In mid-2018, Okinawa’s anti-base movement faces a crisis. The struggle to resist construction of a US military base in Nago City’s Henoko district has never been easy. It confronts two governments, Japan and the United States, that deploy all instruments of state power–police, propaganda, intervening in local elections—to get their way.
The Sankei Shinbun has never been a newspaper that shies away from controversy. In a country that still struggles with its recent history and that is in the midst of allegedly far-reaching reforms, several of the conservative newspaper’s strongly opinionated pieces have given rise to controversy, raising questions about whether or not some of the newspaper’s activities could be called journalism at all–or whether “rightwing activism” would be a better label.
