The following is from the serial column of Masayuki Takayama, who brings the weekly Shincho released today to a successful conclusion.
This article also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
He reveals the truth in a limited space in one sentence or paragraph.
He is also a masterful writer, unique in the postwar world.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but also for people worldwide.
The emphasis in the text except for the headline is mine.
Arrangement for Killing
A long time ago, I held a party in Ichigaya to commemorate the publication of a book that compiled this column.
The organizer was Masahiro Miyazaki.
I noticed that the name "Shinzo Abe" was printed on the prospectus in the style of the general representative of the promoters.
When I told him this was a bit too much, he irresponsibly replied, "That would be better looking."
Perhaps because of this, the event attracted such a large turnout that the political commentator Hisayuki Miyake said, "If we blow this place up, the entire conservative discourse in Japan will be annihilated."
In the midst of all this, former Prime Minister Abe really made an appearance.
He told me he was a regular reader of this column, and I was frankly grateful.
At the time, Mr. Abe had just quit his first cabinet, having fallen ill due to relentless harassment by the Asahi Shimbun.
When Hisayuki Miyake asked Yoshibumi Wakamiya, the chief editor, to verify the aberrant attacks on Abe, he replied, "It's the company policy" (Eitaro Ogawa, "The appointed day: an essay about Shinzo Abe").
The famous line, "Our company will hold Abe's funeral," follows this line.
The feud between the two is old and long.
Mr. Abe was atypical of a Japanese prime minister.
He was neither short nor bald nor fat.
He was tall, intelligent, fluent in English, and above all, neither a Tokyo University graduate nor a bureaucrat.
The Asahi Shimbun newspaper could have entangled him with bureaucratic ties and academic cliques if he were an ordinary prime minister.
It could threaten them in print if they did not listen to the Asahi.
But that did not work with Mr. Abe.
In addition, their political beliefs were utterly opposite.
Since Masuichi Midoro, Asahi had been flattering China and buttering up North Korea to the detriment of Japan.
Mr. Abe was the opposite.
When Asahi was aptly referring to North Korea as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea," Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe got Kim Jong-il to admit that he had abducted Japanese nationals.
He also prevented Asahi from working with Hitoshi Tanaka to send the abductees back to the North.
After successfully destroying the Abe Cabinet with its company policy, Asahi again became severe about holding a "funeral for Abe" in 2012, before it formed the second Abe Cabinet.
Hiroshi Hoshi, who stood up to ask a question, arrogantly asked how it would handle the comfort women issue.
The answer was, "Mr. Hoshi, the comfort women issue is because your Asahi Shimbun newspaper spread the story of a fraud named Seiji Yoshida as if it were true."
In a live nationwide broadcast, he pointed out exactly how distorted and false Asahi's character is.
Although Asahi was dismayed by the prime minister's retort, there was no way to cover up the fact that they had been telling lies to undermine Japan for the past 30 years.
Kimura was fired, and Asahi's circulation dropped so low that reporters were no longer offered cab tickets.
The current editorial director, Seiki Nemoto, was tasked with avenging the loss.
Nemoto thought about it.
For example, it would be a lie if he reported that "Prime Minister Abe gave Moritomo Gakuen an 80% discount on state-owned land at the request of Moritomo Gakuen."
However, if they were to write, "The prime minister or Akie may have had the Ministry of Finance impose a guess," it would not be a false report.
In this way, they can write anything under the guise of news reporting.
It is how they got the Morikake scandal to be written up.
Although the Diet had won a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet, deliberations in the Diet were stifled by the media coverage of the allegations, and the constitutional amendment did not make a single step forward.
Even when the Diet backtracked to add a new constitution that would clearly state the Self-Defense Forces, it was still stalled by new allegations and other problems.
In the end, Mr. Abe was again forced into retirement by Jiro Yamaguchi's "I'm going to slay Abe" jeers.
Still, Nemoto did not relent.
If activists chased the former prime minister and disrupted his street speeches, he was happy to put them in print.
When police officers restricted activists, Nemoto had them file a lawsuit against the police and got a ridiculous ruling from the Sapporo District Court that "obstructing a speech is a good form of freedom of expression."
Nemoto then stirred up the disturbance in an editorial by saying, "Cops should not restrict the audience at former Prime Minister Abe's street speeches."
The paper wrote about the former prime minister as if he were an untruthful person, had Jiro Yamaguchi bluster about the murder, and checked to ensure that the security forces did not restrict the audience at the street speeches.
One can only assume that Asahi arranged for Tetsuya Yamagami's crime to succeed.
One wonders with what emotion Nemoto was watching the plot unfold as planned.
