Politics puppeteers Japan's press freedom

The details presented every year subsequently provoke equal measures of concern and defensiveness regarding Japan’s poor press freedom ranking. According to the press freedom index annually released by RSF earlier in 2024, Japan has ranked seventy out of 180 nations that displayed the most conditions unfavorable to freedom of speech, said veteran politician Ichiro Ozawa, who expressed concern that Japan ‘has been suffering incredible democratic regression. ’ 
 
No, retorted the right-wing news site Japan Forward. Surprisingly, ‘this does not resemble an index at all,’ the RSF study despite its name ‘has little to do with scientifically compiled intelligence’. The critique has pointed out one question with the survey, that why Malta a country considered guilty of the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 ranked higher than the famously safe country of Japan. Other critics of the RSF have also observed that, ‘indeed there is no serious aggression against journalists in Japan’. 
 
Japan’s earlier record in the index showed it obtained it highest RSF score of 11 in the year 2010. Japan ranged between twenty to forty in most of the prior two decades from early 2000 to 2008, it recorded the lowest of 51 in the year 2008. When the DPJ won power in 2009, expectations that it would challenge or scrap the press club system became possible because this vested SOP and encourages owner journalists with monopolized sources and punish critical reporters. 
 
But the press club system continued and is one of the main causes why Japan’s ranking is low to this date. Thus, the DPJ’s approach to the Fukushima nuclear disaster undermined public trust in journalism even more. Most of the published mainstream media reflected the official opinion that the leaking reactors in Japan were safe and reporters did not use the word ‘meltdown’ for two months arguing that it was only ‘partial’ fuel melt that was suspected. 
 
It was when the movement of LDP returned to power in December 2012 that it changed its strategic direction toward what media and political analysts commonly refer to as ‘liberal’ media. Our ex-Prime minister, Shinzo Abe appointed four conservatives into the twelve-board of directors of the public service broadcaster, NHK. In the same year, the LDP also presented television bosses what they deem appropriate political neutrality. Previously in 2016, Sanae Takaichi, a then-communications minister, said she would shut down television stations that violated rules on neutrality amid a sever political controversy regarding the sacking from the similar Liberal TV anchors. 
 
The debate on Abe’s pressure on media reached its pinnacle in 2016 when the UN special rapporteur David Kaye ‘seriously concerned’ by threats to Japan’s media saying that it became emblematic of its ‘self-censorship,’ declining media independence, and visible absence of ‘professional solidarity. ’ In his study, ‘Of about 100 interviews with journalists and editors, the overwhelming opinion of the respondents was that they get pressured by the government into toeing what can be deemed as the government’s favored narrative’. These included fear, anger, and the official reaction toward Kaye’s report was defensive. Koichi Hagiuda, the then deputy chief cabinet secretary said that the findings of Kaye were received based on hearsay information. 
 
But both Kaye and the RSF have claimed to have seen structural problems in the Japanese media that have long been pointed out by domestic observers. Probably the single biggest news story in Japan since 2023 has been the revelation by the country’s largest talent agency that its mogul and chief was an ongoing child molester. In August 2023, a press acount revealed that pop artist Svengali Johnny Kitagawa had been sexually assaulting young men for almost 50 years. 
 
Kitagawa’s former trainees emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to accuse him of sexually assaulting them. In 1999 he was accused by 12 of his former trainees in weekly magazine that was followed by media around the world and even questions in Japanese parliament. However, subsequent there was almost no operation by Japan’s newspapers and television companies and appeared to depend on the publicity by the actors, singers and dancers provided by the agency called Kitagawa’s Johnny & Associates and even although Kitagawa sued and lost the victory for the court battle over the claims of the magazine. 
 
The most recent RSF report shoes why Kitagawa’s actions were made possible by the lack of media responsibility. Despite the fact that violence against journalists is extremely rare in Japan and media freedom is most commonly valued, business influence significantly hinders journalists’ work as critics. One factor that adversely influenced the incentive to look into Kitagawa’s wrong doings was the check and balance relationship that existed between television and his agency. 
 
The Kitagawa story was brought into the mainstream by the weekly tabloids which were not privileged by the establishment such as the Shukan Bunshun. Yet the journalists of Shukan Bunshun still knew even after issuing multiple interviews with Kitagawa’s victims that ‘the Japanese press was unlikely to cover the issue’. A BBC produced documentary that also made interviews with some of the victims also fell Kitagawa’s cover to thin working to remove the code of silence regarding the man. An investigation carried out by a team of outside auditors finally reached its climax in August, 2023 and blamed the firm for concealing misdeeds committed over forty years, though there were many occasions for the company to act, as reported by the head of the investigating team Makoto Hayashi. 
 
It can be concluded that Bunshun’s work proved that media in Japan can be very diverse and interesting. However, self-censorship prevails and restrictions are placed concerning extensive areas of public life. The loose relationship between ‘official’ players and journalists means that independent investigations are discouraged and many topics – including the imperial family, war crimes and the death penalty – receive weak coverage or are banned. It is employed to attack critics; influence the society and propagate right wing issues on social media. Thus, one can forecast that Japan will remain low-ranked in terms of media freedom. 
 
David McNeill is the professor of Communications and English at the University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo, and co-chair of the FCCJ Freedom of the Press Committee.