The magazine of The Foreign
Correspondents’ Club of JapanMay 2020 Vol. 52 No. 5 ¥400

Reporting
Covid-19from Japanand aroundthe globe

In this issueVol. 52, Number 5

May 2020

contact the editors

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

From the President by Khaldon Azhari
Freedom of the Press:
Coronavirus and global press freedoms
From the Archives
Oracle of women’s rights
by Charles Pomeroy

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FEATURES

Needed, yet mistreated: the plight of foreign trainees 6
by Sonja Blaschke

THE FCCJ ONLINE: www.fccj.or.jp

Page 6:
Shelter forforeigntrainees

SONJA BLASCHKEMEMBER EVENTSPRESS CONFERENCE VIDEOSCLUB CALENDARCLUB INFORMATION

Covid-19
Reporting in the age of corona
by Julian Ryall
Viral reports

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PROFILESOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

No. 1 SHIMBUN ONLINEFREEDOM OF THE PRESS INFO

Thomas Hahn
Süddeutsche Zeitungby Ilgin Yorulmaz

12CLUB NEWSFCCJ Exhibition; New Members; New in the library17

Lens craftby photographer Members

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FCCJ

MAY 2020

Editor Gregory Starr
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.itsumo-music.jp/design
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo Coordinator Michiyo Kobayashi
Publications Committee members
Geoffrey Tudor, Orient Aviation (chair)Peter O’Connor, Freelance
Sonja Blaschke, Freelance
Marina Yoshimura, Student
FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
1st Vice President Monzurul Huq, Daily
Prothom Alo
2nd Vice President Robert Whiting, Freelance
Treasurer Mehdi Bassiri, Associate Member
Secretary Takashi Kawachi, Freelance
Directors-at-Large
Mary Corbett, Professional/Journalist
Associate Member
Abigail Leonard, FreelancePeter O’Connor, Freelance
Akihiko Tanabe, Associate Member
Kanji Kazuo Abiko, Freelance
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo,
Associate Member
Ex-officio vacant
FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Members Liaison Keiko Packard,
Yuusuke Wada
Compliance Kunio Hamada, Yoshio Murakami
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Peter O’Connor
Entertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Mehdi Bassiri
Food & Beverage Robert Kirschenbaum,
Peter R. Tyksinski
Freedom of Press Abigail Leonard
House & Property Khaldon Azhari
Human Resources Khaldon Azhari
Information Technology Yuusuke Wada
Library, Archives & Workroom
Koichi Ishiyama, Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing TBA
Professional Activities Tetsuo Jimbo,
David McNeill
Public Relations Dan Sloan
Publications 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
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The Front Page

FROM THE PRESIDENTFREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Dear Fellow Members,
I would like to thank the staff, the management, ourvendor Bplan, committees, and the Board for doing
their best to maintain limited operations at the Clubat this time when Japan is trying to deal with the
COVID-19 pandemic.
While this crisis forced us to downsize our activities, it also gave us the chance
to hold remote press conferences. With the management and members’ help,
the staff—both on the spot at the Club as well as those working from home—succeeded in providing chances for members to hear speakers and even ask themquestions live.
I have been coming to the Club regularly and have seen journalists and othermembers coming to have a quick meal at the Bar. The Library, with the staff
at reduced hours, and the open work room are also supporting journalists andmembers who visit for reporting and gathering news and information.
I think our Club stands out as a supporter for the media at this critical time whenjournalism should not leave the information gathering process to the elements but
be interactive in doing the job. The grand support by FCCJ members is what madethis a reality, and I have not enough words to express appreciation.
With the logistic restrictions on information gathering, and with almost no press
conferences being given, other than online, our Club has become more important
to stay open and provide as much assistance to journalists to function effectively
as possible.

I think our Club stands out as a supporterfor the media at this critical time whenjournalism should not leave the information
gathering process to the elements
I have to admit it was difficult to reach balanced decisions on matters such as
keeping the Club semi-open despite strong suggestions to shut it down.
I am hoping the Professional Activities Committee continues to expand the
speakers’ program, and that other committees follow, such as holding Book Breaks
and whatever can be done online. I am also planning to hold a few President
Forums for limited numbers of attendants with live streaming.
I can’t stress enough the importance of the Club maintaining as many
professional activities as possible. The global economy seems to be collapsingaround us and we need to be in the center of reporting on that, and facilitating theefforts of our members.
We will move forward and possibly even hold remote music concerts on
Saturday night for our members who have trouble getting into Tokyo.
On House and Property issues, the committee is working with the office tocontact newspapers in Tokyo to resume sending us their Extra Editions of breaking
news. We used to have that at the FCCJ reception at the good days of Denkibuilding, when Club members could pick up a copy at the reception for free.
Furthermore, we plan to restore members’ book sales at the FCCJ reception
desk. At the Denki building, Club members could sell copies of their books at theClub reception desk with a 20 percent commission for the Club.
Restoring the bulletin board of press conferences, private ads, and events, etc.
is also under discussion. At the Denki building, we had bulletin boards for that near
the reception and the elevator. They displayed notice of press conferences by
the political parties and business federation, companies, embassies, etc. This was
useful for Club members, particularly freelance journalists.
Have a Golden Week.
– Khaldon Azhari
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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Coronavirus and global press freedoms
Regimes using coronavirus as an
excuse to attack press
New Statesman, March 25

China’s Media Censorship Could
Have Cost Thousands of Lives
Newsweek, March 25

Coronavirus is being used to suppress
press freedoms
Axios, March 31

Coronavirus leads to violations ofmedia freedoms in Egypt
Middle East Monitor, April 2

Coronavirus Consequence:
Crackdown on Press Freedom
World-WideWall Street Journal, April 2

The coronavirus crisis has madepress freedom, in Hong Kong andelsewhere, more vital than ever.
South China Morning Post, April 2

Hungarian journalists fear
coronavirus law may be used tojail them
The Guardian, April 3

How press freedom is being
threatened by the coronavirus
Reuters, April 7

Is the coronavirus killing press
freedom in Africa?
DW Akademie, April 8

Press freedom violations throughout
Africa linked to Covid-19 coverage
RFI, April 14

Journalists threatened and detained
as countries on multiple continents
restrict coronavirus coverage
Washington Post, April 16

When Freedom of the Press is
Stricken with the Coronavirus
The Wire, April 16

Coronavirus Pandemic: 10 Urgent
Threats to Press Freedom
Time, April 17, 2020

MAY 2020

FCCJ

Oracle of women’s rights

Coronavirus: RSF concerned for
freedom of the press as Japan declares
state of emergency
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged theJapanese government to exclude the media
from the list of companies and associations that
could receive its instructions under the state of
emergency and asked for a revision of the law toguarantee press freedom at any time.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic,
the Japanese government declared on April 7
a state of emergency for most of the country,
putting into effect its special-measures law that
entitles the government to give “instructions”
to a number of designated companies andassociations listed on its website, including
public broadcaster NHK. Many have raised
concerns that the ambiguous formulation of thelaw could be interpreted as an authorization to
infringe on the media’s editorial independence.
RSF urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe toremove NHK from the designated list andensure that no other media are added. RSF also
asked the Japanese lawmakers to modify the
emergency law with due haste to make it fullycompatible with the Japanese constitution and
the Japanese Broadcasting Act, both of whichguarantee press freedom.
“When confronted with a public healthcrisis, independent information concerning
measures taken by the authorities and the steps
recommended to limit the spread of the epidemic
are indispensable to the public,” said Cédric Alviani,
RSF East Asia bureau head, who urges the Japanese
government “to fully ensure media’s editorial
independence and act with transparency.”
On March 15, the Japanese Ministry of
Health, Labour, and Welfare apologized for
posting inaccurate content on Twitter. Anotherfalse tweet also posted on March 5 was aimed
at attacking the TV Asahi’s news report oncoronavirus.
Since Shinzo Abe took office as prime ministerin 2012, many journalists have complained abouta climate of mistrust and hostility coming fromthe government, which has tried on several
occasions to interfere with the media’s editorial
independence, including NHK.
UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom ofExpression David Kaye has expressed serious
concerns about freedom of the press in Japan
in 2017 and noted a further erosion of freedom
in 2019.

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MAY 2020

Beate Sirota Gordon speaks at the Club on Sept. 21, 1998,
following the publication of her English-language memoir,
The Only Woman in the Room. That memoir described her
contribution to Japan’s postwar constitution: Article 14 on basic
human rights and Article 24 on basic gender equality. Seatedto her left is Bob Neff (Business Week) and to her right is Bruce
Dunning (CBS).
Gordon was born Beate Sirota in Vienna, Austria, in 1923. At
age five, she came with her parents to Japan, where her father,a noted pianist, had been invited to teach. Following her earlyeducation at German and American schools in Tokyo, she left
Japan in 1938 to continue her education at Mills College inthe US, where she obtained a degree in modern languages.
Multilingual (six languages), she put her fluency in Japanese
to work for the US government during WWII and in 1945
joined the Occupation forces in Japan. During that time, she
worked as an interpreter for high-level negotiations with theJapanese government, making her a “witness to history,” aswell as participating in the drafting of the new constitution.
In 1948, Gordon returned to the US and married Joseph
Gordon, and within five years became director of performing
arts for the Japan Society in New York. From 1970 to 1991 sheserved in a similar role for the Asia Society. Although she waslong reluctant to publicly discuss her involvement in writing
Japan’s constitution, word of her contribution had become
public knowledge by the 1990s. In 1996 she began to speak
both in Japan and the US about her historical role in the
Occupation. She penned her memoir in 1995, with the English
version becoming available in 1998.
Gordon was honored with many awards both for her
work with the Occupation and as a cultural bridge in theperforming arts between the US and Japan. These included
the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese
government in November of 1998 following her appearance
at the FCCJ. A long-time resident of New York City, she passed
away in December of 2012.

– Charles Pomeroy
editor of Foreign Correspondents in Japan,
a history of the Club that is available at the front desk
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Workers rights

Needed, yet mistreated:
the plight offoreign trainees
A visit to a shelter for abused members ofJapan’s Technical Trainee program, which invites
workers from other parts of Asia to bolster thecountry’s declining work force

By Sonja BlaschkeE

ven a year after the last operation, one can still see thedeep, deforming scar on Nguyen Ba Man’s thumb. The
memories of his recovery are painful. “It was snowing. When I tried to leave the house, the pain grew stronger. I
called the trainee organization, asking them to take me to thehospital, but nobody came,” said Nguyen. “Eventually, I had
to remove the stitches myself.”
Nguyen is 22 years old, friendly and unassuming. He issitting on a futon in a cramped shared room at a shelter for
trainees in Hashima, a nondescript town of 68,000 in Gifu
prefecture northwest of Nagoya. Its most prominent feature is its Shinkansen station, which connects the small andmidsize suppliers in the area with Japan’s economic centers.
On his crossed legs lay a Japanese textbook and a notebook
with handwritten Chinese vocabulary. Nguyen’s goal: 150 new
words every day. His rosé-colored sweatshirt read “Count
your blessings”—which could well be his motto.
The scar will keep reminding him of three years in his life
which turned out quite different from what he had anticipated when applying to become a Technical Trainee in Japan.
After he sustained a severe work-related injury seven months
into his stint, his employer pressured him to return to work
early, resulting in the wound repeatedly splitting open. To
make matters worse, the brake company even burned his personal belongings when he left for a third operation, assuming he would not return. And Nguyen’s experience is far frombeing a singular, isolated case.
Japan has been trying to combat the increasing lack ofworkers since the early nineties with the Japanese Industrial
Trainee and Technical Intern Program, especially in fields
requiring manual labor—like agriculture, seafood processing and textile production. In 2019, there were about 330,000
foreign trainees, accounting for one quarter of all foreign
employees in Japan.
Were it not for the coronavirus pandemic, this figure
would have kept rising. However, travel restrictions havecaused some potential trainees to be unable to leave home,with the result that Japan is now facing a shortage of about
1,000 trainees in the agricultural sector alone, according to
the agriculture ministry. Some 400 of them were to work for

6

Nagano lettuce producers, for example, and now large partsof the crop might be left to rot in the fields.
Most foreign trainees are hired by small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). Their absence can be critical, as a textile company operator in Fukui prefecture explained to Kyodo news
agency. Of roughly 20 Chinese trainees, six were prevented
from entering Japan due to the entry ban covering parts ofChina and elsewhere. “It may be just a few people, but forsmall and midsize businesses it means a significant drop in
manpower,” said an official at the company.
The spread of the virus also prevented some trainees fromtaking the skill tests required to renew their visas after theirthree-year training period to extend their stay up to the fiveyear maximum. Others who wanted to return home could not.
So far, the immigration office has shown some flexibility,
granting four-month visa extensions in mid-March.
The Technical Trainee program was ostensibly set up as
a form of overseas development assistance to teach trainees skills which they would be able to use upon their returnhome. However, all they usually learn are a few simple steps,
and sometimes the industry does not even exist in their homecountries. The program has enabled the conservative government to curry favor with right-wing supporters by inviting
cheap manual workers, while renouncing any intention toallow proper immigration.

MODERN SLAVERY?

Critics call it modern slavery and human trafficking, rather
than training. Even before they leave home, trainees haveto pay the equivalent of several thousand dollars to agents.
Once they are in Japan, their visa is tied to one specificemployer—and some abuse this position by paying substandard wages or changing workload arrangements to suit theirown needs. Trainees have to pay rent and utilities for housingthat is often shoddy. Some employers confiscate passports.
There have been reports of sexual abuse, of pregnant womenbeing let go long before maternity leave, or of being coerced
into getting an abortion. While there have been an averageof 200 to 300 reports of abuse in recent years, in 2018 thenumber dropped to a little above 100. (The estimated numberof unreported cases is assumed to be much higher.) According to a study from 2016, three quarters of companies who
MAY 2020

FCCJ

Given shelter
Nguyen Ba Man,
who worked throughmultiple operations on
his thumb, studying
Japanese at the shelter.

employed trainees reportedly
violated labor law.
As a result, several thousand trainees take flightevery year. They either join
the ranks of illegal immigrants, or they ask trainee support groups for help. One such
NGO is the Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan (SMJ)
based in Tokyo, headed by Ippei Torii. He was given an award
by the American State Department in 2013, as a “hero fighting for an end of modern slavery.”
The shelter in Gifu is associated with SMJ and run by aChinese-born lawyer who has spent several decades studying and working in Japan. Zhen Kai, a stocky 60-year-old, met
Torii about ten years ago and turned a three-story building
into a shelter. The ground floor houses the office of a local
labor union which he runs. Zhen lives with his wife and sonon the second floor, while the third floor accommodates adozen foreign trainees from China, Cambodia and Vietnam.
They stay there while they await results from applications forgovernmental support or from mediation and court cases.
Many have suffered both physically and mentally. In Nguyen’s case, his injury was the result of an electric shock fromthe machine he was operating, possibly due to some miscommunication. A Chinese man sustained a severe eye injury
when shucking oysters with a metal hook. A Chinese woman
lost part of one finger at a farm when it got tangled up in a
FCCJ

MAY 2020

rope; Another woman broke her back when she tried to jump
to her death. The injury and death rate among foreign workers is far above the national average.

LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Among the biggest hurdles is the language barrier. A few
weeks of token Japanese language courses are not enoughto make inroads, and Japanese colleagues often show little
understanding of the difficulties. After some initial attempts
to help, they often withdraw, with the trainee ending up isolated and desperate.
That is what happened to 34-year-old Shi Jianhua, a quiet
woman with short hair, who arrived in Japan in 2015. Shi hails
from the mountains of Hubei province, a region now known
worldwide as the origin of the coronavirus. Like many participants in the Technical Trainee program, she left behind
two children and a husband to make money for their support.
Before leaving home, she paid the equivalent of $12,000 to
pay for language classes and agent fees.
In Japan, she worked for a paper company as a quality
inspector. In her first post, her superior insulted her every
day, but she had the companionship of other trainees. In her
second position, there were no more insults, but also no other trainees, and she was soon shunned by her Japanese colleagues. The harsh work environment also took its toll. “It wasvery loud and hot, with paper dust everywhere.” And she wasbeing paid less than half the promised ¥200,000 a month.
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Workers rights

Covid-19: part 1

Reporting in theage of corona

Working for recovery
Above left, Shi Jianhua,
who attemptedsuicide because of her
working conditions;lawyer and shelterorganiser Zhen Kai;
trainees working on
the shelter’s own farm.

Lucrative overtime work was
only given to Japanese.
Two years into the job,frightened after a recent murder case involving trainees in
the area, she asked to change
from night to day shift. Her
request was denied, and feeling that was the last straw, Shi
jumped from the roof of the paper factory. She survived witha broken back and was hospitalized for four months. At thetime of our interview, two years later, she was still receiving
daily physiotherapy treatment and monthly sessions with a
psychiatrist to treat depression.
In November 2017, a few months after Shi’s suicide attempt,
Japan introduced new laws making it a criminal offense for acompany to refuse compensation payment after occupational accidents. Physical abuse can be punished with ten years’
imprisonment or a fine of up to ¥3 million. Despite Zhen’sefforts to mediate and negotiate, however, Shi’s former company was refusing to take responsibility.

FATHER FIGURE

Most evenings, Zhen invites the trainees to the big table inhis kitchen for dinner, often consisting of vegetables cultivated on their own little field 15 minutes away. Nguyen waslamenting the fact that trainees could neither select nor
8change their assigned employer, nor did they have time to
study. “We come here, and we lose our rights,” he said quietly. He felt that it was easy for companies to mistreat them,knowing any lawsuit would be difficult during the short termof the program. He believes the government should do moreto support trainees.
Japan has vowed to improve things, including stricter control of employers and adding more language classes. In April
2019, it also created a new government agency in charge ofan additional program with the goal of attracting 345,000
foreign blue-collar workers with specified skills within five
years. However, even before the coronavirus pandemic, theprogram was less than successful. By the end of last year,
according to a Japan Times interview with the commissionerof the new agency, only 1,700 Specified Skilled Workers had
been accepted. 10,000 more were supposed to sit exams by
the end of March.
Despite all that had happened to him, Nguyen appeared tobe neither angry nor bitter. He said he wanted to study business upon his return to Vietnam, to become a manager. In
the meantime, he had decided to make the most of his timein Japan to study Japanese and Chinese, and possibly English. “The future will be better with foreign-language skills,”
he said. ❶Sonja Blaschke is a Japan-based German freelance journalist and TV

producer.

MAY 2020

FCCJ

RICHARD ATRERO DE GUZMANHow journalists are managing the difficult task ofcovering Japan’s response to the epidemic

By Julian RyallWe live—and work—in interesting times. Obviously,
for members of the media profession, to be in the
thick of a story from its very early stages and thento follow the personal stories and the political maneuvering, or to chronicle the ramifications for companies andsectors through to their conclusions, is why we get into
this business.
The coronavirus pandemic is different, however, because
we’re not dispassionate observers and the job descriptionmeans that we have to take arguably more risks than the
average citizen going about their everyday life.
So just as in March 2011, when the earthquake off northeast Japan triggered a tsunami that devastated a swathe of
Tohoku and set off a nuclear crisis, we are once again in the
middle of the story.
In late December, the likelihood of a global pandemic thatwould infect close to three million people, so far, and killmore than 200,000 [both figures at press time] was unthinkFCCJ

MAY 2020

able. There were sketchy reports of an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan of a previously unknown strain of a virus
with similarities to the flu, but conventional wisdom was that
it was nothing to be overly alarmed about.
Four months later, tens of millions of people are under
lockdown and more people will die, from Boston to Barcelona to Beijing, before this thing has run its course.
Reporting the coronavirus crisis has been, correspondents
concur, “challenging.”“The first piece I wrote was on Jan. 29 and it was a shortstory about how people should protect themselves from thisvirus that was emerging in Wuhan,” said Justin McCurry, correspondent for The Guardian. “But it all seemed very distantat that point.”
EVEN UP UNTIL THE first cases were reported aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship on Feb. 4, “My colleagues in London
were still talking about this as if it was a north-east Asia prob9

Covid-19: part 1

lem as there had been only a couple of cases reported in the
UK by that point, so they sent me a few masks,” McCurry said.
“But then within a very short space of time it was a serious
matter in Europe as well.”
For McCurry and many other correspondents, the Diamond Princess became ground zero for coverage. “When it
was a story about middle-aged, middle-class British tourists
trapped on a cruise ship, then the story took off,” he said.
Social media and modern technology meant it was possible
to reach passengers who were in quarantine, which was whatnews desks were demanding, and it was a story within an
evolving narrative that made consistent and compelling copy
for weeks on end.“It was something we could keep going backto and to hear how conditions on board were deteriorating, tosee how people were going about sitting the thing out, to see
their growing frustrations,” said McCurry, who estimates he
has written nearly 90 stories or contributions to rolling news
blogs on the virus for The Guardian.
Abby Leonard also contributed her first coronavirus story on
Jan. 29, when Japan began evacuating its citizens from Wuhan,
and is reporting for National Public Radio in the US and Timemagazine. The Diamond Princess was an important part of thelarger story, primarily because there were so many US nationals
on board and such “drama” about getting them home, she said,
but the agenda has moved on significantly.
“There’s so much news about this in the US now, it’s harderto get anyone interested in what’s happening in Japan,” shesaid. “At the beginning, I think coronavirus felt like an Asianstory to assignment editors, so we were well-positioned herein Japan. But, of course, that changed,” she said. “In recent
days though, with the uptick in cases, there’s slightly moreinterest in whether it really takes a turn for the worse andhow the Japanese government deals with that.”
EDITORS ARE NOW LOOKING for stories with parallels to what
the US is likely to experience in the weeks ahead, coverage of
10

YOICHI YABEYOSHIKAZU TSUNO

Coronavirus ins
and outs
Opposite: An empty
departure loungeat Tokyo’s Haneda
airport on March 18,
after a number offlight cancellations.
Above: Pubs andrestaurants organize
outside eating andtakeaways on April
11 to stay in businessduring lockdown.

second-wave infections, economic stories and how the government is managing—or mis-managing—the lockdown.
“The lack of information and questionable data are big
challenges, and trying to put the numbers in context for a US
audience is hard when you’re not comparing apples to apples
as far as testing rates and other metrics,” said Leonard, who
also has an added layer of complication to her job.
“It’s been hard,” she admits. “I have a 4-year-old, a 2-yearold and one on the way, so it’s nearly impossible to do anything when they’re around,” she said. “And their school has
been closed since the beginning of March.
“A lot of my work is radio reporting, which I record and edit

the world are dealing with now.”
Drini Kakuchi writes for the UK-based University WorldNews and has been able to concentrate on longer reads,
looking at the impact of the virus on the tertiary education
sector in Japan. She says the biggest hurdle has been obtaining information.
“I have built up really good relationships with healthexperts, and that has meant that they have always been able
to find time to speak with me, even if I call at midnight, so I
really appreciate that,” she said. “The problem has been company and business officials, bureaucrats, PR people who don’t
want to say anything in case it appears that they’re not doing
enough for their students.”“AT THE BEGINNING, I THINKCORONAVIRUS FELT LIKE AN ASIAN
STORY TO ASSIGNMENT EDITORS, SO WE
WERE WELL-POSITIONED HERE IN JAPAN.
BUT, OF COURSE, THAT CHANGED”

KATHRYN WORTLEY, WHO REPORTS for Singapore-based TTG
Asia, has had similar issues with recalcitrant spokespeople
and government officials, making it difficult to get a firm
grasp of the situation facing travel companies and the broader tourist sector in Japan. “I’ve definitely been given the runaround when I contact organizations or companies—because
they’re not happy to comment on what is still an unfolding
situation,” she said. “It’s often hard [in normal times] to get
officials, even PR people, to give you an answer to somethingthat’s fairly easy, so it’s a hundred times worse now.”
The best way of overcoming that hurdle, she has learned,
is to cultivate as many new contacts as possible, get existing contacts to put in a good word with someone else in theindustry who might otherwise be leery about speaking to an
unknown foreign reporter and “just keep on my toes.”
Abby Leonard says that in the same way that March 2011taught us lessons we never knew we needed previously, theearly months of 2020 are demonstrating a whole new set ofneeds—both in terms of journalists trying to do their jobs
and society’s need for the media to fulfill its duty.
“There is a need to question authority and push for moregovernment transparency; [to accept] that explanatory jour-at home,” she said. “I have let my 4-year-old son listen in onsome of my recording sessions because he’s really curious
about what I’m doing, but it’s hard for him to stay quiet forlong stretches, so that’s meant I have to do twice as manytakes to get something usable. That can be frustrating—probably for both of us.
“I sort of feel like I have double deadlines—one from myeditor and one from my kids—because they’re out of school,
they just demand so much of me these days, so it’s really hardto carve out blocks of time to work,” she added. “And I’ve had
to turn down assignments because I just don’t have the time
to do it and also give the kids the attention they need. That’s
been frustrating—but obviously something parents aroundMAY 2020

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MAY 2020

nalism is hard and necessary; that it’s important to haveexperienced foreign journalists in Japan to help explain what
is really going on, on the ground,” she said. “Also, that quality,
available childcare is essential, and we need to find innovative ways to support working parents in times of crisis.”I, PERSONALLY, WOULD ECHO all these comments—but I’m
still finding it difficult to get my head around how un-angry
the Japanese public and media are at the situation the nation
finds itself in. The Telegraph is a solidly conservative newspaper that was firmly in Boris Johnson’s corner in last year’s
election, but it has still been sharply critical of mistakes andmismanagement in his administration’s response to thecoronavirus crisis in the UK. And rightly so.
But here, the front pages of the papers and the television
coverage merely seem to parrot the government line. Where
are the angry op-eds asking why just 11 percent of deaths
merit autopsies and why, therefore, it appears that people
who may have died of coronavirus are being listed as having
succumbed to pneumonia? Why no outrage over the shortageof protective kits for emergency staff, hospitals turning away
people who are clearly ill and, most obvious of all, the failure
to test more than a fraction of the people?
After March 2011 and the failures that disaster laid bare in
the way that the government talked down to the public andthe media reinforced rather than rebutted that message, I
had hopes that things might change in Japan. By the time thestatistics on pneumonia deaths in the early months of 2020are released—five months later, we are being told—any anger
that might have resulted from inexplicably sharp spikes in
the fatalities will have already dissipated.
So Japan moves on to the next crisis no better prepared andits politicians held no more accountable for their action or
inaction than before. And we’re left to live in hope. ❶Julian Ryall is Japan correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.
11Series: Profile

Thomas Hahn
Süddeutsche Zeitung
By Ilgin Yorulmaz

T

In the light ofsocial distancing,
this interview
was conducted
by Skype andThomas took his
self-portraits bycomputer.

homas Hahn’s days normally would be filled withchasing stories all over Japan, from the artisanal beer
production in Akita Prefecture to Japan’s nationalobsession with baumkuchen (“tree cake”)—that fussy “kingof cakes” native to his homeland, Germany. “For Europeans,
Japan is a similar but at the same time a totally different
country,” he says.
Since 1999, Hahn has been a reporter and editor at Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest selling broadsheet. He
started at the sports desk and stuck to it for 15 years.
After a while, covering Olympic Games and world championships in athletics and nordic skiing was overcome by aneed to do something a bit more substantial. In 2014, theMunich-born journalist switched to the politics beat, left
Bavaria in the south where his appropriately named paper
is based (Süddeutsche Zeitung literally means “South German
Newspaper”), and moved to Hamburg as political correspondent for northern Germany.
SZ, as his paper is known in Germany, is characterized by
its witty and opinionated kind of journalism, marked by avariety of critical columns: “I love SZ’s satirical tone as wellas the out-of-box thinking of its writers, and I am certainly
not one of their most talented writers,” Hahn jokes.
When the post for a Japan and Korea correspondent became
available after his predecessor and mentor Christoph Neidhart
retired, Hahn applied, and moved to Tokyo in September 2019.
At first his job allowed him to travel extensively in Japan while
spending a week or two every month in South Korea.
The plan was to report on Far Eastern foreign affairs witha healthy dose of non-political Japan stories on the side,
reflecting “a whole range of the society . . . like the elderly,
and urban artists.” These stories would be like a wisp of fresh
air against the stuffy Japanese political backdrop. And comesummer, he could even use his vast sports writing skills with
the Tokyo Olympics.
JUST THEN A GLOBAL crisis hit Japanese shores and a single
topic flooded the news: coronavirus.
Although Hahn is now chasing infectious disease scientists and Japanese health officials instead of Olympic record
breakers and national sports teams, he may be one of thebest journalists around to report on corona-related news fora very good reason. Between fall 1991 and summer 1992, Hahn
worked as a nurse at the hospital in Fürth, a town that’s a 90minute drive away from Munich. He was 19 and, like many
young conscientious objectors of his generation, he refused
to go into the army, taking a civil service job instead. He ended up being employed at a hospital unit looking after cancer
patients, alcoholics, and cardiac patients, among others.
That year had a massive personal impact and helped him
develop a better understanding of what health means: “I saw
what it looks like when people are dying. I figured how impor-12

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tant it is to cherish the healthy moments outside. I liked thejob, and this feeling of relief after my shift, when I rode my bikeback home feeling the air, seeing the trees, experiencing thefreedom without sickness,” he says. His words ring particularly
true during this ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has so
far claimed the lives of nearly 200,000 people worldwide.
Germany is seen as a role model by the World Health Organization for its successful coronavirus mitigation and containment strategy of immediate lockdowns, cancellations of
big events and massive daily testing of thousands of people incontrast to Japan’s much softer approach and few tests.
At first, Hahn had trouble understanding and explaining to
his readers why Japan was behaving so differently from otherdeveloped nations. The government’s struggle with internal
politics, lack of clear political guidelines, and in turn, theJapanese public’s failure to understand the impending crisis
surprised him.
HE THINKS PART OF the reason was the Olympics, which hada huge influence on the country’s coronavirus response. “Butthe virus is a biological fact; it’s not about politics,” he saysof the need to approach the crisis from a scientific point ofview. “When politics and economic reasons are put before thepublic health, public trust flows away.” And that is exact what
seems to be happening in Japan.
Although both countries have similar administrative structures, he thinks German states came together faster to devise
a common strategy and decide what the next steps would be. In
Japan, with the exception of Hokkaido initially and Tokyo muchlater on, “decision making was not concise and understandable. . . and the public didn’t feel the urgency,” he observes.
Like many of us, Hahn doesn’t like being confined to hisapartment. He echoes a psychologist he interviewed for astory recently who advised against taking extreme measures.
“I tried to change my daily routine as little as possible, but
going to coffee shops, my favorite workplace, is out of thequestion,” he laments.
A drama, history and communications major at university,
he also turns to drawing during the confinement days. (Hissatirical cartoons can be seen on Instagram at @hahninger).
Although Hahn misses traveling around Japan, he still manages to squeeze into his daily dispatch to the SZ head office
the kind of stories he likes to pursue. Among them is a recent
story on the economic impact of vanishing tourism in Kyoto,
which, before the coronavirus pandemic hit everywhere, hadtaken steps to tackle over-tourism and banned tourists fromtaking pictures in the city’s geisha neighborhoods. It sounds
like a fitting story for a paper whose writers celebrate theirony in everything. ❶Ilgin Yorulmaz is a freelance journalist and a regular contributor to BBC

World Turkish-language service.

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Covid-19: part 2

Viralreports

Reporting—and trying to understand—the spread of Covid-19
dominated the news globally. While the news industry suffered threatsof closure and staff furloughs like other industries, more and more
people were getting their news online, even as online ad revenues
plummeted. Here are some front pages of print editions from aroundthe world—a glimpse of the coverage and its importance.

“In the first place, we managed to find the larger
clusters and get them contained. But Japanesesociety is really poor at switching from Plan A
to Plan B. We are poor at thinking about a plan
B. Bureaucrats would rather complete the plan
once laid,” [professor of infectious disease at Kobe
University Hospital] Iwata explained.
– Asger Røjle Christensen, reporting
April
Kentaru Iwata’s online appearance at the20
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Japan: Emergency declared for a largely voluntary lockdown (April 8)

China: World leader in containment? (April 7)

USA: World leader—in virus cases and unemployment, graphically
represented on their broadsheet front page (March 27)

To an extent that no one would have expected amonth ago, Japan is the best place to be among
any of the big industrialised nations, for thetime being at least. It is difficult to explain andfrankly difficult to believe in. As terrible news
comes in from the rest of the world, Japan feels
like a fairyland into which grim reality is liable toexplode at any moment.
March– Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times

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Dubai: Permits needed to leave home (April 6)

Canada: Routes to recovery from lockdown and its effects, in oneof The Globe and Mail’s striking front pages (April 18)
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Covid-19: part 2

Club NewsNEW MEMBERS

NEW IN THE LIBRARY
Outcasts of Empire: Japan’s Rule on Taiwan’s “Savage
Border,” 1874-1945
Paul D. Barclay
University of California Press
The Japanese Linguistic
Landscape: Reflections on
Quintessential Words
Susumu Nakanishi; trans. by
Ryan Shaldjian Morrison
Japan Publishing Industry
Foundation for Culture (JPIC)The Culture of Capital
Punishment
David T. Johnson
Palgrave Macmillan
Gift from David T. Johnson
Make It Happen!: Japanese Companies Need to
Elevate Marketing as a Core Function to Succeed
Outside Japan
Robert E. Peterson
Gift from Robert E. Peterson
UK: PM taken to intensive care and a week in hospital (April 7)

India: Managing infection and country-wide lockdowns (April 13)

FCCJ EXHIBITION

Disagreements between Koike and Abeover how far the emergency measures
should go have quickly escalated sinceTokyo’s 14 million residents were asked
to stay home earlier this week amid
record numbers of new cases.
“Asking for residents to use self-restraint
and stay home is not enough,” Koike
said soon after Abe declared a stateof emergency this week. “We should
also restrict the use of cluster-causing
facilities” such as restaurants andkaraoke parlours, she said.
– Justin McCurry, The Guardian16

Due to certain changes in the operations of theClub because of the declaration of emergency
in Tokyo, Torin Boyd’s exhibition of thephotographs of Stanley Troutman (see lastmonth’s Number 1 Shimbun) has been extended to
be shown throughout May.
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Rodrigo Reyes-Marin is a freelancephotojournalist and videographer
who changed his membership from
Professional/Journalist Associate toRegular. In 2004, he graduated injournalism from the Centro de Estudios
Universitarios PART, and worked forvarious media in Mexico. He came to
Japan in 2008 as a correspondent for the
Mexican wrestling magazine Luchas 2000. He now contributes
to the photo agency NipponNews (AFLO) and the US photoagency Zuma Press. His book Mexicanos en Toronto, waspublished in 2011.
Toru Shiraishi has held the postof foreign news section editor of The
Tokyo Shimbun/The Chunichi Shimbun
since August 2018. Shiraishi joined theChunichi Newspaper Company in 1988,
and has been working there ever since.
For many years he worked as a writer offoreign news section in Tokyo. He wasa correspondent in Shanghai from 1998
to 2001, and in Beijing from 2005 to2007 and from 2013 to 2015, where he covered Chinese politics,
economics and society.
Kantaro Suzuki is a freelance
reporter based in Tokyo. He holds
degrees from Wittenberg University in
Ohio and Waseda University. He was anews assistant in Tokyo at The New YorkTimes, and part of the team covering
the Fukushima nuclear disaster that was
one of the finalists for the 2012 Pulitzer
Prize. He has also worked on stories
for ProPublica (on casino-building inJapan), BuzzFeed, Aera and other publications. He worked on
the Daily Manila Shimbun in the Philippines for four and a halfyears before returning to Japan in 2016. He also works as aphotographer and live-stream producer.
Mutsumi Tatsubo is the Chief
Foreign News Editor for Jiji Press. He
graduated from Kansai University andjoined Jiji Press in 1987. He served as
Vienna bureau correspondent (19941998), Washington bureau correspondent(1999-2002), Washington bureau chief(2013-2018), and Foreign News Editor
from February 2018. He took on his
present post in July 2019.

April 9Germany: Looked to loosen lockdown and toward hope (April 12)

REGULAR MEMBERS

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MAY 2020

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Birendre Jayathilake, Yoshimoto Kogyo Holdings Co., Ltd.
Marianna Sarkissova, Pace B.V.
Akihiko Kumaoka, Pace B.V.
Hiroyuki Shimada, Fuyoh Shipping Company
Kotaro Watanabe, Deloitte Tohmatsu Financial Advisory LLC
17

Photographer members

Lens craft
From a distance . . .
The earth keeps revolving,. . . while not far
oblivious to man’s problems,
away in Tokyo, theand twice a year the famousdescending sun“Diamond Fuji” —when thealmost creates a
sun and Fuji align at sunset—“Diamond Tokyo
still stuns . . .
Tower.”by Bruce Osbornby Stirling Elmendorf

Keeping a distance . . .
Tape closes off the cherry. . . and a chef stands
blossoms in Ueno Parkoutside his restaurant(Tokyo, March 28) toin Tokyo hoping forprevent hanami-party
customers, the day aftergatherings during thethe State of Emergency
virus outbreak . . .
declaration on April 7.
by Rodrigo Reyes Marinby Tomohiro Ohsumi

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Where news is unlocked