Old Anti-war Journalist Dies

He insisted that censorship does not exercised by government men, but existed in the mind of journalists. An old journalist, Takeji Muno, who continued carrying anti-war messages died at 101 on Sunday. Newspapers quoted his words of disobedient as the lessons for current journalists in Japan, where media organizations were too careful about the distance from Shinzo Abe administration. He would have been a Helen Thomas in Japan.

Muno was born in Rokugo Town, Akita. When he was a journalist for Asahi Shimbun, he sent reports from battlefields in Southeast Asia as a war correspondent. “In the battlefield, journalists have the same sentiment as soldiers’. It’s like ‘Kill them, if you don’t want to die.’ Three days are enough to be insane. After that, moral collapses and one may rape woman, steal things and put on fire to erase evidence. Can we preserve justice in such a society?” told Muno.

Muno left Asahi at the end of the war. It was recognized as taking responsibility of newspaper participating in the war. Just before the end of war, he lost his daughter at the age of three with child dysentery. She could not have medical treatment, because all the local medical doctors were absent for attending ceremony to send their colleagues to the war. That experience urged him to anti-war activities afterward.

He got back to his hometown in Akita and launched his own weekly newspaper titled “Torch,” in which he discussed anti-war, peace, democracy, education or local issues like agriculture. Namely, Muno was a strong supporter of Constitution of Japan. “Because we had Constitution of Japan, no Japanese died in a war and killed someone in a war,” he said in a rally on Constitution Day last year, which became his last words to the public. He recommended the Japanese not to thank Article 9 of the Constitution, but to show it off.

Muno has been worried about the situation of journalism in Japan, when Abe administration kept on promoting conservative agenda including Designated Secrecy Protection Act or reinterpretation of Article 9. He did not remember government officials in the office of Asahi Shimbun to monitor its opinion. Muno argued that one out of ten journalists were following the government and others were self-restricted. Cowardice supports despotism.

Muno warned that war could not be finished, once it started. But, current politics in Japan is based on possibility of war in the future. No braveness of imagining the world without war is in Japan. “When the history of human being is equated to a day, war started on 11:58 p.m.” told Muno.