1993 年 10 月 15 日 第三種郵便物認可 毎月 1 日発行 Vol. 46 第 3 号 No. 1 Shimbun 2014 年 3 月 1 日発行

March 2014
Volume 46 No. 3¥400+
Pema Gyalpo inprofileYurakucho:
under the tracks(and under
threat?)Okinawa mayor
wants the world
to listen

OMG!
Separating sense from screams with our“Whack-o-meter” of Fukushima radiation news

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

In this issue
The Front Page		 4 		From the President
Lucy Birmingham
Beijing is hanging on your every word
Nathan Vanderklippe
Cover story
The Fukushima follies

Tim Hornyak

6

ProfilePema Gyalpo

Gavin Blair

10

March 2014

contact the editors

no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJ

There goes the neighborhood?

John R. Harris, Said Karlsson 12
and reporting by Maya Shibata

Okinawa's problem is a global problem

Michael Penn

14

Suicide pilots' spirits await judgment

Suvendrini Kakuchi

15

Michael Penn
and Jake Adelstein

16

Freedom of the Press Committee
Why we need a prize

Volume 46, Number 3

Club News		
FCCJ Exhibition:
Tadashi Kumagai
Soma Nomaoi Horse Festival
and Mayumi Takahashi
Opening nights/Mao Asada/FCCJ in Kansai/		
Join the Movie Committee/Rakugo Night

17

Editor Gregory Starr
Executive Publisher John R. Harris
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.forbiddencolour.com
Editorial Assistants Naomichi Iwamura,Tyler Rothmar
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications committee members
Geoff Tudor (Chair), Martin Fackler, the New YorkTimes, Monzurul Huq, Prothom Alo, Julian Ryall,
the Telegraph
FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Lucy Birmingham, Freelance
1st Vice President Martin Koelling,
Handelsblatt
2nd Vice President
Masaaki Fukunaga, The Sanmarg
Secretary Michael Penn, Shingetsu News Agency
Treasurer Georges Baumgartner,
Swiss Radio and Television
Directors at Large
Tetsuo Jimbo, Video News Network, Inc
Yoshio Murakami, IHT
Yozo Hasegawa, BS Japan/Radio Nikkei
Albert Siegel, freelance
Kanji William Sposato, Dow Jones Newswires
FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Member Liaison Kurt Sieber
Entertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborne
Finance Georges Baumgartner
F&B Rike Wootten
Freedom of the Press Michael Penn
H&P Martin Koelling, Paul Boylan
HR Masaaki Fukunaga
Improvement Ed Merner
ITPC John Boyd, Erol Emed
Koeki Yoshio Murakami
LAW Suvendrini Kakuchi, Koichi Ishiyama
Membership Monzurul Huq, Peter O’Connor,
Kent Dahl
Marketing Committee undecided
Movie Karen Severns, Edwin Karmiol
PAC Abi Sekimitsu, David McNeill
Publications Geoff Tudor
Shadan Hojin Kazuo Abiko, Yoshisuke Iinuma
Special Projects Haruko WatanabeSports undecided
Scholarship Masaaki Fukunaga
Web Content Teddy Jimbo
Young Members’ Activities Albert Siegel
Foreign Press in Japan Justin McCurry

KATSUMI KASAHARAThe Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Yurakucho Denki Building, North Tower 20F,
1-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0006.
Tel: (03) 3211-3161 Fax:(03) 3211-3168 fccj.or.jp

p18

Published by the FCCJAll opinions contained within Number 1 Shimbun are thoseof the authors. As such, these opinions do not constitutean official position of Number 1 Shimbun, the editor or theForeign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Please pitch and send articles and photographs, oraddress comments to no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp

Read the Number 1 Shimbun online:
fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun/
Cover illustration: Andrew Pothecary

FCCJ

3

THE FRONT PAGE

From the President
THE MASSIVE SNOWSTORM ON FEB. 8 MAY HAVE
created havoc in Tokyo but it was a winter wonderland
when viewed from the Club’s 20th floor. More “wow” views
appeared a week later when the city was blanketed again.
How nice to be at the top. But the “best” spot can be amoving target.
We’ll likely be located more on the middle floors if
the Club makes a short move in the direction of Tokyo
Station in 2018. Mitsubishi Estate is offering us sectionsof the 5th and 6th floors of a planned building complex
on the present site of the Fuji Bldg. and Tokyo Kaikan. It could be a sweet spot
but we’re just beginning negotiations, and our finances need to be thoroughly
examined to find if we can afford it. The House & Property Committee will
present another report at the next General Membership Meeting on March 26.
Our wide selection of press conferences has been drawing onsite and SNS
crowds as well as wide mainstream media attention for the Club. Endlessthanks to our hardworking PAC team of Chung-san and Saikawa-san, and thecommittee members. Feb. 25 was a high point. The morning event featured
Olympic skater Mao Asada, fresh off the plane from Sochi. Her appearance wascovered by all the major Japanese TV networks and news media outlets andgarnered the largest audience ever on our livestream site. It also produced avery active Twitter feed. That same day, our luncheon presser featured Vermont
Law School professor Peter Bradford speaking on lessons for Japan’s nuclear
industry, while the afternoon press conference included two conservative Tokyo
assemblywomen on the “comfort women” issue.
We’re formulating ways the PAC events can better serve the membership.
Under consideration are smaller, monthly talks in the evenings that are topic
focused. A series on women is in the works. Business, finance and science arealso on the list. Most importantly, we’re hoping to bring in younger memberswith talks on culture/sub-culture themes.
With Mao Asada’s visit, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is hovering ever closer tothe Club’s horizons — and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has set its sights
on the FCCJ. Their promotion division recently approached us on collaboratingwith the foreign press to promote Tokyo as a visitor destination in the lead-up
to the Olympics. We’re now in talks with them on how to proceed. I’ll keep you
up to date on our progress.
We’ve also been approached by Nippon TV, which wants to do an approx.
5-min. piece on the Club as part of their popular 60-min. “World Ranking”
program to air on Fri. March 21. They're ranking the top foreign news
organizations in Japan, and — unable to film at any of those offices — decided
to focus on the FCCJ. Filming will likely be in early March, and they’ve agreed tosecure permission for all the footage they shoot.
The Associate Members and Professional Associate Members’ meetingon Feb. 21 was well received. We had a good turnout and the meeting wentsmoothly (unlike many of the GMMs). AMLC Chairman Kurt Sieber did aterrific job of organizing and running the evening gathering. Among the many
topics discussed were the three seats the Associates will gain on the Boardof Directors from June, in accordance with Japan’s new law on organizations.
Finally, the Associates will be getting real representation at the Club. The searchfor candidates has officially started.
I also want to remind everyone to please take advantage of our new
Membership Campaign that is taking place until March 31. New Associates will
receive ¥70,000 credit on the joining fee. Joining fee credit will also be given
for new members in all other categories. Members will receive ¥10,000 or¥20,000 dining vouchers for new member introductions. Please see details on
our website. You can also inquire with our staff, Naomichi Iwamura (iwamura@fccj.or.jp), or Associate member Bill Shin (billshin@ttp-r.dlenet.com) who iscoordinating the campaign.
— Lucy Birmingham

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

BEIJING IS
HANGING ON YOUREVERY WORD
Nathan Vanderklippe extols
China’s e-commerce andwonders if his nighttime
activities are being tapped

EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, WHEN IT FEELS LIKE A
good day to tempt fate, I whisper something illiciton the phone. “Tiananmen.” “Xinjiang.” “Bo Xilai.”“Tibet.” Will the line click off? Will conversation
be halted in a burst of static, as China’s listening
apparatus perks its ears?
It hasn’t happened yet, but the mere existence ofthe possibility is the specter that haunts journalistic
work in China. We have Edward Snowden to thank forpulling bare the global chimera of privacy. But there’s
a difference, a psychological one, between knowing a
digital dragnet is catching your ones and zeroes – andbeing in China, where the listening feels personal.
One friend is convinced his ayi – the relativelycheap Chinese nannies that add a veneer of oldworld grandeur to life here – is an employee ofthe state, a spy who washes his underwear. Prearranged interviews on domestically censored
topics are suddenly cancelled. At bars, loud withmusic, news competitors remove mobile phonebatteries and lower voices to conspire on how to
outwit security forces in sensitive regions. Sources
gossip about the portable Faraday cages brought
to China by heads of state, draped over hotel
room conversations like giant mosquito nets tokeep digital espionage at bay. Husbands and wives
whisper plans inside their own houses.
One even wonders if they – and there are, by
one count, some two million monitoring thecountry’s communications – are listening in bed. It
is a discomfiting thought, that someone might beeavesdropping on and, perish the thought, judging,nocturnal performance. A colleague joked thatperhaps the listeners should be rewarded with ashrieked “Xi Jinping” at climax.
A country of 1.3-billion is unavoidably a great manythings. China is a place of enormous opportunity, bothfor its own people and those of us lucky enough to behere writing about it. It’s a place of immense beauty
and immense, sometimes smoggy, ugliness. It’s still insome ways the biggest story around, even if telling it
can mean inhaling bad air, questionable food and great
heaps of propaganda. Step into an intersection at thewrong time, and a corrupt coal miner in a Bentley will
mow you down. Ask too many of the wrong questions,and the annual extension of your visa suddenly
becomes uncertain.
Nathan Vanderklippe is the Beijing bureau chief for The Globe & Mail

4

FCCJ

THE PEOPLE AND STORIES FROM THE COUNTRY’S
GREAT DIVERSE TABLEAU ARE ALMOST UNFAILINGLYCOMPELLING, EVEN INSPIRATIONAL
That’s the downside of China, one
everyone knows. The upside is this:when the faxes have been exchanged
and the pre-written questions approved,
powerful officials take you into theiroffices and talk for hours, often in
refreshingly blunt terms. When the desk
gives it assent and the plane tickets arebought, the people and stories from thecountry’s great diverse tableau are almost
unfailingly compelling, even occasionallyinspirational. And when the lunch plans
are made, the food can be scintillating– from Beijing’s unending diversityof culinary styles (including, without
exaggeration, a burger that ranks in my
top three) to the tongue-incinerating
dishes farther afield.
Beijing in particular is no longer
the bargain it once was, when even a
modest salary could buy a lifestyle fit
for royalty. The tab for a meal at a goodup on your doorstep. Sometimes, whenthings get really slow, it takes until thenext morning. China has an e-commerce
system so competitive, and often so fast,
it makes the rest of the world look stuckin camel trains.
That’s life. For work, the barrel ofstories remains deep, from the multitrillion-dollar economic shifts andweaknesses giving financial definition to
not just Asia but the world; to the stillfascinating glimpses into 100 million
people whose transition to greater
wealth continues; to the extraordinary
exercises of power that define politics
and governance; to the endless variety ofquirks that emanate from a country withsuch a vast supply of people. If one in a
million is truly interesting, Canada has
35. China has 1,351.
The China story is no longer new.
Decades of correspondents have now
come and left behindbooks of great skill
and insight. Beijing
today has echoes of
New York or Delhi, awickedly competitive
media environment
with hundreds ofjournalists from every
corner of earth –albeit a place wherestate media still serve
an uncomfortably
important role inproviding vital
information.
But China hasn’tNathan Vanderklippe
lost its luster yet.
It is a risingand Beijing art
superpower, a role
it has assumed withrestaurant can easily top a similar place
great speed, and to the clear chagrin
in Canada, my home until October whenof many of its neighbors, Japan not
I came to Beijing. But it’s still filled withleast among them. At the same time,some of the expat joys of life in a place
it’s an elephant on a bicycle –where labor is cheap. Need a tailoredeconomically, politically and socially,
suit? $150 and 48 hours. Need newa slight push in the wrong direction
kitchen cabinets? $200 installed. Needstands to unseat it all. That is richto get somewhere? Two kuai – 33 cents
fodder for the pen, to say nothing of– brings you anywhere on the Beijing
the tongue. Few other places offer the
subway system. Need anything else?
chance to learn a language as important
Hop online and (if you need, throughto the future as Chinese – even if only
the auto-translating magic of Google
to ensure that, when the time comes,
Chrome) four hours later your inkjet
the listeners hear “Xi Jinping” shrieked
cartridge or crystal chandelier showswith perfect tones. ❶FCCJDiscount LexisNexis
Subscriptions
for FCCJ Members
The FCCJ is pleased to offer
members a substantial discount on
subscriptions to LexisNexis’ news
database service, Nexis.com
The Members-only deal
allows for flat-rate access at¥7,900 per month – offering
big savings on a service that
normally costs ¥126,000 per month

The service will be billed by theClub. The FCCJ benefits from all
subscriptions sold under thisarrangement.
Nexis provides access to news andinformation from more than 34,000
sources, including Kyodo News, Jiji,
Yonhap, Xinhua, AP, Reuters, AFP,
all major world newspapers andspecialist news sources. Also
included is a database of U.S. andinternational company information,
biographical databases, country
profiles and a U.S. legal database.

For those already in on the secret,the application form is available
on the FCCJ website or from the
19F Club office.

5

THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF 3/11
Amidst the serious radiation issues that still
demand a close watch are hyperbolic rumors whose
provenance have scientists scratching their heads

If you’re living in Japan, you’re bound to have been scolded by friends or loved ones overseas for stubbornly
ignoring the dangers of radiation leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, wrecked by the
Tohoku earthquake and tsunami three years ago this month. After all, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction when it
comes to nuclear radiation and its impact on health and the environment, especially when there’s such welldeserved public distrust in Tepco, the Tokyo Electric Power Company.
While the utility’s repeated blunders in its efforts to contain the crisis don’t inspire confidence, it’s alsoeasy to forget that there have been no deaths from the release of radiation. According to the World HealthOrganization, those in the worst-affected areas face a slightly higher risk of developing certain cancers.
People who don’t believe what officials say about radiation levels can ask Safecast, a “pro-data”
NPO committed to gathering radiation readings through detectors and volunteers. It has collected over 14
million data points through an array of 800 sensors, and has indeed found higher radiation levels close to thereactors. However, both Safecast and government readings have shown radiation levels near the plant falling by
about 40 percent per year.
“The reality is that there are some very contaminated areas in Fukushima which are already closed tohabitation and will need to be closed for decades,” says Azby Brown, a Safecast researcher. “The real problems
the disaster has caused are tremendous and challenging, and require serious attention. It's a shame time andenergy has to be wasted playing ‘whack-a-mole’ with hoaxes and misunderstandings. Oddly, most of theserecent stories seem to originate in the U.S., where mistrust of government in some circles has made people
vulnerable to all sorts of fantastic and implausible conspiracy theories.”
Here’s a selection of the most egregious “moles” that have burrowed their way through the mediasphere anddeserve a good whacking.

THE ARNIE GUNDERSEN HIT PARADE
Dangerously crazy

ncern
ine coGenu

Hmmm . . .

THE
FUKUSHIMAFOLLIESby Tim Hornyak

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

Whack-o-meter: 8

A nuclear engineer in the
1970s turned whistleblower,
Arnie Gundersen is a one-man Fukushima
alarm industry. His resume lists pages andpages of public testimony to august bodies on nuclear issues and he commands
wide attention in the public sector andnews media. Leaving aside his credentials
as “chief engineer” of the NPO Fairewinds
Energy Education, his statements haveundoubtedly fueled anxiety about the scaleof the disaster and its impact on health.
l “Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,” Gundersen
told Al Jazeera in June 2011. Tell thatto the families of the 4,000 to 20,000
people killed by highly toxic methyl
isocyanate gas that leaked from a Union
Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India
30 years ago.
l “The amount of radiation released was clearly
as much as Chernobyl, but most of it headedout to sea,” Gundersen told Democracy
Now! in 2012. Numerous estimates disagree, putting the Fukushima radiation atabout one-fifth to one-tenth that spewed
by the Chernobyl plant. A 2011 study in
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics estimatedthat the actual amount of cesium 137
released was “roughly twice the official

This photoshopped image of a “giant
squid” quickly went viral. While this may
be a quite obvious joke, other rumors are
misinformation that is often taken for truth.
(PHOTO FROM LIGHTLY BRAINSED TURNIP)

FCCJ

government figure, and half the releasefrom Chernobyl,” Nature reported.
l “My estimate is that over the next 30 years
we’re going to see about a million cancers as
a result of this.” This staggering assertion
seems to be based on little more than
Gundersen’s whimsy. Stanford University researchers have estimated in Energy
and Environmental Science that the disaster could eventually cause about 130
deaths from radiation and 180 casesof cancer. That is a drop in the bucket
compared to annual cancer deaths inJapan and less than one-third of theroughly 600 deaths caused by the stressof evacuating people from around the
Fukushima plant area.

FUKUSHIMA MADE CALIFORNIABEACHES RADIOACTIVE
Whack-o-meter: 6

If you believe everything you
see on YouTube, you'll want tostay well away from Half Moon Bay near
San Francisco. A video posted in December
2013 shows a man with a geiger counter
approaching the surfing spot as the reading goes from about 40 to over 150, triggering an alarm. “It's consistently over
100,” he says, adding that he has had several such results recently. “The readings are
solid.” The video has been viewed morethan 750,000 times and sparked fears
that Fukushima radiation has polluted theGolden State's golden shores.
Naturally occurring radioactive material(NORM) at beaches has been known for
decades. It can sometimes be traced to soil
erosion and the presence of thorium-richgranite. “Recent tests show that elevatedlevels of radiation at Half Moon Bay are due
to naturally occurring materials and notradioactivity associated with the Fukushima incident,” said Wendy Hopkins, spokeswoman of the California Department of
Public Health. “There is no public healthrisk at California beaches due to radioactivity related to events at Fukushima.”
Dan Sythe, CEO of radiation monitor
maker IMI – International Medcom – tested soil at the beach and found its naturally occurring radiation is likely associated with dark sand below the high-tidelevel. “The radiation level is elevated,” hewrote on Geiger Counter Bulletin, “but roughly equivalent to some granite counter top
material from Brazil.”

THE PACIFIC IS A RADIOACTIVECONVEYOR BELT

Whack-o-meter: 8
If you’ve been living under arock, or in a nuclear fallout
shelter, you may have missed the manymaps circulating on the Internet showing brightly colored plumes of radiation
exploding eastward from Fukushima overthe Pacific Ocean. Just Google “Pacificradiation map” and you’ll find many
examples, but one of the worst offenders
is an orange-yellow Pacific shot throughwith veins of crimson. The entire ocean
looks like a nuclear wasteland.
If the fact that the supposed radiation
seems to stop when it hits land seems
a little bizarre to you, your skepticism
is well founded. The image is actuallya National Oceanic and Atmospheric

7

THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF 3/11

alent to that in about one-twentieth of abanana. “Although uncertainties remain
regarding the assessment of cancer risk at
low doses of ionizing radiation to humans,
the dose received from PBFT consumption
by subsistence fishermen can be estimated to result in two additional fatal cancer
cases per 10,000,000 similarly exposed
people,” the study states.

USED FUEL RODS WILL IGNITE IFEXPOSED TO AIR

Administration (NOAA) map showing
the height of waves associated with the
March 2011 tsunami. NOAA produced
at least two such plots after the historicquake, with the estimated maximum
height of the waves hitting 240 cm.

THE OCEAN IS A DEAD ZONE

Whack-o-meter: 9“The Pacific Ocean appears tobe dying,” NaturalNews observedin January, “a phenomenon that the datasuggests is a direct consequence of nuclear
fallout from Fukushima.” Just where wasthis data coming from? A 2013 study ofdeep-sea creatures by the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute. NaturalNews put its spin on the paper this way:
“Though the researchers involved with thework have been reluctant to pin Fukushima as a potential cause – National Geographic,
which covered the study recently, did noteven mention Fukushima – the timing of
the discovery suggests that Fukushima is,perhaps, the cause.”
You can’t argue with ironclad logic likethat. It sounds better with some numbers, of course, so NaturalNews decided
that 98 percent of the sea floor off California is covered with dead animals, up
from 1 percent before Fukushima. The
Monterey Aquarium study actually indicated that an unusual abundance of gelatinous creatures known as salps ended up
carpeting the abyssal floor after dying.
Furthermore, scientists found that there
were actually more algae and salps in
California waters in 2011 and 2012 thanin the previous 20 years. As the institute
pointed out in a press release debunking

8

Emails accompanying this widely
circulated map often claim that it shows
the spread of radiation from Fukushima.
It is actually from the U.S. National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,and shows the tsunami wave amplitude.

the report, “There is no indication thatany of the events documented in thisstudy were associated with the Fukushima nuclear accident.”

WEST COAST FISH ARE RADIOACTIVE

Whack-o-meter: 7
Fears about radiation reaching the North American West
Coast have focused on reports that fish
are becoming extremely contaminated.
Doubtless this has been fueled by the realnews that some fish caught off Tohoku
are unfit for human consumption. But
the miles and miles of ocean between
that region and the West Coast ensures theeffects are limited, as Ken Buesseler of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
writes: “These contaminated fish are notbeing sold internally in Japan or exported. Because of the dilution that occurs
even a short distance from Fukushima,
we do not have a concern about the levelsof cesium and other radionuclides in fish
off the West Coast of the U.S.”
While cesium has indeed been discovered in Pacific bluefin tuna (PBFT), a findthat was reported by over 1,000 newspapers worldwide, a study published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
showed that a standard serving of such fish
would expose someone to radiation equiv-

Whack-o-meter: 7.5
In November, Tepco began
the delicate task of removing
1,534 nuclear fuel rods from a storage
pool at the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s No.
4 reactor building. The pool has been reinforced since the March 11, 2011 disaster,
but Tepco wants the rods in a safer locationand the job is expected to take until theend of 2014 at least.
Fears have focused on the possibility of
another quake striking the building, which
could cause more cracks in the pool anddrain the water from it. Various media havepainted alarming scenarios of what will
happen if the rods are exposed to air. “Thatwould allow the zirconium alloy cladding
to ignite and release radioactive material
into the air,” said the Telegraph. But if a YouTube demonstration by UC Berkeley nuclear engineers is anything to judge by, zirconium alloy cladding does not ignite when
exposed to air, or even a blowtorch. They
heated a piece of zirconium to 2,000ºC
without sparking a fire. (Zirconium powder, however, is flammable.)

A FUEL ROD DISASTER WILL DESTROYJAPAN AND THE WEST COAST

Whack-o-meter: 9David Suzuki is a household
name in Canada. The scientist,
broadcaster, and member of the Order ofCanada is known for his long-running
CBC documentary show “The Nature ofThings,” and has been championing thecause of wildlife and the natural world
for decades. So people took note when hewarned last fall that a major quake during
the fuel rod extraction process at Fukushima would precipitate a nuclear holocaust.
He went on to claim there was a greaterthan 95 percent probability of such aquake in the next three years.
“If, in fact, the fourth plant goes underan earthquake, and those rods are exposed,
it’s bye-bye Japan,” he told a gathering at the University of Alberta, “andeverybody on the West Coast of North
America should evacuate. Now if that isn’t

FCCJ

HEADLINE HYPE!
28 Signs that the West Coast is
being absolutely fried with nuclear
radiation from Fukushima(The Truth)
U.S. Army General: The whole
northern hemisphere is at
risk of becoming largely
uninhabitable (InfoWars)
Japan Physician: Parents should
evacuate children from Tokyo(EneNews)
SURPRISE: You're eating
Fukushima radiation andbloody, cancerous tumors in fishcontaminated by radiation(Turner Radio Network)
Revenge of the mutant vegetables?

(Daily Mail)
Dr. Helen Caldicott: If Spent FuelNo. 4 collapses I am evacuating
my family from Boston (EneNews)

terrifying, I don’t know what is.”There is no scientific evidence to support that wild scenario. David Measday, aprofessor emeritus of nuclear physics at the
University of British Columbia, dismissed
it as “ridiculous” and “totally impossible.”
Suzuki recently said he regrets what hetermed an “off-the-cuff” remark, but stillfears a “potential widespread disaster”
from a second quake or tsunami hitting
what’s left of the Fukushima plant.

FUKUSHIMA IS KILLING AMERICAN
BABIES, ADULTS AND . . . BALD EAGLES

Whack-o-meter: 10
In 2011, physician Janette
Sherman and epidemiologist
Joseph Mangano reported in Counterpunchthat in the 10 weeks to the end of May
that year, there was a 35 percent increasein baby deaths in eight cities in the Northwest compared to the four weeks to March
19, 2011. The increase “is statistically significant,” they wrote, pointing out that it
coincided with the Fukushima meltdown.
The article is premised on analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
data, but an analysis by Michael Moyerof Scientific American shows how the CDC
numbers were cherry-picked to suit the

FCCJ

authors’ premise. If data from the beginning of 2011 are included (and not justthe four weeks to March 19), there is nochange in baby deaths.
The duo, part of an anti-nuclear groupcalled Radiation and Public Health Project, returned in 2012 with another report,
this time in the International Journal of HealthServices, suggesting as many as 14,000
Americans had been killed by Japaneseradiation. They arrived at this shocking
figure again via creative statistics: The tally of CDC deaths for 122 cities increased
4.46 percent in the 14 weeks after the
fallout from 2010 levels, and projectingthat increase yields a nationwide totalof about 14,000 people. “The analysis
assumes that the plume arrived on U.S.
shores, spread everywhere, instantly,
and started killing people immediately,”
Moyer writes. “The publication of suchsloppy, agenda-driven work is a shame.”
Meanwhile, dozens of bald eagles havedied mysterious deaths in Utah. They havebeen found with paralysis, seizures andtremors. Officials at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah were baffled, and told the L.A. Times they weren’t
ruling anything out, including Fukushima radiation. This predictably spawned
a series of articles linking the two. Tests
ultimately revealed that West Nile virus ingrebes the eagles fed on was responsible.

SQUID GROWS TO 160 FEET, COMESASHORE IN CALIFORNIA

Whack-o-meter: 11
This is really too daft to mention, but points for creativity
go to satirical website The Lightly Braised
Turnip for reporting that a 160-foot squid
had washed up on a beach in Santa Monica, California. Over 1 million Facebook
users liked the farce, especially its fakephoto of people gawping over the housesized cephalopod, and naturally it rampaged through social media like a kaiju inheat. The article quoted experts who said
the creature came from “waters near the
Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant
in the Futaba District of Japan.” Writers at urban legends site Snopes.com actually visited the beach in question and ofcourse no squid, giant or otherwise, wasto be found. Other Fukushima mutant
hoaxes have included vegetables, dogs,
and rabbits. ❶Tim Hornyak is Tokyo correspondent for IDG News
Service. A former CNET News contributor, he is theauthor of Loving the Machine: The Art and Science ofJapanese Robots and co-author of several Lonely Planet
travel guidebooks.

AP PHOTO/IAEA, GREG WEBB

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014REAL WORRIESFUKUSHIMA CANARDS CIRCULATING IN
the media detract from the ongoing costof the triple meltdown at the plant and theneed for continued public scrutiny andvigilance. There are legitimate concerns
about the potential danger from an
accident involving the transfer of fuel rods
from Reactor 4, not to mention the factthat no one really knows yet the conditionof the reactor cores that have melted down.
This spring also marks the third
anniversary for thousands of Fukushima
Prefecture evacuees who lost their homes.
About one-third of 160,000 people who
fled remain in temporary housing, stuckin legal limbo as the government tries
to decide if it can live up to its cleanup
promises. A ray of light was seen in
February, however, when for the firsttime an evacuation order was lifted fora restricted area: residents of part of
Tamura will be able to return home April 1.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Fukushimafrom stress and other conditions related
to the disaster recently hit 1,656, topping
the 1,607 killed in the prefecture by
the tsunami and quake. "People havegone through dramatic changes of theirenvironment,” a prefectural health official
told AFP. “As a result, people who would
not have died are dying.”
Another ongoing concern is possible
links between radiation and thyroid
cancer, especially among children. Eight
more kids were found to have thyroid
cancer in February, though healthofficials ruled out radiation from the plant
as a cause. As of the end of 2013, there
were 33 people under 18 confirmed withthe disease, up from 25 three months
earlier. The findings are worrisome but
on a far different scale than those fromthe Chernobyl disaster, in which morethan 6,000 children and adolescents werediagnosed with thyroid cancer, according
to the U.N. Scientific Committee on the
Effects of Atomic Radiation. A team fromthe Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry
is also checking 1,972 workers from theplant who helped contain the disaster in
the initial stages and were exposed toradiation doses over 100 millisieverts.

9aving been a representative of theDalai Lama in Japan for 15 years,
many might expect Tibetan-born Pema
Gyalpo to be something of a Utopian
dreamer. The reality is more complicated.
“I tell my students that I’m 60 percent
realist and 40 percent idealist,” says Gyalpo, who combines media commentary
and authoring books with a professorshipat Yokohama’s Toin University.
His experience of fleeing the Chinese
invasion of Tibet as a child in 1959, andthe suffering his family endured, has clearly shaped his worldview. His two brothers
were killed by the occupying Chinese forces, something he was unable to confirm
until 1980, when he returned as an envoyof the Dalai Lama.
“When the Chinese came to Tibet, we had
250,000 monks chanting for peace frommorning to night, but it didn’t help. China
sent an armed force of only 20,000 people,
and it was enough,” says Gyalpo, explaining
his disillusionment with pacifism.
Having escaped with his parents overthe border to India, Gyalpo was invited
to study at an Australian-run missionary
school in India, learning English in theprocess. Next came another opportunitythat would alter the course of his life. A
Japanese “agent” who had been working
in Tibet before and during the Second
World War, despite the mountain kingdom’s claim of neutral status, arranged
scholarships for a small group of refugees
to study in Japan.
While he found Tibet and Japan culturally similar, in part through the common
ground of Buddhism, the modernity of
post-Olympic Tokyo was a shock. Following his first time on an airplane, he recalls
his first encounter with a large glass door
resulted in him walking straight into it.
Sent to a junior high school in Moroyama, Saitama, Gyalpo remembers the
locals as very welcoming, with teachersand students helping him by writing hiragana alongside the kanji in his textbooks.
In his second year, he was elected chairof the student council. He was the first foreign pupil to hold such a position in a Japanese public school, and the event attracted
national media attention. He went on tohigh school and the Asia University ofJapan, where he obtained his law degreein 1976, before entering graduate schoolat Sophia University.
Eventually, however, he dropped out of
his course, worried that if he completed
his studies, his visa would not be renewed.
It was during his time at Sophia in 1976,
that he began his work for the Dalai Lamain Japan, and eventually became responsible for the whole Asia-Pacific.

10

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

Pema Gyalpo
by Gavin Blair

In the early years, Gyalpo says he foundit easier in some ways to work for the
Dalai Lama in countries such as South
Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia, than in Japan,
where academia had a strong streak ofinternationalism and socialism, leading
to sympathy toward China.
The Tiananmen Square incident was
something of a watershed in perceptionsof China, says Gyalpo. “When people saw
how ruthless they were with their own
people, they began to believe what weJapanese, and I was called in to commenton it, along with a few other foreigners.
It was the same with universities, whichstarted having international departments
and classes, leading to a permanent job at
Gifu Women’s University.”
In addition to his media and academic
careers, Gyalpo has written, co-authoredand translated no fewer than 63 books, aswell as trying his hand at politics. In 2007,
he unsuccessfully stood for election to theHouse of Councillors with the conserva-‘I FEEL JAPAN IS MISUNDERSTOOD AND I THINK IT’S MY
DUTY TO TELL THE WORLD WHAT I’VE SEEN AND HEARD.’
had been saying about Tibet.”
It was as a representative of the Dalai
Lama in the late 1980s that Gyalpo wascontacted at his office by Aum Shinrikyo,
when the cult’s founder Shoko Asaharacame to visit.
“To be honest, I was quite impressedwith him at first, when he talked about
his level of meditation. And he was very
polite in those days,” recalls Gyalpo. “Thatdidn’t last long though, as he began tomake claims about his enlightenment,
levitation and that his followers should
drink his blood.”
With Aum Shinrikyo claiming to befollowers of Tibetan Buddhism, Gyalpo
found himself at odds with the cult. “I
told Asahara that in a free country, you
can have your Asahara-ism, but what
you’re teaching is not Tibetan Buddhism.”
Gyalpo eventually faced Asahara in a
television debate, but says his responses
were mostly drowned out by the cultleader’s followers shouting and banging
on tables. However, following the sarin
gas attack in 1995, Gyalpo says he was
grateful for having fallen out with the cultso publically.
Gyalpo resigned as the Dalai Lama’s
representative in 1990. Following theassassination in 1991 of Rajiv Gandhi,
whom he had met, Gyalpo found himself
in demand as a commentator on JapaneseTV. He believes he was fortunate that it
was a period when Japan was somewhat
fixated on internationalism.
“Anything that had the word “international” in it had a special meaning to thetive LDP-breakaway People’s New Party(Kokumin Shinto), on a platform that
included reforming the pacifist Article
9 of the constitution and condemninga resolution passed by the U.S. Congressthat year on the “comfort women” issue.
“Article 9 is a declaration from Japan;
there is no obligation for anyone else torespect that, so it’s not practical. Under thepresent constitution, the Self-Defense Forceis illegal. They receive the same training as
an army, and have the same weapons.”“In this way, I’m a little conservative;
maybe not a little, quite conservative.”
The furor surrounding the commentsof NHK’s new governor at his Januarypress conference is mystifying to Gyalpo.
“If I want to know what the Japanese government is thinking, I would watch NHK.
It is supposed to be the national TV station, so I think it’s important that it gives
the government’s views. Equally, I believethat the Asahi should give its own views,
which should be different; otherwise
what’s the point in having two different
types of media?”
Looking to the future, one of Professor
Gyalpo’s plans is to reach a wider audience with his writings. “All my books so
far have been in Japanese, so my audience has been restricted to the Japanese.
I’d like to write something in English. I
feel Japan is misunderstood and I thinkit’s my duty to tell the world what I’ve
seen and heard.” ❶Gavin Blair covers Japanese business, society andculture for publications in America, Asia and Europe.

FCCJ

ANDREW POTHECARY

of in o Ano
Cl ur thproub M seri erfile em es
s ber

H

PROFILEYURAKUCHO

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

There goes theneighborhood?

Kiyoshige Ozawa (above left) and his
employee-free bar, Shoku-an (bottom left).
Andy Lunt (above right) oversees the friendly
digs of the Shin Hinomoto izakaya (left)

Text by John R. Harriswith reporting by Maya Shibata
Photos by Said Karlsson

S

ince moving to the Denki Building in
1976, the FCCJ has been perched on
the border of blue-chip Marunouchi andthe seedy magic of Yurakucho-under-thetracks, the last trace of the raucous postwar
district in which the Club was born. Now,
as we mull over a move to new digs, Club
Members may be witnessing the last daysof our much-loved, rough-and-tumble
friends across the street.
According to Andy Lunt of Shin Hinomoto – the eatery across the street thatcombines Tokyo’s best seafood with what
may be the city’s most down-at-heel décor– earthquake-proofing reconstruction of
the elevated Yamanote-line tracks may spell
the end for all the businesses below.
“We sublet this place from a landlord
who owns the space below the arch,” Andy

12says. “But the arch itself belongs to JR –and the landlord actually pays rent to JR
for the roof. They can’t evict us full-stop,
but they can force us to move out during
the construction period – which could
take years. And since the JR have legionsof lawyers, there's nothing you can do. We
know they have to do it at some point, butneither we nor the landlords can get any

information on when they plan to do it.”
Doing business under the tracks has been
precarious ever since the postwar days when
it was a black market rife with gang activity.
Andy was told by his father-in-law (whose
father started the business in 1945) that thelandlord’s rights to the site were granted by
a U.S. Army officer sent by the nearby GHQ
to stamp out turf battles in the market.

FCCJ“Apparently, he just decreed on-thespot ‘this one’s yours, that one’s his’ andsomehow it took on the force of law,”
Andy says.
Kiyoshige Ozawa tells a similar story.
He’s the proprietor (the friendly young
guy with glasses) of Shoku An, the vending machine bar next to Shin Hinomoto
that’s the last respite for local smokers.

FCCJ“My grandfather started this business in
1948,” Ozawa says. “I don't know all thedetails, but it seems he was helping thegovernment somehow, distributing foodto people who were hungry after the war.
That led him to start his own catering business, which my father took over and ran
until he had to lay off all his workers after
the bubble burst. That’s how this vending

machine idea started: he figured we could
run a business without employees.”
Like Andy, Ozawa is concerned about the
future. “Our lease comes up for renewal infour years. JR haven't told us anything, but
we assume they will want to strengthen the
tracks before the 2020 Olympics, as they are
doing up the line near Okachimachi.”
For Andy, the worst part is not knowing what to expect. “I want to renovate
this place before the Olympics,” he says.
“My landlord isn’t into it, so I’d have to
do it myself. But how can I spend thatkind of money when we could be told tomove out tomorrow? Even if they forced
us out for only six months it’d be tough.
JR has no interest in talking to me, andthey won’t even talk to my landlord. And
I tried asking the Ward Office, but I still
can’t get any information.” ❶John R. Harris is a speechwriter and freelance journalist
based in Onjuku on Chiba’s Pacific coast.
Said Karlsson is a freelance journalist and photographer
reporting on Japan for Swedish media.

13

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

Nago’s newly re-elected Mayor Susumu Inamine
wants the world to listen to his constituents’ voices

Okinawa’s problem is a global problem
by Michael PennT

he mayor of a small city of some
61,000 people doesn’t usually attract apacked room full of foreign and Japanesejournalists at the FCCJ, but Nago is no
ordinary small city, and its mayor, Susumu Inamine, is no ordinary man. In fact,
what Mayor Inamine managed to accomplish last January was something all of thenational opposition political parties put
together have failed to do since the endof 2012: to inflict a bitter electoral defeat
on the Abe administration.
Prior to the election, it was government
ministers and senior officials of the ruling party that were making raids into little
Nago City, propping up the candidacy ofchallenger Bunshin Suematsu and promising generous development funds for the
local economy if only the city’s residents
would obey the directions of the central
government and vote for their man. But
Mayor Inamine weathered the government’s challenge and – with his Club
appearance on Feb. 13 – was launching his
own raid into the heart of the capital.
Before his FCCJ audience, the mayor
was unequivocal: the government’s insistence that the new U.S. Marine airbase
must be built at Henoko was a decision
based, not upon military necessity, butrather upon domestic political expediency and structural discrimination against
the Okinawan people.
“Okinawa comprises only
0.6 percent of Japan’sland area and about
one percent of
its population,”
the
mayor
noted, “Andsince Okinawa has only about one percent of the population, our political power and influence is weak.” The militarybases have been concentrated in Okinawa, he contends, because other regions inJapan have more political power than thenation’s 47th prefecture.
Mayor Inamine repeatedly explained
how Okinawa’s post-1945 history had somarkedly differed from that of the rest ofJapan. While the U.S. Occupation of Japan
ended relatively quickly in 1952 and was
followed by a substantial degree of internal political independence, Okinawa wasruled as a U.S. military colony for 27 years,
until 1972. Even now, it is given no choice
but to host large numbers of U.S. troops
and to suffer a great deal of outside political intervention, even at the local level.
The Nago mayor made it clear that heunderstands many important advantages
have accrued to Japan through its enduring security link with the U.S., but he also
pointed out that Okinawa, Japan’s poorest prefecture, has not enjoyed the same
experiences as main-island Japan.
“The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty has
elements of benefit and burdens forour nation. The benefit is that Japan
experienced an economic development
unmatched in the rest of the world. Thisis one of the great benefits bestowed by
the alliance. But the burdens have been disproportionately borne by Okinawa, so that
74 percent of the U.S. military personnel
are concentrated in
our prefecture.
This situationin which mostof the benefits are given
to one groupand most of
the burdens

Susumu Inamineat the Clubput on another group is fundamentally
unreasonable.”
Mayor Inamine vowed – as he didrepeatedly in advance of his reelection –that he would use all of the legal power
at his disposal to block construction of
the airbase at Henoko, and would, in fact,
reject all discussions with officials thatwere premised on the notion that the basewould be built.
He also predicted that any attempt on
the part of the Abe administration to forcibly construct the base would be closely
observed by the international community
and would invite criticism from aroundthe world.
One of the messages at the heart of themayor’s presentation was that Okinawa’s
problems were, in fact, challenges for allof Japan, and that he had come to Tokyo
to try to make the Japanese people understand that the Henoko issue was the business of all of the nation’s people.
This is particularly the case from thestandpoint of democracy, Mayor Inamine
declared. “If the government forces
through the relocation and denies thevoice of the local people, as expressed in
the election, I should say it’s unacceptable
for a democratic nation.”Indeed, one of the fundamental issues
at stake in the Okinawa base issue is precisely whether Japan is to be governedby the will of the majority of the people,
or by political lever-pullers in Tokyo andWashington. Whatever the benefits of the
U.S. bases in Okinawa are perceived to be,
if they are not acceptable to the people
who live there, then they should not be
acceptable to the nation as a whole. Bothmedia polls and the results of Nago elections clearly suggest that most people in
Okinawa see the U.S. forces as a greater
danger to their daily lives than somehypothetical outside invader – no matter
how differently the Abe administration
might calculate the risks.
Mayor Inamine made his appeal to theJapanese general public and the gathered
foreign journalists: “Please pay more
attention to the issues of Okinawa andNago City, for these are the problems of
all of Japan. At stake is the direction of
democracy itself; therefore, it is a matterfor the whole world as well.”He made one last point: “I believe thatwhat the government fears most is forunderstanding of the Okinawan situation
to spread, and for the Japanese people tohear our voices.” ❶Michael Penn is President of the Shingetsu News
Agency and Chair of the FCCJ Freedom of thePress Committee.

14

FCCJ

HISTORY

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

The Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots wants its
collection of letters to be recognized by UNESCO

AP PHOTO/DAVID GUTTENFELDER

OKINAWA

Suicide pilots’ spirits await judgment
by Suvendrini KakuchiShinao Hirayama, 91, speaks slowly as
he recalls his youth as a kamikaze pilot
some 70 years ago. Hailing from a Tokyo
samurai family background, Hirayama
says he eagerly volunteered to save hiscountry from the jaws of the approaching
American enemy. “Japan was losing the
war at that time and so it was absolutely important for me to join the Tokkotai.
I wanted to protect the country and theEmperor as I had been taught in school,”he explained.
Tokkotai is the abbreviation for Tokubetsu
Kogekitai, literally “special attack unit,” butmore usually referred to as the kamikaze, or “divine wind” suicide pilots. They
were young, brave men who were sent on
one-way flights at the tail end of WorldWar II to swoop down on enemy ships
with their bomb-laden planes to annihilate their targets and themselves.
Hirayama survived when Emperor
Hirohito declared Japan’s surrender only
a few days before he was due to board his
plane. But that fate continues to upset him
even today as he enjoys his retirement andgrandchildren. “I wanted nothing moreat that time than to be a human torpedo
like the others,” he explained. The official
number of kamikaze deaths on missions
out of Chiran and other airfields during
the Battle for Okinawa was 1,036. The
wartime total was close to 4,000.
The fate of the young kamikaze pilots
remains one of the most tragic stories ofWorld War II. Courageous men as young
as 17 were chosen by the Japanese military for their unflinching commitment
to death. Indeed, much of the military’s

FCCJ

loyalty was so fierce that even an admiral
did a suicide dive with a tiny aircraft into
the Allied fleet on the evening after Japansurrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.
“It would be too cruel not to show
our respect to the unflinching spirit ofthese young men who were devoted to
the Japanese people,” said Takeshi Kawatoko, a storyteller at the Peace Museum
for Kamikaze Pilots located in Kagoshimaon the southern island of Kyushu. The
impressive building stores bone-chilling
artifacts of Japan’s tortured past. It isnestled among the green hills of Chiran,where an airstrip was built for the Tokkotai to take off on their ill-fated flights to
Okinawa in 1944. They were attempting
to turn the tide of the bitter land battle
being fought between desperate Japanesemilitary forces and increasingly powerful
American troops. Caught in the middle
were the Okinawan civilians.
The museum displays more than athousand letters written by the kamikaze
along with models of the various planes– some of their cockpits so narrow thatpilots literally had to crouch with theirknees bent almost to the chin. Amongthe somber exhibits are fading dolls andtorn scarves that were once carried by
the young men on their final journeys.
Kawatoko explained how these items
reflected the innocence and youth of the
kamikaze: “They probably did not want
to die alone,” he said. Indeed, their lastletters, many penned in exquisite handwriting, include heart-wrenching passages. “Goodbye,” wrote 23-year-old Captain Toshio Anazawa to his sweetheart. “I

Left, women study kamikaze pilots’ photos inthe museum in Chiranhave nothing more than wishes for yourhappiness.” “Forget the past,” Lieutenant
Aihana Shoi wrote to his mother. “Live inthe present.”
The emotions lingering from the kamikaze tactic, based on the traditional Japanese philosophy in which self-sacrificecan be used to turn the tide, are so powerful that visitors, around 700,000 annually, walk through the halls in hushed
silence, some clutching handkerchiefs totheir eyes. Kawatoko says the museum,supported by entry fees and the local
government, is now attempting to register the last letters as UNESCO Memory of
the World documents. They are, he says,“symbolic” of the country’s commitment
to peace. “The registering of their messages as a world document is to recognize
the pilots’ courage and Japan’s pledge tonever enter a war again,” he said.
Such sentiment, however, is at themercy of continuing political tension
between Japan and its former East Asiancolonies, China and the Korean peninsula, over its wartime past. And China,
as expected, reacted to the request withindignation. “The design behind the socalled application for the kamikaze pilots
is very clear, which is to try and beautify
the Japanese militarist history of invasion,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Hua Chunying said.
“There is a kind of frustration because
we dare not mourn our war dead in public for fear of an international outcry,” says
Akiko Ozaki, 48, a tour guide for Chinese
tourists. In fact, for Hirayama, who meetswith the fellow former Tokkotai colleagues
at the museum for its annual memorial
every May, the pilots simply represent
tragedy and courage. “We are a symbolof a national yearning for world recognition,” he says.
At the museum, Kawatoko says thepilots of the suicide flights represent the“Japanese samurai traits of putting loyalty over personal needs, a character thatwas deeply embedded in the national
psyche but has been forgotten by the
postwar generation.”
Leaving the haunting museum, one
feels that the final rest due to the young
suicide bombers is still a long way off asJapan and its East Asian neighbors grapple
with the difficult past.
The kamikaze are waiting. ❶Suvendrini Kakuchi is a Sri Lankan reporter for Inter
Press Service, and a regular commentator for Japanesepublications and television.

15

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS COMMITTEE

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

A proposal to draw attention to thedeclining state of media freedom in JapanWhy we need a prize
by Jake Adelstein and Michael PennN

ew technologies and social media arebringing the world together as neverbefore. At the same time the profession ofjournalism is facing renewed challenges,
sometimes through direct forms of violence, but more often through the subtle
means of tighter information control,
threats to employment and economic viability, and social pressures to conform tooutside expectations.

may be obvious, but they are still worthhighlighting.
At the end of last year a secrecy law of
a scope unprecedented in Japan’s postwar
history was forced through the Diet over
the objections of critics who pointed out
its many deficiencies. While the law wasstill under consideration, FCCJ President
Lucy Birmingham released a statement
expressing our concerns: “It is at the very

THE WORLD PRESS FREEDOM INDEX FOR 2014 HAS
DROPPED JAPAN TO NUMBER 59 ON ITS LIST
The FCCJ has always been committed topromoting excellence in the media fieldby highlighting events that receive insufficient attention in the Japanese press,by speaking out for the safety and forthe rights of journalists, and by hosting
speakers who throw new light upon thesubjects of the day.
To strengthen and supplement these
efforts, the FCCJ Freedom of the Press
Committee would like to propose an initiative that we expect will further promote
the public interest role that our Club has
been playing: We would like to launch a
FCCJ Freedom of the Press Prize to confer
due recognition upon those heroes andheroines whose work represents the finest in defense of free speech, open society, and democratic accountability, with aparticular eye to issues connected with, ortouching upon, the Japanese experience.
Some of the reasons why Japan needs
such a prize at this particular juncture

heart of investigative journalism in open
societies to uncover secrets and to informthe people about the activities of government,” she wrote. “Such journalism is
not a crime, but rather a crucial part ofthe checks-and-balances that go hand-inhand with democracy.”
Meanwhile, the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index for 2014
has just dropped Japan to number 59 on
its list, below countries like Serbia andChile. This marks a precipitous fall; Japanwas ranked as high as 22 in 2012. Clearly,
even international observers are becoming increasingly concerned about thedirection of media freedom here.
In this troubling context, we feel thatthe time has come to embark upon a new
venture that we hope will turn the tideand remind our Japanese friends of all of
the blessings that peace and freedom hasbrought them over the last seven decades.
We envision a Prize Committee com-posed of five members. The announcement of the winners would take placeeach year on May 3, coinciding with theUnited Nations’ observance of World
Press Freedom Day, as well as Japan’s own
Constitution Day. An awards banquet
would follow a couple of weeks later inwhich the Club could invite our distinguished friends to join us in a celebrationof what is most vital and dear in our journalist profession.
We envision five award categories, andthus up to five annual winners, but if nosuitable nomination is made, it is possiblethat no award will be given in a certain
year in a certain category. The five basic
categories we have in mind are Prize for
the Written Word, Prize for Visual Journalism, Friend of Freedom of the Press
Prize, Lifetime Achievement Prize, andFallen Hero Prize. The precise names ofthese prizes may evolve as we receive
more input from FCCJ Members.
The judgments would be made on thebasis of the originality, courage, and democratic public interest that is served by awork that was first published, broadcast,or otherwise transmitted in the calendar
year previous to the selection. All awards
would have a direct connection withJapan or the Japanese people.
What the Freedom of the Press Committee would like to ask of our colleagues at
the Club at this time is for you to begin to
discuss this idea among yourselves and tosee if you find as much merit in it as we do.
If this initiative finds favor with ourClub members, then we would like tomove forward at a coming General Membership Meeting to gain formal approval
to launch the FCCJ Freedom of the Press
Prize program. Naturally, we also hopeto obtain your active support so that we
can create a superb event that may in time
become another valued FCCJ tradition. ❶Jake Adelstein is the Chairman of the Prize
Subcommittee of the FCCJ Freedom of the Press
Committee. Michael Penn is Chairman of the FCCJ
Freedom of the Press Committee.

CLUB NEWSFCCJ EXHIBITION: SOMA-NOMAOI HORSE FESTIVAL
Photographs by Tadashi Kumagai and Mayumi Takahashi

THREE MONTHS AFTER 3/11, WE MET
horses that had been rescued from thetsunami and areas around the Fukushima
nuclear reactors. They were being cared forat the Soma Nakamura Jinja – historically,
the location for the 1,000-year-old SomaNomaoi Horse Festival. Now the shrine wasthe center for relief operations in Fukushima.
One year after the disaster, the Festival
was revived. In the heat of July, about 400
riders dressed in samurai armor engaged inraces and mock cavalry battles. We have been
documenting the festival since its resumption
and will be there again this year, cheering thehorses and their riders, and praying for thearea’s recovery.
The dates for 2014 Soma-Nomaoi Festival
are July 26, 27, and 28. ❶Tadashi Kumagai (above) (Studio Bears) graduated from Mayumi Takahashi (top) of Heartful Photo is a graduate
Tokyo College of Photography. He works in advertising and of Japan Women's University and works mostly on family
for magazines, and personally focuses on performing art. photography.

一九九三年十月十五日 第三種郵便物認可 毎月一日発行

1993 年 10 月 15 日 第三種郵便物認可 毎月 1 日発行 Vol. 46 第 3 号 No. 1 Shimbun 2014 年 3 月 1 日発行

March 2014
Volume 46 No. 3¥400

Please send your story ideas to第三号
Vol. 46
二〇一四三月一日発行
No. 1 Shimbun
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SUPPORT
no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp, and be sure towhetheryou(orcorrespondent
have access
McCurry
is Japanandhave
Korea
YOUR CLUB Justinnote
to)visuals.
for the Guardian and the Observer. He contributes to
Gen NakataniMAGAZINE
atthe Christian Science Monitor and the Lancet medical
the FCCJ+

Pema Gyalpo inprofileYurakucho:
under the tracks(and under
threat?)Okinawa mayor
wants the world
to listenOMG!

OPENING NIGHTS
Each month's exhibition starts with an opening night for
the artist. Here are shots by Club member Martin Hladik(photographer with MH Agency) of two recent waterthemed shows. Left, Everett Kennedy Brown at his “Seaof Fertility” exhibition of wet-plate photographs of the sea
around Chiba; and Taisuke Yokoyama at the party for his
photographs around the lives of two watermen, Jacques
Mayol and Tiger Espere.

Photo essays: ¥15,000 for full-page
photos and ¥5,000 for smaller shots. All
payments will be made in chits to yourmember account.

journal,Our
andrates
reports
Japan
Korea for France
areon¥20
perandpublishedword, 24 TV.

¥20,000 for a front cover photo.

Separating sense from screams with our“Whack-o-meter” of Fukushima radiation news

16

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

FCCJ

FCCJ

17

CLUB NEWS

Number 1 Shimbun | March 2014

“I don’t think
anything of hiscomments now, but
Mori-san may havesome regrets about
what he said.”
Olympic figure skater Mao Asada
on former PM Yoshiro Mori’s commentthat she “always falls at critical times.”(See also "From the President," p4)

MICAH GAMPELHeard at the ClubFCCJ IN KANSAINEW MEMBERSFCCJ PRESIDENT LUCYBIRMINGHAM SPOKE TO
audiences in Osaka andKyoto on Jan. 25 about thestate of the foreign media
in Japan, and FCCJ’s rolein protesting last year’s
new state secrecy laws. The
Knowledge Capital complex
in Umeda, along with Kansai
Scene magazine, sponsored
the Osaka talk, which drew
about 40 people, including local journalists, diplomats and business leaders.
The Kyoto talk was co-sponsored by the Kyoto City International Foundation andattended by about 60 people, many of whom expressed concern about the statesecrets law. It was covered by the Kyoto Shimbun.
— Eric Johnston

TSUTOMU ISHIAI was named Foreign News Editor of the Asahi Shimbun
in June, 2013, after serving in Cairo as the Middle East and African
Editor. Ishiai joined the Asahi Shimbun in 1988 after completing his B.A.
of economics at Waseda University. He worked in Washington D.C. from1996 until he was transferred to Cairo in 1998, where he served as
Middle East correspondent until 2001. Ishiai returned to Washington
from 2002 to 2006 as Sr. diplomatic correspondent, and focused on
U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. He is the co-author of Guantanamo, what is goingon at the U.S. anti-terror camp in Cuba? and Japan's Grand Strategy and its Constitution. Since 2009, hehas been a visiting fellow at Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions
at Doshisha University. He lives in Tokyo with his wife and son.

JOIN THE MOVIE COMMITTEE . . .

KATSUMI KASAHARA. . . AT 6:00 PM ON THURS., MAR. 20
for the most talked-about film of thepast — or perhaps any — year:
Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act ofKilling. The mega-award-winningdocumentary focuses on theIndonesian genocide of 1965-66,
exploring what one critic calls “thepsychological gestalt of a country inwhich mass-murderers brag about theirslaughtering — and still intimidate theirneighbors — with complete impunity.”
After we meet two of the executioners,
boastful that they’ve killed hundredsof “Communists” in styles inspired byclassic Hollywood gangster movies,
Oppenheimer allows them to reenact their atrocities.
By doing so, he had hoped to get beneath their skin, to probe for something
deeper, to capture their conscience, to elicit a moral response. What heachieved is absolutely shattering. This is a must-see.

LIU TIAN is China’s Xinhua News Agency correspondent responsible
for political and diplomatic stories from its Japan Bureau. He came to
Japan over one year ago on his first assignment abroad. Prior to this,from July 2011, he worked as an editor at the English-language desk of
the International News Department in Beijing. Tian received a master’s
degree in international relations from China's Foreign Affairs University
in Beijing after majoring in English at the University of International
Relations. His dispatch to Japan caught him by surprise, since his second foreign
language is French.
REGULAR MEMBERS
Liu Tian, Xinhua News Agency
Tsutomu Ishiai, Asahi Shimbun
PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALIST ASSOCIATE
MEMBER
Jeffrey Quigley, The Diplomat

NEW IN THE LIBRARY
Japan Company
Handbook: Winter 2014

Toyo Keizai, Inc.
Toyo Keizai, Inc.

An Encouragement of
Learning

Fukuzawa,Yukichi; translated byDavid A. Dilworth; introduction
by Nishikawa Shunsaku
Columbia University Press

Religion in Japan: Unity
and Diversity(Denmark/Norway/UK, 2012; 159 minutes (Director’s cut); in Indonesian withEnglish and Japanese subtitles)

Earhart, H. Byron
Wadsworth Cengage Learning

Seijoki no Kikoenai Heya

Levy, Hideo
Kodansha

ALBERT SIEGELRAKUGO NIGHT

18

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Sarah Wooten, Delegation of the European Union
Yoshiaki Nakamura, Nippon Steel & Sumikin
Technology Corp.
Akira Tanabe, Career Development Associates
REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE)
Hiroo Tanabe, Ozma Inc.

A Room Where the Star- Okinawa and Jeju: Bases
Spangled Banner Cannot of Discontent
Be Heard: A Novel in Three Kirk, Donald
Palgrave Pivot
Parts

Levy, Hideo; translated by
Christopher D. Scott
Columbia University Press
Gift from Mr. Hideo Levy

Gift from Mr. Mr. Donald Kirk

Men of Uncertainty:
The Social Organizationof Day Laborers inContemporary Japan

Compiled and Edited by Cortazzi,
HughBack to Work: Why We
Global Oriental
Need Smart Government
Gift from Mr. Peter O’Connor
for a Strong Economy
Clinton, BillThe Eternal Japan
Alfred A. Knopf
Huq, Monzurul
Gift from Mr. Robert Walter
Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts
Whittemore
Gift from Mr. Monzurul Huq

Gill,TomState University of New York
Press
Gift from Mr.Tom Gill

Shot by Both Sides: A
Novel

Goto, Meisei; translated by
Tom GillCounterpoint
Gift from Mr.Tom Gill

UP-AND-COMING RAKUGO PERFORMER Kokontei Bungiku
drew in a sell-out crowd of 160 at an “Edo Setsubun Rakugo
Night” on Feb. 3 staged by the Special Projects Committee.
A graduate of prestigious Gakushuin University, Bungiku
served his apprenticeship with the renowned rakugoka,
Kokontei Engiku. In 2009 he was recognized by NHK by theaward of the broadcaster’s New Entertainer Grand Prize.
Part sponsors of the evening were theKato Kichibei Shoten sake brewery, which provided generous
supplies of their best brews to lubricate the evening.

FCCJ

FCCJ

Law, Policy, andTechnology:
Cyberterrorism,
Information Warfare andInternet Immobilization

Britain & Japan:
Biographical Portraits,
vol. viii

Reich, Pauline C./Gelbstein,
EduardoInformation Science Reference
Gift from Ms. Pauline C. Reich

The World in 2014

The Economist
The Economist
Gift from Mr. Frankie F. L. Leung19

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