Is Japan's Rightwing vulnerable to foreign pressure? Unlikely

Can foreign media pressure force changes in Japan?

BY PHILIP BRASOR
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES, JUN 25, 2016

Former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s first-person “biography” of late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, “Tensai” (“Genius”), remains atop best-seller lists. It is interesting to note that when Tanaka was alive Ishihara berated him as a crude opportunist. The years have obviously tempered his view, or perhaps Ishihara’s own political career helped him appreciate how an uneducated hick without connections could become the most powerful man in Japan.

The incident that caused Tanaka’s downfall, the 1970s Lockheed bribery scandal, received greater coverage overseas than it did in Japan, and one of Ishihara’s favorite themes as a public figure has been how Japan should resist foreign pressure and assert its position as a world power. Takashi Tachibana was the journalist most instrumental in exposing Tanaka’s money politics, but it was foreign press attention that made the former prime minister’s actions impossible to ignore — even in Japan.

A similar situation surrounds the rise of the right-wing lobbying group Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), which has received close scrutiny by the likes of the U.K. newsweekly The Economist, Australia’s ABC News and other prominent foreign media over the past year. The Japanese press has shown less interest.

In April, freelance journalist Osamu Aoki talked about “grass roots conservative movements” on TBS radio, and mentioned the overseas fascination with Nippon Kaigi, which counts among its 38,000 members Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, half his Cabinet and a good portion of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Local reporters tend to think of Japan Conference as a cult, and thus some have characterized the foreign opinion that Abe and his government are “under the thumb of Japan Conference,” as Aoki put it, as being akin to conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, citing how the foreign press helped advance the prosecution of Tanaka, Aoki says Japan Conference could be another big story the Japanese press is missing “even though it’s right there under its nose,” and so he plans to publish a book on the organization next month.

If Aoki is hoping for a scoop, he’s too late. In April, a writer named Tamotsu Sugano published “Nippon Kaigi no Kenkyu” (“Nippon Kaigi Research”) which sold 126,000 copies in less than two months. The book purports to be the most detailed study of the group ever written, but its popularity is chiefly due to Japan Conference’s reaction. The organization’s founder, Yuzo Kabashima, wrote to Sugano’s publisher, Fusosha, asking it not to print the book. Fusosha ignored the request. Weekly magazine Shukan Post then called present and past members of Japan Conference asking why they hated the book so much. Most refused to comment. One professor who belongs to another nationalist organization told the magazine that Sugano’s report is “beyond the pale,” a “pile of lies” based on anonymous sources. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he is quoted as saying. “Whatever I say will benefit the book.” That seems to be exactly what happened.

Interviewed on the web news channel DemocraTV, Sugano admitted that he is ideologically right-of-center and did not write his book “to be critical” of Japan Conference. He just noticed that the mainstream press was not covering the group. The book is based mainly on a series of articles he wrote for the Japanese Harvard Business Review, which attracted no attention from Japan Conference when they were originally posted online. “Japan Conference members are old men and women who don’t use the internet,” he said. When the book was slated for print publication, Japan Conference finally took notice, but it thought Fusosha was a right-leaning imprint and could thus be easily persuaded. Sugano says Fusosha publishes anything “that can make money for them.” Their biggest-selling book in the same format is a study slamming the nuclear power industry, hardly a conservative position.

Sugano chronicles the group’s origins in the early ’70s. Several founding members belonged to the student wing of the religious group Seicho no Ie at the time, and its main purpose was to counterbalance the leftist student movement. After graduation, this group established its own right-wing organization, Nihon Seinen Kyogikai, which eventually merged with another like-minded group in 1977. This organization morphed into Nippon Kaigi in 1997.

Japan Conference’s formidable organizational skills have influenced government policy, especially with regard to the legality of the national anthem and flag, the definition of the “Japanese family,” the direction of education and the Constitution, which they want to change. But Japan Conference is not “conservative” in Sugano’s eyes. Its interests are purely reactionary in that they were formulated in response to left-wing interests.

So he interrogates its motives. Six lofty goals are listed on Japan Conference’s website. The first is to uphold Japan’s “beautiful traditions,” which he interprets as reestablishing a strict social hierarchy under the Emperor. Japan Conference says it wants to create an education system that “fosters a Japanese sensibility,” which Sugano says means getting rid of the teachers union, Nikkyoso, the Japanese right’s bete noire. Japan Conference aspires to contribute to world peace, which means elevating the Self-Defense Forces to the position of a national military and, according to Sugano, “bullying peace-loving liberals.”

The author believes none of these ideas merit deep thought. Except for the Self-Defense Forces’ change, most citizens would probably find them regressive. In fact, that’s the reason Seicho no Ie, which now boasts 520,000 followers, has come out against the LDP in next month’s election. Because of Sugano’s book, the religious group felt compelled to explain that it rejected politics in the ’80s, and told Shukan Post that it doesn’t support the present administration or Japan Conference, which is “stuck in the past.”

Sugano doesn’t think Japan Conference is as powerful as foreign media make them out to be, and he may be underestimating them. This lobbying group’s effectiveness lies in its ability to remain cloaked in anodyne sentiments. Sugano’s book reveals it still longs for a Japan that didn’t lose World War II — a country that doesn’t exist.

Alarm over deadening of Japan's press

Hiroko Kuniya’s ouster deals another blow to quality journalism in Japan

By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member

THE JAPAN TIMES, JAN 23, 2016,

Hiroko Kuniya, the widely respected anchor for NHK’s stellar “Close-up Gendai” news analysis program, has been ousted from her position after 23 years with the show. She now joins a growing list of prominent news presenters and commentators who have discovered the apparent perils of not kowtowing to the government. She will remain on air in her 7:30 p.m. slot until April, so enjoy this journalistic giant among pygmies while you can.

Kuniya declined to comment on her impending departure, but told me by email about her approach to journalism.

“I have consciously been trying to follow in the footsteps of Ted Koppel,” she said. “When I was studying in the U.S., (the news program) ‘Nightline’ started and I remember being glued to his fair and in-depth interviews. He has definitely taught me what journalism should be.”

Former New York Times bureau chief Martin Fackler, who is currently journalist in residence at the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, says Kuniya’s work at the show stood apart from that of her peers.

“‘Close-up Gendai’ was refreshing because it was one of the few efforts by NHK or any major media to do anything remotely approaching investigative, public-interest journalism, and in a prominent time slot,” he says. “Just by going outside the press clubs to even talk about social problems — and then having the temerity to ask the obvious questions — ‘Close-Up Gendai’ was a challenge to the well-managed official version of reality that appears, say, on NHK’s own regular newscasts. I think this is why the show, and Kuniya, had remained popular for so long.”

Baseball and yakuza expert Robert Whiting, who appeared on the program, believes Kuniya is “class personified.”

“Her legacy is her intelligence and professionalism in her reporting,” he says. “(She is) a rarity in Japanese television: a female anchor, Ivy League education and as fluent in English as she was in Japanese.”

Whiting also notes that she is always well-prepared for interviews. He was surprised at how much she knew about baseball, which came through particularly in a series of questions about the “wear and tear on pitchers’ arms and how much the Japanese system contributed to that.”

Sophia University’s Koichi Nakano praises the scope of Kuniya’s interviews, ranging from nuclear refugees to labor deregulation and the lack of female representation in politics. He admires her as “a rare TV journalist who presented solid, probing stories, all the while avoiding making herself the story.”

Michael Cucek, an adjunct professor at Waseda University, feels “Close-up Gendai” is of uneven quality, but admires the way it has been able to frame and analyze complicated policy issues such as rural redevelopment, depopulation, immigration and child care.

“Being dull has played a part in the program’s longevity — its producers poking and prodding but never wounding politicians, bureaucrats and other vital actors —and in the TV game, longevity is the standard of success,” he says.

Paraphrasing a Japanese proverb, Cucek concludes that “Kuniya’s legacy is of keeping one’s capacities hidden in order to prevail in the spotlight.”

Intelligent, critical journalism is under siege in Abe’s Japan, as the nation has plummeted in press freedom rankings, from 11th place in 2010 to 61st in 2015 according to Reporters Without Borders, which cites the state secrecy law and political intervention in news coverage as reasons for the drop. One notorious example of such intervention was the prime minister’s appointment of Katsuto Momii, a political crony with no media experience, as NHK president. Momii has been disastrous for the broadcaster’s reputation right from his first press conference, downplaying the “comfort women” issue regarding wartime sexual slavery and proclaiming Pyongyang-esque rules: “When the government says right we can’t say left.”

Andrew Horvat, a professor at Josai International University and former president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan believes Momii “sees his role not as the head of a ‘public broadcaster’ whose mandate is to guarantee that pluralism is maintained in news reporting, but as a de facto government appointee, directing a ‘state broadcasting’ organization that acts as a disseminator of policies already decided by those in power.”

Insiders at NHK also complain that the atmosphere has become much more politicized under Momii, and what little critical coverage of the government that once aired has all but disappeared.

“It is not a coincidence that controversial news reporters are being removed from not just NHK but any program that politicians complain about,” Horvat says, referring to Shigeaki Koga and Ichiro Furutachi from TV Asahi’s “Hodo Station,” and TBS “News 23″ commentator Shigetada Kishii, who dared to criticize the government on its handling of new security legislation. Kensuke Okoshi, the anchor of NHK’s “News Watch 9,” and TBS veteran Monta Mino have also been purged.

“Major media companies appear in full retreat under political and social pressure in the Abe era,” Fackler says. “Kuniya is just the latest high-profile journalist to be muzzled by media companies that appear to have grown incredibly risk-adverse, seeking to play it safe by just repeating what they are told in the press clubs, and shunning any topic or story that might draw criticism.

“The result has been the almost complete disappearance of the sort of independent, public-interest journalism that ‘Close-up Gendai’ could, in its best moments, offer.”

It appears the decision to oust Kuniya came because of a July 2014 interview with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, in which she crossed the invisible line accepted by Japan’s craven media by asking an unscripted follow-up question that rattled the politician. He had prepared answers and was thus flustered when she gently reiterated the question he had artfully danced around (twice) regarding Abe’s unpopular reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution. It was all polite and low-key, nothing like, for example, BBC’s interview program “Hard Talk,” in which the hosts often go for the jugular.

It was later reported that Suga was infuriated by being put on the spot. From that time on, Kuniya was a marked journalist and her political enemies bided their time, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. When her program aired a staged interview last spring that misrepresented the background of a source, they pounced.

“If all programs in Japan that resorted to an occasional staged interview were shut down, there would be nothing but blank TV screens throughout the country,” says Horvat, who adds that the real reason Kuniya has to go is because “political leaders did not like her incisive reporting.”

“She is an intelligent news reporter and the people in power in Japan today would prefer to have Japan’s TV screens populated by colorful clowns and polite news readers,” he adds.

Hideko Yoshimoto, an associate professor at Yamaguchi Prefectural University, agrees that the non-renewal of Kuniya’s contract was retribution. She also notes there is prejudice against older women on television and a preference for young, cute women regardless of their talent. In her view, Kuniya’s departure means the “death of once-decent NHK journalism.”

Sophia’s Nakano is concerned that the media is severely handicapped in holding the government accountable because journalists now understand the cost of crossing Abe.

“First Koga, then Furutachi, Kishii and now Kuniya — it does look like the Abe government has no more serious critical reporting of news that it needs to be concerned about from April,” Nakano says.

The media lapdog has been well and truly muzzled, and just in time for Diet elections.

Requiescat in pace

KIM J. WILLENSON, a former Asia Policy Point Board Member, passed away on September 24, 2013 at the Virginia Hospital Center, surrounded by his family who loved him dearly. He was a veteran journalist who worked in Vietnam and Japan for Newsweek and was the author of the 1988 book, The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. He was editor and publisher during the 1990s of the seminal Japan Digest, which made Japanese news accessible and understandable to the American policy community. He set the standard for reporting on Japan.

A farewell gathering will be held at 1:30 pm, Sunday, September 29 at the National Funeral Home, 7482 Lee Highway, Falls Church, VA 22042. The meeting will be followed by a graveside ceremony at the adjacent grounds of the National Memorial Park/King David Memorial Gardens. Reception following at funeral home. His friends are welcome to make remarks at the gathering or to leave comments HERE.