The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

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March 2019 Vol. 51 No. 3 ¥400

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Rob Reiner
The actor/director talks
Shock and Awe

AI in the newsroom
Displacing journalists
or saving news?

Radio star
Katherin Erdmann,broadcasterIn this issueVol. 51, Number 3

March 2019contact the editors

no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJTHE FRONT PAGE

From the President by Peter Langan
Freedom of the Press news:
Report on imprisoned journalists in 2018
by Elana Beiser

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5

FEATURES

None behind bars
by Roger Schreffler

6

Friend or foe: Artificial Intelligence in the newsroom 8
by Maria Teresa Ronderos

THE FCCJ ONLINE: www.fccj.or.jp

Nabbing the newsmakers
by Julian Ryall

12

PROFILE

Katherin Erdmannby David McNeill

MEMBER EVENTSPRESS CONFERENCE VIDEOS

10Page 14: Director and actor
Rob Reiner speaks at the ClubCLUB CALENDARCLUB INFORMATIONCLUB NEWS

Truth, lies andShock and Aweby Tim Hornyak

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Lens craftby photographer Members
No. 1 SHIMBUN ONLINEFREEDOM OF THE PRESS INFO

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14

In Memoriam: Life Member James P. Colligan
by Bradley Martin

16

Exhibition: Kakejiku Art
New Members, New in the library

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19

FCCJ

MARCH 2019

Editor Gregory Starr
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.itsumo-music.jp/design
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications committee members
Gavin Blair, Freelance (co-chair)
Geoffrey Tudor, Orient Aviation (co-chair)
Daniel Hurst, Freelance
Sonja Blaschke, Freelance
Albert Siegel, Freelance
FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Peter Langan, Freelance
1st Vice President Abigail Leonard, Freelance
2nd Vice President Robert Whiting, Freelance
Secretary Daniel Hurst, Freelance
Treasurer Willem Kortekaas,
Associate Member
Directors-at-Large Khaldon Azhari,
PanOrient News
Daniel Sloan, Nissan Motor/Freelance
Mary Corbett, Professional Associate Member
Milton Isa, Associate Member
Kanji Kazuo Abiko, Freelance
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo,
Associate Member
FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Members Liaison Keiko Packard,
Harumi Kumagai
Compliance Kunio Hamada, Yoshio Murakami
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Abigail Leonard,
David SatterwhiteEntertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Willem Kortekaas
Food & Beverage Robert Kirschenbaum,
Mehdi Bassiri
Freedom of Press Abigail Leonard
House & Property Peter Langan,
David Satterwhite
Human Resources Willem Kortekaas
Information Technology Albert Siegel
Library, Archives & Workroom
Koichi Ishiyama, Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing Abigail Leonard,
Willem Kortekaas
Professional Activities Tetsuo Jimbo,
David McNeill
Public Relations Rosa Argyropoulos
Publications Gavin Blair, Geoff Tudor
Special Projects Haruko Watanabe
Foreign Press in Japan Robin Harding

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Marunouchi Nijubashi Building 5F
Marunouchi 3-2-3 Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-0005
Tel: (03) 3211-3161 Fax: (03) 3211-3168 fccj.or.jp
Published by the FCCJ All opinions contained within
Number 1 Shimbun are those of the authors. As such,these opinions do not constitute an official positionof Number 1 Shimbun, the editor or the Foreign
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 photo: Phawat Khommai | Dreamstime.com

3

The Front Page

FROM THE PRESIDENTFREEDOM OF THE PRESS NEWS

Report on imprisoned journalists in 2018
By Elana Beiser
DEAR FELLOW MEMBERS,Firstly, I have to beat the drum again
about the Club’s upcoming
GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETING
ON MARCH 20 (WEDNESDAY),STARTING AT 6:30 P.M.
If you are a Regular Member of the
FCCJ, please mark this date in yourcalendar. Even if you don’t plan to attend
the meeting, we will still need Regular
Members to “show up,” so to speak.
The GMM is where Regular Members
vote to approve the Club’s Budget for
the year ahead, as well as deal withmany other resolutions required for
managing the FCCJ.
If you are a Regular Member and you
don’t vote or send a proxy in the days
running up to the March 20 GMM, youwill get a phone call from the officeor the front desk. In fact, you may get
more than one phone call, along withreminder emails.
If you are a Regular Member andhave no interest in playing any partin voting on Club resolutions at the
GMM, well the Board has been thinking
about you, too. A group of Associate
and Regular Members is reviewing
the FCCJ Articles and Bylaws andone matter under consideration iscreating Voting and Non-Voting
Regular Member categories. These twocategories would grant all the same
privileges to current Regular Members,
except one category will have theright to vote, the other won’t. It will
be an entirely optional choice, but
its purpose is to reduce the number
of Regular Members needed forestablishing a quorum.
The irony of this is, to adopt such aresolution, Regular Members whowish to be removed from voting on
FCCJ matters will need to vote on this
FCCJ matter . . .
The drumbeat ends here (for now)
but to all Regular Members I repeat
again that if we don’t form a quorum
on March 20, we can’t pass the Budget;
if we can’t pass the Budget, we can’t
run the Club. The choice is yours.
4

If we don’t form a quorum on March 20,
we can’t pass the Budget; if we can’t passthe Budget, we can’t run the Club.
The choice is yours.
AT THE JANUARY BOARD MEETING,

I invited the Publications Committee
to give a presentation on the Number
1 Shimbun. For those unaware, we nolonger have advertising in the magazine(long story) so it’s costing the Club
around ¥600,000 a month to generatecontent, edit, design, publish, print anddistribute the magazine. In my view,
it’s a mistake to view the magazine asjust a cost, because it fulfils many othertasks as a voice of the Club. Also, I
cannot imagine a press club without apublication, not least in these times, tohighlight attacks on freedom of speech
and the turbulence engulfing journalism,
as well as events happening within theClub itself. (Not to mention that themagazine has won a design award.)
So the Board and the Publications
Committee have been discussing ways
to fund the magazine’s operation.
“Ideas” include introducing a ¥300
monthly subscription fee for all
members; switching to a digital-only
publication to cut out printing anddistribution costs (about ¥300,000of the total); or moving to a quarterly
print magazine with more substantial
content, also reducing print anddistribution costs. I stress, these areideas, though we will need to come up
with some options for the GMM on the
future course of the magazine.
ON ANOTHER TOPIC, THERE is aphenomenon in newsrooms aroundthe world known as the “drive-byeditor.” This is the individual who fires

off a bunch of story directions at areporter’s desk and then walks away,
expecting all the work to be done intheir wake. I’m beginning to identify asimilar phenomenon in the “drive-by
FCCJ member.”
The FCCJ most certainly needs
feedback from members, but if you
have, say, comments about the foodor service, let us know about them.
The General Manager and the F&B
Committee have provided comment
cards to fill in and hand to F&B staff
or the front desk. This way we cancompile comprehensive views fromthe members on how to improve themenu and service, and give thosesuggestions back to the kitchen.
It’s also an opportunity for positive
feedback. Another option for thedrive-by-inclined is to join one of themany committees staffed by volunteer
members that form the backbone of
the FCCJ.
Finally, I’m very happy to announce
that the Board at the February meeting
voted to grant Life Membership
to Sandra Mori. Sandra has been amember of the FCCJ for more than
40 years, during which she has chaired
the Entertainment Committee,
moderated many press conferences,
was instrumental in founding SaturdayNight Live and served twice as a board
member. Please join me in thanking andcongratulating Sandra.
See you in the Club.
– Peter Langan

If you have comments about the food or service,
let us know about them. The GM and the F&B
Committee have provided comment cards to fill inand hand to F&B staff or the front desk.
MARCH 2019

FCCJ

FRESH WAVES OF REPRESSION in China,
Egypt, and Saudi Arabia sustained theglobal crackdown on press freedom
in 2018 for the third consecutive
year. In its annual global survey, theCommittee to Protect Journalists
found at least 251 journalists in jail in
relation to their work.
The majority of those imprisoned
globally – 70 percent – are facing antistate charges such as belonging to or
aiding groups deemed by authorities
as terrorist organizations. The number
imprisoned on charges of false newsrose to 28 globally, compared with nine
just two years ago. Egypt jailed themost journalists on false news charges
with 19, followed by Cameroon with
four, Rwanda with three, and one eachin China and Morocco.
The higher number of prisoners in
China – with 47 behind bars – reflects
the latest wave of persecution of the
Uighur ethnic minority in the Xinjiangregion. At least 10 journalists in China
were detained without charge, all ofthem in Xinjiang, where the United
Nations has accused Beijing of mass
surveillance and detention of up to amillion people without trial.
In the highest-profile example,
Lu Guang, a freelance photographer
and U.S. resident whose work on
environmental and social issues in
China has won awards from the World
Press Photo Foundation and National
Geographic, disappeared in Xinjiang
in early November. Authorities later
confirmed his arrest to his family,
but have not disclosed his location orreason for detaining him.
MORE BROADLY, PRESIDENT XI Jinping
has steadily increased his grip on
power since taking office in 2013; thisyear, authorities stepped up regulationof technology that can bypass thecountry’s infamous firewall, issued
lists of “approved” news outlets, anddisbarred lawyers who represent jailed
journalists, CPJ has found.
In Egypt, at least 25 journalists
are in prison as the administration
FCCJ

MARCH 2019of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has
increasingly arrested journalists andadded them to existing mass trials.
Even after trial, Egyptian authorities
go to transparently ridiculous lengths
to keep critical journalists behind bars.
Saudi Arabia – under intense
scrutiny for the murder of exiled,critical Washington Post columnist
Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul
consulate last October – stepped up
its repression of journalists at home,which CPJ is a partner. Furthermore,
over the past year and half, CPJ has
documented or assisted in the casesof at least seven foreign journalists
seeking asylum in the United States
because of work-related threats at
home, who were held in prolonged
detention by U.S. Immigration andCustoms Enforcement (ICE).
CPJ defines journalists as people
who cover the news or comment on
public affairs in any media, including

For the third consecutive year, every journalist
imprisoned in Turkey is facing anti-state charges
with at least 16 journalists behindbars on Dec. 1. The prisoners include
four female journalists who wrote
about women’s rights in the kingdom,
including the ban on women drivingthat was lifted in June.
Even as Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan has been the fiercest
critic of Saudi Arabia for the murder of
Khashoggi, his government continued
to jail more journalists than any otheron the planet. CPJ found at least
68 journalists jailed for their workin Turkey, which is slightly lower
than previous years. For the third
consecutive year, every journalist
imprisoned in Turkey is facing antistate charges.
Those on the periphery of thejournalistic profession are also
vulnerable. CPJ’s list of jailed
journalists does not include 13 staff
from Gün Printing House, including its
owner, a security guard, and several
machine operators, who were jailed.
Their “crime” is evidently printingÖzgürlükçü Demokrasi, a pro-Kurdish
daily paper that the government took
over and eventually shut down.
IN THE UNITED STATES, wherejournalists encountered hostilerhetoric and fatal violence in 2018,
no journalists were in jail on Dec. 1,
although nine were arrested in thecourse of the year, according to
the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, ofprint, photographs, radio, televisionand online – and includes only thosejournalists it has confirmed have been
imprisoned in relation to their work.
The list is a snapshot of thoseincarcerated at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 1,
2018. Journalists remain on the list
until the organization determines withreasonable certainty that they havebeen released or have died in custody.
The prison census accounts only forjournalists in government custodyand does not include those who havedisappeared or are held captive by
non-state actors.
Other findings from CPJ’s prison
census include:• Ninety-eight percent of jailed
journalists are locals imprisoned by theirown governments.
• 13 percent, or 33, of the jailed
journalists are female, up from 8 percent
last year.
• Freelancers accounted for 30
percent of jailed journalists, in line withrecent years.
• Politics is the riskiest beat, followedby human rights. Those imprisoned forcovering human rights including Wa Lone
and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters reporters
in Myanmar sentenced to seven years
each for violating the Official Secrets
Act because of their work uncovering
military atrocities in Rakhine state. ❶Elana Beiser is editorial director of theCommittee to Protect Journalists.
5Feature: The Auto Industry

None behind bars
By Roger SchrefflerIt was one of those make-or-break moments – Feb. 24, 2010at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
Akio Toyoda, just eight months into his presidency at
Toyota Motor Corp., sat before a congressional committee toanswer questions about fatalities from an accelerator pedal
malfunction in Toyota and Lexus cars sold in the U.S. He wastreated, frankly, like a criminal.
Dennis Kucinich, the congressman from Ohio with presidential aspirations, confronted him about whether he knowingly concealed design flaws which put people’s lives at risk.
Since nearly 90 people had died, it couldn’t have been clearer
where Kucinich was heading with his questioning.
Kucinich wasn’t the only one to ask “gotcha” questions. I
counted at least eight members of the congressional committee in charge who took aim at Toyoda, mostly, not surprisingly, from states like Kucinich’s that didn’t have a Toyota plant.
Scion of the automotive family that bears his name, Toyoda
had a lot on the line. Apart from his presidency – it is customary in Japan for a CEO to take responsibility for a scandal by
resigning – Toyota’s decades-old reputation for quality was
being questioned. And without becoming overly hyperbolic,“Japan Inc.” was on trial since Toyota was and is the most celebrated corporation in Japan.
In the end, Toyota would pay a lot of money – more than $2
billion – to settle the multiple legal claims, including a criminal complaint by the U.S. Justice Department.
Toyoda did all the right things in testifying before Congress: he bowed his head, expressed regret and accepted
responsibility, all customary in Japan. He did everything
except blame Toyota suppliers, including CTS Corp. the one
based near Chicago that used the wrong synthetic rubber forthe accelerator pedal.
CTS Corp. had used a polymer (a resin synthesized from petroleum) that under certain conditions – extremely hot and cold
temperatures – expanded and didn’t revert to its previous form.
In a very small number of cases, the pedal swelled and stuckafter being engaged, sending the car forward at high speeds.
Toyota would eventually recall more than 7 million vehicles
in the U.S. and another 2 million in other markets.

DEATH BY BLOW OUT

The second scandal involved the Ford Explorer, which undercertain conditions – high-speed driving in hot climatic
regions – rolled over after its tires blew out.
More than 270 fatalities and 800 injuries over nearly adecade starting in mid-1990s were linked to tread separation
involving tires manufactured by Nashville-based Bridgestone/Firestone Inc.
Ford blamed the tires. Bridgestone/Firestone blamed the
Explorer’s design: specifically, that the automaker had added
weight, as much as 450 kg, through the model’s various iterations yet didn’t change the specifications of the tires.
Bridgestone/Firestone eventually asked the U.S. National
6

Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to investigate the handling and control characteristics of the Explorer.
NHTSA reported back in February 2002 that the evidence wasinconclusive. A win for Ford? Yes and no.
First, Ford got lucky. More than half of accidents occurredin a handful of states in the southern region of the U.S.
including the Southwest where daytime temperatures often
average 40 degrees Celsius in August. Bridgestone/Firestone
claimed that the tires should have been inflated at 30 psi. The
owner’s manual said 26 psi was sufficient. They went backand forth and back and forth – after the fact.
Second, Ford had a perfect scapegoat in Firestone, the former Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., and may have overplayed
its hand. Twelve years before the 1990 introduction of the
Explorer, which became the best-selling sport-utility vehicle
in the U.S., Firestone was the subject of the largest recall
in the auto industry’s history – 14.5 million tires – and wasforced to pay a substantial fine, leaving the company financially weaker and eventually opening the door for Bridge­
stone to purchase its global operations for a then-record $2.6
billion in 1988. Ford acted as if it was unaware that Bridge­
stone (Tokyo) was calling the shots.
This was all the more ironic considering that when Bridge­
stone incorporated in 1931, Firestone challenged its name,accusing the Kurume-based company of trademark infringement. Firestone lost its challenge because the name “Bridgestone” was not a Firestone rip-off but a transliteration andinversion of the surname of its founder, Shojiro Ishibashi, or“stone bridge”.
Like Toyoda years later, Bridgestone/Firestone’s CEO Masatoshi Ono, the former head of Bridgestone’s Kurume plant,
accepted a congressional invitation to express his “regrets.”
Like Toyoda, he delivered his formal statement in English
and responded to questions through an interpreter. Unlike
the Toyota CEO, he made a disastrous impression and cameacross as inconsistent and evasive.
(Ono, by the way, spoke English. We spent half a day together in Kurume and met twice in Nashville. His English wasgood, but his attempt at Congress to accept responsibility but
not blame was lost in translation to a hostile audience andskeptical public.)
Both Ford and Bridgestone lost money. Different sources
put the losses at more than $1 billion each including recall
costs. More interesting is that Bridgestone/Firestone severed
its nearly 100-year supplier relationship with Ford in May
2001. Bridgestone also moved to close the subsidiary’s Decatur, IL, plant, which produced the tires and which was thecenter of the earlier recall in 1978.
Ford increased the pressure level of the Explorer’s tires
when it revamped the model in 2002.

RECALLING 50 MILLION AIRBAGSThe third scandal centered around an estimated 20-25 deaths
that were attributed to faulty airbags supplied by Takata
which, to quote Automotive News, “exploded, sending metal
MARCH 2019

FCCJ

AP PHOTO/SHUJI KAJIYAMA

A look back at four scandals that shook the Japanese auto industry – and their aftermath.

A sorry sightAir-bag maker Takata Corp’s CEO Shigehisa Takada,center, Senior VP Hiroshi Shimizu, left, and CFO Yoichiro
Nomura, bow at the start of a press conference about thecompany’s product defect and recall, June 2015.
shards and other materials into the passenger compartment.”
Takata’s automotive customers were forced to recall morethan 50 million airbag inflators in the U.S. alone. Those customers include a who’s who of the auto industry, from BMW
and Mercedes in Europe to General Motors and Ford in the
U.S. to Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru in Japan.
The root of the problem was a management decision in
the late 1990s to switch to ammonium nitrate as the propellant for airbag inflators. The material, which was reportedly cheaper than many other propellants used by suppliers,
proved less stable.
Particularly damning, the auto supplier’s engineering division reportedly altered and concealed test results. Neither
did management respond with a sense of urgency. In one ofhis messages to shareholders, Takata president Shigehisa
Takada, another scion, focused on “warranty reserves” and“special losses” while not mentioning the victims.
When the end finally came, it came quickly. In February
2017, Takata entered into a plea agreement with the U.S.
Justice Department whereby it would pay $1 billion in penalties including criminal penalties. The following June saw the
supplier file for bankruptcy and the firm was delisted by the
Tokyo Stock Exchange in July, 2017.
Takata probably would have gone bankrupt sooner exceptthat its main automotive customers couldn’t let it go under
until they got a handle on the nature and extent of the problem and found new suppliers to replace it.

INFLATING MILEAGE RESULTS

In our fourth scandal, no one died. No one was injured. No
carcinogens were emitted into the atmosphere. It came tolight when it was found that Mitsubishi Motors Corp. inflated
mileage claims in its 660cc “kei” car business in Japan to meet
new, more stringent regulations.
And while no one went to jail, several in senior management resigned, including Mitsubishi president Tetsuro
Aikawa, himself a scion, the son of former Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries president and chairman Kentaro Aikawa.
Osamu Masuko, who was chairman and CEO at the time,
did not resign. When we met shortly after the scandal came to
FCCJ

MARCH 2019

light in April 2016, I asked him,
partly as a conversation starter,“Why do you still have a job?”
Masuko revealed that it was
because Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s
former CEO and chairman who
is being held without bail at theTokyo Detention House, madethat a condition for Nissan toextend Mitsubishi a financial lifeline. (Nissan would invest ¥237
billion to acquire a controlling 34
percent stake.)
The revelations that Mitsubishi had inflated mileage-testing
results came just as Masuko waspreparing the next stage of theautomaker’s restructuring –essentially, that it would be able to operate independently
in an auto industry of goliaths like Toyota, Volkswagan andRenault-Nissan alliance.
In the second week of April 2016, just days before he waspreparing to announce record earnings in the automaker’s
then 99-year history, he was shown evidence that Mitsubishi’s engineering group had falsified fuel-economy testingdata on more than 625,000 minicars sold in Japan, a majorityof which were sold as Nissans.
Note that 16 years earlier, in July 2000, Mitsubishi and its
truck-making subsidiary, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp.,
were caught covering up defects dating back to the 1990s, triggering a police investigation, multiple recalls and eventually thearrest and conviction of several executives, all of whom received
suspended sentences. A truck driver and pedestrian died.
The scandal was big news in Japan and the prelude to
Masuko’s involvement with the company, first as a representative director from Mitsubishi Corp., one of the automaker’s
major shareholders, and then as president and CEO.
Masuko, who had spent 11 years restructuring Mitsubishi– bringing it back from the brink after DaimlerChrysler AG
withdrew its investment in 2005 – had to start over, whichmeant finding a partner. Now, with Mitsubishi’s benefactor
in jail, who knows what comes next?

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Although the incident tarnished Toyota’s brand, the damage
from the sticky-pedal fiasco wasn’t long term. Toyoda, nine
years later, has emerged as a strong chief executive.
Bridgestone replaced Ono as Bridgestone/Firestone CEO
in October 2000. Nearly 20 years later, the company is theworld’s number-one tire maker and exceedingly profitable.
In fact, it is the most profitable automotive supplier in Japan,
with an operating margin exceeding 10 percent.
Takata ceased to exist in April 2018. Shigehisa Takada
resigned to make way for the sale of its assets to a competitor.
Mitsubishi, despite tensions between Nissan and Renault,
is 80 percent back to record earnings. Masuko, who joined
the automaker from Mitsubishi Corp. and turned 70 in February, could very well stay on for several more years.
Carlos Ghosn remains in jail. ❶Roger Schreffler is a veteran business reporter who focuses on the auto

sector, and a former FCCJ president.

7

Feature: Technology

Friend or foe:
Artificial Intelligencein the newsroom

HOW AI IS USED IN JOURNALISM
Automated journalism: producing stories from data. Initially it wasused in reporting on sports and financial news. It can free journalists
from routine tasks, improving efficiency and cost-cutting. AP uses
Wordsmith software to turn financial data into stories. The Washington Post uses in house-developed technology Heliograf for reportingon sports events and electoral races.
Organizing workflow: tracking down breaking news, aggregating
and organizing news using tags and links, moderating comments andusing automated voice transcription. The New York Times uses the
Perspective API tool developed by Jigsaw (Alphabet) to moderate
readers’ comments. The Reuters Connect platform for journalists
displays all Reuters content, including the archive, and content frommedia partners around the world in real time.

ai

AI may be repl c ng journ l sts in mundanejobs, but it could also be the s v or of truejourn l sm in an incre s ngly complex world.
By Maria Teresa RonderosM

any large newsrooms and news agencies have forsome time been relegating sports, weather, stock
exchange movements and corporate performancestories to computers. One reason is that machines can be more
rigorous and comprehensive than some reporters. Another isthat, unlike many journalists who often single-source stories,
software can import data from various sources, recognize
trends and patterns and, using Natural Language Processing, put those trends into context, constructing sophisticatedsentences with adjectives, metaphors and similes. A program,for example, can now convincingly report on crowd emotions
in a tight soccer match.
These developments are why many in the journalistic profession fear that Artificial Intelligence will leave them without a job. But, if instead of fearing it, journalists embrace AI,
it could become the savior of the trade – making it possible
for them to better cover the increasingly complex, globalized
and information-rich world we live in.
Intelligent machines can turbo-power journalists’ reporting, creativity and ability to engage audiences. Following predictable data patterns and programmed to “learn” variationsin these patterns over time, an algorithm can help reporters
arrange, sort and produce content at a speed never thoughtpossible. It can systematize data to find a missing link in an
investigative story. It can identify trends and spot the outlier
among millions of data points that could be the beginnings ofa great scoop. For example, a media outlet can continuously
feed public procurement data into an algorithm which has theability to cross-reference this data against companies sharing
the same address. Perfecting this system could give reporters
many clues as to where corruption may be happening.
Not only can intelligent computers analyze huge amountsof data to aid timely investigations, they can also help source
and fact-check stories from the crowd to see if contributions
are reliable. According to a 2017 report from Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center, several media outlets in the U.S.
are already using AI for fact checking. Reuters, for example,
is using News Tracer to track breaking news on social media
and verify the integrity of tweets. Serenata de Amor, a groupof technology enthusiasts and journalists from Brazil, uses a
robot named Rosie to track every reimbursement claimed by8

the country’s members of Congress and highlights the reasons that make some of the expenditures suspicious.
There are many other ways in which algorithms are helping
journalists, from making rough cuts of videos, to recognizing voice patterns and identifying faces in a crowd. They canbe programmed to chat with readers (chatbots) and answer
queries. The tricky part is that this process cannot happen
without a human journalist present who, with a goal in mind,
asks relevant questions about the data. Reporters and editors
need to learn fast how these systems operate and how they
can use them to enhance their journalism.
Most journalists in the world do not have access to a team ofprogrammers or data scientists to help design and build theirprojects. Collaboration is the answer. Small newsrooms andfreelancers can make up for the lack of resources by teaming
up with software developers to help build a more permanentcollaboration. They can also become perceptive in spotting
the many open-source search and analytics tools available.
Communication between journalists and techies is not agiven. It needs a lot of learning from both sides and sometrial and error. With ongoing technological development,journalists now have an ever-expanding toolkit in which tohold power to account. With this increased capacity to listen
to their communities and identify their needs, it would be atremendous waste not to try.

Ethical Challenges

The readers’ editor of the Guardian, Paul Chadwick, writing
about the relationship between journalism and Artificial Intelligence, proposes a new clause for the newspaper’s code of ethics.
“Software that ‘thinks’ is increasingly useful, but it does notnecessarily gather or process information ethically,” he warns.
“When using Artificial Intelligence to augment your journalism, consider its compatibility with the values of this code.”
Journalists have to be aware that algorithms may lie or
mislead. They have been programmed by humans, who havebiases, and logical patterns may lead to the wrong conclusions. This means journalists will always need to check resultswith their century-old verification techniques: cross-checking sources, comparing documents, doubting their findings.
Transparency is another must for journalism in this new
era of machine intelligence.
“The biggest stumbling block for the entrance of AI into
MARCH 2019

FCCJ

“TRANSPARENCY, A BASICJOURNALISTIC VALUE,IS OFTEN AT ODDS WITHARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”
newsrooms is transparency. Transparency, a basic
journalistic value, is often at odds with Artificial
Intelligence, which usually works behind the scenes,”
says Nausica Renner, digital editor of the Columbia
Journalism Review.
Media should let the audience know what personal
data they are collecting if they want to remain credible. Despite the powerful new toys allowing themto cater precisely to their audiences’ taste, editors
should also strive to inform users about what they
don’t want to know. The public interest is still the
media’s business and the key to its survival.
By the same token, investigative reporters should
do their best to explain how they are using algorithms
to find patterns or process evidence for a story if theywant to be different from the manipulators and demagogues who secretly collect data for use as a commercial or political weapon. Moreover, healthy journalism
should continue to bring to life those silenced voices
and intractable issues around which no one has systematically collected information or built data sets.
In the end, while it is true that AI enables journalism as never before, it is also true that this brings newchallenges for learning and accountability. Without
journalistic clarity, all this technology will not leadto a well-informed society. Without ethics, intelligent
technology could herald journalism’s demise. Without
clear purposes, transparent processes and the public
interest as a compass, journalism will lose the credibility of people, no matter how many charts, bots andwhistles you adorn it with. ❶María Teresa Ronderos, from Semana, Colombia’s leading

news magazine, recently served as director of the Open Society
Foundation’s Program on Independent Journalism. This piece wasoriginally published on the Medium page of the OSF program, andis reprinted with permission.

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Tracking news on social media: analyzing real time and historical data,
identifying influencers and engaging with audiences. AP uses Newswhip to monitor social media trends and increase engagement.
Engaging with audiences: Quartz Bot studio’s chatbot app allows
users to text questions about news events, people, or places, and theapp replies with content it believes is be relevant to them. Others,
like the Guardian, include chatbots for Facebook Messenger. The BBC
used bots to help cover the EU referendum. The AfriBOT project,
one of the Innovate Africa grant winners, by the European Journalism Centre and The Source (Namibia and Zimbabwe), are developing
an open source newsbot “to help African news organizations deliver
personalized news and engage more effectively with audiences via
messaging platforms.”
Automated fact-checking: allows journalists a speedy fact checkof public statements or claims. Chequebot is used by Chequeado inArgentina; Full Fact UK and partners are developing an automatedfact-checking engine that “will spot claims that have already beenfact-checked in new places; and it will automatically detect andcheck new claims using Natural Language Processing and structured
data.” The Duke Reporter’s Lab in the US developed the tool ClaimBuster to deliver politically meaningful claims to media and, in 2017,
launched a hub for automated fact-checking projects. Factmata in
the UK is also developing an automated fact-checking tool.
Analyzing large data bases: software crunches data and looks forpatterns, changes or anything unusual. Reuters’ Lynx Insight goes
through massive data sets and provides journalists with results andbackground information. OCCRP’s Crime Pattern Recognition uses
technology that analyzes large databases of documents for similarcorruption-related crimes and links between involved parties.
Image recognition: technology that recognises objects, places,
human faces and even sentiment in images. The New York Times
uses Amazon’s Rekognition API to identify members of congressin photos. Any user can test Google’s Vision API image recognition
technology for free.
Video production: automatically creates scripts from news articles
and produces narrated rough cuts of short video pieces from video
footage. Wibbitz software is used by USA Today, Bloomberg and NBC.
Researchers at Stanford University are developing an automatedvideo editing tool.

9Series: Profile

Kathrin Erdmann
By David McNeill

RODRICO REYES MARIN

K

10

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leans toward social issues. “I’dathrin Erdmann has
like to do stories on women,
been in Japan for less“I’D LIKE TO DO STORIES ON
on poverty and how homelessthan six months but has
WOMEN, ON POVERTY AND HOW
people really live.” She wants
already had her share of surHOMELESS PEOPLE REALLY LIVE.”
to look at businesswomen who
prises. Take public prosecutors.
buy men in host bars and says
In her native Germany, reportstories about Japan’s kawaii culers expect them to give detailed
ture are popular back home. She recently visited a fashion
briefings of ongoing cases. “Here, they say just ‘no comment’,”show, the first ARD correspondent in 12 years to do so.
she laughs, recalling her first calls to stonewalling prosecutors
on the detention of Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s defrocked boss. “If
ERDMANN IS RELUCTANT TO deploy the usual, sometimes cliyou’re talking about a democracy, it is really shocking thatchéd historical comparisons between Germany and her new
they don’t respond.”
host country. “I think it’s too complicated,” she says, of theThen there is immigration, which Germany knows somediscomforting legacy of World War II. “Nobody understands
thing about too: It has fielded over 1.4 million asylum appliwhy Japan has such difficulties with the past.” Still, the pastcations since Chancellor Angela Merkel resisted demands to
can’t be completely avoided: “As a correspondent you can’t
close the country’s borders in 2015. Erdmann doesn’t underchoose,” she says, noting that she has already been snagged
estimate the difficulties of accommodating such a tsunami offor stories on comfort women.
foreigners. “It took a long time; we had a lot of problems with
Not surprisingly, perhaps, given German’s nuclear-phobic
refugees and still have, but we understood that they have toreputation, Erdmann was invited to visit Fukushima soon after
speak the language, and we have to make it easy for them toshe arrived. The resulting look at
find a job.”
the cleanup from Japan’s 2011
She sees no such system here.
disastrous triple meltdown was“In Japan, [refugees and immi“more or less” a promotion tour
grants] have to learn Japanese
but she says that’s perfectly natuthemselves; there are no proral. “If I were a foreign journalgrams to integrate them andist in Germany, of course, I would
learn the customs – and this is
not expect them to show me themuch more important here. Thiscountry’s weak points.” Still, thecountry needs immigration.”technical complexity of the story
Erdmann says the missing ingremeans she is dreading a Marchdient is political leadership. “You11 deadline. “I would love to do ahave to really change the minds
human story about someone whoof people. This has to come fromhas been displaced instead.”the politicians but they are not
Like many Japan-based forreally interested in attracting
eign correspondents, Erdmann often finds herself busier
immigrants. My impression is that they only see them as secdealing with stories about its isolated neighbor, North Korea.
ond-class people.”
Last October, she went there to report. “I had a lot of fun,” shesays, recalling a “very good” cappuccino in Pyongyang and
ERDMANN COVERS JAPAN AND a large chunk of East Asia,
a trip to the mountains. “People were singing, dancing, andincluding Korea and Taiwan, for ARD, Germany’s powerfulthey had a barbecue. It was another face of North Korea. Of
consortium of regional public broadcasters. A Berliner, shecourse, I know it’s a difficult country but I could only reportstudied politics in the city before joining NDR (Northernwhat I saw.”
German Broadcasting) as a freelancer in 2005. NDR put her
Japan and Germany could still learn a lot from each other,on half-time staff in 2011. The Tokyo bureau is her first fullshe says. While Merkel is criticized for accepting so manytime position.
Syrian refugees, Erdmann thinks that on balance the openThe decision to come halfway across the world wasn’t easy,border policy will be good for Germany. “On the other hand,she says, during an interview at ARD’s office in the upscale
I appreciate very much this deep culture and tradition inresidential district of Shoto, just around the corner from theJapan. In some ways, we gave up on that in Germany.” Thehome of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. For one thing, she had toimportant thing, she says, is to show respect to the placeleave her partner behind in Germany. “I cannot ask someone
you’re reporting. “We all have our own personal interest but
to give up and follow me here. By the time we would go backultimately you just have to report the story.” ❶he would be in his mid-50s.”
Erdmann hopes her efforts will bring a fresh perspectivefrom Asia to her millions of German listeners. The focus ofDavid McNeill writes for the Irish Times and the Economist, and teaches
her predecessors – all men – she says, was economics; she
media literacy at Hosei and Sophia Universities.

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Feature: Where news is madeA packed meeting
Left to right, Fred Varcoe (freelance), Abby Leonard (freelance),
Yuka Ito (PAC), co-chair Teddy Jimbo (Video News),
Akiko Saikawa (PAC), co-chair David McNeill (The Economist),
Ken Moritsugu (AP), Roger Schreffler (WardsAuto).

Nabbingthenewsmakers
By Julian RyallA

foreign correspondents’ club that lacks a hard-driving andfast-acting committee dedicated to bringing in speakers toaddress the most pressing and newsworthy issues of theday, David McNeill reckons, is about as much use as the proverbial
chocolate teapot.
Joint chair of the FCCJ’s Professional Activities Committee (PAC)and a correspondent for the Economist, McNeill has served on theboard and the Club’s Freedom of the Press Committee as well asediting the Number 1 Shimbun, but considers PAC to be the heart ofwhat the Club is about. “What are we if we’re not a fully functioning club that facilitates the work of journalists?” McNeill said.
The 12 member-strong committee is charged with consistently
delivering the people and issues that the Club’s members turninto column inches or video footage, he says, although he admits
12

Inviting those in the headlines to face
the questions of journalist Members is oneof the core elements of the FCCJ. Meet
the Professional Activities Committee –the team that’s responsible for the lineup.

that is rarely as straightforward as it might be. “PAC ismade up of working journalists who vote on events. If it
is working well, it brings in speakers that are of use to
the Club’s members,” he said. “If it doesn’t do that, thenmembers of the FCCJ cannot be plugged in to what isgoing on in Japan and the region.”
Members of the committee meet once a month topropose speakers for the weeks ahead, although they
communicate recommendations via e-mail when abreaking news story requires swift action to arrange fora speaker to address the Club.
In February, for example, the committee’s discussions
led to invitations being extended to Denny Tamaki, thegovernor of Okinawa, to speak after the prefecture-widereferendum on U.S. bases, and to the “combative” newlawyer who has been taken on to defend Carlos Ghosn in
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his legal struggles with Nissan Motor Co.
The press conference in January with Ghosn’s previous lawyer – with McNeill as moderator – was one of
the best-attended in the FCCJ’s history. With the world’s
media watching and the FCCJ logo prominent in the
background, that sort of publicity can only be a goodthing. The committee continues to try to get Greg Kelly – who is accused of abetting Ghosn’s alleged illegal
actions – to speak at the Club, along with officials fromthe prosecutor’s office for the other side of the story.
THERE IS A STANDING request in with the government
for someone from the cabinet to speak at the Club,
although McNeill admits it has been a “real struggle” toconvince the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe to engage with the foreign media since he returned
to power in 2012. “We have never had Abe since hewas elected in 2012; in fact, we have not had [Finance
Minister] Taro Aso or any foreign minister since then,”
McNeill said. “We have put in a lot of effort to get themto come, but to no avail. It now feels like a boycott.”
It is possible that the government considers the FCCJ
to be in decline, with an ageing and shrinking core offull-time correspondents, more freelancers and bloggers writing for an online audience, but they almost
certainly prefer scripted events that they are able tocontrol – unlike the press conference on Sept. 25, 2014
in which Eriko Yamatani, chair of the National Public
Safety Commission, ended up “like a rabbit in the headlights,” McNeill said.
Arriving with the expectation of discussing North
Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese nationals, she wasinstead quizzed on the recent revelation of her close
links to Zaitokukai, described by McNeill himself in areport on the event as “perhaps Japan’s most toxic racist group.” The result was not the choreographed reception she could have expected at the National Press Club,but an example of how the media operates in most partsof the world with a strong press.
McNeill says he was “astonished” when another seniorpolitician demanded all the questions that he would faceafter his speech in advance. And was not embarrassed at
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MARCH 2019

PHOTOS: YOSHIKAZU TSUNOA SENIOR POLITICIAN DEMANDED ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT HE WOULD FACE AFTERHIS SPEECH IN ADVANCE. AND WAS NOT EMBARRASSED AT MAKING THE DEMAND.

Studying newsmakers
At a PAC meeting, committee members consider
the newsmakers. On the right, a member who
missed our portrait, Martin Koelling.
making the demand. Instead of free-for-all press conferences, thegovernment has introduced “surgical strikes” in the form of invitation-only meetings with bureau chiefs, often off the record. The
downsides are obvious; most FCCJ members cannot access thesesenior government ministers and invitations can suddenly stop if
the correspondent is perceived to have stepped out of line.

McNEILL SAYS HE HAS the utmost admiration for the FCCJ’s PAC
staff, who are charged with reaching out to potential speakers –and cajoling those who are reluctant to step out of their comfort
zone. “We have superb staff who are brilliant at what has to bequite a demanding job,” he said. “Nominating these people is theeasy part; they have to do all the tough stuff.”
Akiko Saikawa, who oversees PAC events as media and press
conferences liaison manager, plays down the scale of the task she
regularly faces. “The hardest part is that we get so many requests
from members suggesting people to come and speak at the Club:
we can only have so many events,” she said.
“It is surprisingly easy to get some speakers to come, but on other occasions we have to work really hard to try to persuade them tocome. In some cases, it can take more than a year,” Saikawa said.
“At that point, they often agree because we have worn them down;
they know we will just keep calling them until they agree. I thinksome of them come just so we will stop calling them.”
Along with Carlos Ghosn’s lawyer, a particularly memorablepress conference for McNeill was David Kaye, the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the rightto freedom of opinion and expression, because it shone a newlight on the on-going issue of Japan’s closed press club system andquestions over the independence of the domestic media.
But there are still some high-profile targets for the committee
to convince to come to the Club. “It would be great to have theEmperor or the Crown Prince – although that will likely never happen,” said McNeill. “But Abe would be a very important event for
us and there is absolutely no reason why he could not come. We’realso obviously very keen to get Ghosn here just as soon as we can –that would be huge for us.” ❶Julian Ryall is Japan correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.
13

Club news

Photographer members

Truth, lies and Shock and Awe
Rob Reiner trains his lens on a true story about journalism,
jingoism and the drums of war.
By Tim Hornyak
THERE’S A BRILLIANT SCENE in the
1970s U.S. TV show All in the Family
where Archie Bunker, a “lovablebigot,” meets his daughter’s hippy
boyfriend for the first time. Looking
over the headlines in a newspaper,
they immediately begin arguing
about the Vietnam War. When theboyfriend calls the conflict illegal andimmoral, Bunker tells him, “You are ameathead… Dead from the neck up!”He then breaks into an overpowering
rendition of “God Bless America,”
causing the boyfriend to storm out.
Rob Reiner, the actor who played theboyfriend, is still protesting America’s
overseas wars. He visited Japan in
February to promote his latest film, thetrue story of Knight Ridder journalists
Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel
who probed the official justifications
for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The title, Shock and Awe, refers to thebattle plan concept developed at the
National Defense University that was
repeated by U.S. officials and parroted
by U.S. news media.
Apart from directing, Reiner stars as
Knight Ridder editor John Walcott, who
has described the film as practically aword-for-word accurate representationof actual events. Reiner, known foriconic films like Stand By Me, When
Harry Met Sally… and This Is Spinal Tap,
visited the FCCJ to talk not only about
why he wanted to make a movie about
the George W. Bush administration but
also today’s news media landscape.
“I was of draft age during theVietnam War, and as we were running
up to the war in Iraq in 2003 I wasappalled that in my lifetime we would
be engaging in war based on lies,”
said Reiner. “We knew that there
was no connection between Saddam
Hussein and 9/11. We knew that there
was no evidence of weapons of mass
destruction, WMD. And we knewthat the administration was using
the fear of the American public ingoing forward and invading Iraq
based on the ‘Project for a New
14

nominated court-martial drama A Few
Good Men. “It’s an important story toremember right now, assuming you
can remember anything after being
beaten over the head with talking
points for 90 minutes,” Rolling Stone’s
David Fear wrote. “The title is amisnomer.”
But Reiner didn’t seem to be phased
when discussing his hopes for a better
response in Japan, where the film wasslated to debut in March 2019 under
the title Kishatachi (journalists). He
noted that, in a happy irony, journalists
like Landay and Strobel are no longer
media pariahs, thanks to the rise ofa reality TV star to the presidency.
Reiner said the U.S. news media has
been “bifurcated” between outlets witha pro-Donald Trump agenda and thosethat have returned to their watchdog
role vis-à-vis the White House.
“CNN, NBC, Washington Post, NewYork Times are holding the president
accountable and they’re working very

“I believe mainstream media was not doing thedue diligence it needed to do at the time”
American Century’, [a 1997 statementof principles] written by a bunch of
neocons at a conservative think tank.”
THE FILM INCLUDES A 2002 clip of
then-Vice President Dick Cheneytelling an audience, “Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein
now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Mainstream U.S. media swallowed
this, hook, line and sinker, ignoring
investigative reports written by Landay
and Strobel, portrayed in the film by
Woody Harrelson and James Marsden,
respectively. The jingoist chorus forinvasion grew as overwhelming as
Bunker’s singing. The result, of course,
was the fall of the Iraq regime and,according to the website Iraq Body
Count, the violent deaths of over
280,000 civilians and combatants. U.S.
weapons inspectors found no militarily
significant WMD.
The war left a tragic, divisive
legacy that was reflected in the film’s
production. Some U.S. news media
outlets refused to sell footage for use
in Shock and Awe. Predictably enough,many American viewers didn’t warm
to it either, with critics comparing it
unfavorably to Reiner’s 1992 Oscar-

Lens craft

Somin-sai festival
Men at Kokusekiji, Oshu, after bathing in the river,Feb. 11. The ancient festival is to pray for good
harvests and the prevention of climate disasters.
by Richard Atrero de Guzman/SIPA
A long line
Left, the Imperial family greets wellwishers from the balcony of the palace on
the Emperor’s birthday, Dec. 23 last year.
by Albert Siegel

hard at trying to get to the truth,”
Reiner said. “That didn’t happen in
the run-up to his election. I believe
mainstream media was not doing thedue diligence it needed to do at thetime, for a couple of reasons. One is I
don’t think they thought he was going
to win, and two, quite frankly, money.
[Former CBS Corp. CEO] Les Moonves
put it quite succinctly. He said ‘Donald
Trump is bad for the country. He’s
good for CBS.’”All in the Family also aired on CBS,and no doubt Archie Bunker would
have cheered Trump’s refrain of “fakenews.” The anti-war boyfriend though,would probably respond with a linefrom Shock and Awe that Reiner’s
Walcott delivers to his troops: “Whenthe government says something,
you only have one question to ask:
Is it true?” If American news media
today does its job, future scholars ofjournalism may look back and say,“Those were the days.” ❶Lion dance
Below left, a street performance for
Chinese New Year in Yokohama enters arestaurant, Feb. 5.
by Tomohiro Ohsumi
More icy bathing
Below right, Shinto believers pourpurifying cold water over themselves at
Kanda shrine, Tokyo, Jan, 26.
by Yoshikazu Tsuno

Tim Hornyak is a freelance writer who has

worked for IDG News, CNET News, Lonely
Planet and other media. He is the author of
Loving the Machine: The Art and Science ofJapanese Robots.
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Club NewsIN MEMORIAM

Life Member James P. Colligan“Just as he always was while sitting
at a table in the Main Bar, Jim wasoften the grownup in the room. He
was measured, polite, intelligent andempathetic with a subtly wicked senseof humor.”
Coming from what he described asa working class family in the ethnic
mixing bowl that was Pittsburgh, Jim
Colligan had an explanation for hishealthy lungs despite exposure to
the tobacco smoke that used to fill
the Club’s bars: In the American steel
capital he’d awakened each morning tofind soot on the family’s window sills.

He was measured,polite . . . with a subtly
wicked sense of humor.

JAMES P. COLLIGAN, a Roman
Catholic priest and FCCJ Life
Member who died at 90 on Jan. 31
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hadsomething in common with Cold
War-era journalistic contemporaries
who represented governmentfunded news organizations ranging
from VOA and Stars and Stripes to
Komsomolskaya Pravda and Novoye
Vremya, and who did not wish to be –or to be seen as – anything less thanfirst class correspondents.
16

Colligan was determined to show thatchurch-sponsored journalism was thereal deal. Representing UCAN (Union
of Catholic Asian News) and then CNS(Catholic News Service), he threw
himself into both reporting good stories
and participating in the professional
activities that help make good stories
possible. He served three terms as chairof the Foreign Press in Japan and waselected to the FCCJ’s board.
“Jim was on my board,” recalls Mike
“Buck” Tharp, Club president 1989-90.

COLLIGAN WENT TO COLLEGE at
Duquesne University and enjoyed thedating scene. He even came close to
marrying one woman – but before
that could happen he realized he had areligious vocation. Of course, Catholic
priests must take vows of chastity andso, he recalled, he “said a sad goodbye”
and went off to the seminary of the
Maryknoll Society.
In 1955, after his ordination, Father
Colligan was posted to Japan as a
Maryknoll missioner. He studied
Japanese and carried out parish priest
duties in Sapporo and Kyoto parishes.
For four years, he was a pastor andkindergarten principal in the coal-mining
town of Mikasa in Hokkaido. At the sametime, he taught English at Hokkaido
University’s Iwamizawa Division.
He took time out to study journalism
back in the U.S., at Syracuse University,then returned to Japan as a journalist.
Besides writing for the Catholic news
organizations, he also did a column
for a Protestant publication, Japan
Christian Quarterly. He edited a bookcalled The Image of Christianity inJapan: A Survey. A highly accomplishedphotographer, he published a bookof photos of the 1981 visit to Japan byPope John Paul II.
Non-religious news stories hecovered included the 1992 visit of
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FCCJ

Wedding vows
Jim officiates amarriage in hisrole in the parish
President George H.W. Bush. Whenthe president fell ill at a state dinner,
Colligan was there.
He was a fixture evenings in theMain Bar, where he exhibited his
artistic talent by constantly sketching
cartoons on the backs of drink
coasters. He and the late Richard Pyleof the AP “scribbled lots of cartoons,often funny ones,” recalls former Clubboard member Toshio Aritake. Some ofthose cartoons, signed “Japacol,” madeit into Number 1 Shimbun.
“HE SHOWED THAT DRY wit,” agrees
Tharp. “He drew one for us –‘The
Buckboard’ with me at the reins andcaricatures of our board members in
the wagon.”
A topic he kept returning to in
conversation was the pigeons thatmade sleep in his Tokyo apartment
difficult and repeatedly fouled his
balcony. To hear him talk, you’dimagine he went after them relentlessly
but haplessly – the way Wile E. Coyote
pursued the Roadrunner.
Club colleagues didn’t hesitate toconsult him on the relevant theology.
Animal lover Mieko Yasuhara, longtime
translator of the Asahi Shimbun’s “Vox
Populi” column, was given to feeding
the pigeons on her own balcony. A
graduate of a Catholic school, she
asked whether cats have immortalsouls – and if so, whether Colligan
would baptize her cat Kobayakawa.
“No,” he replied, unfazed.
“It was all good fun,” remembers
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MARCH 2019

Yasuhara’s husband, former Club
president Roger Schreffler. “The Club
had an auction for some reason, I can’t
recall why or when. Jim donated morethan a hundred of his coasters. I do
remember that I bought one on which
he had drawn a pigeon.”
Although he seldom wore a clericalcollar in the Club, Colligan, with hischiseled Irish looks, could have been
Hollywood casting’s version of ahandsome priest. As Schreffler puts
it, “he was dapper, the most eligible
bachelor some might say.” Or, as Colligan
himself would have protested, ineligible.
Often asked to handle delicate Club
legal issues, Colligan liked to say, tongue
in cheek, that he did so in reliance on“canon law.” In one such instance in
1993, recounted in the official Club
history, president Lew Simons asked
Colligan to deal with a dispute overregular membership qualifications.
ONE IRATE MEMBER “PROMPTLY sent
Simons a fax complaining that the
problem should be handled by a regularcorrespondent and not ‘by a fucking
missionary.’ Simons handed themessage to Colligan, who was sitting
next to him in the bar. Colligan smiledand said, ‘No, no. I’m the unfucking
missionary.’ Colligan eventually wasable to defuse the issue.”Even though his eyes might twinkle
when he referred to his priestly vows,
he was dead serious about them. That
was a major factor when, ultimately,
Colligan-style journalism apparently
became too probing to suit somesuperiors in his religious order. The
work that upset Maryknoll bosses
was on a topic less often addressedat that time than it is now: priests
aggressively indulging their sexuality.
“Maryknoll priests who have takenvows of chastity and fidelity to the
Church are bound to uphold thatteaching, both in word and deed,” hewrote in a 1991 article in the Catholicmagazine Crisis, in which he cited aseries of cases of Maryknoll priests
behaving otherwise. “As more cases likethis become known, priests everywhere
become targets of suspicion on theparts of mothers and parishioners.”
Criticizing priests and officials“who take a light view of the problem,”he argued that “one reason for
their neglect and acquiescence is

Maryknoll’s philosophy of liberation
theology.” The society “has actively
promoted the idea that social justiceis more important than personal
morality.” He added, “I believe in social
justice myself, but not to the point
where it takes away responsibility for
individual behavior.”
REPORTING ON QUESTIONS OF thatsort more than a decade later would
bring Pulitzer Prize recognition to
the Boston Globe and, still later, win
the movie Spotlight the Oscar for best
picture. But such was the level ofconcern about Colligan’s challengethat his superiors ordered him home
for a psychiatric examination.
When talking with fellow FCCJ
members, he compared the experience
to something that would have been
inflicted on a Soviet dissident. He
described his stay at the order’s New
York-area base as akin to house arrest.
Eventually, in 1997, Colligan wangled
a career-capping assignment to
Los Angeles. Jim Palmer, former AP
photojournalist, and his wife Pamela
were among Tokyo friends who had
already moved to L.A. Pam Palmer
relates that they helped him find anapartment and that he had “a swelltime.” Colligan led Sunday services ata couple of churches and, in his spare
hours, rode his bicycle, hung out with
the Palmers, Tharp and ex-UPI Tokyo
correspondent John Needham andbecame a champion (in his age group)
skyscraper climber.
He returned to Maryknoll’sheadquarters in Ossining, NY, to livein the society’s retirement home for acouple of years. Then, after cerebral
incidents and an eventual diagnosisof dysphasia, he moved back to
Pittsburgh – by then a city cleaned
up, gentrified and quite pleasant.
His final two years, during which hewent silent on social media, werespent in assisted living there as someof his many relatives helped lookafter their beloved brother and uncle.
“The adventurous life that he led wassomething that touched my entire
family,” a nephew, Shawn MacIntyre,said in a eulogy. ❶Bradley Martin, in his 42nd year as an Asia
correspondent, is also the author of a thriller
set in a near-future North Korea.
17

Club news

FCCJ EXHIBITION

NEW MEMBERS

Kakejiku art

REGULAR MEMBERSSIMON DENYER is the Washington Post’s bureau chief for

Hanging scrolls

Japan and the Koreas. He arrived in Japan last summer asa refugee from China’s pollution and Internet censorship,
after five years in Beijing. He also spent more than sevenyears in India, for the Post and Reuters, and managed
to get a book out of the experience: Rogue Elephant:
Harnessing the Power of India’s Unruly Democracy. He wonan Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of China’s
Internet censorship and digital surveillance, a National Headliners Awardand a Human Rights Press Award for coverage of Tibet. He also covered the
Libyan uprising against Gaddafi and Ukrainian civil war for the Post, andwas president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New
Delhi. He worked as Reuters Washington bureau chief during the Obamaadministration, as Pakistan & Afghanistan bureau chief shortly after 9/11,
and in Nairobi, New York and London for Reuters text and television. Born
in Portsmouth, and a devoted Pompey fan, he now lives in another port city,
Yokohama, with his wife and daughter, and still plays football and cricket at
every possible opportunity, if not always very well.

A total of 33 designers, selectedby the designers’ association DAS,
display new takes on Gifu’s traditional
kakejiku (Japanese hanging scrolls).
DAS believes that kakejiku are oneof the best interior decoration
choices for today’s art lovers (withextra advantages of being light andcompact). The exhibition’s aim is
to continue to inspire new kakejiku
reflecting different lifestyles allover the world – and to promote abeautiful craft. ❶Designers: Motodugu Araki, Junko Inagaki,
Shinsaku Inoue, Takako Imatani, Hiroshi Ira,
Dairoku Oka, Miyoko Kawamura, Kazuo
Kimura, Hiroko Koshino, Tadahiro Sakamoto,
Hitoshi Sasaki, Kunio Sato, Takahiro Shima,
Akihito Mizu, Giacomo Valentini, Shinnosuke
Sugizaki, Yoshinori Sengoku, Toshihiko
Daimon, Yukichi Takada, Zenmaru Takahashi,
Akihiko Tamura, Masahiko Tsubota, Yoshihiro
Noguchi, Shigeki Hattori, Masaki Hisatani,
Takeshi Fukuda, Takashi Fujita, Riko Honta,
Yoshiho Mawatari, Haruko Mitori, Akiko
Miyako, Takao Yamada, Yoji Yamamoto.

“WE’RE TAKING THE INITIATIVE IN APPOINTING
A GREATER NUMBER OF WOMEN. CURRENTLY
ABOUT 20 PERCENT OF OUR GOVERNMENT’S
MANAGERIAL ROLES BELONG TO WOMEN . . .
AND I BELIEVE THIS DIVERSITY LEADS TO AHIGHER QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT THAT BETTERSERVES ITS PEOPLE.”

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, on what her government isdoing to improve what she called Japan’s “truly shameful”
gender gap ranking. At an FCCJ press conference, Feb. 16.

18

NEW IN THE LIBRARYSHINJI INADA is the Foreign News Section editor of
the Asahi Shimbun. He joined the paper in 1992 and held
positions in Gifu and Nagoya before joining the Foreign
News section at the Tokyo head office in 1998. His
overseas roles have included bureau chief in Tehran from1999 to 2001, a stint as correspondent in London from2004 to 2007 and bureau chief in Paris from 2010 to 2014.
He has been with the Foreign News Section since 2015.
YUKO TAKEO reports on the economy for Bloomberg

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Please send your story ideas tono.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp, and be sure
to note whether you have (or haveaccess to) visuals.

Our rates are ¥20 per published word

MARCH 2019

FCCJ

News, and is currently focused on covering the Ministryof Finance and the Bank of Japan. Since joining
Bloomberg in 2013, she has covered the Japanese stock
market, Japan’s giant pension fund GPIF, and various
corporate news. She returns to the FCCJ after being a
student member back in 2011. Born in Tokyo, Yuko is a
graduate of Sophia University and the London School of
Economics and Political Science.

REINSTATEMENT (REGULAR)
Stefan J. Wagstyl, Financial Times/
Nikkei Asian Review
PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALISTASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Takao Nagatake, Chunichi Shimbun
Kenichi Sakuma, Makino PublishingCo., Ltd.
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Goya Furukawa, Sumitomo Mitsui
Banking Corporation
Shinichi Fukuoka, Real Estate
Research Institute, Inc.
Yoshiaki Hagiwara, Hagiwara Electric
Holdings Co., Ltd.
Ichiro Ishikawa, K and Blue Co., Ltd.
Satoshi Ihara, Sun Realty & Insurance
Corporation
FCCJ

MARCH 2019

Masatoshi Kato, Nikka Shoko Co., Ltd.
Makoto Miyauchi, Toin Hospital
Yoko Niwa, Real Estate ResearchInstitute, Inc.
Munenori Ogata, MUFG Bank, Ltd.
Tomohiro Omoda, Central Japan
International Airport Co., Ltd.
Yohei Suzuki, Shihodo Gallery
Yoshinao Takashima, Tokyo Maine &Nichido Fire Insurance
Yasuhiro Tamai, K and Blue Co., Ltd.
Ichiro Yonahara, Japan Steels
International Co., Ltd.
REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE)
Yasutaka Sanga, Kajiya Corporation
Co., Ltd.
Noriko Takaku

Comfort Women and
Sex in the Battle Zone
Ikuhiko Hata; Jason
Michael Morgan (trans.)
Hamilton Books
Gift from Yoshiko
Sakurai
The Private Diplomacyof Shibusawa Eiichi:
Visionary Entrepreneur
and Transnationalist of Modern Japan
Masahide Shibusawa; The Center forInternational Communication (trans.)
Renaissance Books
Gift from Masahide Shibusawa
Colonizing Language : Cultural
Production and Language Politics inModern Japan and Korea
Christina Yi
Columbia University Press
EBSCO*
Reinventing Japan: New
Directions in Global
Leadership
Martin Fackler and
Yoichi Funabashi (ed.)
Praeger
Gift from Martin Fackler
Target: Business Wisdomfrom the Ancient Japanese Martial Artof Kyudo
Jérôme Chouchan
LID Publishing
Gift from Jérôme Chouchan
Target: Godiva wa naze uriage nibai ogonenkan de tassei shitanoka?

ターゲット：ゴディバはなぜ売上２倍を５年間で達成したのか？

Jérôme Chouchan
Takahashi Shoten
Gift from Jérôme Chouchan* EBSCO is an e-library system provider.
Members are able to borrow books fromanywhere via the FCCJ Library’s EBSCO
account.
The system works in a similar way to thelending system of the print-book libraryin that only one person can borrow thesebooks at a time. But after due dates
borrowers will not be able to open thebook. Members will need their own ID andpassword to use the service.
Full guidance for using these books will
be explained to Members.
19