Abe Government's War on the Press

 Biased Pressure on Broadcasters

By Takuya Nishimura, Chief Editorial Writer, The Hokkaido Shimbun

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun

March 12, 2023

It should be pointed out that the former administration led by Shinzo Abe did not fully understand what democracy was. Last week, a lawmaker from the main opposition party revealed a document that described attempts by Abe's colleagues to pressure broadcasters that they thought were biased against the administration. While the minister who was in charge of the issue argued that the document was fabricated, the ministry admitted it as authentic. It is highly strange that a minister denies the truthfulness of a ministry’s document. But the point is not about whether it was true or not, but whether the Abe administration tried to oppress the freedom of expression.

A member of the House of Councillors, Hiroyuki Konishi, exposed a document of the Ministry for Internal Affairs and Communications that indicated that the Abe administration tried to change the interpretation of the Broadcasting Act on political impartiality. Article 4 of the law requires every broadcaster to be politically impartial in producing the programs and the government had been interpreting the provision as applied to the broadcasting station's programs as a whole. According to the revealed document, an adviser to the prime minister, Yosuke Isozaki, in a meeting with the officials of the ministry in 2014, questioned that interpretation and argued that there were obviously inappropriate cases among actual broadcasting programs.

The meetings on the interpretation were consecutively held and some secretaries of the Prime Minister's Office often joined. In one meeting in 2015, a secretary warned Isozaki that if the government, which had the authority to stop the broadcasting wave, would assess political impartiality by only one program, it might be an oppression of freedom of speech. Not only Isozaki, however, then Prime Minister Abe was willing to review the interpretation to make things straight, arguing he would be right to say no to some extreme programs. Among the programs discussed in the series of meetings, there were Sunday Morning and News 23 of TBS or Hodo Station of TV Asahi.

"Is there any unbiased program in TV Asahi, anyway?" was the words of Sanae Takaichi, Minister for Internal Affairs and Communities at the time, in a meeting. She was willing to answer the questions on revising the interpretation in Diet discussion, expecting positive support from Prime Minister Abe. After the documents including those exchanges were revealed, Takaichi, the current Minister in charge of Economic Security, immediately denied the description and dismissed her conversation as fabricated. 

Asked whether she would resign as the minister and lawmaker if the documents were found not to be fabricated, she said "Very well." But, a few days later, the documents were acknowledged as made in the ministry. There appeared a great contradiction that the head of the ministry denied the credibility of documents made by the ministry officials, because every policy delivered by the minister would be based on such documents.

Takaichi still insists that the description in the documents was incorrect and refused to resign. It is possible that she hoped the ministry would protect her by admitting their fabrication, as the Ministry of Finance did for Abe by admitting manipulation of internal documents on the Moritomo scandal in 2018. Upon refusing to resignation, she apologized for the incorrectness of the documents under her leadership.

What we can see in the documents is an amazing fact that Abe's colleagues believed that they could, with the approval of Abe, pressure the broadcasters they didn't like. Abe had been a politician who had a tendency of intolerance of criticisms against him and showed little hesitation in blaming news organizations skeptical of him. That kind of approach reminds of the oppression of the Hong Kong media by the Xi Jinping administration of China or the strong grip on the media by Vladimir Putin in Russia. What is biased is such a kind of politics. It might be inappropriate for Japan to advise some foreign countries to share common values of freedom of speech, rule of law and human rights.

The Politics of Hate and Artistic Expression in Japan

statue in question

Organizers of the 2019 Aichi Triennale, a sprawling showcase of contemporary art, got more publicity than they bargained for

By Jeff Kingston, Temple University, The Diplomat, September 14, 2019.

It is a troubling sign of the times in Japan when the government fails to unequivocally condemn threats of violence that target freedom of expression while politicians grandstand on censoring art. Organizers of the 2019 Aichi Triennale, a sprawling showcase of contemporary art, got more publicity than they bargained for. In an exhibit entitled After ‘Freedom of Expression?’ organizers displayed some 20 transgressive works, including a comfort woman statue that incensed Japanese conservatives because it drew attention to the Japanese military’s system of sexual slavery in the 1932-45 period. The “Statue of a Girl of Peace” is a South Korean work depicting a young woman in traditional Korean attire sitting next to an empty seat. A similar statue is located across the street from the site of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul that Tokyo wants removed, along with others around the world that reproach Japan over its inadequate contrition and efforts to downplay this sordid saga.

Over the past several months, the rupture between these frenemies morphed from battles over the shared history of comfort women and forced labor into a trade row as Japan instigated tit-for-tat trade restrictions that precipitated Seoul’s decision to terminate an intelligence sharing pact. This trifecta of history, trade and security was triggered by Japan’s bumbling diplomacy and poorly thought out actions, an own goal that plays to the advantage of Beijing and Pyongyang. Certainly, President Moon Jae-in earned an assist on that goal by mishandling unresolved grievances from the colonial era and playing the anti-Japan card to rally public support. Meanwhile, the Japanese public, egged on by a jingoistic press, supports Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Trumpian tactics.

His reactionary supporters may not know much about art but they know what they hate.

Japan’s culture wars escalated in early August 2019 over the art exhibit, as some netizens took exception, sight unseen, to the Girl of Peace and a video installation depicting an image of Emperor Showa (Hirohito) being incinerated by a blowtorch. Following a faxed threat to set fire to the venue, 770 threatening emails and a cascade of scripted tirades by angry callers, organizers shutdown the exhibit just three days after it opened, mindful of the arson attack on Kyoto Anime the previous month that killed 35 employees. This decision without consulting any of the artists showing their works at the Triennale drew a sharp reaction in a petition signed by 72 of them condemning both the threats and the organizers’ capitulation. In a gesture of solidarity, two South Korean artists withdrew their work while other artists requested their art be removed from the festival until the controversial exhibit was reopened.

It was certainly an ironic decision given the symbolism of displaying art that had been rejected or removed from previous shows for political reasons. The After “Freedom of Expression” exhibit was intended to highlight and challenge such efforts to stifle this freedom. Adding to the drama, the governor of Aichi accused the mayor of Nagoya of championing censorship by advocating closure of this special exhibit, asserting that this violated Article 21 of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression. As Philip Brasor wrote, “By demanding that a public function be shut down due to a threat of violence without expressly condemning that threat, the authorities, inadvertently or not, send a message that says violence could be an acceptable means of protest.” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga only said that such threats are wrong “generally speaking” in a manner implying they were just possibly justified in this case.

Japan Forward, the conservative Sankei Shimbun’s English language media outlet, tried to shift blame onto the organizers, accusing them of engaging in hate speech, fuming, “Many of the works shown cannot be characterized as anything but expressions of hate towards the Japanese people and the Emperor,” adding, “It is difficult to imagine why on earth a behavior based on hate — like the exhibition in question — should fall within the scope of ‘freedom of expression.’”

Japan Forward asserted that the Japanese curator sought to inflame “public opinion as a marketing technique to breed confrontation” and called for common sense to prevail, assuming that its aesthetic tastes and constitutional interpretations represent that common sense. Apparently, those threatening violence against the art show share that common sense, one that is inimical to freedom of expression. Moreover, by condoning politicians weighing in against the exhibit, Japan Forward sanctions violating the culture and arts law guaranteeing noninterference by authorities in such situations.

It also turns out that those protesting the burning Emperor video were clueless about the artist’s history and intentions, whipping up hysteria on social media based on ignorance or willful distortion. Art critics assert that the artist is definitely not against the imperial system and that the video was actually a protest against the burning of 470 copies of a museum catalogue containing the Emperor’s image instigated by right-wingers and local assemblymen in Toyama Prefecture.

Perhaps unintentionally the curator succeeded in highlighting how limited freedom of expression is in Japan and how informed opinion has been overwhelmed by an ideologically charged public discourse.

The Aichi Triennale debacle is yet another example of how the rising tide of revisionist denial and downplaying of Japan’s wartime and colonial era abuses under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has had a chilling impact on freedom of expression as academics and journalists are subjected to orchestrated attacks.

Such efforts to rewrite the worst chapter of Japan’s modern history shine a limelight on it and impart a whiff of what life must have been like under the militarists when censorship was widespread and dissent dangerous. Curbs on freedom of expression in contemporary Japan appear to be gaining momentum under a reactionary political leadership and represent a threat to democracy and the free press.

SEE ALSO:

Japan’s tabloid media accused of racism towards South Korea as tourism dives: A Japanese newspaper has accused the nation’s tabloid media of racism in its coverage of the country’s ongoing diplomatic spat with South Korea, South China Morning Post ,  9/18/19

     The monthly magazine WiLL published a feature with the headline “Countdown to South Korea’s disappearance in 202X” which suggested Seoul’s present economic and political problems are the precursors to the nation’s doom within the next decade. The Shukan Post also printed an article that claimed to draw on academic research to conclude that South Koreans have a pathological inability to control their own anger. It is this failure, it added, that is largely to blame for the deteriorating relationship between Seoul and Tokyo. The Asahi editorial said the premise of the entire article “is nothing less than racist”.

Media ethics betrayed in Japan

click to order

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

Resolution of the Association of German Historians on Current Threats to Democracy

Where are Japan's historians?

Resolution of the Association of German Historians (VHD, Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands) on Current Threats to Democracy

passed at the association members’ meeting in Münster, 27 September 2018

In Germany as in numerous other countries, excessive attacks on democratic institutions are currently threatening the foundations of the political order. As historians, we feel it is our duty to warn against these threats. Dispute is essential in a pluralistic society, but it must follow certain rules if it is not going to undermine democracy itself.

Historiography as a scholarly discipline has the task of analyzing historical developments in order to contribute to a better understanding of contemporary issues and to explore the complexity of their causes. Given that politics seems to be increasingly driven by the volatility of public opinion polls and ever faster-paced media dynamics, we would like to stress that only thinking in longer-range time periods can guarantee the future of our political system in the long run.

We therefore consider the following basic attitudes for democratic interaction in politics and society essential:

For historically sensitive speech, against discriminatory terms
Political discussion in a democracy involves pointed language that clearly expresses one’s own position but does not deny other people fundamental respect. Today’s derogatory descriptions of politicians as “enemies of the people” or the media as producers of “fake news” employ the same kind of anti-democratic language that was used in the interwar period. We also have many historical examples of the dangerous effects of using disparaging terms to exclude perceived “others” on the basis of their religion, their ethnic background, their gender or their sexual orientation.
For parliamentary democracy and a pluralistic culture of debate, against populism
In pluralistic democracies, public policy is the result of open debates in which a variety of political opinions and social interests are expressed. A unified will of the people that can be discerned by those regarding themselves as “called” is, in contrast, a fiction, used by people in political debates primarily for the purpose of making themselves invulnerable. In the Weimar Republic, the idea of “the people’s will” smoothed the way to power for a movement whose “Führer” saw himself as the incarnation of that will.

For unified European action, against nationalist unilateralism
Given the many violently waged intra-European conflicts of the past, European unification based on a commitment to pluralistic democracy and inalienable human rights is one of the most significant accomplishments of the 20th century. While the legitimacy of individual national interests is undisputed, unilateral nationalist actions threaten this historical achievement. Exclusively national problem-solving strategies cannot meet the political, humanitarian, ecological and economic challenges of the globalized present. Also, in light of colonial violence committed by Europeans in other parts of the world, it is crucial to acknowledge our shared responsibility for the consequences of our policies in regions outside of Europe.

For humanity and the rule of law, against the slander of migrants
Migration is a historical constant. Despite all the problems it entails, on the whole it has benefited societies – including Germany’s. It is therefore important to work toward proactive, pragmatic policies concerning migration and integration that respect both human and international rights. It is essential that the constitutionally guaranteed right to political asylum and the duty to provide help in humanitarian crisis situations be applied in a way that falls to Germany not only because of its economic power but also for historical reasons.

For critical engagement with the past, against the political misuse of history
The Federal Republic of Germany today is a stable democracy. One of the reasons why is that the German people, after considerable resistance at first, now for the most part deal with the history of National Socialism in a self-critical and reflective way. Our own discipline, too, was slow to embrace this process. In any case, a responsible approach to the past has as its prerequisite the findings of historiography, a field that must also be willing to be self-critical and that in principle is independent of political influence. Its information is based on research into historical sources and is open to critical discussion. Only in this way will it be possible to remain mindful of the historical bases of our democracy and defend them against “alternative facts.”

Arrogant Abe disrespects U.N. and the press

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

THE JAPAN TIMES, June 10, 2017

What is with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s arrogant disrespect for the United Nations?

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga spread fake news by insisting that the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres endorsed Japan’s much-maligned “comfort women” deal with South Korea even after his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, who was in Italy with Guterres when he met Abe, emphatically denied this. The South Korean government reported that it confirmed with Guterres directly that he had not endorsed the deal. Suga’s disinformation may be aimed at discrediting the U.N. Committee Against Torture’s recent call for revisions of the comfort women accord. [See Government of Japan May 12, 2017 rebuttal]

David Kaye, a professor of law at the University of California-Irvine and special rapporteur for the U.N. Human Rights Council, called Abe out on his government’s incivility towards U.N. representatives. Abe is miffed that Kaye and other U.N. representatives have voiced criticisms about the erosion of press freedom and the freedom of expression, in addition to conspiracy legislation that threatens the right to privacy and the right to dissent. These are legitimate concerns widely shared by Japanese about how democratic norms and values are being sacrificed in favor of the surveillance state, and where Abe is leading the nation. [See Kaye 2017 Final report See 2016 Preliminary Observations]

As the Japan Federation of Bar Associations notes, the government is wrong to maintain that the conspiracy legislation is necessary for Japan to live up to its commitments under the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It is also wrong to claim that adopting the conspiracy legislation is necessary for Japan to gain access to intelligence about international terrorism. Scare-mongering about preventing terrorism at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics aims to distract attention away from the ongoing assault on civil liberties. The police already have the powers and laws needed to combat terrorism without handcuffing democracy.

In May, as tens of thousands of demonstrators around the nation decried the Draconian provisions, Joe Cannataci, the U.N. rapporteur on the right to privacy, expressed concerns about the sweeping nature of the powers granted that threaten the right to privacy. Cabinet secretary Suga dismissed Cannataci’s remarks, asserting that he was merely speaking in a private capacity. In fact, he was carrying out his duties. The government also denounced Kaye for doing his job, saying he “degrades the authority of the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

Kaye recently submitted his report on press freedom in Japan to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Kaye has been a target of government criticism since April 2016, when he submitted a scathing draft report that highlighted government intimidation of journalists, self-censorship and the press-club system, all of which enable the government to manage the mainstream news. The government engaged in damage control, arguing that Kaye didn’t meet the right people, didn’t understand the context and failed to give credence to official rebuttals.

At a recent Tokyo symposium sponsored by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Kaye cited the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ Article 19, which protects the people’s right to know. This right is crucial to good governance and accountability, and is why it is essential to protect journalists, because they protect the public by letting them know what the authorities would rather they not know. Citizens’ ability to participate meaningfully in public life and hold government accountable, he argued, rests on the efforts of responsible journalists to access information and promote transparency. In a democracy the media watchdog must be able to bark, and to the extent it is muzzled, citizens’ democratic rights are threatened.

Kaye emphasized that the challenges to a free press are global and the forces of darkness are gathering as governments around the world justify restrictions on civil liberties in terms of combating violent extremism. Terrorism and public safety are typically invoked to muzzle the press, stifle dissent, curb civil liberties, arrest reporters, block access to the internet and adopt draconian surveillance laws.

In his final report, Kaye heralds “a high degree of freedom online,” but expresses concerns about the vaguely worded Specially Designated Secrets Law enacted in 2014, the potential for abuses and how it might impinge on freedom of expression given inadequate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act. He also lodged a protest with the government after he “became aware of allegations that the government ordered intelligence community members to monitor at last one member of civil society who helped coordinate meetings.” For Kaye it was striking that most of the journalists who confided in him requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by their own management, highlighting the absence of any independent body to protect them from such reprisals.

Japanese journalists, media organizations and civil society groups told Kaye about threats to freedom of expression, including the “opaque and clique-plagued system of press clubs” that enforces norms of “access and exclusion,” self-censorship and access journalism. The latter encourages lapdog reporting to curry favor with those in power.

Kaye draws attention to broadcast regulations, pointing out that they are not independent from the party in power and are thus subject to abuse in ways that intimidate the media. He also reports about the apparent ouster of respected pundits from their broadcasting duties, and the spiking of stories and demotions of reporters as examples of the pressures exerted by the Abe government against its critics. Moreover, he notes allegations that the current political leadership has backed orchestrated campaigns of harassment targeting liberal critics, singling out the Asahi Shimbun in particular.

At the symposium Martin Fackler, former bureau chief of The New York Times in Tokyo, lamented that most Japanese journalists are company employees first, and avoid taking risks, and that media-wide solidarity and commitment to a professional ethos is lacking.

Regarding lapdog journalism, what are we to make of NHK and the Yomiuri helping Abe out over the Kake Gakuen vet school scandal? The Yomiuri’s effort to tarnish the name of Kihei Maekawa, a former top education bureaucrat who alleges Abe did a favor for crony Kotaro Kake, the school’s owner, is unseemly. Reports about Maekawa frequenting singles bars are irrelevant to the testimony Abe is trying to prevent him giving in the Diet on the issue.

Meanwhile, NHK shamelessly sidelined the story, giving short shrift to official papers implicating the prime minister’s office and focusing instead on Princess Mako. Fortunately, other media outlets are making these press poodles look decidedly lame, finally forcing NHK to find its journalistic backbone, at least on this scandal.

Japan’s Double Standard on Freedoms and Rule of Law

PM Shinzo Abe is maintaining a double standard on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

By Aurelia George Mulgan
First Appeared in The Diplomat, April 20, 2016

A number of domestic and international developments have revealed a glaring disconnect between the Japanese government’s preaching and its practice on the issue of universal values.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proudly declared a values-based diplomacy for Japan in both his first (2006-07) and second administrations (2012-), emphasizing universal values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law. In January 2013, not long after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power, he outlined the basic principles on which his government’s diplomacy would be based. One of these fundamental principles was the concept of “universal values.” A month later, he publicly repeated this commitment to “diplomacy that places emphasis on universal values.”

As a diplomatic tool, rhetoric such as “democracy, human rights and the rule of law” justifies the Abe government’s continuing alignment with Japan’s long-standing democratic allies and with other semi-democracies in Asia that share his strong reservations about China’s unpeaceful rise. It also pointedly excludes China by definition from any putative coalition of democratically aligned states.

On the other hand, several recent actions and policies of the Abe administration, particularly in the domestic domain, suggest that the prime minister’s declarations of a commitment to universal values are primarily a diplomatic device for international consumption. They do not represent a guide to the government’s stance at home on a number of key issues. Quite the contrary, the prime minister’s record clearly shows that his government is taking Japan in an authoritarian direction that is unprecedented in the postwar era. What is more, these steps seriously question Abe’s commitment to universal values.

Among a series of deleterious developments, the Abe administration’s record in dealing with the media demonstrates that it is falling well short of observing first principles of democratic accountability. Amongst the most egregious examples of media-muzzling are attempts to silence media critics, including creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation amongst journalists and other commentators who dare to question the government’s and ruling party’s policies, personnel and actions. In addition to the administration’s explicit actions to control the message, the 2013 State Secrets Law compounds the threat to freedom of news reporting by hanging over journalists’ heads like the sword of Damocles.

In the education sector, the Abe government has censored school textbooks, ensuring that the latest versions for students follow the government’s uniform line on history and territorial issues. The bottom of this slippery slope will land Japanese students in the same position as those in China, for whom only official accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre are available and who are taught that the Dalai Lama is a terrorist.

The Abe government has also heavied universities to rid themselves of humanities and social science departments, arguably, amongst other things, to discourage the training of students’ critical thinking skills, thus silencing another potential source of criticism of the government.

Yet another and possibly the most disturbing example is the proposed content of the LDP’s May 2012 draft revisions to the 1947 Constitution. In glaring contrast to the human rights Abe cites internationally as “universal,” the draft explicitly rejects this notion. It states that human rights derive from a country’s history, culture, and traditions, and are, therefore, qualified to the extent that they are influenced by these factors. Indeed, the maintenance of so-called “public order” is elevated over all individual rights, raising the question, “public order” as defined by whom? Presumably “the government of the day.” Instead of universal human rights, Japanese citizens will be given “duties and obligations” (unspecified) – no doubt, once again, to be defined by public authorities. At the same time, the prime minister has undermined the rule of law by claiming in the Diet to be the ultimate source of authority regarding interpretation of the Constitution, an act for which he will be judged by the electorate. In short, the meaning of the constitution is what the prime minister says it is, which would potentially remove the Japanese constitution’s safeguards against the rise of authoritarianism.

Last but not least is the Abe government’s flouting of the ruling of the highest court of the UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Japan’s whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. In March 2014, ICJ ruled that Japan’s Antarctic whale hunts were unscientific and ordered it to stop hunting. Only three months after this ruling, in June 2014, Prime Minister Abe told the Japanese parliament that he wanted to aim for the resumption of commercial whaling by conducting whaling research. He thus personally endorsed the resumption of commercial whaling, which Japan had been conducting on spurious scientific grounds under the politicized term “research whaling” (chōsa hogei) used ubiquitously by Japanese authorities and in the media.

Japan has since resumed lethal research whaling under the much publicized heading of NEWREP-A and stated that it will not accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ on marine living resources, reflecting a clear double standard in its stance on the rule of law internationally. Nor does Japan recognize the Australian Antarctic Territory’s EEZ, or its Whale Sanctuary, or the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The reality is that Japanese whaling is neither scientific nor commercial. It is a government-subsidized and sponsored industry conducted for the benefit of the Japanese whaling industry-cum-lobby and is certainly not for the benefit of Japanese consumers. This lobby is headed by the semi-governmental Institute of Cetacean Research, charged with propagandizing the virtues of whaling and an affiliated organ (gaikaku dantai) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF). Apart from providing plum positions for retired bureaucrats, many such groups play key roles in the ancillary apparatus of government intervention by undertaking regulatory and/or allocatory functions as well as participating directly in markets.

Whaling is defended against international attack on spurious cultural grounds, traditionally the last defense of the protectionists. The Japanese government tried the same defense of its rice industry at the Uruguay Round of the GATT, proselytizing the notion of rice as quintessentially a cultural good in Japan. Here it was considerably more successful, extracting a concession that allowed rice to be spared from tariffication under the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA).

Japan's path to the terrors of the past

The pretext of counterterrorism covers many sins
By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member

The Japan Times, Mar 19, 2016

The Japanese government’s track record on respecting civil liberties and the rule of law is suspect, as I detailed in last week’s Counterpoint.

In 2002, the former Defense Agency, which is now a full-fledged ministry, spied on people who filed information disclosure requests, while the police and courts railroaded antiwar protesters on dubious charges of trespassing after they passed out flyers encouraging members of the Self-Defense Forces to oppose deployment in Iraq as war raged there in 2004.

These weren’t the only cases. A Buddhist priest was also apprehended while passing out antiwar flyers (imagine that, a peace-loving monk!), and the police kept a tail on one civil servant so they could catch him distributing copies of the Communist Party newspaper — arresting him even though it was on his day off. Don’t the cops have anything better to do than harass ordinary citizens exercising their constitutional rights? Is this how they pretend to keep the nation safe from terrorists?

In any society governed by the rule of law, it is essential to protect civil liberties by applying reasonable limits to police surveillance powers. In battling terrorism, such limits are portrayed by critics as handcuffing the police and other security agencies and thus endangering public safety. Unlike despotic societies defined by tyranny and the denial of human rights, however, democracies depend on ensuring that civil liberties are not trampled and human rights are respected. Debating the balance between an individual’s privacy and the state’s desire to pry strengthens a democracy and the rule of law — but this is a project that is never fully realized and depends on constant vigilance and an ongoing commitment.

As Japan wades ever further into the “war on terror,” it is important to ask what protections should be accorded to ethnic and religious minorities. It is evident that the police have zeroed in on Japan’s tiny Muslim community, seeing it as a potential hotbed of terrorism. But can this profiling of an entire community based on religious belief be justified? Is it not a violation of fundamental rights such as freedom of religion and privacy? Are such discriminatory practices consistent with democratic norms?

The it-can’t-be-helped school of thought asserts that terrorists don’t abide by any rules, so democratic societies are vulnerable and therefore sometimes need to curtail civil liberties and discriminate for the greater good.

Germany, however, has found that such blunt instruments are ineffective. According to a report by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, a German profiling program known as Rasterfahndung gathered information on 32,000 Muslim residents in Germany, but failed to identify any suspected terrorists.

There are an estimated 100,000 Muslims in Japan and it has been reported that the government has compiled dossiers on 70,000 of them. It has so far failed to identify a single terrorist, but has succeeded in indiscriminately invading privacy. The courts have sided with the police, affirming their right to conduct surveillance based on profiling alone without an iota of evidence suggesting criminal activities or terrorist inclinations.

Back in 2010 there was a leak of documents from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department that revealed just how intrusive this surveillance is, prompting a lawsuit that accused the police of violating constitutional rights to privacy and religion, and protections against discrimination. In 2014 the court awarded token damages for the leak of personal information, but dismissed the constitutional claims and held that the police surveillance was necessary and inevitable. This means it is open season for the police to collect personal information and conduct surveillance of designated groups of people based on ethnicity or religion, absent any concrete evidence justifying intrusions of their privacy and human rights.

So, with judicial backing, the police can take the picture of everyone who enters a mosque in Japan and intercept the communications of any resident solely based on the individual’s faith. As Japan boosts tourism in the run-up to the 2020 Olympics it is attracting many Muslim tourists, but are they all being tracked as potential terrorists? Can customers of halal restaurants expect special scrutiny? That’s a sinister twist on the welcoming spirit of omotenashi.

You only need to look at South Korea for an example of a nation struggling to prevent the wholesale expansion of police powers under the pretext of cracking down on terrorism. President Park Geun-hye’s ruling Saenuri Party is pushing through an antiterrorism bill that would give her country’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) sweeping new powers that are “justified” by the “security emergency” associated with North Korea’s recent nuclear test — despite a lack of concrete evidence that shows Pyongyang is preparing terrorist attacks on South Korea.

There are concerns that the law would primarily serve to repress internal dissent in line with Park’s efforts to tame the press and intimidate critics, including educators. Opposition parties tried to block the new law by mounting a record-breaking filibuster because there is no pressing need to expand the extensive snooping powers the NIS — an organization indelibly associated with terrible excesses under a succession of authoritarian governments — already enjoys.

Moreover, the NIS has been implicated in a dirty tricks campaign that helped Park win elections in 2012 by a slim margin, and oversight mechanisms remain feeble. One can understand why security agencies seek indiscriminate authority to collect intelligence, tap wires, conduct investigations, track financial transactions, delete online posts and impose travel bans — that is the nature of the beast. But giving them a blank check is perilous to civil liberties and constitutional rights. Rather than unleashing the NIS, it needs to be reformed and subject to more extensive monitoring to prevent abuses. As Japan ratchets up its counterterrorism capabilities, the NIS provides a worrying example.

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Sanae Takaichi has gained notoriety for her comments warning that the government could suspend broadcasting rights if programs are deemed “politically biased. “Problematically, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s idea of bias seems to be defined as criticism of its policies — an essential element of democratic societies. So it’s not enough that media firms have ousted several newscasters critical of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies, or that they have hired relatives of Abe (a nephew at Fuji TV) and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso (a nephew at TBS), now they are being warned that in the coming battle over revising the Constitution, the government is taking off the gloves.

These developments are having a chilling effect on freedom of the press and expression in Japan, and raise real concerns about expanding police powers under the guise of counterterrorism. Attempts to muzzle the media while subverting the public’s right to know through the new state secrets law imperils democratic freedoms and highlights the need to strike a virtuous balance between ramped-up counterterrorism, civil liberties and accountability.