���Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” is one of the most famous headlines in the history of British journalism. It rested above an editorial in the conservative (pre-Murdoch) Times newspaper by its distinguished then-editor, William Rees Mogg. The Times in those days (1967) was the voice of the establishment in many ways, so it was somewhat surprising, to say the least, to find its editor lambasting that same establishment for its treatment of two of the bad boys of pop: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

That was more than 40 years ago, but the headline has been spinning around my head ever since Noriko Sakai was arrested for possession of 0.008 grams of a “stimulant drug.” There’s been no confirmation of what drug yet; some say cocaine, some say crack, some say methamphetamine. Needless to say, 0.008 grams of anything is not going to turn you into a drug-crazed hippy, although given the manic coverage by the Japanese media, that might be hard for some to believe.

The case against the two Rolling Stones was somewhat different, but the intensity of the media coverage it generated was similar. Jagger and Richards were arrested during a party at the latter’s country home near London. Jagger was convicted of possessing four tablets – bought in Italy and approved by his doctor – containing amphetamine sulphate and methylamphetamine hydrochloride, while Richards was convicted of allowing his home to be used for the consumption of drugs, specifically cannabis resin.
The case occurred at a time when drugs were becoming known, used and talked about – not to mention condemned. There were a lot of drugs about, but taking them was still a risky pastime. What Rees Mogg condemned in his editorial was not the conviction so much as the sentences: three months in jail for Jagger, a year for Richards. He wrote: “It is surprising … that Judge Black should have decided to sentence Mr. Jagger to imprisonment, and particularly surprising as Mr. Jagger’s is about as mild a drug case as can ever have been brought before the courts.”

Rees Mogg’s colleague at The Times, Hugo Young, stated: “The trial proved to be a show trial in which the prurient press coverage played an essential and predictable part.” The Stones themselves believed they had been set up by tabloid paper the News Of The World after Jagger had filed a libel lawsuit against it earlier in the year. The paper later admitted it had tipped off the police.

Rees Mogg wasn’t alone in believing that the whole trial was a show. “There are many people who … consider that Mr. Jagger has ‘got what was coming to him.’ They resent the anarchic quality of the Rolling Stones’ performances, dislike their songs, dislike their influence upon teenagers and broadly suspect them of decadence, a word used by Miss Monica Furlong in the Daily Mail.”

The editorial continued: “There are cases in which a single figure becomes the focus for public concern about some aspect of public morality. … If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity.”

John Gordon in the Sunday Express echoed Rees Mogg’s comments when he asked: “Have we lost our sense of proportion?”

Jagger alluded to that notion in a press conference after the pair’s appeal when his jail sentence was suspended and Richards’ conviction was overturned. “My responsibilities as far as my private life goes are only to myself. In the public sector – with my work, my records, etc. – I have a responsibility, but the amount of baths I take or my personal habits are of no consequence to anyone else.”

The prosecution had also played the public morality charge by introducing evidence of a naked young lady, claiming that she had lost her inhibitions as a result of consuming drugs (although she wasn’t charged). The lady – actually Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithful – was dressed only in a rug, which, the prosecution claimed, slipped on several occasions to reveal her nude body. Keith denied any such thing had happened and plunged a knife into middle-class British morality when he stated in court: “We are not old men; we are not worried about petty morals.”

In a way, the trial of the two Stones was symbolic. It was representative of the massive social changes taking place in the U.K. and the rest of the world. In the ’60s, Britain had abolished the death penalty, relaxed censorship, made divorce easier and legalized abortion and homosexuality. Pop culture, led by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, reflected this stunning transformation of the world from the gray postwar era of the ’50s to the multicolored kaleidoscope of culture that was the ’60s. “The Man” could no longer keep youth under control; Jack was out of his box (in more ways than one).

Of course, Jack is still very firmly in his box in Japan, as Sakai is finding out.

Sakai represents a distant demographic from Jagger and Richards. The Stones were already the bad boys of pop; they were almost expected to get into trouble (the chemically dependent Brian Jones certainly helped their cause). But Britain was still a conservative country, and its conservative elements still reacted (and overreacted) to attacks on their standards of morality.

That was 40 years ago; welcome to Japan today.

The cult of personality is alive and kicking in Japan. In fact, the media lives on it. Once Sakai had disappeared following her husband’s arrest, the TV stations were up and running, the weeklies were on her trail. After her arrest, they were in hyperdrive. It was only when Yukio Hatoyama wiped the Aso government off the map that she was able to get a break in the media coverage. Fortunately, Sakai was in detention at the time, so it’s unlikely she knew just how manic the coverage of her case was. Every magazine-type show on the airwaves featured Sakai – in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening and at night. You would have thought that nothing else was happening in the world – and nothing else mattered. You would have thought that she had murdered her family.

In fact, the police had found 0.008 grams of a drug in her apartment and, after a few weeks of detention, they managed to come up with an additional charge of taking drugs on Amamioshima island. According to one report the charge was “allegedly inhaling heated stimulant drugs.” Presumably inhaling cold drugs is OK. And presumably the police have evidence of the inhaling and the heating of drugs on the island – a fantastic coup for the police and their investigative team.

MEDIA IJIME
Like the charges against Mick and Keef, the actual crimes are insanely disproportionate to the media impact. While the media in the U.K. in 1967 had mixed feelings about the Stones, they were somewhat sympathetic after their sentencing. Almost without exception, it seems the media in Japan have chosen to take the moral high road. And they don’t have to say much to do so. The more conservative media will just state the facts and let them condemn their targets, while the weeklies will print any rumor by any unnamed (non-existent?) source and allow their readers to put two and two together. All the media are aided by the police, who use outlets such as the shukanshi (not to mention their own kisha club) to smear the character of those they have in their sights. The shukanshi just take the ball and run with it. While the conservative media outlets are more restrained in their condemnations, the sheer volume of coverage constitutes its own special genre in Japan; welcome to “media ijime.”

Media ijime is not just about attacking an individual/group/company; it’s moral proselytizing. It’s also reassurance. It provides the readers/viewers with a sense that bad people are being hunted down and punished – and not just by the authorities. The weeklies – like the News of the World in Britain – like to give the impression that they are active in the hunt, that they are the moral guardians of society.

Media ijime is well described in A Public Betrayed, the excellent book by Adam Gamble and Takesato Watanabe on the failings of the Japanese media.

“Vicious attacks against individuals and organizations are a hallmark of shukanshi journalism. … These attacks are as much about punishing those who threaten to destabilize the Japanese system as they are about anything else. … Media ijime is supported both by the establishment news media and by the broader society, which either actively participate in it or silently tolerate it.”

One journalist I spoke to told me that the media blitz on Sakai was a result of her “betrayal” of the Japanese people, who gain their revenge via their proxy executioners, the media. Gamble and Watanabe quote one weekly reporter as saying: “We get good results by crucifying people.”

In their section on the shukanshi, Gamble and Watanabe conclude with the following: “In Japan, scandal and media ijime play too important a role in keeping in place the status quo of ruling elites, institutions, and traditions. The ever-present threats of the shukanshi and the broader media to beat up on, shout down, discredit, and delegitimize virtually anyone who steps out of line are so beneficial to the current Japanese establishment that reform is unlikely.”

Ditto perspective. Now the media are hurling everything they can at Sakai: her skin is bad because of drug use, her father was a gangster, she likes raves and wild dancing, she would drink until morning, her weight may have dropped to 30 kg, her father put drugs in his curry, she was part of a love triangle with her husband’s lover, she took drugs in front of her son, her hairstyle changed, her half-brother is a druggie, she was always hyper and, perhaps most vile of all, she’s Korean!

Some of these claims may be true, but a lot of it is innuendo, a lot of it is unproven and a lot of it is irrelevant. But the sheer scale of this media construction is overwhelming (one person described it as a lynch mob).

What the media need to do is find perspective. Middle-class England in the 1960s disapproved of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, disapproved of long hair and wild music, and were repulsed by drug taking. But middle-class England understood that you don’t break a butterfly on a wheel.

William Rees Mogg’s editorial in The Times was credited with changing society’s perspective of the case against Jagger and Richards and, in doing so, saving them from going to jail.

Sakai is unlikely to go to jail for her transgressions. When she appears in court on Oct. 26, the judge will know she’s already had her punishment – a butterfly broken on the wheel of the media. ❶