Befitting a country boasting close to 100-percent literacy, the world’s second-largest gross domestic product and a love of electronic gadgetry, Japan enjoys the benefits of an advanced media industry that is second to none. On the print side, it produces almost 150 daily newspapers and several thousand weekly, monthly and periodical magazines. Six major terrestrial television stations and five satellite stations provide nationwide TV coverage, spoiling viewers for choice, while broadband Internet connectivity is widely available via fiber-optic, 3G mobile-phone and ADSL networks. Also of note, NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile-phone carrier, celebrates the 10th anniversary of its immensely popular i-mode mobile Internet service this year.

The country is also served by two domestic news agencies: Kyodo News is a non-profit cooperative press service owned by its media members that provides coverage of all types of news in Japanese and English; Jiji Press is 100-percent privately owned by its employees and competes with Kyodo by offering a comprehensive paid-for news service in Japanese and English.

According to World Press Trends (WPT), the Japanese are the world’s most avid buyers of newspapers, with 624 daily sales per thousand adults in 2007. After China and India, Japan had the world’s third-largest newspaper market in that year, with 68 million copies sold daily, compared to 51 million in the United States, which has almost three times the population of Japan. Despite these impressive figures, given the rapid increase of online news sources and spectacular growth in broadband access to them, more people, especially younger Japanese, are turning to digital means to get their news, mobile phones in particular. No surprise, then, that newspaper circulation fell almost 1 percent in 2007, according to WPT, and an overall 2.7 percent during the five preceding years.

Declining sales notwithstanding, Japan’s three most popular newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, ranked first, second and third, respectively, among the world’s top 100 paid-for daily newspapers in 2008, based on data from the World Association of Newspapers cited in Wikipedia. The fourth-largest national, business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, ranked seventh in circulation among newspapers worldwide, while the Sankei Shimbun, which covers general news, came in at 15th. The Yomiuri’s circulation alone topped 10 million, the Asahi more than 8 million, while the Mainichi counted roughly 4 million subscribers.

The Yomiuri also publishes an English-language newspaper, The Daily Yomiuri, while the Asahi puts out an English edition in collaboration with the International Herald Tribune. There is also the independently published English daily The Japan Times, while the Mainichi’s now-defunct English daily has been replaced with an English-language Web site.

Besides the high value many Japanese place on education, self-improvement and reading, these large circulation figures are also due to the efficient home-delivery systems set up by the five national newspapers and other prominent publications, as noted in Japan’s Mass Media, published by the Foreign Press Center, Japan. The door-to-door system enables households and businesses throughout the country to subscribe to several newspapers daily. In addition, kiosks in the thousands of commuter railway stations around the country sell morning and evening editions of newspapers, as well as popular magazines.

Most major Japanese newspaper companies are privately owned, usually by the founders’ families and employee groups. Each has expanded to include publishing houses and stakes in affiliated TV companies.

TV NEWS OR ENTERTAINMENT?
Japan’s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (Japan Broadcasting Corp. or NHK), is financed by mandatory fees paid by householders who own TVs. Besides several radio stations, NHK operates both a general and an educational terrestrial TV channel, two satellite channels, plus an additional satellite channel broadcasting in high definition, a technology NHK pioneered. In February the public broadcaster launched NHK World, an English-language news and information channel that broadcasts a variety of Japan-related programs 24 hours a day for overseas viewers. NHK World complements NHK World Premium, a Japanese-language pay-TV service aimed at overseas viewers, who can subscribe to it through local providers.

NHK competes with five major commercial networks: TV Asahi, Fuji TV, Nippon TV (NTV), Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and TV Tokyo. Each is affiliated, respectively, with the following newspapers: Asahi, Sankei, Yomiuri, Mainichi and Nikkei, and these six media groups dominate Japan’s daily newspaper and broadcast news. Two commercial satellite broadcasters, Sky PerfectTV and WOWOW, also compete for viewers by offering a wide range of international and locally produced news, business, sports and entertainment channels on a subscription basis. Come July 2011, all analog TV broadcasting is due to cease and the country will change over exclusively to digital broadcasting.

In 2007, 46 percent of NHK’s daily TV content was devoted to news, compared to 19 percent for commercial stations, according to Mapping Media and Communications Research, a report published by the University of Helsinki’s Department of Communications. As for entertainment, NHK allotted 15 percent of its daily content to such programs, while commercial stations devoted 40 percent of their content to entertaining viewers. The report concludes: “Based on these figures, it is safe to say that the commercial channels focus on entertainment, while NHK focuses on news.”

This imbalance does not mean that commercial-TV news is inconsequential. In fact, it is more likely to take the lead in pursuing serious scoops. For instance, the commercial TV networks were credited with being first among all Japanese media to report on Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa’s apparently drunken behavior at a press conference following the Group of Seven meeting in Rome in February, which led to his resignation.

Spending on TV advertising in 2006 came to ¥2 trillion, according to Japan Marketing Data ’08/’09. Newspaper advertising accounted for ¥999 billion, while ¥389 billion was spent on ads in magazines.

MEDIA INCLINATIONS
Regarding the political leanings of the major media groups, conventional wisdom says that the Yomiuri is conservative, the Asahi liberal, while the Mainichi is centrist. But as an outsider looking in, noted Japan scholar Ellis Krauss, in an article republished in Japan Media Review (Oct. 3, 2003), says that differences among the top newspapers are mostly cosmetic. He argues that the Big Three all present the news “in the same factual and neutral manner,” to the extent that “their news pages actually betray the opposite problem of political diversity: remarkable conformity.”
Any discussion of the Japanese media’s autonomy and the freedom of its journalists inevitably leads one to the role of the kisha clubs, the news-gathering groups located in press rooms set up by establishment power-holders such as government ministries, the police and major corporations.

These reporters’ clubs are not exclusive to Japan, of course, but they have come in for loud and lengthy criticism from excluded local reporters and foreign correspondents who find it difficult to gain direct access to key sources of information in a timely fashion. Many of these outsiders have not only denounced the exclusivity of the clubs, but also allege that they are breeding grounds for cozy relationships that can inhibit full, honest and critical reporting.

In some cases, it is not the organizations doling out the information that enforce exclusivity, but rather the kisha-club members themselves, who are apparently intent on protecting their privileged access. “The kisha clubs in various government ministries have total authority to prevent any journalist from attending non-pooled events for the media,” says veteran Japan foreign correspondent Khaldon Azhari, a Syrian-American TV journalist who works for several Middle East media outlets. “Some kisha-club members have even prevented me from entering the public halls of government buildings when press conferences were being held – which is a serious attack on freedom of the press, not to mention a big hit on my income.”

Defenders of the clubs say the concentrated strength of a club’s elite members helps to open up the organizations they are reporting on. Also, some members point out – albeit, while insisting on anonymity – that they have been excluded from similar press gatherings overseas, such as those held for the Washington press corps in the U.S. Meanwhile, the organizations feeding the kisha clubs find them to be an efficient system through which to make official announcements, leak information and make unattributed remarks to select media and have the information immediately disseminated.

Taking an evenhanded view of the system is Australian academic Jane O’Dwyer, who has made a study of kisha clubs and corresponding entities abroad, particularly the press gallery in Canberra, Australia’s capital. In Asia Pacific Media Educator (Issue 16, 2005), she argues that the system “is not a unique aberration, but rather a more extreme version of Australian, British and United States’ press-club systems.” Nevertheless, in the context of half a century of veritable one-party government rule and cultural characteristics such as a lack of bylines and frequent absence of attribution, group loyalty favored over loyalty to one’s profession, as well as a belief in the merits of maintaining social cohesion, it is hardly surprising that O’Dwyer adds that the kisha clubs have developed “some unique, and from a liberal point of view, concerning [worrying] traits.”

Local journalists generally excluded from the kisha clubs are those working for shukanshi weekly magazines. These publications provide a wide range of content – from the seriously analytical to the embellished reporting of supermarket tabloids, with the latter tending to give all weeklies a bad name.

Yet because of their independence and the need to ferret out their own stories, the shukanshi often break political and other scandals first, says Japan-based writer Mark Schreiber, who has translated numerous shukanshi articles for various publications and has produced three books based on their content. “They provide a valuable counterbalance to the kisha-club-fed dailies,” he says. “They are unpretentious, yet highly motivated, and I would say they tend to hit the target more often than they miss. The Asahi Geino, for instance, was the first to run an investigative article on the beating death of the 17-year-old sumotori last year, which may have discouraged authorities’ attempts to put a lid on the story.”

NHK NEUTRAL TO A FAULT
NHK was once Japan’s most respected and trusted news organization, regularly coming out on top in surveys on the media. But in the past several years the public broadcaster has been plagued by one scandal after another, including a series of embezzlements, employees using internal information to make stock purchases and changing program content after caving in to political pressure. To take the blame, NHK President Genichi Hashimoto resigned in January 2007, saying: “We damaged the trust of the viewers.” Indeed, a viewer backlash saw many households refuse to pay the NHK monthly fee for a time, with the number estimated to exceed well over a million at the peak of dissatisfaction.

Such scandals have served to strengthen the view of NHK’s critics, who have long questioned its independence and who point out that the government controls its budget and appoints its president. This practice would not ordinarily be a problem, says author and media scholar Barbara Gatzen in Japan Media Review (Feb. 26, 2003), when there are regular changes of government. But given the Liberal Democratic Party’s domination of the Diet over the past 50 years, such control gives rise for concern.

Gatzen continues her critique: “NHK has struggled to maintain the image of a reliable and objective news source, while not antagonizing the political leadership, by avoiding controversial topics and concentrating on neutral, authoritative and bureaucratic news. The public broadcaster is clearly limited in its scope to provide critical reporting or analysis of political issues.”

As if to underline this view, NHK Board of Governors Chairman Shigetaka Komori was reported in the Japanese press in January last year as saying, “NHK should broadcast items that assert Japan’s national interests.” This prompted The Japan Times to editorialize as follows on April 4, 2008: “This shows he does not understand the principles under which NHK should operate. His call suggests endorsement of the broadcaster as a government propaganda organ.”

HUMAN RIGHTS AND WRONGS
When it comes to covering human-rights violations, the Japanese media have been much absorbed in recent years by a single topic, almost to the exclusion of addressing anything else in depth. The entire media has allotted enormous energy and space to reporting on the Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the late 1970s and early ’80s, ever since North Korea admitted its culpability in 2002. The parents of Megumi Yokota, who was abducted in 1977 at the age of 13, are regularly interviewed and appear frequently on TV to the extent that they are as recognizable as any music or film star.

Such blanket coverage often comes at the expense of critical thinking, suggests Tessa Morris-Suzuki, professor of Japanese history at the Australian National University. Writing in the Nautilus Institute’s Policy Forum Online (Dec. 6, 2007) she says: “The heat generated by the issue, however, has not always been accompanied by light .… [though] the fury of the Japanese media toward North Korea is entirely understandable.” Unfortunately, the outrage has since hardened into a rigid government policy toward North Korea that is preventing closure for the victims’ families. Despite the political impasse, fear of a backlash should doubts about the policy be expressed means few Japanese mainstream newspapers or TV programs have the nerve to question it, according to Morris-Suzuki.

While Japan’s anger against North Korea’s kidnapping of at least 16 of its citizens has been voluminous and vehement, many people in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Korea and Indonesia suggest that Japan’s oft-expressed moral indignation opens it up to charges of hypocrisy. Why, they ask, can some of the country’s most powerful politicians and media groups loudly condemn North Korea, yet all too easily dismiss strong evidence – evidence provided by all its near neighbors – that Japan’s military coerced thousands of their female citizens into becoming sex slaves during World War II?

The issue re-emerges periodically, typically when Japan, or at least its politically conservative factions, refuses to accept full responsibility for the country’s actions. The most recent example occurred in March 2007, when then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied there was any proof that the Japanese Imperial Army coerced the women into brothels for its troops. This, despite Abe saying he acknowledged the 1993 statement issued by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the subject, which reads in part: “The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.”

While Abe’s denial caused outrage overseas, this was not the case in Japan. As Philip Brasor wrote in The Japan Times on March 11, 2007: “In Japan, Abe’s remarks have been buried in articles about Diet business or stuck at the end of TV news reports. These reports rarely address the sex-slave issue itself. The Japanese media continue to use the euphemism ‘comfort women’ to describe the sex slaves and have generally stopped discussing it as anything except a point of historical contention between Japan and certain groups outside of Japan. To the Japanese public it’s a non-issue.”

CHALLENGES AND ISSUES
Regarding key challenges facing the Japanese media today, Monzurul Huq, a Japan-based journalist for two Bangladesh dailies and author of three books in Bengali on Japan, believes the most fundamental issue journalists face is eliminating the practice of “self-censorship,” that is, not reporting news that could embarrass those in power or the journalists themselves.

One example Huq points to was the furor created by the media when Japan resident Mohamed Himu Islam was arrested in 2004 and interrogated for alleged connections to al-Qaeda.

“The media went crazy exploring minute details of his presumed terrorist connections and branded him as extremely dangerous,” says Huq. “But after his release without charge, the same media remained silent. Was it to avoid embarrassing the law-enforcement agencies for their mistakes, or to protect their own collective misjudgment? I presume it was a combination of both.”

Self-censorship would appear to be an inevitable part of maintaining membership in a kisha club. “A problem with the system is that journalists’ way of thinking tends to be too much in tune with the people whom they are covering,” says Yoshisuke Iinuma, who spent 30 years as a writer and editor with Weekly Toyo Keizai, a business magazine, and who now writes for The Oriental Economist. As a result, reporters often fail to keep a healthy distance between themselves and the politicians and bureaucrats they are covering. Consequently, adds Iinuma, “Their reporting often looks like billboard notices than reporting by journalists. Critical assessment of policies goes missing.”

One way to foster more critical, independent reporting, according to some in the media, would be to upgrade what certain critics describe as a woeful lack of educational opportunities in journalism – only four or five Japanese universities provide courses in journalism. “This is a serious problem, and it is one of the main reasons for poor reporting,” says Takashi Koyama, who worked as a journalist for 35 years and is now a visiting professor at Akita International University. “Japanese journalists must be taught about standards of evidence, and that the role of a newspaper is not to preach, but to present the facts and connect the dots for readers. Perhaps the Japan Newspaper Association should consider an educational program for their reporters. Maybe even invite teachers over from the U.S. to provide a fresh approach to reporting.” ❶