lit a candle 8 Sept 202669. Too early. Good journalist. Will miss the column.
Their story
This memorial is for Masao Yora, the Japanese political journalist and television commentator known in Japanese as 与良正男 (よら・まさお). He is the Mainichi Shimbun political writer who later appeared on TBS Nスタ and MBS programmes, and who died on 30 August 2026. It is not a page for other Mainichi…
This memorial is for Masao Yora, the Japanese political journalist and television commentator known in Japanese as 与良正男 (よら・まさお). He is the Mainichi Shimbun political writer who later appeared on TBS Nスタ and MBS programmes, and who died on 30 August 2026. It is not a page for other Mainichi political writers, and it is not a page for unrelated people who share the surname Yora.
Masao Yora was born in 1957 in Hamakita City, Shizuoka Prefecture, today part of Hamamatsu City's Hamana Ward. The exact month and day are not published on the Japanese Wikipedia page or in the Mainichi death notice, so this page keeps the birth year only. In Japanese name order the family name comes first: Yora Masao. An English approximation of the reading is YOH-rah mah-SAH-oh. Visual trademarks later in life were glasses, a small mustache, and often a cap.
After Shizuoka Prefectural Iwata Minami High School and the Faculty of Letters at Nagoya University, he joined Mainichi Shimbun in April 1981. No postgraduate degree is described in the sources as a requirement of that path. He began at the Chubu headquarters news desk, then moved in 1989 to the Tokyo headquarters political desk. There he covered the Liberal Democratic Party's Abe Shintaro orbit and the Seiwakai / Mitsuzuka faction for a long stretch. Around the spring of 2000, as the Mori cabinet began, he spent about a year in the Kantei (prime minister's office) press club. He later served as cap for opposition and Ministry of Foreign Affairs coverage. In a 2008 Mainichi Hasshinbako column he looked back on the Mori period with unusual bluntness for a political reporter: he barely remembered writing policy stories, because day after day the beat chased gaffes instead. That self-critique became part of how colleagues and critics described him. He was a journalist willing to argue about what political journalism should be for.
From 2004 he was an editorial board member (論説委員). From 2010 until March 2012 he was deputy editorial chair (論説副委員長). The title left him that April. From 2014 he worked as specialist editorial fellow (専門編集委員). Across roughly two decades he helped shape Mainichi editorials. From about 2010 until his retirement on 31 March 2023, he wrote the Tokyo evening paper's signature politics column 「熱血！与良政談」 (Nekketsu! Yora Seidan). The column mixed beat knowledge with a first-person voice he later defended. Newspapers often hide behind vague subjects, he wrote in a late piece, but Mainichi had long signed reporters' work, and he used "I" on purpose. A 2008 book, also titled 『与良政談』, collected that style for readers beyond the evening paper. The column archive remains on Mainichi's 与良 hub.
On screen and radio he became a familiar face. TBS viewers knew him from みのもんたの朝ズバッ!, Nスタ, ひるおび, and サンデーモーニング. BS-TBS's 報道1930 also used him. MBS's ちちんぷいぷい and VOiCE carried his Kansai-facing commentary. TBS Radio's 大沢悠里のゆうゆうワイド gave him a Wednesday slot, 「与良正男の与良ば斬るぞ!」. Lecture agents billed him as someone who could explain Nagatacho's human drama, including the talk that never made the night's chyron. Searches for 与良正男 with サンデーモーニング, Nスタ, ちちんぷいぷい, or VOICE land on this same commentator, not on a separate person.
His columns and on-air remarks were not bland. Japanese Wikipedia and contemporary critiques record a consistent pattern. He valued the newspaper's role in proposing how society might change. He warned that fair attacks on every party can deepen the public's sense that politics is hopeless. He often wrote more sympathetically about Democratic Party of Japan governments than about LDP cabinets. He sparred in print with Yomiuri's posture during the 2007 grand-coalition episode and later Diet fights. Journalist Takashi Tachibana (立花隆) accused him, during the Hatoyama years, of urging media to push the new government in a way Tachibana likened to wartime Daihonei happyo propaganda. Yora answered that simply criticising politics was no longer enough, and that he had wanted to raise that problem even if some readers would not hear it. Later pieces pressed the second Abe cabinet over historical issues and over what he called a small-minded refusal to tolerate dissent. Admirers heard a reporter fighting for reform-minded coverage. Critics heard a columnist who had chosen sides. Both readings are part of the public record. These were political-press controversies, not personal scandals.
He retired from Mainichi on 31 March 2023, then stayed on as guest editorial fellow (客員編集委員), freelance journalist, and guest professor in public management at Waseda University's Graduate School of Political Science. He had also served on a Ministry of Education jukugi discussion committee and as an operating committee member of the 21st Century Rincho (新しい日本をつくる国民会議). Nippon.com listed him as a special adviser to NPO Dot.jp. He kept writing and appearing into the mid-2020s, including Bunshun panel discussions on politics and money that remain on YouTube, and a final Mainichi まいもく commentary episode.
Mainichi announced on 7 September 2026 that he had died of stomach cancer (胃癌) on 30 August 2026, aged 69. TBS NEWS DIG and Hochi reported the same cause. The place of death was not made public. The funeral was held among close relatives. His wife Keiko (啓子, styled 与良啓子 in the notices) was chief mourner. Children, parents, and siblings are not named in the obituaries or on the Japanese Wikipedia page used here, and they are not invented on this page. A resting place was not published.
That evening on Nスタ, anchor Takahiro Inoue told viewers Yora had been calm no matter what topic was thrown at him, that he loved television, and that he would often say he had watched their show. Co-anchor Mai Izumi (出水麻衣) remembered a light, bright way of speaking. TBS NEWS DIG and MBS NEWS ran video obituaries the same day. For a generation of viewers who met politics through an evening paper column and a commentator with a mustache and glasses, those tributes closed a beat that had lasted more than forty years, from the Chubu news desk in 1981 to the September 2026 notices.
Biography adapted from JA Wikipedia 与良正男; Mainichi obituary 7 Sep 2026; TBS NEWS DIG; Hochi; nippon.com; worldkikaku; Mainichi column archive..
In their own words
“マスコミが高い志を持って政治報道をしなければ、日本の政治がみすぼらしくなってしまう”
On the duty of political journalism. Mainichi editorial-room remarks of 5 February 2009, cited on Japanese Wikipedia.
“「(社会の)仕組みを変えよう」と提起するのが私たちの仕事だ”
Same cluster of remarks on what journalists owe the public. Japanese Wikipedia citing Mainichi.
“テレビは本当に怖いメディア。こんな時代こそ新聞。物事をどう見るかという部分で頼りにされている”
Defending newspapers against television's power. Japanese Wikipedia citing Mainichi editorial remarks.
“政策の記事をほとんど書いた記憶がない。毎日、失言ばかりを追いかけていた”
Looking back on about a year as Kantei club reporter at the start of the Mori cabinet. Mainichi Hasshinbako column 「悲しいほどの…」, 11 December 2008, cited on Japanese Wikipedia.
“自民党がどういう方法で、どういう人をリーダーにしていくのか。私たち国民も非常に冷静に、厳しく見ていかないといけない”
On LDP leadership selection during the COVID-era party race. 2021 interview excerpt used in the TBS NEWS DIG death report of 7 September 2026.
“単純に政治を批判していれば済む時代ではなくなったのではないか”
Yora's reply to Takashi Tachibana's criticism of his call for media to help push DPJ-era reform. Japanese Wikipedia citing his column reply.
“どんな話を振っても穏やかに話してくれる方で。テレビも大好きで『あの番組見たよ』なんてよく話してくださいました”
Spoken about him, not by him. Takahiro Inoue on Nスタ, 7 September 2026, announcing Yora's death. Source: Hochi.
“語り口がいつも軽やかで明るい方でしたよね”
Spoken about him, not by him. Mai Izumi (出水麻衣) on the same Nスタ tribute, 7 September 2026. Source: Hochi.
Photos
1Masao Yora (与良正男) in Chiyoda, Tokyo, 20 November 2023. Glasses, mustache, salt-and-pepper hair. Obituary portrait published by Mainichi Shimbun on 7 September 2026.
Nov 2023 · by People Forever
He did that. Didn't need to shout. The glasses and mustache helped you remember his face, but his words stuck harder.