Sankei newspaper apologizes over ad for anti-Semitic books

@Galapagos,

Thanks for the link. The guy's out to lunch with a huge appetite.

He is little known in the USA too!

I met him once. He's a total conspirisy theorist. THEY don't want you to know. Ironically, any action you take against such a guy just reinforces his beliefs. Best you can do is think for yourself and try to avoid arguing with such people. They are lost causes.

Koshimizu seems like a nut job but consider the following! If it had been said that a group of Burmese or Portuguese had been behind a plot like this then I would have dismissed the idea instantly! However, It is a fact that many scientists (Jews) having fled Germany such as Einstein,Szilard and Oppenheimer (born to German Jewish parents) developed nuclear technology. Israel, that country with nuclear weapons that no US president will publicly declare attempts to hide this unsavory fact. Nor is Israel a signatory to the NPT as many countries are! Hold on isn't Israel the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a number of unconfirmed nuclear missles!!!!!! Hasn't Israel shown itself to flout international law by sending Mossad to assassinate its enemies in foreign countries using Canadian,British and other non Israeli passports ? WTF? So, the point is that however idiotic or implausible Mr Koshimizu seems, there' is plenty of evidence pointing to Jewish involvement, open and clandestine with nuclear weaponry and design..,,,and worse !

As a Jew, I do not take offence of peoples stupidity. It cannot be helped.

I would love to meet this guy one day and have a chat.

Shalom

The Yomiuri and now the Sankei.............it seems like these newspapers need to send their staff to the local hospital (and wait with the throngs of elderly) for a serious dose of foot-in-mouth disease medicine.

“It was obvious there was a fault in our screening of advertisements,” he said.

Stop slacking off, stop apologising and DO your job

FernGully@I don't think it's censoring him to refuse to run his ad. All newspapers, TV stations, etc. adhere to a code that they don't want their name associated with certain topics. When they run such ads, they send a message to readers that they either endorse the contents, or at the very least accept that such contents are suitable topics for discussion.

This writer is not just obnoxious-- he's certifiably cuckoo. See for yourself http://richardkoshimizu.at.webry.info/201412/article_25.html

This guy holds a fanatical world-view, but I don't think he should be censored. Freedom of speech and ideas is an important value for democracy to thrive. He paid money for the ad placement, so he should get it. But who is going to believe that nonsense?

@alberlo: Thank you for kind comment but when you read my comments, I have many typo and broken English, So, dismiss my strange writings. In my time, we had to learn English by books. I had permission to watch Ameican movies to learn conversation but it did not help because I watched old B $ W movies of Ronald Ragan and did not give atention to axcresses. When I came to USA, I had to tell my religeon. I used dictionary to find Atheist and wrote that because I was (still) ignorant in religeon. School officials called one American Japanese professor to tell me that I will get mistreated if I say I am atheist. So, I wrote Methodist becaause I went Methodist kindergarten . I had to sing Joy to the /world to prove I was Methodist. In Jaoanese I sang and it was January.

Anti semitism does not work in Japan.

Maybe not@Toshiko, but it seems to sell lots of wacky conspiracy books!

@toshiko

Thanks for the excellent insight into Japanese attitudes towards religion. I agree with all you say. One thing I must say is that I have Jewish friends who are atheists and THEY might misunderstand that you believe all Jews are religious. May I ask whether most Japanese understand this? Karl Mark wasn't religious. Most Japanese don't care about anti-religion but Anti-Semites seem to blame all Jews.

@Ah_so

To my understanding, most Anti-Semites also focus on non-religious Jews. Communists or Capitalists, strangely enough.

About Matsuoka who did not kill Jewish people in China, later he said he dd not know what is Jew in Germany, Japanese word is Yudaya-jin. Later he became TB patient and died before WW II A class trial. But he was enshrined in Yasukuni . Not because of war or allied with Hitler but because he was from Yamaguchi ken that has more souls in Yasukuni than any other places in Japan. Anti semitism does not work in Japan. Anti Moslem either.

here we go racism

The World would be a wonderful place if their was only ONE Religion No matter what the Religion is only, ONE!

Japanese anti-Semitism intrigues me - why does it exist? Despite Juadaism have almost no presence in Japan, and Japanese people not being very religious, there is a stream of anti-Semitism, or at the very least, deep interest in it. You may remember the vandalism of Anne Frank diaries in libraries by a Japanese a year or so ago. Why?

No doubt the internet gives more people an opportunity to discover the lies of others and spend their lonely evenings reading about Jewish conspiracy theories and other nonsense.

@toshiko

"And they call all religeon as Shukyo and that is about the attention religeon get in Japan."

I always enjoy your posts on Japan today, but this was perhaps the best. That's the best explanation of Japanese attitudes towards religion I've come across. It saves me writing that book I was planning. Take care. Keep posting.

Is the guy from Japan? When German, Italy and Japan were together, Japanese head, Matsuiko was asked by Hitler to kill all Jews in China. Matsuoka could not understand what Hitler meant as like majority of Japanese, he was not religeous even he helped Methodist churches in Yamaguchi ken. So, he sent Jewish people to Japan instead of killing. Trying to spread anti-semitism id not going to work. Japanese couldn't care less of anti religeon. A majority of Japanese families are Shinto and some kind of Buddhism. They don;t become against any religeon. In Japan, people do not separate Catholic and Protestant. They just call Christian. Likewise, any Buddhisms are calles Bukkyo, And they call all religeon as Shukyo and that is about the attention religeon get in Japan.

I'd have to agree with a previous poster.... by censuring all negative, unbelievable, or just crazy views we leave just a one sided report of what happened. I'm not saying I agree with this guy one bit... but to continually cultivate your own message of history can also backfire... especially if that cultivation is too one sided. I don't want to feel as if I'm being patronized or brain washed... let me figure out right from wrong.

@presto345

Very punishable, indeed, in some countries. In Germany, in one case, even the defense lawyer was sentenced to 3.5 years.

In another book featured by the advertisement, Koshimizu claims the Holocaust was a “fabrication” designed to establish the state of Israel.

Isn't this punishable falsification of history? Are there publishers that print this Koshimizu's books?

The fact that anyone would believe the hateful lies from this 'writer' is sad in itself.

@donkusai

I agree that our children should learn how to think rather than what to think. But to commit to such an idea, you have to accept that the outcome may not be what you expect. So if your kids decide the views of Koshimizu are not so stupid, would you reconsider your own views?

One of my kids once doubted the Apollo moon landings. He had a point. "You expect me to believe that people landed on the moon in 1969 when today we still seem to have trouble keeping a few people in orbit around the earth." So I shouldn't be surprised if he had said, "You expect me to believe six million people were killed for their religion in the space of a few years. Come on, dad! Be serious!" I think the suppression of books like this would add evidence to his reasoning. "You're just being brainwashed, dad. That's what they want you to believe."

And so I have to remind myself why it is that I believe millions of Jews were killed. There is a mountain of evidence, but most of it has been presented to me second or third-hand. Maybe it's all a lie. But I find that one of reasons I believe it took place is that the counter-arguments put by people like Koshimizu are even harder to believe. Koshimizu's ideas are spectacularly crazy, in my opinion. But they shouldn't be suppressed.

The intelligent reader who already has anti-Israeli sentiments wouldn't believe such a story. This doesn't reflect my sentiments about Israel at all. I have been the proud victor against many anti-Jewish debaters.

@John Bosworth. Please explain to us all. You insult Hidflect1 (I also want to give my opinion without fear of such an attack) because you can't see why an agent provocateur would create a fake Anti-Israel kook. But then you say the idiot has the required intelligence to see why. I think the Moderator and everyone else would agree that we shouldn't insult others on this forum. Thanks for sharing your opinion more gently in the future.

@John

No. It requires the reader to be intelligent. Stupid readers would read, believe and develop anti-Israeli sentiments....

Sankei Shimbun is the flagship publication of one of Japan's five largest media groups. You would think they'd have standards in place to screen out ads for off-the-wall, looney-tunes hate books.

Hidflect1 doesn't sound too smart either. How this kind of story could benefit ISRAEL requires the reader to be an idiot.

'Certainly creative writer; should be writing novels though.'

There's nothing particularly creative about this idiot. He's just regurgitating centuries old vicious nonsense. Is a conspiracy theorist who spends too much time on barking mad internet sites going to tell me how blinded I am?

the iranian gov must love this guy, probably financing him, since his ideations serve their purposes as well, portraying jews as people to be killed and erased. hey! mr koshimizu, change the word "jews" to "aliens" and you probably can resell as a crappy sci-fi novel!

While the internet is a great thing and wonderful for finding information and alternate views on issues, one problem we have is that there is no real way to filter the honesty of what we read. Views such as those expressed by the author in this story become freely available, which isn't such a problem, but all the crazy stuff is mixed in with speculation and actual evidence, all given the same weighting. People can choose whatever they want to believe, no matter how crazy, and they'll find voices online to confirm these beliefs, thus validating them.

With all this information available, schools really should be teaching children critical thinking skills. Memorising information is pretty useless when you've got access to so much information instantly through your phone. We need to focus on searching for facts, weighing evidence and comparing points of view to find the strongest arguments. These are the skills kids need today. We'll always have people claim things like 'the Jews let off an atomic bomb underwater to destroy Japans economy'. The only way to protect our kids from such stupidity is to teach them to think.

Sounds like this guy is an agent provocateur or at least a useful idiot. The only beneficiary of his ridiculous book would be Israel.

I was just thinking about the fascist nature of some of the posters' dialogue on this site, that the revisionist narrative is so much akin to neo-Nazism of holocaust denial. And now I read this with the ongoing canard about the Evil Jew. Even though we are told that this is another "extremely regrettable" incident, the fact that the work of a "a self-styled journalist" can get this far with their poisonous message belies a severe problem that exists here in the guise of analysis of the past.

To paraphrase:

"Those who cannot remember the past are compelled to rewrite it."

What a wild imagination! If he seriously believes what he wrote, then maybe he should go to a doctor to get himself checked out.

This guy's a fool and lowlife who's willing to spread hate for personal financial gain.

There are documents written by the killers, documents written by the victims, other documents by the bystanders. . . . And they dare today to write books and say it didn't happen? The Japanese are not fanatic about religion and lack the anti-Semitic tradition rooted in Europe and dating back to the Middle Ages.

That's all very nice, but when are they going to get rid of all that Sinophobia too?

“The Sankei considers the Holocaust by the Nazis as an unforgivable, heinous crime,” the president said.

I wonder what their stance is when it comes to wartime sex-slaves, Nanking, Unit 731 and other 'heinous crimes', or do these apologies only apply to fellow honorable whites.

A conservative Japanese daily

That's putting it lightly!

I'm not a Makuya, but I am a very pro-Israel Japanese citizen. I'm Shinto, but I believe that in some sort of way, the Jewish people is the one destined to that territory in the Middle East. Besides, they have shown that they are fully capable of living in democracy and being compassionate of their belligerent neighbours,

Ever since Netanyahu visited Japan last May, I feel the ties between Israel-Japan have strenghtened.

Jewish people are a friendship of the Japanese.

Certainly creative writer; should be writing novels though.