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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Shukan Bunshun is one answer to the charge that aggressive, confrontational journalism does not exist in Japan. For over a year, the nation's biggest-selling weekly magazine (about 420,000 audited copies) has scored a string of scoops. In January 2016, it harpooned economy minister Amari Akira over bribery claims, forcing him to quit. The following month, it exposed an extramarital affair by Miyazaki Kensuke, a politician who had been campaigning for maternity leave during his wife's pregnancy. The same month it revealed illegal betting by Kasahara Shoki, a former pitcher with the Yomiuri Giants baseball team.
1 See here. (April 2, 2015)
2 Circulation figures for the NYT. (accessed Nov.1, 2015) The Yomiuri. (accessed Nov.1, 2015)
3 The Seikyo Shimbun, a newspaper run by religious group Soka Gakkai, claims a daily circulation of 5-6 million. Shimbun Akahata, the daily newspaper of the Japanese Communist Party, has a claimed circulation of 1.6 million.
4 See Japan Fact Sheet. (Accessed April 5, 2013)
5 See Laurie Anne Freeman's “Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels,” Japan Policy Research Institute, Working Paper No.18, April 1996. (October 6, 2011). Also see Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media, Princeton University Press (2000). And DeLange, W., A History of Japanese Journalism: Japan's Press Club As the Last Obstacle to a Mature Press, Routledge (1998). On differences with the US media, Freeman notes: The institutional machinery for cartelizing official news is virtually absent in the US…It is at this fundamental level – the initial source – that the two systems vary so dramatically. While the US media industry shares common institutional features in the ‘downstream’ stages of report – notably in the role of concentrated media groups in the dissemination of news – there is nothing similar at the ‘upstream’ stages. And it is here that the two systems are sufficiently distinctive to represent not simply differences in degree but differences in kind.“
6 For an account of prewar and wartime control over the Japanese media, see Kasza, G., The State and the Mass Media in Japan: 1918-1945, University of California Press (1993).
7 Pharr, S.J., “Media and Politics in Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” in Pharr and Krauss (ed.) Media and Politics in Japan, University of Hawaii Press (1996).
8 Pharr, S.J., Ibid.
9 Hanada, T., “The Stagnation of Japanese Journalism and its Structural Background in the Media System,” in Bohrmann et al. (eds), Media Industry, Journalism Culture and Communication Policies in Europe, Halem (2007).
10 See: Nihon Shimbun Kyokai. (accessed May 2, 2015)
11 Herman and Chomsky.
12 Karel Van Wolferen, Karel, The enigma of Japanese power: people and politics in a stateless nation, Tuttle, 1993.
13 A record of this press conference can be found here. (date accessed April 6, 2015)
14 See Laurie Anne Freeman's “Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels,” Japan Policy Research Institute, Working Paper No.18, April 1996. (October 6, 2011). Also see Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media, Princeton University Press (2000). And DeLange, W., A History of Japanese Journalism: Japan's Press Club As the Last Obstacle to a Mature Press, Routledge (1998).
15 This had been happening for years: In 1964, LA Times reporter Sam Jameson was famously barred from a police press conference following the stabbing of US Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer.
16 “Press clubs stymie free trade in information: EU,”The Japan Times, Nov. 7, 2002. Available online. (April 3, 2015)
17 Personal interview, April 15, 2015.
18 Laurie A. Freeman, “Japan's Press Clubs as Information Cartels,” Japan Policy Research Institute, April 1996.
19 Feigenblatt, Hazel and Global Integrity (eds), (2010) The Corruption Notebooks. vol. VI, Washington: Global Integrity.
20 Jonathan Watts, “EU acts to free Japanese media,” The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2002.
21 See here. (April 27, 2015)
22 The Economist, “See no evil”, 2010. (Accessed April 29, 2015)
23 Personal interview with Tetsuo Jimbo; Asahi journalist
24 Personal interview, Okumura Nobuyuki, Musashi University of Tokyo.
25 Ibid. See also, Brasor, P., “Abe raises eyebrows when he's off script,” The Japan Times, October 24, 2015. At press conferences with Abe Shinzo, NHK reporter Hara Seiki is selected, even when he doesn't have his hand up.
26 Brasor, Ibid.
27 McNeill, D., “Japan pulls up the drawbridge as refugee problem grows,” The Irish Times, October 3, 2015. Available online. (Nov.1, 2015).
28 No.1 Shimbun, “Behind the Barricades,” Dec. 28, 2014, Available online here (last accessed on October 20, 2016).
29 Satoh K., “What Should the Public Know?: Japanese Media Coverage on the Antinuclear Movement in Tokyo between March 11 and November 30, 2011,” (Accessed October 4, 2016).
30 Press Conference: Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Tuesday, December 16, 2014.
31 See McNeill, D., “Pro-Nuclear Professors Accused of Singing Industry's Tune in Japan,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2011.
32 Ito, M., (2012) Terebi Wa Genpatsu Jiko Dou Tsutaetanoka? (How Did Television Cover the Nuclear Accident?), Tokyo: Heibonsha.
33 Fackler, M., 「本当のこと」を伝えない日本の新聞 (双葉新書), 2012.
34 By that time a steady stream of foreign and freelance reporters had been to see the town (AFP was the first to arrive, on March 18th).
35 Japanese reporters for the big media have little to gain from breaking ranks during major news stories such as Fukushima because they form cartel-like arrangements to prevent rival scoops. In particularly dangerous situations, managers of TV networks and newspapers enter agreements (known as “hodo kyotei”) in effect to collectively keep their reporters out of harm's way. The volcanic eruption of Mt. Unzen in 1991 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both of which led to fatalities among Japanese journalists, solidified these agreements—one reason why so few Japanese reporters from major media could be seen during the Iraq War, or in conflict zones such as Burma, Thailand or Afghanistan. There, freelancers did much of the heavy lifting. Cf. the Vietnam War where Honda Katsuichi reported extensively on the ground for the Asahi.
36 Personal Interview, June 24, 2015.
37 FCCJ, May 18, 2016.
38 Personal interview with Kimura Hideaki, journalist with the Asahi Shimbun, May 6, 2015. Kimura was one of the disciplined journalists.
39 See: 朝日新聞「吉田調書報道」は誤解ではない.
40 Kaido Yuichi, Kamata Satoshi & Hanada Tatsuro: “Crisis of Asahi and Japanese Journalism”, press conference at The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Dec. 16, 2014. Available online here.
41 Kaido et al, Ibid.
42 “Scholars adamant that Yoshida memoirs had no influence in US,” Asia Policy Point, Sept. 25, 2014. Available online. (Accessed May 2, 2015)
43 See David McNeill and Justin McCurry, “Sink the Asahi! The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy and the Neo-nationalist Attack”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 5, No. 1, February 2, 2015. (May 2, 2015)
44 Anna Fifield, Washington Post.
45 His account can be found here. (May 8, 2015)
46 See McNeill, D., “LDP vs. FCCJ - Behind the Barricades,” No.1 Shimbun, December 2014. Available online. (March. 31, 2016)
47 McNeill, D., No.1 Shimbun, Ibid.
48 2016, Watanabe Tsuneo, editor-in-chief of the Yomiuri Shimbun, hosted an evening dinner with Prime Minister Abe and some of Japan's top media executives at the company's headquarters in central Tokyo. The companies represented included the Mainichi, Sankei, Asahi and Nikkei newspapers, along with the nation's biggest broadcaster, NHK. Writing in the Asahi Shimbun a few days later, journalist Ikegami Akira asked the obvious questions: Who pays when the country's leader eats with the head of its most-read newspaper? “Does the Yomiuri owe Abe something? Enough to invite him for a meal?…Did Abe meet with Watanabe because he wanted the Yomiuri to understand his views? Or did Watanabe give advice to Abe?” See: 池上彰, “安倍氏は誰と食事した？“朝日新聞, Jan 29, 2016. (Last accessed on March 21, 2016)
49 Personal interviews, Tokyo, Feb. 12/13, 2016. See: “Anchors Away,” The Economist Feb. 20, 2016.
50 Personal interview, Tokyo, February 13, 2016.
51 Personal interview, Tokyo March 24, 2016.
52 See Alexis Dudden and K. Mizoguchi, Abe's Violent Denial: Japan's Prime Minister and the ‘Comfort Women,‘ Asia-Pacific Journal.
53 Profile of four appointees: Hyakuta Naoki, Hasegawa Michiko, Honda Katsuhiko, Momii Katsuto. Hyakuta rejects charges that Japan committed war crimes.
54 The Broadcast Law says governors of must make “fair judgment concerning public welfare.”
55 The original MOFA document “On the Issue of Comfort Women,” posted in 1993 at a time when the government reached an understanding with the Republic of Korea, notes: With regard to the supervision of the comfort women, the then Japanese military imposed such measures as mandatory use of contraceptives as a part of the comfort station regulations and regular check-ups of comfort women for venereal and other diseases by military doctors, for the purpose of hygienic control of the comfort women and the comfort stations. Some stations controlled the comfort women by restricting their leave time as well as the destinations they could go to during the leave time under the comfort station regulations. It is evident, at any rate, that, in the war areas, these women were forced to move with the military under constant military control and that they were deprived of their freedom and had to endure misery. Available as of Oct. 6th, 2016.
56 Momii's statements after appointment.
57 See here.
58 See here (Nov. 3, 2015).
59 See Fackler, M., “Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media is Working,” New York Times, April 26, 2015. Available online here (last accessed, October 20, 2016).
60 Novelist Hyakuta attacks Okinawan media at LDP's meeting; “The two newspapers of Okinawa should be shut down,” Ryukyu Shimpo, June 26, 2015. Available online here (last accessed October 20, 2016).
61 For example, see Human Rights Watch, “Malaysia: Crackdown on Free Speech Intensifies,” (Oct. 13, 2016).
62 See, The Japan Times, “Sankei journalist Tatsuya Kato acquitted of defaming South Korean leader,” Dec. 17, 2015. (Last accessed October 11, 2016).
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