれども、日本の友人に参拝をお願いして、御霊へ祈りを」といった話を大きく記事に取り上げています。朝日は初めから反靖国だったわけじゃないのです。途中からやっぱり何らかの意図があったのでしょう。

 

　門田　材料にできると思ったのではないでしょうか。

 

　櫻井　いわゆるＡ級戦犯合祀を念頭にしたのですね。日本の外交で反日的なところは中国と朝鮮半島です。この中国と朝鮮半島に反日の種を蒔いたのは朝日です。朝日新聞が本当に諸悪の根源になっています。

 

　門田　多くの中国人は決して反日ではなくて、やさしいのです。やさしくて人がよくて、私が経験している八〇年代の中国人は、非常に日本人のことが好きでやさしい存在だった。けれども、それが今、どんどん変わってきている。朝日新聞はそういう人たちの味方ではなく、必ず共産党独裁政権の味方なのです。

 

　櫻井　門田さんの御指摘はすごく大切だと私も思います。中国にはいろんな人たちがいます。日本をきちんと理解していて、人間的にも素晴らしい方がいるのです。実は国基研で日本研究賞を出しているのですが、初年度の今年、その特別賞に東工大の劉岸偉さんを選びました。この人は魯迅の実弟の周作人の研究をしている学者です。彼に記念講演をお願いしましたさい、彼は「日本研究をした中国人で日本を悪く言う人はいません」と語ったのです。これは日本を知っている人たちは、日本のよさをきちんと理解することができるということでしょう。ほんとに大事なことを言ってくださったと思います。本当に日本をきちんと見ている人たちは、日本を嫌いになるはずがないし、なっていないのです。

 

　朝日新聞に反日的な意識を掻き立てられた中国人ではなく、中国の底辺に必ずいる誠実で、事実を事実として見ることができる人たち、今の共産党支配におかしいと思って異を唱えている民主化のリーダーの人たち、民主化に傾いている若い世代たちとの交流をしっかりとやっていかなければいけないと思いますね。

 

　門田　真の日中友好というのは朝日新聞〝廃刊〟から始まるということですね。