The Asahi Shimbun,
Japan’s second-largest daily newspaper,
retracted an influential report on the
Fukushima nuclear disaster on Thursday
after weeks of criticism from other media
organizations.
The move, which included an apology, came
a month after the newspaper retracted a
series of stories on another hot-button issue,
Japan’s wartime legacy.
“We hurt readers’ trust in our reports,”
Tadakazu Kimura, Asahi Shimbun’s
president and chief executive officer, said at
a news conference Thursday evening.
Mr. Kimura announced that he was
dismissing Nobuyuki Sugiura, Asahi
Shimbun’s executive editor, and would
punish other editors involved in the
Fukushima reporting. Mr. Kimura said he
would decide whether he himself would
resign after carrying out a “drastic
restructuring plan.”
In May, the newspaper cited testimony given
by the Fukushima plant manager, Masao
Yoshida, in reporting that about 650 workers
disobeyed orders and fled the Fukushima
Daiichi power plant at a critical moment
during the disaster in 2011.
In recent weeks other Japanese news
organizations have reported on Mr.
Yoshida’s testimony. Reports from The
Mainichi Shimbun, The Yomiuri Shimbun
and The Sankei Shimbun, three other leading
newspapers, and the Kyodo News agency
portrayed his comments differently , saying
that the exodus was the result of
miscommunication.
Mr. Yoshida died last year of throat cancer
at the age of 58. His interviews with
investigators stretch over 400 pages.
Mr. Yoshida, who is regarded by many in
Japan as a hero for preventing a wider
disaster, had asked that the contents of his
interviews not be made public. The
government, however, released the text of
his interview on Thursday, saying it was
necessary to clarify the public record.
“Only a part of the record of Mr. Yoshida’s
testimony has been picked up and reported
by several papers,” said Yoshihide Suga, the
top government spokesman. “His original
concern that his story would develop a life
of its own without verification came to be
realized. We think it would lead to a result
that is against his will if we don’t disclose
it.”
Since the Fukushima disaster, the liberal
Asahi Shimbun has campaigned against
nuclear power in its editorial pages, saying
it regretted its earlier support. The
conservative Yomiuri Shimbun has been
critical of Asahi’s coverage, saying its report
on Mr. Yoshida’s testimony “ caused serious
misunderstandings among the international
media .”
The Asahi Shimbun’s coverage of another
sensitive topic has also come under scrutiny
in recent weeks. Last month the newspaper
retracted 16 stories , the first published in
September 1982, citing a Japanese Imperial
Army veteran who said he had rounded up
Korean women to serve as sex slaves during
World War II.
Tokyo issued a formal apology in 1993 to
women on the Korean Peninsula and in
other places occupied by Japan during the
war who were forced to work in brothels
that served its military.
While most historians agree that Japan
forced tens of thousands of women to work
in a network of wartime brothels, some have
long questioned the particular evidence
given by Seiji Yoshida, a soldier who later
became a writer . Shinzo Abe called him a
“con man” in a speech in November 2012,
shortly before taking office as prime
minister.
Mr. Abe, a nationalist who has a reputation
for trying to end what he calls a masochistic
view of Japan’s history, told a radio program
on Thursday that he would not comment
directly on The Asahi Shimbun. But he said,
“I think it is true that, by the false reporting
on comfort women, for example, a lot of
people have suffered, and Japan was
discredited in international society,” the
broadcaster NHK reported.
The Asahi Shimbun said that it dispatched
reporters to South Korea’s Jeju Island in
April and May to corroborate Mr. Yoshida’s
claims, but that after interviewing about 40
people, they were unable to do so. Mr.
Yoshida died in 2000 and had declined to
help in previous efforts to investigate his
claims, the newspaper said.
In February Mr. Abe ordered an
investigation into the government’s apology
for the sex slaves, also known by the
euphemism “comfort women.” That effort
sparked criticism from China and South
Korea, which say Japan has not come to
terms with the brutality of its wars against
its neighbors.
There is broad evidence to support the
existence of wartime sex slaves, The Asahi
Shimbun wrote last month in an article
questioning whether the retraction of the
stories citing Mr. Yoshida was being used to
undermine Japan’s apology on the issue.
The newspaper came under further criticism
last week after it spiked a column from a
well-known contributor, Akira Ikegami, who
said that the paper’s retraction of the
comfort women story was too late and didn’t
go far enough, and that the newspaper
should apologize. Following criticism from
readers and members of its own staff, the
paper reversed course and published the
piece.
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