Issue:
August 2026
Eric Johnston talks to the founder of Frontline Press, a company attempting to bring life back to investigative journalism in Japan.
The past two decades have seen the rise of “news deserts” in many parts of the world. Defined as a rural or urban community where residents have very limited access to the sort of credible and comprehensive news and information that nourishes democracy at the grassroots level, the causes of news deserts are complex.
Digital technologies are destroying the traditional advertising model upon which local media in particular relied upon. Corporate media mergers mean shareholders and cost-cutting to improve quarterly stock performance have become more important to owners and management than investing in stories that might get few online hits but were deemed vital by editors and reporters for local democratic accountability.
In Japan, discussion often focuses on the plight of media in rural areas where an aging, declining population threatens the survival of local newspapers, radio and television stations. The problem certainly exists. But the head of one group fighting the spread of local news deserts in Japan, and promoting shoe-leather reporting and investigative journalism argues that the problem may be more severe in the media-saturated cities.
“The Tokyo metropolitan area is a news desert”, says Masayuki Takada, the head of Frontline Press, a Koichi Pref.-based firm (with a Tokyo office).
Link to Frontline press: https://frontlinepress.jp
Image of Takada: https://frontlinepress.jp/author/masayuki-takada
“There’s virtually no local news coverage there covering the city’s wards and local government on a consistent basis. Osaka is the same. Effectively, there is no local media in Osaka and I suspect most residents have little idea of what’s happening in the city’s Yodogawa ward or Suita city.”
Born and raised in Koichi, Takada says his research shows that if one standard of news desertification is the number of journalists per capita, then Koichi Prefecture looks to be less sandy than some Tokyo wards.
“Koichi prefecture’s population is around 640,000 and the Koichi Shimbun had an editorial staff of about 100 until about a decade ago, including copyeditors, page-designers and other newsroom journalists who did not work in the field. I imagine the number has dropped since then to around 70 reporters, serving 640,000 residents of Kochi prefecture,” Takada said.
On the other hand, the Tokyo Shimbun covers the cluster of Tokyo’s 23 wards as a single beat. Setagaya ward alone has about 600,000 residents and a single reporter might cover Setagaya, Shibuya, and Suginami wards.
“Consequently, they aren’t monitoring local assemblies or the activities of the administrations, the mayors, on a day-to-day basis.”
Some local mayors of Tokyo’s wards no longer bother with press conferences. When a member of Frontline Press went to investigate why, he was told it was because reporters never showed up to briefings and just asked for any materials to be sent to them later on.
“So there is no one to engage in discussion or ask consistent questions of the ward mayor,” Takada says.
In an attempt to water Japan’s news deserts and, in particular, to support investigative journalism locally and nationally, he established Frontline Press in 2019. A company of about 20 freelance and staff-journalist members, Takada said that it’s essentially a distributor of investigative journalism. Frontline Press members sell their work to various news sites.
The company has worked with national media outlets such as Mainichi Shimbun as well as the respected Kumamoto Nichi Nichi Shimbun to pursue stories. It was the Kumamoto Nichi Nichi (though not in collaboration with Frontline Press) that scooped the national media recently by revealing that the Ground Self-Defense Force’s intelligence arm secretly collected information on the “patriotism” and “sentiments toward the Self Defense Forces” of academics and NPO leaders. The GSDF also collected details regarding sexual preferences, relationships with the opposite sex, and physical characteristics.
Cost and other burdens make it increasingly difficult for local newspapers or even the big national dailies to carry out investigative reporting. Media owners learn, often to their horror, that real investigative journalism is expensive to produce – and may cost more after publication if advertisers pull out in protest at a hard-hitting piece, or if the company lawyers have to be paid to deal with threats of a lawsuit.
Frontline Press operates by deciding on a theme to cover, and then a small team of member journalists might come together to pursue a topic.
“If something looks promising, we turn it into an article. But we’re talking about investigative journalism. So even if interviews and research are conducted, there are many, many times when no article results because of our stringent journalistic ethics regarding confirmation before publication,” Takada says.
The efforts are paying off. Frontline Press won the 2025 Japan Congress of Journalists Award for a series of reports on election campaign expenses and political funds, and the creation of an election campaign expense database.
One of its members, Rie Izawa, won the Soichi Oya Non-Fiction Award and the Yasuharu Honda/Kodansha Non-Fiction Award in 2023 for a book that investigated the mystery behind a fishing boat sinking off the coast of Chiba Prefecture.
Another member, Ryuichi Kino, won the 2022 PEP (Policy Entrepreneur’s Platform ) Journalism Award Special Prize for a piece examining whether judges who hand down rulings unfavorable to the government face adverse treatment in subsequent personnel decisions.
With this growing recognition, Takada and Frontline Press hope, will come growing demand across Japan for investigative journalism that matters.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for The Japan Times. Views expressed within are his own and not necessarily those of The Japan Times.
