Media ethics betrayed in Japan

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by Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan, a former columnist of The Japan Times and author of Japan (Polity 2019).

East Asia Forum, 12 February 2019

Imagine that the editorial page of The New York Times suddenly shifted dramatically rightward and columnists critical of US President Donald Trump were ousted and replaced by sycophantic pundits. Then a tape emerges of the editor justifying these changes as intended to counter accusations that the newspaper is anti-American and the sacking of Trump debunkers as designed to boost government ad revenue and snag an interview with Trump. This is essentially what recently happened at The Japan Times.

In June 2017, public relations firm News2u purchased The Japan Times, Japan’s oldest and most circulated English-language newspaper. The new management jettisoned the newspaper’s previous critical editorial stance in favour of lauding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies. The Japan Times now embraces Abe’s revisionist history, which promotes a vindicating and exonerating narrative of Japan’s wartime past.

Based on information from an insider’s tape, on 25 January 2019 Reuters reported that Executive Editor Hiroyasu Mizuno insinuated during a staff meeting that criticising Abe’s policies and revisionist views on history conveyed an anti-Japanese bias. He said, ‘I want to get rid of criticism that Japan Times is anti-Japanese’ — akin to arguing that criticising Trump makes The New York Times anti-American. According to that logic, much of the Japanese population must be anti-Japanese since polls suggest support for Abe’s signature policies hovers between 25–30 per cent.

At the same meeting, a senior manager clearly stated on tape that termination of my own column (which was often critical of the Abe administration) had already produced an upside, boosting revenues from government-sponsored content and scoring an interview with Abe.

Reuters drew attention to Mizuno’s unsuccessful efforts in mid-2018 to convince his editorial team to soften its criticism of Japan’s wartime misconduct, annotating several articles to make his point. According to copies of his notes, he ‘objected to calling comfort women “victims” or mentioning that they included girls; questioned referring to Japan’s occupation of Korea as “brutal”; and criticized the paper’s reporting and stories by wire services, including Reuters, as generally “pro-Korea” and not adequately reflecting Japan’s view’.

The latter is a misleading claim, as there is no monolithic Japanese view of history as it varies across the political spectrum. The Japan Times has shifted from the Asahi newspaper’s left-of-centre stance to the deep right at the Sankei end of the spectrum.

Having failed to sway his team, Mizuno proceeded to ignore their objections, inserting a note at the end of an article on 30 November 2018 about the Seoul–Tokyo fracas over forced labour. The note announced that The Japan Times would no longer use the terms ‘comfort women’ and ‘forced labour’. In doing so, Mizuno overturned the terminology long used at the newspaper and most English-language media, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian.

Mizuno’s brief note explains that the newspaper will now refer to comfort women as ‘women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will’. And Korean workers will be referred to simply as ‘wartime labourers’, omitting any reference to coercion.

The note angered many Japan Times reporters and staff, forcing Mizuno to hold a meeting to clear the air (at which the tape featuring his controversial remarks was made). After the meeting on, 6 December 2018, Mizuno acknowledged and expressed his regret that the note ‘damaged the relationship of trust that we have developed with our readers, our writers and our staff’.

Mizuno told Reuters that he is not opposed to ‘appropriate’ criticism. But the editorial shift seems to exclude hard-hitting commentary. New columnists act as cheerleaders for Abe, while an acerbic political reporter who asked awkward questions at press conferences was shifted from the Prime Minister’s beat. Blogosphere reactionaries are triumphant, claiming victory now that The Japan Times has capitulated and is endorsing euphemisms about the comfort women system of sexual slavery and forced labour.

The bombshell Mizuno tape has tarnished The Japan Times’ brand. The tape suggests that the newspaper’s editor lacks integrity and journalistic ethics, having traded both for government ad money and access to Abe. The Japanese media has also picked up the story, amplifying the reputational damage. Transactional journalism of this sort overshadows the excellent reporting and features that make The Japan Times so valuable. Whether or not one agrees with the new terminology on comfort women and forced labour, the revelations are devastating public relations for a venerable newspaper now owned by a PR firm.

Although the newspaper’s physical circulation is just 45,000 copies,The Japan Times plays an outsized role in global perceptions of Japan because of the internet. This is precisely why a cabinet minister reportedly asserted at a late-2016 meeting that something had to be done about The Japan Times’ critical coverage, which was undermining the government’s pro-Abe public diplomacy.

After the ownership change, The Japan Times began fawning over Abenomics and the Prime Minister’s right-wing agenda. The evident willingness to kowtow to power, rather than speak to it, highlights the larger problem of self-censorship in Japan and a beholden media reliant on access journalism.

Japan Times staff have been in damage control mode since the Reuters story broke. It appears unlikely that there will be any reversal of the new editorial direction despite internal discord and the embarrassing revelations. Management is likely hoping to brazen out the scandal and continue milking the government for sponsored content and crumbs of access as it rides the lucrative 2020 Olympic wave

Human Rights Day and Japan

December 10th was the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (#StandUp4HumanRights!). It is International Human Rights Day.

Human Rights Day is also when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. This year it is of special interest to those who care about the Comfort Women as the honors went to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict and the UN Security Council held an Arria-formula meeting on "Raising the effectiveness of atrocity crimes prevention: role of the United Nations Security Council and its Members".

Few appreciate the role of Asian states and diplomats in forming the Universal Declaration and modern human rights principles. Recent scholarship has highlighted extensive involvement in the 1940s by Asians in identifying war crimes and demanding accountability. Dan Plesch's work on the UN War Crimes Commission (1943-48) [Human Rights after Hitler] outlines how Chinese and Indian lawyers and officials were deeply involved before 1948 in defining crimes against humanity.

The new book by Robin and Bertrand Ramcharan, Asia and the Drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes how the values of the Universal Declaration are very much Asian values and that the future of the world must continue to be inspired by those values. [Springer Press has made the introductory chapter from this book available free on December 10th]

This contradicts the excuses behind the human rights violations in Burma, China, Vietnam, and North Korea. The scholarship also challenges Japanese PM Abe's rationale for revising Japan's "imposed" constitution. From his many statements, he believes the charter's provisions concerning human rights do not accurately reflect the history, culture and tradition of Japan. Concerned critics fear Abe and elements in the LDP want the references to individual liberties removed and replaced with greater loyalties to the state.

The LDP draft published in 2012 confirms as much. Japanese legal expert Larry Repeta analyzes the changes proposed and how they will upend Japanese democracy in Japan's Democracy at Risk – The LDP's Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change (July 22, 2013).

This focus on traditional Japanese values leads critics to worry that a vital supporter of the liberal international order does not actually believe in the universal nature of human rights as a practical matter. Most Westerners belief Constitutional change is only about Japan's war-fighting abilities. This is merely a backdoor. Japan's conservatives, who are currently running the country are most concerned with rejecting the individual liberties and human rights embodied in the current constitution.

Whereas it remains to be seen if Abe can fundamentally alter Japan Constitution, he has succeeded in adjusting the language both Japanese citizens and foreigners use in describing the history of Imperial Japan. On December 1, all the state-involved news agencies, such as JiJi, Kyodo, and NHK as well as MOFA publications and the English-language Japan Times no longer say "comfort women" or "forced laborers." It is now "women who worked in brothels" and "wartime laborers.

These changes not only erase the actual wartime language used by Imperial Japan..."comfort women" is not something imposed postwar by us... it can be argued that the new language somehow sanitizes the imagery of these wartime tragedies and abuses, and thus flies in the face of every aspect of today's Nobel Peace Prize award.

Human rights are tools that human beings designed to protect ourselves from the arbitrary exercise of power. They are not culture specific. Yet with the proposed changes to the Constitution, the Abe government now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of apparently denying a key human element of the liberal international order.

Working to preserve the histories of the Comfort Women, forced laborers, and all of Imperial Japan's victims is important in that it reminds the Japanese people of the consequences of believing that they are unique and do not share values with others. It is less about those harmed than about the abyss that Japan can again fall. It is about democracy under attack and the values of individual dignity it can protect.

Not all in the LDP want to Constitution revised. In fact, the 10th was also the last day of the current Diet session and the party did not submit any constitutional revisions for consideration.

But if Abe continues to revise Japan's wartime past and cleanse the language used to describe the war, his patience might pay off.

For a good history of how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came to be, see: A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon.

Japanese Rightwing's Manipulation of the Western Press

Yoshito Hori

@YoshiHoriGLOBIS

Shingetsu News Agency Intrepid reporter Michael Penn has tracked down a source of the change to the Japan Times history language. We find it unlikely that former Sumitomo executive (his offices are in Sumitomo buildings) Yoshito Hori acted alone or with his own finances. His ties are deep within Japan's alt-right. There are no lone wolves or individual thinkers among them.

Yoshito Hori and the Rightwing Turn of the Japan Times

December 17, 2018, Shingetsu News Agency

by MICHAEL PENN

SNA (Tokyo) — The November 30 “Editor’s Note” in the Japan Times—which appeared to adopt the rightwing Abe administration’s historical revisionist views on Pacific War Comfort Women and forced laborers—came as a shock to many of its readers. As it turns out, it was also a major shock to many of the editors and journalists working in Japan Times own newsroom.

Inside accounts have been clear that the Editor’s Note policy change was driven by Executive Editor Hiroyasu Mizuno, with the consent of a handful of other senior editors. No one else—at least within the Japan Times newsroom—seems to have been in the loop.

The reaction to the Editor’s Note, briefly tacked on to the end of a news article, was enormous, generating international articles and provoking a revolt from some Japan Times staff members and readers.

It also gained the outspoken support of some far right Japanese commentators.

Among those who celebrated the change in the Japan Times editorial line was Yoshito Hori, managing partner, chairman, and CEO of Globis Capital Partners, as well as the founder of the Globis University Graduate School of Management.

Hori’s reaction on Twitter was almost immediate (as if he knew in advance about what was coming). He offered one tweet in Japanese and one in English. His English tweet read, “Japan [Times] has changed the term ‘Forced Labor’ to ‘Wartime laborers’. Brave and right step to avoid misunderstanding. I hope other newspaper will follow.” In the Japanese tweet he singled out the Financial Times as an example of an English-language newspaper that he hoped would follow the Japan Times’ lead.

When The Guardian quickly published an article with a critical tone toward the Japan Times editorial note, Hori was evidently annoyed and he renewed his defense of the paper: “The Guardian should stop using the terms ‘Sex Slaves’ and ‘Forced Labour’, as these words are misleading and mostly wrong. Foreign media should learn from Japan Times’ decision, which changes of terms depict the historical facts better.”

• While Yoshito Hori was hardly the only commentator who jumped to the defense of the rightwing turn of the Japan Times, he had three distinctions easily visible in the public record that set him apart: He is a long-time major advertiser in Japan Times through Globis University; 
• Japan Times had become an official media partner to his G1 Global Conference 2018 only the previous month; 
• and, most of all, Hiroyasu Mizuno, the Japan Times executive editor who had driven the policy change, had come the previous year from—you guessed it—the Globis Corporation, where he had served as Hori’s manager of global communications for almost six years.

What Hori was failing to mention in his tweets to his 115,000 followers was that he is not exactly an appreciative observer from the sidelines, but in fact the previous boss of the man who had engineered the controversial Editor’s Note.

We don’t know exactly what role Hori played in helping Mizuno to get the top job at the Japan Times in June 2017, but it is difficult to believe that the new owners of the Japan Times would have entrusted their newspaper to Mizuno without Hori’s advocacy. For Hori, it must have been quite a coup to get one of his proteges installed as the day-to-day chief of the nation’s leading English-language newspaper.

But it’s also in the public record what Yoshito Hori thinks of the English-language news media in Japan, and what goals he had for it, even before News2u Holdings took over the Japan Times from the Ogasawara family in June 2017.

Hori has spent several years promoting his rather megalomaniacal “100 Actions” program, whose purpose, he explained, is to fundamentally change Japan: “I’ve been gathering the best ideas from G1 Summit, the annual multi-day conference I run, to create a vision for Japan based on 100 necessary reforms,” he wrote earlier this year.

Among the “necessary reforms” Hori preaches are staples of Japanese rightwing thought such as revising the pacifist Constitution, increasing the use of nuclear power, the creation of a “state of emergency” power under which the rights of the people can be restricted, the abolition of prefectures, and an emphasis on the notion that the Japanese people have “responsibilities” to the state, and not simply rights to be protected.

While the entire document is quite an eye-opener in terms of the man’s messianic self-confidence, it is his section about the media that is most relevant to us in our current context.

Namely, one subheading of his “Action 89” calls for the need to “Cultivate a Healthy English-Language Media.” And what exactly is a “healthy” English-language media? In the English-language version of the 100 Actions document, Hori explains: “Japan’s English-language media is a gateway through which foreign nationals can access information about the country. It is unfortunate that the English-language media available in Japan is of poor quality. Since the English-language media is expected to play a leading role in disseminating information throughout the world, it is necessary to fundamentally improve its quality to ensure accurate information is shared so that Japan may be assessed fairly. It is also essential to build relationships with the foreign media. The Japanese English-language media should not only assert Japan’s position as a matter of public relations, as in the past, but should also lead the discussion in the media.”

This passage, published in English about nine months before Hori’s protege took over editorial control of the Japan Times, makes clear that he sees the role of the English-language media not as any kind of watchdog for the public interest or a venue for Japanese and resident foreigners to communicate honestly with one another, but rather as international PR outfits for the government “so that Japan may be assessed fairly.”

This is spelled out even more starkly and in more detail in the Japanese-language version of the document.

The Japan Times itself (then under the previous owners) was singled out for criticism by name: “The English-language media is naturally the portal through which foreigners come to know about Japan. It was very crude as journalists for the managers of the Mainichi Shinbun and the Japan Times to publish articles at variance with the facts, and they did enormous damage to Japan.”

Again, Yoshito Hori’s view is that the mission of the English-language media is only to distribute “correct” information about Japan, thus strengthening the nation’s positive image abroad. This is explicitly a call for journalists to become national propagandists. And it is the man who served as Hori’s own propagandist when he wrote these words—Hiroyasu Mizuno—who now runs editorial affairs for the Japan Times.

The evidence is strong, though not entirely conclusive, that Yoshito Hori is the immediate string-puller behind the rightward turn of Japan Times. Ultimately, however, it is clearly bigger than just one man. It is rather the rightwing political establishment in general that has now got its hooks into what some had regarded as the “last bastion” for independent English-language journalism in Japan. 

In that sense, Hori himself is not much more than a willing puppet.

It has been a clear pattern of the Abe years that many institutions that previously exercised a degree of independent power have been brought in line with the regime’s rightwing policies. Most of the time this has been done through some form of cooptation. It would appear that the Japan Times’ number came up last summer when the Ogasawara family sold the newspaper that they had held for decades. What is occurring now under the new owners was probably planned long ago.

When Mizuno became sufficiently panicked about the strong reaction to the Editor’s Note and wrote a full-page explanation on December 7, Yoshito Hori made no comments on his Twitter feed. He did, however, retweet an article published by the rightwing Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (#561 - We Support Japan Times’ Wise Decision by Hironobu Ishikawa, 2018.12.12)

The author of the piece that Hori recommended to his followers wrote: “Although the Japan Times is the country’s oldest English-language newspaper, founded in 1897, during the time of the previous owners it took an anti-Japanese editorial stance and thus was rightly called the ‘Anti-Japan Times.’ 

Last June it was bought by the online media company News 2u (with Minako Kambara as representative director). Since then, under the editorship of Hiroyasu Mizuno and others, it is adopting a new line. For the foreign journalists in Japan, who are mostly unable to read Japanese and so must use this English-language paper as their information source, the Editor’s Note was unmistakably a huge shock.”

Fury as Japanese paper redefines 'comfort women'

The Japan Times' decision to revise its description of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II has triggered anger and condemnation. Julian Ryall reports.

Deutsche Welle

by Julian Ryall, December 5, 2018

Japan's oldest English-language newspaper, The Japan Times, has provoked anger and accusations of historical revisionism after announcing that it will no longer use the term "comfort women" to describe women forced to serve in front-line brothels for the Japanese military during World War II.

The paper also said that it was dropping the phrase "forced laborers" for the hundreds of thousands put to work in often appalling conditions during the conflict.

Read more: 'Comfort women' - The wounds of their lives

On November 30, The Japan Times said in an editor's note attached to a story that the terms "comfort women" and "forced labor" were "potentially misleading."

Claiming that the "conditions [the laborers] worked under" and how they were recruited "varied," the paper said it will from now on refer to them as "wartime laborers."

The definition of "comfort women" has previously been understood to refer to women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese troops before and during World War II, but that is being altered, the paper added.

Rewriting history
"Because the experiences of comfort women in different areas throughout the course of the war varied widely, from today we will refer to 'comfort women' as 'women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.'"

The announcement appeared in the paper at the bottom of a story about the ruling by the South Korean Supreme Court on November 29 that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries should pay compensation to a group of Koreans who had been forced to work in the company's munitions factories and dockyards during the war.

Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point and an advocate for the rights of former Allied prisoners of war, many of whom were also forced to work in Japanese factories, described the paper's change in editorial policy as "a dramatic capitulation" to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "PR efforts to rewrite history" and fit his own political agenda.

"This is nothing less than astonishing and outrageous," she said. "This is not a change of wording; it is a change of definition. It is the manipulation of language to bury history."

Read more: Is the Japan-South Korea 'comfort women' deal falling apart?

Kotler charges that a "central theme" of the Abe administration has been to deny Japan's war crimes "as mere manifestations of victor's justice" and his administration has set up committees to undermine the 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono apologizing to the comfort women, as well as the outcomes of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals.

"The goal is to build an idealized wartime regime," Kotler said. "Ignored is the fact that Japanese fascism had bad personal, national and international consequences."

The Japanese government is likely to try to apply the same term to Allied prisoners of war (POWs) who were put to work, Kotler said, adding, "Mostly it whitewashes the horrors and abuses inflicted upon those who did not willingly work for Japanese industries."

Change in ownership
The change in editorial policy at The Japan Times — founded in 1897 — comes 17 months after it was sold to a Tokyo-based public relations company called News2U Holdings for an undisclosed amount. In a statement issued at the time, the new owner said it would maintain the paper's editorial independence.

But some people believe that the Japan Times is already taking a new editorial line by adopting a position which is closer to the Abe administration, which has been determined to deny Japan's war crimes 'as mere manifestations of victor's justice'.

"The reason this new policy at the newspaper is in error is because when it comes to sex slavery, they try to conflate voluntary prostitution with the women and girls who were abducted and forced to work in these brothels," said a former employee of The Japan Times who wished to remain anonymous.

"It may be that there were some women who were working voluntarily, but the rest of the world is talking about those who were not volunteers," the source said, adding: "To me, this is a disingenuous attempt to whitewash history and, for me, the only people who don't know about Japanese history are the Japanese themselves."

The Japan Times was contacted for a comment for this article but did not reply.

Critics say the Abe administration has been determined to deny Japan's war crimes 'as mere manifestations of victor's justice'

Kotler believes that Tokyo will continue to use diplomatic pressure and money to promote its version of history, such as the removal of a "comfort woman" statue that stood close to the site of the Bayview Hotel in Manila, scene of an alleged mass rape and murders by the Japanese military in the closing days of the war.

"This is not a mere editorial policy of an independent newspaper," she said. "The only response should be loud condemnation. The New York Times should sever its ties with The Japan Times."