Foreign Minister Okada Sets Off Tremors Beneath MOFA
By Changing The Rules On Access By Journalists

Like a surgeon gingerly tinkering with a sclerotic heart, Japan’s new government has spent its first months in office dithering over where to put the scalpel. Finance bureaucrats, the bankrupt construction state, pensions, military bases in Okinawa; the patient is ailing badly, but the Democrats have yet to make deep incisions. In one area of direct relevance to the foreign press, however, they have been praised for making real progress.

In September, new Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada announced what amounted to a minor tremor beneath the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Henceforth, foreign journalists, along with genuine freelancers and writers from magazines and cyberspace, will be allowed to attend his regular briefings. Instead of waving MOFA press cards to get in, applications can now be made online. “This is a matter of the public’s right to know,” Okada announced at the first test of this approach on Sept. 29, before proceeding to give a master class in how to host an open press conference.

Over 50 minutes, the foreign minister fielded questions on Okinawa, the U.S.-Japan alliance, tension with Washington and the Democrats’ battles with the bureaucracy with answers that were crisp, clear and free of MOFA bureaucratese. Okada carried on talking until he had exhausted his inquisitors, at one point ignoring official hints to wind up. More than half the questions came from the once lowly ranks of cyber scribes, who couldn’t seem to believe their luck. “That was unexpected,” Taro Kamematsu, an editor from Net-based news site J-cast, said afterward.

For years, foreign journalists and Japanese freelancers have been banging on the door of the government demanding to be let in and given the same access as their Big Media counterparts in the TV stations, wire services and daily newspapers. The weaknesses, if not corruption, of the system were clear to many, including, it seems, Okada. As members of exclusive press clubs tied umbilically to the ministries on which they reported, Big Media journalists were accused of being too close to their quarry and at times of colluding with them. Now, at a stroke, that exclusive privilege has ended.

Naturally, there is opposition. The grim faces of MOFA officials at the Sept. 29 conference spoke volumes about a group that, by its nature, prefers to control and channel information to a limited pool of journalists. A September DPJ announcement that politicians, not bureaucrats, would henceforth make public announcements has further earned their displeasure. Perhaps not surprisingly, press-club journalists have sided with MOFA against the new government – they say the new rules may actually reduce the flow of information to the public.

The head of the MOFA press club – who demanded anonymity – admitted that the club had sent Okada a letter protesting the new rules after they were announced, but he added that, for now, the club plans no further action. “We have not voted or done anything else to formally protest the new system,” he said. He added that club members are upset that Okada started the new policy “little by little” without responding to their protest or consulting them, even as they were debating what to do.

“Regardless, as far as foreign journalists are concerned, we do not plan to protest the new policy or oppose it, or exclude foreign journalists by doing so,” the press-club head said

The tremors from the MOFA experiment are spreading fast. Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei and Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and the Declining Birthrate Mizuho Fukushima have all followed Okada’s lead and bypassed the press-club system. By the time this article goes to print, others may well have joined the list, but a key exception is the Kantei. Prime-ministerial briefings are still subject to the same restrictions, barring freelancers and foreign journalists from all but limited observer status. That system was on display at the last press conference of then-Prime Minister Taro Aso in July, when foreign reporters were ignored and a bureaucratic minder channeled questions to the usual small pool of local reporters.

Privately, some MOFA officials are hoping that the fuss over freer access to politicians once shielded behind a solid bureaucratic wall will quickly die down. Although the Sept. 29 presser was almost full, they doubt – rightly – that routine briefings will continue to attract large numbers of foreign and freelance reporters, unless they are flagging a major story. Routine bureaucratic briefings to press-club journalists will continue, and some fear that old habits may return.

Still, as Kamematsu and others said, Okada has set an important precedent by declaring, once and for all, that the old system is on its deathbed. Only time will tell if he and his government are to be its undertaker.