Thank you for running Mack Chrysler’s very evocative article about reporting on Japan back in the days of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. Two points:

1. It was Club member Ted Shimizu, formerly of UPI, who deserves the credit for breaking the Sato wife-beating story. Mrs. Sato had mentioned casually in an interview prepared for Bungei Shunju that her husband had given her the occasional slap-up, like most other good Japanese husbands in those days. It seems no one in Japan thought it was important, but the Japanese language-fluent Ted picked it up and ran with it. Flashed around the globe, it had more impact on Japan’s reputation than any number of LDP political corruption stories.

2. Mack’s article had a photo of the Club bar in its former Otemachi premises. Look closely – and not just at the nude Marilyn Monroe on the wall allowed in those politically incorrect days – and you will see how a press club bar should be designed: a long passageway with round tables on either side leading to a horseshoe bar at the end, with the latter generally reserved for correspondents.

It is a minor tragedy the same design was not used for the main bar in the present club.

Greg Clark