The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

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Vol. 49, Number 2

February 2017contact the editors

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

Pregnancyand healthyeating classp8

In this issue
The Front Page
From the President by Khaldon AzhariCollections: Tokyo February weather numbers
From the archives

4
4
5

Journalism enters the Matrix
by Michael Penn

6

Difficult conceptions
by Sonja Blaschke

8

ProfileAndy Sharp
by Gavin Blair

10FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
1st Vice President Anthony Rowley,Singapore Business Times
2nd Vice President Todd Crowell, Freelance
Secretary David Satterwhite, Associate Member
Treasurer Robert Whiting, Author, Freelance
Directors-at-Large Said Karlsson, TT News Agency
Milton Isa, Associate Member
Yuichi Otsuka, Associate MemberPeter Langan, Freelance
Ex-officio Suvendrini Kakuchi,
University World News
Kanji Yoshisuke Iinuma
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo, Associate Member
FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Members Liaison Milton Isa,
Masanobu Tsukagoshi
Compliance Kunio Hamada
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Abby Leonard,
David SatterwhiteEntertainment Sandra Mori, Suvendrini Kakuchi
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Robert Whiting
Food & Beverage Robert Whiting,Robert Kirschenbaum
Freedom of Press Khaldon AzhariHouse & Property Khaldon Azhari
Human Resources Khaldon Azhari
Information Technology Khaldon Azhari
Library, Archives & Workroom Koichi Ishiyama,
Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing Rie Sakamoto
Professional Activities Andrew Sharp,
Tetsuo Jimbo
Public Relations Khaldon Azhari
Publications Gavin Blair
Special Projects Haruko Watanabe
Web Committee Gavin Blair

The “kabuki” of Donald Trump and the auto industry
by Roger Schreffler

12

Welcome to the post-truth world
by Ayako Mie

14

The 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

Olympic press center plan under fireby Julian Ryall

15

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.

16

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

17

Cover illustration: Andrew Pothecary

Club News
Exhibition: Dojo Giga
by Bujinkan Dojo Sōke, Masaaki Hatsumi
Join the Film Committee/Last month’s screening of Silence
New Members/New in the library
FCCJ

FEB 2017

Foreign Press in Japan Justin McCurry

3

SONJA BLASCHKE

Editor Gregory Starr
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.forbiddencolour.com
Editorial Assistants Naomichi Iwamura,Tyler Rothmar
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications committee members
Gavin Blair, Freelance (Chair); Geoffrey Tudor,
Orient Aviation; Monzurul Huq, Prothom Alo;
Julian Ryall, Daily Telegraph; John R. Harris,
Automobile Magazine

FRONT PAGE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

COLLECTIONS

THE MAESTRO WITH THE BATONTOKYO FEBRUARY
WEATHER NUMBERS

From thePresident
PLEASE ATTEND THE EMERGENCY GMM.
The FCCJ Board of Directors has decided tohold an emergency General Membership Meeting(GMM), seeking Members’ votes on a crucial issue
facing our Club, which is the proposed movefrom the current building to a new building threeblocks away.
It is possibly going to be the most important
GMM in the Club’s 71-year history, and I strongly
urge all Regular Members to attend.
I urge those unable to attend to give their proxies
to a Member whom they trust to listen carefully toarguments presented at the meeting, and to use
careful and considered judgement in voting.
I also urge all Members to research the facts forthemselves and not reply on the opinion of others.
All Members should understand the situation as thewrong decision could potentially place the longterm survival of the Club at risk.
The issue we are facing is that some Membersof the current Board and committees believe that
the Club faces risks to its financial soundness as aresult of increased costs incurred by the proposed
move. Furthermore, they feel the character andprofessional identity might undergo some change
because of membership augmentation measuresthat might result from the move.
In addition, the Food and Beverage Task Forcecommittee says there are “issues” over the
proposed new premises from the point of view ofdesign and functionality of the kitchen and service
area, although the House and Property committee
has been working in extensive meetings weekly with
our partner, Mitsubishi Estate, to develop the best
designs for our operation.
We have been discussing all of those issues
and have explored every possible analysis withlegal advice from professionals. I am calling on
our membership of the FCCJ to be fully involved
as the Club’s Articles and Bylaws require it to bein authorizing spending decisions relating to the
proposed move.
All issues facing the Club will be discussed at themeeting, and I again urge all members to attend andgive attention to the discussion if they want to havea say in the future of the Club. It is essential that
the GMM – which is the “sovereign body” of the
FCCJ – be fully appraised of and fully debate what is
involved, and then make appropriate decisions so we
maintain the core mission of the Club.
Since its establishment in 1945, the FCCJ has
served as the oasis for generations of foreign
correspondents in Japan. Our job is not tocompromise our founding principles and values,
but to continue our mission as a shining light of
freedom.

Monthly mean percentage ofpossible sunshine

Monthly mean air temperature (°C)

3.6
4.3
7.2

57
55
51

(1876)(1956)(2016)

Monthly mean relative humidity

73
55
56

(1930)

Record minimum temperature
in February (°C)(2016)-7.9

Monthly mean daily maximum
temperature (°C)(1876)(1945)

Deepest February snowfall(1956)

1:(2016)

33cm
27cm

2:

Monthly mean daily minimum
temperature (°C)(1951)(2014)+ TRIVIAL DIGITS

1
24(1876)The number of people inJapan who died from being
bitten by a mouse in 2013(1956)(2016)The number of people
in Japan who died fromcontact with hornets,
wasps and bees in 2013

Sources: Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,Japan Meteorological Agency– Khaldon Azhari
4(2016)

24.9(1956)

-2.6
-0.3
3.1

(1956)

Record maximum temperature
in February (°C)(1876)

7.3
9.8
12.2

(1876)FEB 2017

FCCJ

FCCJ

FEB 2017

Famed conductor/composer/pianist Leonard Bernstein, cigarette in hand,addresses Club members on Sept. 5, 1974. Seated immediately to his left is
FCCJ President Max Desfor (AP), who celebrated his 103rd year on this planet
last year, and Jack Russell (NBC News), whose death in 2007 made the cover ofthis magazine. To his right is Bela Elias (Hungarian News Agency), FCCJ 1st VP.
Bela, as Acting President while Max was on home leave, would introduce Japan’sPrime Minister Kakuei Tanaka on Oct. 22 at a controversial event that resulted in
Tanaka’s eventual resignation (see pages 206~210 in our history book).
Multi-talented, prodigious and versatile, Leonard Bernstein was an earlyparagon of American-born and educated talent who achieved worldwide
acclaim as a pianist, composer, conductor and music lecturer. A long-time
director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra who conducted concertswith leading orchestras around the world, he is perhaps best remembered
for West Side Story, a musical written in 1957 that bridged the gap between
classical and popular music. A half-dozen musicals were to flow from his pen.
Eclecticism was characteristic of Bernstein, who drew on Jewish,
theatrical and classical works for musical inspiration. Phenomenallycreative, he wrote symphonies and other orchestral works, film scores andmusic for theatrical performances, operas, ballets, chamber music, choral
music and music for piano as well as a wide range of incidental music. His
lectures on classical music, which appeared regularly on television fromthe mid-1950s until his death, also reflected his eclecticism.
Bernstein’s prolific creativity won him over 20 major awards, including
the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 1990. He
donated the $100,000 prize to an international project for combining
arts with education that took the form of a school in Tennessee some
two years after his death. That same year, Bernstein was the key man inestablishing the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo as a hands-on prep
school for musicians. (His Japan connection had started much earlier,
however, when he boosted the career of Seiji Ozawa in the 1960s by
appointing him as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.)
Bernstein was noted for his long-time social activism, including a 1970
event in his Manhattan apartment to raise money for the legal defenseof the Black Panthers. Although that event gave rise to negative press
coverage, and the derogatory term of “radical chic,” he maintained his
intent was to preserve civil liberties, and his career did not suffer.
Two years after his Tokyo visit, he came out of the closet, announced his
bi-sexuality, and left his wife to live with a male musical director in San
Francisco. However, within a year or so his wife was diagnosed with lungcancer and he returned to her side, caring for her until her death in 1978.
“Lenny,” as he was known, after a long and successful career, retired
from conducting on Oct. 9, 1990. Five days later, at the age of 72, he diedof a heart attack, bringing an end to a most interesting life.

– Charles Pomeroy
5

FEATURE
TECHNOLOGY & THE MEDIAF

rom the development of the printing press, radio andtelevision to the computer and mobile phone, technological advancement has often reshaped what it means
to report the news. Each of these media has opened up new
possibilities for mass communication as they have impacted
the content and the very definition of the news itself.
An entirely new generation of media technologies is now
clearly destined to reshape the news industry once again –at a minimum adding new dimensions and new methods tojournalists’ storytelling. At the head of the list are two quickly developing technologies – 360° video and virtual reality,commonly known as VR.
The terms “360° video” and “VR” tend to be used interchangeably in many cases, but while they are, indeed, related
concepts, there is an important distinction between them. As
the name suggests, 360° video allows the viewer to observea scene in all directions from the axis of the camera. This
includes not only the entire horizontal view but up-and-down
as well – the full 360°.
Simple versions of 360° video are already available. YouTube
began hosting 360° video in March 2015, and Facebook followed
suit in September that year. Last April, YouTube became capable of live streaming such video, with Facebook again playing
catch-up in a December 2016 launch. Other platforms, such assung. Many of the videos they produce are human interest
stories, such as “Daybreak Around the World,” “52 Places to
Go: Canada” and “Basking in Butterflies.” But their recent
stories also include hard-hitting reportage on subjects suchas “Fleeing Boko Haram and Food Shortages,” “Sleeping on
Denver’s Bitterly Cold Streets” and “Still Living with Bottled
Water in Flint.”“Part of the Times’ core mission is to bear witness to onthe-ground to events as they happen, in order to inform ourreaders,” says Hopkins. “We see powerful benefits to allowing
the viewers to bear witness with us, whether it be a war zoneor the site of a protest.”
AN EVEN EARLIER INNOVATOR was the news start-up RYOT,
launched in 2012 and later bought out and made a divisionof the Huffington Post in April 2016. By that time, they had
already attracted considerable attention for presenting thefirst 360° news footage of the Nepal earthquake in May 2015
and of war-torn Aleppo in August that year.
RYOT was one of the very first to attempt to grapple withthe special technical challenges of dealing with a technology
in its infancy, in which entirely new problems crop up andworkflows must be created from scratch. Overcoming these
difficulties requires a new generation of skilled innovators

Thompson, the deputy managing editor and senior web editor of the Japan Times. “I was more excited about the Virtual
Reality stuff, and this seemed to be kind of a stepping stone
to that. [We started] just to kind of get our feet wet.”
Thompson found a subject that was both newsworthy andideal for the new media. “I saw the potential for news when
we got invited to check out the basement of the new Toyosu
market, the first time for the public to actually see the basement,” he says, referring to the controversial move of the
Tsukiji Fish Market, which has been delayed by Tokyo Gov.
Yuriko Koike due to potential contamination issues. “We did
a video of that and I thought that was a perfect application.
You could see with your own eyes how high the water was in
the basement.”

The gaming experience already demonstrates that VR canbe very intense for participants. As Masaki Tsukakoshi ofSony’s Corporate Communications department says, “Manypeople using Virtual Reality can be seen to be physically reacting to the environment and scenes that they are experiencing
within it.” Being surrounded by a frightening or dangerous
environment – such as war zones or disaster areas – could bea traumatic experience for some viewers.
Along these lines, some of the pioneering uses of VR forjournalism have been created by Nonny de la Peña, who has
produced content taking participants to such places as thestreets of Los Angeles as a man collapses due to hunger, or
to Aleppo where children are playing when a rocket lands
nearby. De la Peña describes her work as “immersive jour-

The news business is just beginning to react to new advances in 360° video and virtual reality.

Journalism enters the Matrix

360⁰, 24/7

by MICHAEL PENN

Twitter and Periscope, are now in the process of joining them.
Presently on the YouTube and Facebook versions of 360°
video, one can view a scene in any direction simply by clicking a mouse or using a trackpad. Yet this is neither very
impressive nor how the technology is actually meant to be
used. Rather, the genuine experience is to view 360° video
while wearing a special headset, with the field of view changing as one turns one’s head. One is transported, so to speak,into a different world in which one’s eyes and mind are experiencing a remote scene.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN 360° video and VR is that, in theformer, one may simply observe the scene in all directions,while in the latter, one may in some manner interact with andaffect the remote scene which is being perceived. Today’s VR
thus usually involves some form of animation. For all intents
and purposes, 360° video may be considered a transitional
technology, and is in fact sometimes referred to as “the gateway to VR.”
News organizations are already employing 360° video on
their digital platforms. Internationally, the most aggressive
pioneers are the New York Times and Huffington Post. The New
York Times launched its full “Daily 360” series on Nov. 1, 2016,
with a statement “that 360° videos offer a new way to experience the journalism of the New York Times. These immersive
videos put you at the center of the scene.”
Marcelle Hopkins, the executive director for 360° video
for the Times, says that “dozens of reporters” are currently
using the special 360° video gear provided to them by Sam6

like Maria Fernanda Lauret, a VR “stitcher” editor.
Most 360° video today is shot with multiple cameras
simultaneously – often five or six of them – whose images
must then be “stitched” together at the edges in order tocreate the illusion of a single scene occurring in all directions around the viewer. Lauret’s job is to make those stitches as seamless and unobtrusive as possible. “Depending on
the distance between the Virtual Reality rig and the subjectof your scene,” says Lauret, “the intersection of cameras is
noticeable – especially if there’s an object in motion aroundthe camera. My job as a stitcher is to make these lines invisible for the viewers.”
REPORTING IN 360° ALSO has its own set of challenges, suchas the location of the person shooting. The camera must be
set up in the center of the action with the shooter then hiding
somewhere out of view, controlling the recording by meansof a remote device – or become part of the shot. In the meantime, they must hope that a passerby doesn’t abscond withexpensive camera gear, or simply accidentally knock over the
rig while it is filming a dramatic news event.
Some basic 360° cameras have now become relatively inexpensive and are within easy reach of the journalist. The Ricoh
Theta S is among the most popular and easy-to-use of these
consumer-level cameras, and this is precisely what the Japan
Times has been using in its own initial experiments with 360°
photography and video. (Development has been much moresluggish in the Japan-based news media.)“I had seen what the New York Times was doing,” says MarkFEB 2017

FCCJ

The New York Times’“Still Living with
Bottled Water in
Flint” (above) and“Fleeing BokoHaram and Food
Shortages” (bottom
right); Huffington
Post VR stitcher
Maria Fernanda
Lauret at work (topright); Two screen
grabs from the Japan
Times’ look under
the contaminatedToyoso market(right).

TRUE VIRTUAL REALITY IS a realm that journalism has yet topenetrate, but it is assuredly just around the corner. Despite
many outstanding issues, its use will likely grow as the technology develops and the necessary equipment, such as Virtual Reality headsets, becomes standard household items.
Its main advantage will be allowing journalists to create“empathetic” responses to events and issues in the news
more effectively than ever before. Viewers can be imaginatively transported to places – or even to hold “face-to-face”
meetings with other people – that are in fact far away.
Though games on the Sony Playstation 4 are, like mostvideo games, centered on action, such as gunfights, etc.
there are a few, like Ocean Descent – in which the viewer isslowly lowered down in a diving cage to view an undersea
world – that are more suggestive of the potential uses forjournalism.
FCCJ

FEB 2017

nalism” which conveys “the sights, sounds and feelingsof news.”
But in its greatest strength also lies its most fundamental
danger: The realities experienced within the headsets will be“virtual” realities, often designed to elicit certain responses. This means that concerns about “fake news” and public
manipulation are likely to become even deeper and more
complex in the coming era.
Indeed, commenting on YouTube to one of De la Peña’s
presentations, journalist Heyley Longster wrote, “The only
way to ‘accurately’ represent a scenario is to record events asthey happen, and then play them back. Any element of ‘reconstruction’ by someone, journalist or no, involves an elementof narration and projection that is extremely subjective. In
other words, this isn’t journalism, it’s art.”
This is likely to become a recurring criticism of VR journalism in the years ahead. ❶Michael Penn is the President of the Shingetsu News Agency.
7

FEATURE
WOMEN’S ISSUES
Japan is desperately in need of a higher
birth rate and more working women.
But the stresses of getting pregnant
later in life are not making it easy.

SONJA BLASCHKE

Difficultconceptions
by SONJA BLASCHKEAn elderly woman in a traditional cream-coloured kimono and elegantly upswept hair is asking questions.
“When we talk about a normal sex life, how often does
sexual intercourse take place? Please raise your hand if you
think that once a week is normal.”
Her audience in a nondescript hotel seminar room in Tokyo
consists of several dozen couples, many in their thirties, anda few solo women. A few hands go up. “Does anybody thinkthat twice a month would be enough?” No one raises theirhands, but she does not relent: “Or would three times a week
be better?” Again, a few hands go up.
Shoko So nods in agreement. A trained midwife, she heads
a birth clinic in Tokyo, and her talk this Sunday afternoon
is on ninkatsu. The word “ninkatsu” was coined relatively
recently, consisting of nin from ninshin (pregnancy) andkatsu from katsudo (activity) – meaning the efforts women make to prepare for a possible pregnancy. Despite, andbecause of, persistently low fertility rates and fewer births,
the pregnancy business is booming. Various stakeholders –seminar organizers, health service providers, yoga teachers,
pharmacies, clinics and the like – are benefiting from therise in the average marriage age and the resultant late start
to attempt conception.
Ninkatsu services largely target only women, althoughusually both partners wish to have children. And the pressure
on women, not only from the industry, but also from politicians and from society as a whole, is increasing. In this ageof “Womenomics,” despite women being encouraged to enter
the work force and attain management positions, one thing
has not changed: To be a “true” Japanese woman, one must
become a mother.
GETTING PREGNANT IN JAPAN is mainly a woman’s job, says
former nurse Kokoro Sano. “That is the culture here.” Sano
advises participants in popular ninkatsu cooking seminars at
Tokyo’s ABC Cooking Studio on how to eat healthily to prepare their bodies for future motherhood.
A teacher is showing 70 participants how to make spinachpancakes. Spinach, she says, has a lot of folic acid. It is goodfor the female body and can help them become pregnant.
The participants, mostly women between the ages of 25 and45, listen attentively and take notes. They learn that nowadays many women have too much fat in their bodies from too
much meat, too many sweets and too little physical activity.
The result is a lack of energy and a higher hurdle to pregnancy. The teacher tells them to consume a wide variety ofhealthy foods, to eat enough and to encourage their partners
to do likewise. Further advice includes plenty of sleep, sports,
stress reduction and keeping warm.
8

Pregnant with ideas Left to right, midwife Shoko So in front ofacupuncture information; former nurse Kokoro Sano gives healthyeating for pregnancy advice at her cookery class; Dr Yuichi Nishino,trained in Western and Chinese medicine, at one of his presentations;advisors at Dr Nishino’s presentation.
Men, although welcome, rarely attend the seminars, Sanosays, but she has the impression that most women prefer itthat way. Although the seminars exclusively deal with foodrelated facts, ninkatsu is still a sensitive topic, perhaps dueto the lack of sex education at school. “It is not discussed as
openly as in other countries,” she says.
Sano criticizes Japanese women for being too extreme.
“Either they work like crazy or they concentrate exclusively
on ninkatsu,” she says. Some women even leave their jobs.
Husbands, however, continue as before, despite the fact thatin 50 percent of the cases inadequate sperm is the reason fora couple being unable to conceive. “It is still the women who
are held responsible for infertility,” Sano says.
Having children in Japan is closely linked to marriage: Only
two per cent of Japanese children are born out of wedlock.
The year 2015 saw 635,000 marriages, the least since WWII.
At the same time, the average marriage age is on the rise. In
2015, men were on average 31.1 years old when they first tiedthe knot, their female counterparts were 29.4. Accordingly,
the age of women when giving birth to their first child has
been rising as well: While in the 1970s Japanese women wereon average 25.6 years old, that figure went up to 30.7 in 2015.
Sano also attributes the small number of children to thelack of childcare facilities, especially in major cities. Youngpeople also move to the cities for work while leaving parents
behind in the country, too far away to help with childcare.
Then there is the lack of money. For over two decades, withthe economy faltering, salaries have been stagnant. Still,
many young women aspire to find a husband who can support a family on his salary alone, which, considering the stateof the economy, is increasingly unrealistic.

to develop a ninkatsu mobile phone app. Its purpose is toestablish a community of women who have become pregnant and are willing to share their advice, and those
who are still trying to have a child. Currently, theapplication is in its trial phase.
Not being able to have a child can have ahuge impact on a woman in Japan. The status of a woman dramatically changes ina positive way with motherhood, Yamamoto says, though she would love to
see Japanese society being more
accepting, whether a woman hasa child or not. Ironically though,once a woman has become
a mother, her status as an
employee sinks dramatically,
as cases of maternity harassment have repeatedly shown.
In Yamamoto’s case, her reasons for wanting to become amother are personal. She wants
to know what it is like to bepregnant, and is curious about
seeing the result of her DNA
combined with her husband’s. Her
husband is relatively relaxed about
having children, as his sister has achild. “That is good for his parents,”
Yamamoto says, but not being able toconceive after trying for over three-anda-half years has put a strain on her. She
has been undergoing fertility treatment anddoing ninkatsu yoga, meant to warm the belly in order to make the body more receptive topregnancy. Yamamoto has also been taking kampo
medicine, based on herbal and animal extracts.

WHILE BECOMING A MOTHER has become more difficult,women strive to conform to the expectations of society, Saori
Nishibe Yamamoto says. That is why they go to such lengths
to become pregnant: “They don’t leave the house, they don’t
go shopping, they don’t go to work. They turn their whole life
upside down.”
Yamamoto, a slender woman with shoulder-length hair,wants to have children, too. In early 2016 she quit her job
with a big advertising agency to have a child – a brain child,that is. As she and her husband had yet to conceive, Yamamoto decided to help other women in a similar predicament. Together with a friend, she founded a small company

KAMPO IN COMBINATION WITH acupuncture is aninkatsu treatment Dr. Yuichi Nishino swears by. In asober Tokyo hotel room in central Tokyo he is standing
in front of a dozen couples and several solo women seatedin front of him. Nishino first trained in Western medicine
before traveling to China to learn traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) from a famous doctor a few years later. “Western
medicine treats a cold, Eastern medicine wants to prevent
someone from getting a cold in the first place,” he says about
the core difference.
Behind the listeners are several whiteboards with someposters. On one table is a toy panda bear with acupuncture

FEB 2017

FCCJ

While
becoming amother has
become moredifficult,women strive toconform to the
expectationsof society.

FCCJ

FEB 2017

needles sticking in its back. On two other tables are trays withsmall cups filled with a brownish liquid. During the break,the participants gather, asking questions. “This is an extractfrom swine placenta,” a female advisor in a white lab coat is
explaining. By the window, several more advisors are seatedbehind other tables, measuring the participants’ pulses andchecking their tongues.
Nishino says he has treated hundreds of women trying tobecome pregnant. Many are low on energy and self-esteem,so he tries to restore their courage and power. Getting older,
blood sugar and blood pressure rise, the doctor explains, andblood circulation deteriorates. One result is that no matter
how many hormones a woman takes, they don’t reach thedesired location in her body. As an experienced Kampo practitioner Nishino says he can recognize imbalanced blood circulation, for example, by the hardness of the skin behind theears or the temperature of the belly. His advice to women is
to take care of themselves first before thinking about becoming pregnant.
Nishino also invites men to join the seminars: “This affects
both partners, of course,” he says. While women often ask him
about the aging of the ovules, men usually consult him about
stress-related issues in their marriage or at work, or a lack ofphysical activity. Modern life, with a mobile phone in one’s
trouser pocket, a laptop on the knees until late at night, cancause bad blood circulation, Nishino warns. Getting older, thebody’s ability to heal itself decreases. Many believe Kampo
and acupuncture can help prevent these health issues, andeven slow down the aging process.
BACK AT THE HOTEL seminar room, midwife So is telling theattendants that people no longer make enough time for the
essentials – good food and enough sex. In a country thatprizes slimness more than anything, many women fail to eat
properly, skip meals or only eat junk food. She suggests a gluten free diet – still rather unusual in Japan.
Men, So warns, should reduce their stress levels, as stresscan affect the quality of their sperm. However, in the end, it
all comes down to the quality of the couple’s relationship andtheir sex life. “For many, sex has become a duty, to be performed around ovulation,” says So. “But it’s about feeling!”
Her advice to those listening is to at least once a week taketime for each other. Instead of spending money on the latest
mobile phone they should go travelling together on the weekend. “Do something regularly, like going swimming or for awalk. And take your sex life seriously.” ❶Sonja Blaschke is a freelance journalist and TV producer dividing hertime between Japan and Australia.

9

SERIESPROFILE

Andy Sharpby GAVIN BLAIR

10FEB 2017

FCCJ

ANDREW POTHECARYN“a great place to work,” the lack of potential career progresow Japan and Korea politics editor at Bloomberg,
sion led to him to apply for a position at Bloomberg covering
Andy Sharp first arrived on the archipelago in 1999,
the Japanese economy.
and spent a couple of years teaching English in FukuFlashing headlines to Bloomberg’s terminals immediately
yama, Hiroshima. His interest in Japan had been piqued byafter events are a crucial part of its operation, putting presstories of working in the country he heard from colleagues
sure on reporters to be both fast and accurate with words thatin Izmir, Turkey, where he had gone to teach for a year after
can move global markets. Sharp points to the Bank of Japan as a
graduating university in Britain. Realizing the advantages ofpressure-packed example of the need for speed. “You’re locked
language proficiency during his time in Turkey, he was deterin a room and not allowed any phones or electronic devices
mined to master Japanese.
when it’s making announcements,” he says. “We have signs with
His language skills helped him land a position at Rorze
numbers that correspond to the various actions, like more
Corporation, a maker of robots for the semiconductor indusquantitative easing, and as soon as the meeting is finished,
try, in Fukuyama. “I was the one gaijin among 300 employees
you open the door and show the number to another guy who
and they didn’t really know what to do with me. So I ended up
is waiting outside with an editor in the office on the phone.”doing international sales, translating manuals and teaching
The information appears on traders’ screens between one
the employees English, whatever they could find for me toto five seconds later, according to Sharp.
do,” recalls Sharp.
Circumstances can make such real-time reporting evenAfter 18 months of “trying to sell robots to Germans who
more challenging. Sharp recalls a trip to Myanmar with
were much smarter than me, and doing a pretty terrible job
finance minister Taro Aso andof it,” Sharp was offered voluna small pool of reporters in thetary redundancy during a postearly days of the Abe administrainternet bubble downsizing. Hetion that was mostly devoid of
returned to the UK and worked
news. On the last night, the jourfor a Japanese firm dealing in
nalists ate dinner together andsemiconductors and chemicals,“had quite a few drinks,” when
but found London prohibitively
they unexpectedly received word
expensive and yearned to returnthat Aso would host them in his
to Japan and further develop hisroom. After a few more drinks
language ability.
with the minister and some offBack in Japan in 2004, Sharp
record stories, Aso suddenly
again worked at an English
announced he would take on-theschool, picking up translation
record questions.
work on the side, before moving“I was frantically trying to coninto the field full time, beginning
tact editors in London in case hewith translating a soccer manager
said anything interesting, whenvideo game. A year of long hours
he started talking about the yen,”and poor pay led him to apply forsays Sharp. “Aso is not the easia job at the Daily Yomiuri, transest person to understand at thelating articles for the English
best of times and he’d had a few
edition. “After a while I began toas well. I managed to flash headthink I could do a better job thanlines on to our terminals faster
this . . . and began to think I could
than Bloomberg’s rivals, but I
be a journalist,” he says.
spent that night sweating about
As well as writing for the Yomiwhether I’d accurately reflected
uri, he freelanced for other pubwhat he’d said.”
lications during his four years at
Sharp was appointed to his curthe paper, where he also became
rent position in 2014 and leads a
the union rep for its foreign
team of reporters covering politics in Tokyo and Seoul, as well
employees. “We tried to get equal conditions for foreigners,
as doing TV and radio hits for Bloomberg’s in-house channels.
but were laughed out of the room,” Sharp says. “‘We don’t
An active member of the Club, he is co-chair of PAC, which hehave mutual understanding’ was a phrase I remember mandescribes as, “a bunch of journalists around a table talking
agement bounced around for weeks.”
about the news and what’s important, which can spark ideas
After switching to freelance full-time in 2010, Sharp foundfor stories.”
the translation work he used to supplement his journalism
With three young boys, the most recent of whom arrived last
drying up in the aftermath of the March 2011 disasters. Havmonth, balancing family life and work is now one of his major
ing just become a father, and in need of financial stability,
challenges. “Last night I was watching the Abe press conferhe took a job copyediting the English online edition of theence from Hanoi while reading my
Nikkei, while also acting as an
Gavin Blair covers Japanese business, society and culture
son a Yokai Watch book,” he says. “I
editor of the Number 1 Shimbun.
for publications in the U.S., Asia and Europe.
was literally balancing the two.” ❶Though he describes the Nikkei as

FCCJ

FEB 2017

11

FEATURE
INTERNATIONAL TRADE

The “kabuki” of Donald Trump and the auto industry
The new U.S. president has been making a lot of noise about
reining in automakers’ moves to foreign soil and saving
domestic jobs. But the numbers tell a different story.

LIGHT VEHICLE PLANTS IN MEXICO

by ROGER SCHREFFLER

O

ver a two-week period in late December and early
January, then President-elect Donald Trump threatened to impose 35 percent tariffs on two of the biggest names in the auto industry, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota
Motor Corp., if they went ahead with plans to invest in Mexican production. Soon after, the U.S. president issued a similar
warning to BMW AG, the iconic German maker of luxury andperformance cars.
Trump’s Twitter outbursts came as no surprise. He’s beenusing Twitter to articulate policy positions since announcing
his run for president with a populist message to “make America great again” and bring back jobs lost to countries like
Mexico because of “horrible” trade agreements like NAFTA.
On Jan. 23, his third day in office, President Trump
announced by way of a presidential executive order that the
U.S. would withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,
signed last February by 12 Pacific Rim countries including
the U.S. and Japan, and declared, through a second order,that the U.S. would renegotiate NAFTA.
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, created a free-trade zone between Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
when signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993, but it
has been a target of Trump’s “pro-America” message since
the early days of his campaign. He has declared it to be the“worst trade deal in history.”
Unwittingly, perhaps, Trump did Ford a favor. The automaker, according to multiple sources, wanted to back out of
its $1.6 billion investment in a new Ford Focus plant in Santa
Luis Potosi. Paul Eisenstein, publisher of the Detroit Bureau,a website news service devoted to the auto industry, said thedecision was made well before the election.
“Ford was already second-guessing itself when it formallyannounced it would move small cars to Mexico last April,”
Eisenstein reported. “The reason is simple: Demand for passenger cars – and small sedans and hatchbacks in particular– has been collapsing. Ford recognized it didn’t have enoughdemand for the products going into Potosi.”
In the case of Toyota, Trump apparently named the wrong
plant in his tweet. He reported Baja, Mexico, which actually is
Baja California, a state in northwestern Mexico, and the plantis in Tijuana, the largest city in Baja California, which again
is in Mexico.
Sound confusing? It is.
Toyota’s Tijuana plant builds Tacoma pickup trucks andtruck beds. The truck beds are shipped to the automaker’s
San Antonio plant in Texas, which also builds Tacoma trucks.
The planned investment, around $150 million, is for a line
expansion, not a new plant, thus not a big deal in the grandscheme of things.
Trump’s tweet appears to have targeted a second Toyota
investment: $1 billion for a new plant 1,300 miles southeastof Tijuana in Celaya, Guanajuata state, to produce Corollas.
12

The bottom line: Toyota is a minor producer
in Mexico. It ranked lastamong major manufacturers last year. And evenwhen the new Corolla
plant comes on stream
in 2019, it will still be aminor producer.

DAMAGE CONTROLWITH REVERSE SPIN

Geared up

A Mexican employee
at JATCO’s largetransmission plant inAguascalientes.
JATCO is 85 percent
owned by Nissan,
Mexico’s largest auto
manufacturer.

In early January, reacting to Trump’s threat,
Ford CEO Mark Fields
announced that the U.S. automaker would cancel its $1.6
billion Focus project and invest $700 million in a new production line in Michigan to build advanced-technology cars,
including hybrids. Highlighted in the announcement: plansto create 700 new jobs.
The administration declared victory.
But substantially underreported, Ford is still moving the
Focus to Mexico, diverting the car’s production to its 30-yearold Hermosillo plant which is currently the North Americanbase for the Ford Fusion and Lincoln MKZ, both sedans – theMKZ a luxury sedan.
An informal survey involving two of my neighbors, both
Trump supporters, was greeted with angry disbelief. I suspect that much of the public is unaware that Ford hasn’t
given up on Mexico or that it takes time, sometimes years,
to make these decisions. But the fact is that Ford’s decision
to replace the Focus at its Michigan Assembly Plant with apickup truck and shift small car production to Mexico – anddo so without cutting jobs – is sound. And it is also supportedby the numbers.
The Focus, if it remains in the U.S., will face mounting pressure from the transplants – Hyundai, Kia, Honda and Toyotain particular. The margins are just too small, ranging from anestimated $1,000 to $2,000 per car.
Meanwhile, Toyota President Akio Toyoda, speaking at theNorth American Auto Show last month, declared that the
automaker would invest $10 billion in the U.S. over the next
five years, roughly matching its investment over the past
five years.
Details of the investment have not been disclosed, althougha substantial portion is expected to be for upgrades of existing
plants as models and powertrains undergo changes, rather thanfor new plants. The late January announcement of a $600 million investment in Toyota’s 18-year-old Indiana plant to expand
capacity for Highlander SUVs is an example. Also included:building a new U.S. headquarters in Plano, TX, north of Dallas.
But those investments are not normally counted when
FEB 2017

FCCJ

1 Audi (San Jose Chiapa)
2 BMW (Toluca)
3 Fiat Chrysler (Satillo)
4 Fiat Chrysler (Toluca)
5 Ford (Cuautitlan)
6 Ford (Hermosillo)
7 GM (Ramos Arizpe)
8 GM (San Luis Potosi)
9 GM (Silao)
10 Honda (Celaya)
11 Honda (El Salto)
12 Kia (Monterrey)
13 Mazda (Salamanca)
14 Nissan (Cuernavaca)
15 & 16 Nissan (Aguascialentes x2)
17 Toyota (Tijuana)
18 Volkswagen (Puebla)
19 Daimler-Nissan (Aguascialentes
in 2017)
20 BMW (Santa Luis Potosi in 2019)
21 Toyota (Celaya in 2019)

discussing job creationinmanufacturing, research andengineering. And Toyota has a very positive
story to tell. Since themid-1980s, when theautomaker
committed to building cars in
Georgetown, KY, it has
invested some $17 billion in the market while
creating 34,000 jobs,
second to none among
foreign automakers.
In fact, Japanese automakers as an industry have invested
nearly $50 billion in U.S. manufacturing since 1981 when theformer Ministry of International Trade and Industry orderedthem to restrain exports to preempt Congress from introducing hard quotas to protect the American industry, which was
bleeding due to fallout from the 1979 oil crisis. Establishinga U.S. manufacturing base was an unintended consequence.
Counting suppliers of components and materials, total
investments well exceed $100 billion.
Note that Nissan Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG have been
exporting compact cars from Mexico for more than a quarter of a century. Annually, Nissan exports more than 200,000
Mexican-built Sentras to the U.S. Honda Motor Co., the firstJapanese automaker to venture into the U.S. market, built its
first Accord in 1982 in Ohio. Honda is the least exposed totariffs, producing nearly 70 percent of U.S. sales in the U.S.,
second only to Ford.

DON’T LET THE FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF THE(MEXICAN TRADE) STORY

It remains to be seen if tariffs, assuming they are more than anegotiating ploy, will have an adverse effect on the economy.
Analysts seem to think they will.
Dave Andrea, executive vice president of the Center for
Automotive Research, warns that a “wholesale, large application of tariffs would hurt not just auto manufacturers, but
suppliers that support those assembly plants and dealers thatsell Mexican assembled vehicles.”And who are those auto manufacturers? Not counting
truckmakers, there are 11. They come from the U.S., Germany,
Japan and South Korea. A twelfth, Daimler AG, will start soonby way of a joint venture with Nissan.
Nissan is Mexico’s largest automaker, accounting for one
out of every four vehicles produced, some 3.5 million lastyear, making Mexico the seventh largest auto-manufacturing
country in the world. America’s Big Three – Ford, General
Motors Corp. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, assuming
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FEB 2017

Fiat Chrysler still is included though it is now owned by Italy’s
Fiat – accounts for nearly half of the total.
Trump’s NAFTA criticism, echoed by Wilber Ross, his
nominee to head the U.S. Commerce Department, concerns
exports not production, 70 percent of which goes to the U.S.
To quote Ross: it’s about whether or not Mexico “plays by therules of the road.”
It is a fact that Mexico’s automotive trade surplus with the
U.S. is really large, having ballooned to $70 billion last year.
Then again, possibly undercutting the Trump narrative, morethan half comprises vehicles built by GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler and components fed from Mexico to their U.S. plants.

“DÉJÀ VU” ALL OVER AGAIN

We are not supposed to report the news before it happens.
But it is predictable that once the administration realizes
that renegotiating NAFTA and imposing penalties could hurt
American companies, at least American automakers, morethan their foreign competitors, it will look for someone elseto blame.
The big picture is that the U.S. registered an estimated$170 billion automotive trade deficit with the world last year.
Mexico accounted for nearly 40 percent, the single largest
share. Again, more than half was generated by the Big Threeand their suppliers.
But if one digs deeper into the numbers, Japan could
easily become a target as happened twice in the 1980s andagain in the 1990s. Japan’s automotive surplus with the U.S.
last year totaled $44 billion, double that of South Korea andGermany, each around $20 billion, while Canada, almost
forgotten in this discussion, posted a $5 billion surplus. (Asubstantial portion of Canada’s exports to the U.S. are Toyotas and Hondas.)
It doesn’t help that GM and Ford sold a combined 4,247
vehicles in Japan last year, all imports, compared to nearly 1.5
million cars, trucks and SUVs exported from Japan to the U.S.
Total sales by Detroit’s makers, mostly Jeeps, fell to 13,546
units and accounted for only 4 percent of imports. It alsodoesn’t help that Ford, the first foreign automaker to establish a beachhead some 90 years ago in Yokohama, pulled outof the market last February, claiming that Japan is the “mostclosed” market in the world, according to AP’s reporting.
It won’t matter that Ford didn’t offer a right-hand-drive
car in Japan’s right-hand-drive market or that GM’s dealer
network hasn’t improved appreciably since “gray market”
sales of converted Astro vans, its best-selling model in 1995,
accounted for an estimated 85 percent of sales. Nor will itmatter that Germany regularly runs up surpluses of $1 billion
with Japan.
The focus will again become, and this is a personal prediction, “nontariff barriers” and “structural impediments.”
Their existence is undeniable, such as offering tax breaks
to owners of kei mini cars powered by 660cc engines. But
then every major country around the world that sells cars has
their own nontariff barriers: low gas prices in the U.S., whichmake it possible for 2,270 kg trucks like Ford’s F Series or
3,225 kg SUVs like the Cadillac Escalade to own the highways,
or a regulatory environment in Europe that offers advantages
to diesels.
And the prospect of quotas, harkening back to the early
1980s? It would seem highly likely, at least as a threat. And
almost certainly by way of a tweet. ❶Roger Schreffler is a veteran business journalist who has been following
the auto industry for more than 30 years. He is a former president of
the FCCJ.
13NEWS SITESTHE OLYMPICS

Fake news, presidential tweets and irresponsible website curating. What’s the media world coming to?

The city government’s plan to turn Tokyo Big Sight into a
media center has the exhibition industry seeing red ink.

Welcome to the post-truth world

IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S an entire industry
dedicated to explaining Donald Trump’s
ascent, with any number of reasons:the anger of those in the Rust Belt left
behind by globalization; the frustration
against the establishment; and last but
not least – fake news, which churned out
negative and false information about
Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton.
Across the Pacific from Trumpland,
I thought Japan was a safe distancefrom the fake news movement. Afterall, even liberal satire such as the U.S.
comedy show “Saturday Night Live”and the Onion website have yet to findfertile ground here, perhaps out of fearof political backlash. Yet the recent
quasi fake news scandal surrounding
DeNA, one of the most respected andinnovative social networking and

AFTER BUZZFEED’S REPORT AND thefollowing public outcry, DeNA, foundedby Harvard-educated, visionary
business entrepreneur Tomoko Namba,
announced the temporary shutdownof WELQ and nine other of its media
websites on Dec. 5. The company
admitted it lacked understanding as towhat it takes to be a responsible media
and that its control over accuracy and

The company admitted it lacked understanding
what it takes to be a responsible media and thatits control over accuracy was lax
online gaming companies in Japan, wasa reminder that all media, anywhere
can be manipulated.
Buzzfeed Japan was the first toreport last October that the popular
healthcare information website called
WELQ, owned by DeNA, had run manystories touting medical programs thatwere not based on scientific facts. The
site had stories that claimed that black
seeds were a panacea that could cureanything but death, featured headlinesthat linked allergies with certain
restaurants and once even stated thatghosts cause stiff shoulders.
WELQ was one of DeNA’s 10 curation
platform services, which gather andpresent information on specific topics.
The information can range fromlinks to news mashups, but the sites
generally do not create new content.
There are no rules, of course, but for ahealthcare site, one would expect the
curation to be selective.
It was found, however, that thecontent was uploaded without any
proper editing or attribution. Articles
were also outsourced to crowdsourcing
14

copyrights issues was lax. (What wasironic during DeNA’s three-hour plus
news conference in December was that
Namba, who stepped down as the CEO
to take care of her cancer-stricken
husband, admitted that she herself had
turned to academic papers and books
when researching the disease rather
than relying on web information.)
But why did DeNA, which had
started as an online auction site before
branching out into social media andgaming, decide to tap into the media
business? The answer is easy: moremoney and growth. During the news
conference, DeNA CEO Isao Moriyasu
said that the company’s gaming
business peaked in 2012, and thecompany had been searching for otherareas such as media-related businesses.
It bought curation media sites, suchas iiemo – a mobile service for custom
home improvement and interior
design – and another media site called
MERY from serial entrepreneur Mari
Murata reportedly for ¥5 billion in
the fall of 2014, and gave Murata an
executive position at DeNA to oversee

the media business. Unfortunately,
Murata, who reportedly lives in
Singapore, has yet to comment on the
scandal nor was she present at theDeNA press conference.
While it is true WELQ’s false
information wasn’t politically motivatedlike much of fake news, DeNA did
prioritize a monetizing scheme overnewsworthiness, including using clickbait tactics. The DeNA manual also
encouraged writers to focus on oftensearched issues, and told them to write
longer so that the search engines would
highlight the content.
Of course, Japan, with its historyof anonymous posting, has many
websites whose information accuracy
is dubious, such as Naver Matome,
another curation media, let alone “2Channel,” a rumor mill and the groundzero of slanders. But I’m beginningto wonder if anyone can be trusted as
accuracy may be taking a back seat tosensationalism in the race to gain more
clicks. Yutaka Hasegawa, a former
announcer at Fuji TV, came under fireafter he wrote a blog with a sensational
title, “People who need dialysis due totheir fault should entirely pay on theirown. If they cannot, kill them.”
Hasegawa, who quit the network
after alleged expense account fraud,
had been a blogger popular forcontroversial statements. In a recent
Asahi Shimbun interview he said he wasadvised to use extreme words to gain
page views, adding that he became
numb as he escalated his rhetoric. At
its most popular, his blog claimed 33
million page views. But he lost all his
TV contracts and other writing jobs
after the scandal.
Does a solution exist? Shigenori
Kanehira, a journalist who travels toplaces like Iraq and Afghanistan for his
weekly news program on TBS, told methat technology is the culprit. He said
that the amount of information has
become so massive that journalists are
overwhelmed and readers cannot tellwhat’s true or false. Some might noteven care.
It’s easy to say professional
journalists have to do a better job at
setting an example in spite of budget
cuts. It’s hard to be optimistic ina world controlled by tweets fromPresident Trump. ❶Ayako Mie is a staff writer for the Japan Times.

FEB 2017

FCCJ

Olympic press center plan under fire
by JULIAN RYALL

MORIO/WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

by AYAKO MIE

websites, using writers with little or nobackground in professional healthcare
writing. Buzzfeed also revealed thatWELQ gave contributors a manualthat all but encouraged plagiarism,
instructing writers how to paraphrase
already published articles without
attribution. It did attempt to dodge
liability by running a disclaimer that itwas not responsible for the accuracy
and efficacy of the informationand that readers should be held
accountable for any action taken basedon their stories.

Tokyo Big Sight
AFTER WEATHERING ALLEGATIONS OF
brown envelopes changing hands,
massive cost over-runs, plagiarism
and breaches of contract over theconstruction of facilities, the organizersof the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games might
have hoped that the bad news was behindthem. Now the Tokyo Metropolitan
Government (TMG) finds itself at thecenter of a three-way collision pitting
the city against the lucrative exhibitionsindustry and the world’s media.
The TMG decided to close Tokyo
Big Sight, the city’s prime exhibitionand event venue, so it can serve as
the international media center before
and during the 2020 Olympics andParalympics. The exhibitions sector
claims that the decision is “insane” andwill cost the city dearly in the long run.
Speaking at the annual meetingof the Japan Exhibition Association(JEXA) on Jan. 12, Chairman Tad
Ishizumi compared the decision to thedisaster wrought on the industry by theearthquake/tsunami/nuclear disasterof March 2011, which hit the industry
hard as exhibitors and visitors stayed
away from the country.
“For enterprises, especially small
and medium-size enterprises, this isnothing less than a matter of life anddeath,” he said. “Even when exhibitions
were cancelled for just one month in2011, many companies were on theverge of bankruptcy. Imagine what
the impact will be if Tokyo Big Sight isunavailable for seven months.”
The industry says the decisionmeans that the largest purpose-built
venue of its kind will be unavailable
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FEB 2017

for exhibitions between April andOctober 2020, forcing the cancellationor significant down-sizing of 170
exhibitions that are held at Big
Sight during that period. It willcause an estimated ¥1.3 trillion in
financial damages, they claim, withexhibitors losing out on ¥1.2 trillion
and service companies forfeitingsome ¥100 billion. They add that
there are insufficient purposebuilt alternatives, with Makuhari
Messe also earmarked for sporting
events and to provide support to theorganizers of the Games.
THE DECISION BY THE city government– which owns Tokyo Big Sight – also
threatens the survival of 38,000 small
and medium-size exhibitors that relyon events for a large portion of theirannual revenue. It “guts” a 1,000
company-strong local service industry
that creates booths, signage, staffing,
food and beverage facilities and ahost of other services and depends on
exhibitions for its existence.
“We organize Comiket, the largest
manga and anime event in Japan, at
Big Sight every August and many of thecompanies that take part rely on thatexhibition for as much as 50 percentof their annual revenue,” said Hajime
Okada, president of Hiroshima-based
publisher Eikou Co., Ltd. “To not beable to use the venue for seven months
is going to be absolutely devastating tothese companies.”
Remarkably, the city government
initially proposed to close Tokyo Big
Sight for 20 months to carry out

upgrades and improvements on thefacilities. The exhibitions industry has
at least managed to avoid that scenario.
The exhibitions industry is working
with the metropolitan government
and the Ministry of Economy, Tradeand Industry and is marshalling theassistance of a number of friendly
members of the Diet to fight in its
corner, but the only solution to emerge
so far is a plan for the construction of atemporary exhibition hall one quarterthe size of the facilities at Big Sight.
“They say this is the solution,”
Ishizumi said. “But it’s not. A simple
calculation shows that with atemporary venue one quarter the sizeof Big Sight events can only be onequarter of their previous scale. Thatmeans a loss of more than ¥1 trillion
in sales.”A spokesman for the metropolitan
government issued a statement
confirming that a 23,000m2 facility
will be made available nearby between
April 2019 and November 2020,
but declined to comment on why
Big Sight had been selected as themedia center, the anticipated scaleof economic losses or the possibility
that exhibitions will be lost to the city
forever because of the decision.
Yuichiro Nishida, director of the
Planning and Public Relations Divisionof Tokyo Big Sight Inc. and presently
on secondment to the metropolitan
government, also declined to comment
on whether the authorities are open
to the idea of reviewing the selection
and Gov. Yuriko Koike’s position on
the matter.
“It is a nightmare,” said Christopher
Eve, managing director of UBM Japan
Co., which organizes trade shows, and a
director of JEXA. “We are a big company
so we will survive, but a lot of thesecompanies rely on events at Big Sight,
so if there are no trade shows, they haveno income, they have to lay off staff
and, ultimately, they could go under.”He added: “And organizers of events
that have been using Big Sight for
years will find out that they have novenue in 2020 and will probably lookat Shanghai, Hong Kong or Singapore
as an alternative. And some of themmight not come back.” ❶Julian Ryall is Japan correspondent for the
Daily Telegraph.

15

CLUB NEWSCLUB NEWSJOIN THE FILM COMMITTEE . . .

FCCJ EXHIBITION

The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

p
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W
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’s Andy
berg
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Blo
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de
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un
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da
an
und
Aro

How the media is making use of
the latest camera technology –from in-the-round to VR

d:
pr
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na
nc
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tru
ggle
s cont
inue

to
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mb
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Circle the wagons: DeNA. . . at 7:00pm on Thurs., Feb. 23 for an alluring, elliptical retelling of a haunting
tale: Kiki Sugino’s TIFF Competition standout, Snow Woman. The writer-directorstar leads a stellar cast (and crew) in her gorgeously lensed reinterpretationof the oft-told “Woman of the Snow,” from Lafcadio Hearn’s 1904 anthology
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Shot in Sugino’s home prefectureof Hiroshima, but set in a timeless era when mountaineers sleep in huts understraw mats while factory workers engage in the production of electrical products,
Sugino’s stylized, enigmatic work is daringly short on dialog and long on metaphor.
There are scenes of such trancelike beauty and mesmerizing mystery that theviewer soon stops puzzling over the many riddles, and succumbs to the film’s
stately pace and poetic power. Sugino will be on hand with her costar, Munetaka
Aoki, for the Q&A session following the screening. (Japan, 2016; 95 minutes;
Japanese with English subtitles.)– Karen Severns

Film Committee chair Karen Severns
addresses the audience before the screening.

Dojo Giga paintings
by Bujinkan Dojo Sōke,
Masaaki Hatsumi
IN THE MARTIAL ARTS there is an essence– a feeling beyond training and knowledge
and skill.
Performance at this intuitive level isbeyond description. So how does a mastermartial artist teach this indescribablefeeling? Through his art. ❶16

Masaaki Hatsumi is an 85-year-old
sōke (head instructor) of Japanesemartial traditions. He has worked asa professional osteopath, acted in a
popular television series and written
many books on ninjutsu and budo.
He has previously visited the FCCJ
as a guest speaker. About 30 years
ago, Hatsumi Sensei made a series ofcolorful paintings of concepts which areessential to his dojo. Until now, Hatsumi
has kept this collection private for theeducation of his students, but now feels
it is the time to share these paintings.

sneak preview of the film on Jan. 12. A
crowd of close to 200 had the privilegeof watching Scorsese’s masterwork at the
nearby Human Trust Cinema.
For more photos, a full transcript of
the Q&A and more, read Film Committee
Chair Karen Severns’ blog: https://goo.gl/
YckD8fLeft to right, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke
Kubozuka and Issey Ogata at the Club.

FEB 2017

FCCJ

FCCJ

FEB 2017

s”
ew
“n
fx

PITCH US
YOUR
STORY

and support yourClub magazine
Please send your story ideas tono.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp,
and be sure to note whether you have(or have access to) visuals.
Our rates are ¥20 per published word,¥20,000 for a front cover photo.
Photo essays: ¥15,000 for full-page
photos and ¥5,000 for smaller shots.
All payments will be made in credit toyour member account.

LAST MONTH’S SCREENING OF SILENCE“I TRIED READING SHUSAKU Endo’s
novel when I was young, and only got
halfway through,” admitted Issey Ogata,
one of the Japanese stars receiving criticalaccolades for his role in Martin Scorsese’s
Silence. He was joined by co-stars Tadanobu
Asano and Yosuke Kubozuka for a rousing
Q&A session at FCCJ, following the Club’s

Sharp profled

NEWS
360°

sit
es

Wh
eel
er
de
ale
r:

February 2017, Volume 49 No. 2, ¥400

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17CLUB NEWSSPECIAL CAMPAIGN OFFER FOR NEW ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
The FCCJ is offering a special deal for new Associate
Members. Until March 31 this year, those joining are
eligible for a ¥100,000 DISCOUNT off of the regularfee of ¥300,000.
If successfully approved, the applicants will be able
to enjoy all the member benefits: attendance at all the
major press conferences and professional and social
events; dining services at the Main Bar, Pen & Quill
Executive Dining area and the Masukomi Sushi Bar;
special discounts on sports, arts and cultural events;
free wi-fi, half-price parking, the Club’s monthly
magazine; and access to reciprocal press clubs aroundthe world.
Present members can also benefit. A ¥20,000 restaurant voucher will be given to those
who introduce successfully approved new Associates. For more information, or to pick up
an application form, go to the front desk.

New
Members

REGULAR MEMBERS

JOHANN FLEURI is a correspondent for daily newspaper Ouest-France
which has a print and web version. She also regularly contributes to Le Monde
Diplomatique, Causette, Sept Info (Switzerland) and other magazines. In Japan,
she covers politics, the economy, culture and travel. Johann has been working
as a journalist for almost 10 years, including six at a daily newspaper in France.
She spent one year in Japan in 2009 and visited often before deciding tosettle in Tokyo in 2015. In 2013 she won the Robert Guillain prize for her workon Tohoku reconstruction.
MOTOKO RICH is the Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times after
spending 13 years at the mother ship in New York, where she covered the
housing market, book publishing, the U.S. economy, and education. Since
graduating from Yale and Cambridge universities, her career began as areporter at the Financial Times in London. She has also worked as a staff
reporter at the Wall Street Journal. She lives in Tokyo with her husband and twochildren, aged 12 and 10.
REINSTATEMENT (REGULAR)AYAKO MIE covers Japanese politics and policies for the Japan Times. She
started her career as a reporter at Tokyo Broadcasting System in 2001. In 2008,
she went to journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, as a
Fulbright scholar. On returning to Japan in December 2010, she worked for
the Washington Post as a special correspondent. Ayako was also awarded with
the Wall Street Journal Asia Fellowship at NYU in 2014 and spent 18 months at
the NYU’s Stern School of Business, and the Economic Reporting Program.
PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALIST ASSOCIATE
MEMBERS
Christopher Jones, Custom Media K.K.
Hirato Shimasaki, Japan Golf Journalist
Association
Hideaki Ota, The Sankei Shimbun

18

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Yoichi Minato, MX Engineering Co., Ltd.
Takeru Ogawa, Ogawa Construction Co., Ltd.

New in the
Library

The Ideas Industry: Comparative
Perspectives
Kent E. Calder (fwd.); Michael Kotler (ed.)
The Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East
Asian Studies
Gift from Andrew Horvat
The Comfort Women: Historical, Political,
Legal and Moral Perspectives
Kumagai Naoko; David Noble (trans.)
International House of Japan
Gift from George Baumgartner
How Like a God: Deification in Japanese
Religion
Sato Hiroo; David Noble (trans.)
International House of Japan
Gift from George Baumgartner
Censored 2017: The Top Censored Stories
and Media Analysis of 2015 – 2016
Mickey Huff (ed.); Andrew Lee Roth (ed.);
Project Censored (with); Mark Crispin Miller(fwd.); Khalil Bendib (cartoons)
Seven Stories Press
Gift from Suvendrini Kakuchi

Another Kyoto
was the subjectof a Jan. 24 Book
Break at the Club

Another Kyoto
Alex Kerr
Sekai Bunka Publishing
Gift from Sekai Bunka Publishing Inc.
Nyumon Toranpu seiken
Hiroki Sugita (supervision); Kyodo Tsushinsha(ed.)
Kyodo Tsushinsha
Gift from Masaaki Urano (Kyodo News)
Kyodo tsushin nyusu yotei: 2017
Kyodo Tsushinsha Henshukyoku Yotei Senta
Kyodo Tsushinsha
Gift from K.K. Kyodo NewsFEB 2017

FCCJ

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PR Department
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Tokyo 104-8222
Tel: 03-6278-5228
Email: koho@ricoh.co.jp
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