Though I had heard a lot about net uyo, I was curious to know more about them and their method.

This book focus on Channel Sakura and the different methods and campaigns they ran since their inception in 2004. It also explains how Channel Sakura fits into the Japanese far right.

What I found particularly interesting is how the described methods are similar to the dediabolisation campaign and the use of the net and especially Youtube by the French far right. Only 10 years before, which is not what I was expecting at all. The fact that the far-right was better at using the net to broadcast their message than other groups is also something that has then expanded in other countries and has only started to face backlash since 2015-16

The fact that NHK only aired A First-Rate Asian Power on two occasions would typically mean that protesters and people filing complaints about the documentary would have needed to watch it on their television sets in order to formulate an opinion on its contents. However, in the era of affordable broadband internet, anyone with internet access could go on YouTube at any time and view videos from Channel Sakura that provided detailed criticisms of the documentary.

Having spent some time in China, I was really interested in the link between Japan’s far right and the Taiwan pro-independance groups

Taiwanese independence activists wanted to assert that Taiwan had a separate identity from China and thus should be treated as an entirely different country. To achieve this, they looked back on Taiwan’s history as a colony of Japan. They advanced the view that Japan liberated Taiwan from oppressive colonial Chinese domination and helped nurture Taiwan’s uniquely non-Chinese society. The postwar acts of oppression committed by Nationalist Chinese authorities against the population of Taiwan are contrasted with what they see as the less oppressive colonization by Japan.

The faux-grassroot aspects of Channel Sakura proselytism and the war against established newspapers is also similar to the reinformation aspects of the French far-right media campaigns. Also, refusing to publish an article on a marketing/PR campaign is not reporting the truth ???

The Asahi Shimbun and Tokyo Shimbun – two left-leaning papers that were often targets of Channel Sakura’s criticism – had not sent anyone. According to Mizushima, these media outlets had exercised their “freedom not to report” the truth.

Final word

Recommended: yes. IF you want to deepen your knowledge in the domain.