Norimitsu Onishi - Criticism

Criticism

Some critics, especially conservatives in Japan such as Kohyu Nishimura and Yoshihisa Komori, accuse Onishi's leftist perspective of having a strong "anti-Japan" bias, which, they suggest, helps foster a vilified image of Japan abroad.

In his New York Times article, "Letter from Asia; Japan and China: National Character Writ Large," Onishi compared the Japanese method of transliteration to that of the Chinese, noting that Japanese has a special character set called katakana to express foreign words and names and to label them clearly as foreign, while in Chinese, non-Chinese names are depicted entirely in standard Chinese characters. Speculating on the origins of the different writing approaches, he suggested that the origin lay in the historical identities of the cultures, namely the inward-looking island nation of Japan in contrast to the historical Chinese cultural explanation of themselves as 'the center of the world,' as expressed in the country's name, the "Center Kingdom". Onishi criticized the practice of using katakana when writing the names of naturalized citizens of Japanese descendants, although their names could be written in the Japanese-style Chinese characters kanji. This established custom marks people as "not truly Japanese." The article has been criticized because of the difficulty of identifying kanji to associate with the name of someone coming from a linguistic background which uses Roman letters and katakana are also used in a number of other situations to mark something as special, rather like italics and scare quotes are used in English.

Another article, "Letter from Asia: Why Japan Seems Content to Be Run by One Party" provoked an official objection statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for being "an incorrect article." In it, Norimitsu referred to Japan's democracy as an "illusion," comparing its government to that of North Korea and China.

His article on December 17, 2006, "Japan Rightists Fan Fury Over North Korea Abductions," was also criticized by Kyoko Nakayama, Tokyo Special adviser to the Japanese Prime Minister on Abduction. Thomas H. Snitch, a former professor of American University and the president of Little Falls Associates, Inc. also mentioned that Onishi's coverage on Japan's effort to deal with the issue of the North Korean abductions of Japanese is based on his political bias. Some Japanese conservatives claim that Onishi is a naturalized Japanese citizen of Korean descent.