The magazine of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of JapanMay 2021 · Volume 53 · No. 5

FREEDOM

Frontline journalism
and the climate of fearin the Asia-Pacific

FIGHTERS

(BREAD) BREAKING

NEWS

Four do lunch at the FCCJ
Kantaro went for the Sautéed Pork Shoulder Loin with tomato sauce. Jessa had the Spaghetti Carbonara, Randy the
Cheeseburger. Isabel chose the fish of the day with an Arugula and Baby Leaf Garden Salad and split an Apple Pie à lamode with Randy. The others chose from Creme Brûlée, Chiffon Cake and Tiramisu to go with their coffee.
When Kantaro, Jessa, Isabel and Randy had lunch at the FCCJ, it was the least they could do. They could have watched
the news being made at a PAC event, or caught an author presenting his or her latest work at a Book Break – next up is
Robert Whiting with Tokyo Junkie on May 12 – or gone for a sneak Film Preview. The FCCJ is so much more than a dining
club, but the latest Main Bar menu is not to be sniffed at.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. Home from home for the curious and hungry.

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THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB OF JAPANMarunouchi Nijubashi Building 5F, Marunouchi 3-2-3 Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-0005, Japanwww.fccj.or.jp E-mail: front@fccj.or.jp Tel: +81-3-3211-3161 Fax: +81-3-3211-3168

03 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

In this issue
May 2021 · Volume 53 · No. 5
Contact the Editors
no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJ
Editor Justin McCurry
Designer Julio Shiiki
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo coordination Hiroko Moriwaki, Norio Muroi
Publications Committee
Justin McCurry (Chair), Peter O'Connor, Suvendrini
Kakuchi,Monzurul Huq, Robert Whiting, David McNeill
FC C J B OA R D O F D I R EC TO R S
President Isabel Reynolds, Bloomberg L.P.
Special Advisor to the President
Monzurul Huq, Prothom Alo, Dhaka
1st Vice President Andy Sharp, Nikkei Asian Review
2nd Vice President Walter Sim, Straits Times
Treasurer Mehdi Bassiri, O.B.M. Co., Ltd
Secretary Ilgin Yorulmaz,
Freelance/BBC World Service Turkish
Directors-at-LargePeter O’Connor, Freelance
Simon Farrell, Custom Media K.K.
Mary Corbett, Cresner Media
Daniel J. Sloan, Freelance/Nissan Motor
Kanji Gregory Clark, Freelance
Associate Kanji Vicki L. Beyer, Freelance
Ex-officio Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
Regular Reserve Director: Pio d'Emilia, SKY TG 24
FC C J C O M M I T T E E C H A I R SDiversity Co-Chair and Board, Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
Co-Chair and Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Publications Chair: Justin McCurry,
Board Liaison: Peter O’Connor
Website Chair and Board Liaison: Simon Farrell
Associate Members’ Liaison Chair: TBA
Board Liaison: TBA
Entertainment Chair: Sandra Mori,
Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Exhibition Chair: Bruce Osborn,
Board Liaison: Peter O'Connor
Film Chair: Karen Severns, Board Liaison: Dan Sloan
Finance Chair and Board Liaison: Mehdi Bassiri
Food & Beverage Co-Chair: Robert Kirschenbaum,
Co-Chair: Pio d'Emilia, Board Liaison: Mary Corbett
Freedom of Press Co-Chair: Justin McCurry,
Co-Chair: Simon Denyer, Board Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
House & Property Chair and Board Liaison: Andy Sharp
Human Resources Chair and Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Information Technology Chair: TBA
Board Liaison: TBA
LAW Co-Chair: Koichi Ishiyama,
Co-Chair: Suvendrini Kakuchi
Board Liaison: Peter O’Connor
Public Relations (incorporating Marketing
Membership)
Chair and Board Liaison: Simon Farrell
Membership Co-Chair: Andrew Horvat
Co-Chair: Monzurul Huq, Board Liaison: Peter O'Connor
Professional Activities Co-Chair: Tetsu Jimbo
Co-Chair: David McNeill, Board Liaison: Andy Sharp
Special Projects Chair: Haruko Watanabe,
Board Liaison: TBA
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Co-Chair: Abby Leonard
Co-Chair: Kazu Takada, Board Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
Compliance Chair: Kunio Hamada, Board Liaison: TBA
Election Chair: Reed Stevenson

JUSTIN McCURRYF

rom China to Myanmar, few can recall a time when governments in the
Asia-Pacific had so little compunction in attacking journalists and the
independent media. As we prepare to mark World Press Freedom Day
on May 3, this month’s issue of the Number 1 Shimbun is putting journalists working in challenging parts of the region front and center, starting withan overview from our colleagues at Reporters Sans Frontieres, whose 2021 globalpress freedom index appeared last month. Ben Dunant explains how the Myanmar coup has led to a crackdown on media organizations that oppose the military
junta, while a reporter in the region explains the exodus of Western journalists
from China. Anthony Rowley reminds us of the role the world’s oldest professional
association for journalists continues to play in protecting media freedoms. Elsewhere, Kaori Kohyama, author of the winning essay in this year’s Swadesh DeRoy
Scholarship awards, looks at how cults and new religions have sought to exploit
the coronavirus pandemic, and David McNeill finds the journalist Takashi Uemura in no mood to abandon his reporting on the “comfort women” issue, despite
intimidation from the Japanese far right. We are delighted to be able to run atranslated extract from Asger Røejle Christensen’s new book about Svend Nyboe
Andersen — whom some current members will remember from his time in Tokyo
several decades ago — as well as a selection of arresting black-and-white photographs by Masanori Kamide.

THE FRONT PAGE
04 From the President
Isabel Reynolds

COVER STORY
05 Censorship and disinformation in the Asia-PacificDaniel Bastard & Cédric Alviani

FE AT URES
08 Beijing’s media exodus
Regional reporter

10 In the junta’s crosshairs
Ben Dunant

13 Protecting press freedom
Anthony Rowley

15 ‘I am not a fabricator’David McNeill

BOOK BREAK

17 Nyboe’s Japan

Asger Røejle Christensen

F CC J SCHOL A RSHIP AWA RDS

22 Preying on a pandemic
Kaori Kohyama

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
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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
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Please pitch and send articles and photographs, oraddress comments to no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Read the Number 1 Shimbun online:

www.fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun.html

CLUB NEWS25 New members, Join the Film Committee,
New in the library, Regular by eggs
EXHIBITION

28 888Zenya photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide

Cover illustration: Julio ShiikiINDEX04 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

THE FRONT PAGE

From the President
Dear members,

L©FCCJ / JULIO SHIIKI

ast December, when the world’s
coronavirus vaccine rollout was justbeginning, I wrote in my column
about the faint signs of light at theend of Japan’s pandemic tunnel. We recently
heard from government vaccine chief Taro
Kono that he plans to have Japan’s immunization program completed by February next
year at the latest. That’s a lot later than manyof us had hoped (and far slower than someother countries) but it does at least give us afirm timeline to work with. The Club’s Board
and Committees can start planning for eventsand gatherings in person to restart aroundthat time. That’s not to say that we don’t havea whole lot of hurdles to overcome before
then — not least the third state of emergency
in Tokyo, which is due to last until May 11. The
restrictions are much stricter than under theprevious emergency declaration. We’ll keep
you posted on any change to operating hours
for the Club’s facilities.
After introducing our new food and beverage
vendor in the Main Bar, we’re trying to makemore improvements so that the Club will beeven better value for our members. From next
month, we are planning to open the balcony
leading off the Main Bar for al fresco coffee anddrinks. Please take advantage of this outdoor
space as the weather gets warmer. Anotherdecision the Board recently made is to cut thefees charged for members to rent rooms at theClub for their own events and parties. We’ll be
uploading the new price schedule on the Club
website as soon as possible.
We’re also heading into election season at
the Club, so please put the June 23 General
Membership Meeting in your diary. The Associate Members’ Liaison Committee is alreadylooking for candidates to run for the threeassociate positions on the Board. Please do
consider putting your name forward, if you
haven’t done so already. We would love tobenefit from the wealth of wisdom and experience that we know our Associate Members
have to offer.

We have a number of interesting events
coming up, but I’d like to single out one in that
may be particularly relevant as the pandemic
looks set to drag on, affecting everyone’s stateof mind. On May 13, we have a panel of experts
talking about the mental health effects of
Covid-19, as the latest in our Deep Dive series.
Finally, you may have heard that NHK recently spent a day filming in our main press conference room for a scene in a new drama starring
the popular actor Tori Matsuzaka. The drama,
Ima Koko ni Aru Kiki to Boku no Kokando, wasscheduled to air at 9 p.m. on Saturday nightsfrom April 24. If you’re interested in seeing thepress conference scene, it will be shown either
May 1 or May 8.
● Isabel Reynolds has been reporting for
Bloomberg in Tokyo since 2012. She has lived inJapan for more than 20 years and been a regularmember of the FCCJ for most of that time.

INDEX05 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

COVER STORYCENSORSHIPANDDISINFORMATION
IN THE

ASIA-PACIFIC
Reporters Sans Frontieres press freedom index warns
pandemic being used as cover for media crackdown

DANIEL BASTARD & CÉDRIC ALVIANIT

he region’s authoritarian regimes
have used the Covid-19 pandemic toperfect their methods of totalitarian
control of information, while the “dictatorial democracies” have used it as a pretext
for imposing especially repressive legislation
with provisions combining propaganda with
suppression of dissent.
The behaviour of the region’s few real democracies have meanwhile shown that journalistic
freedom is the best antidote to disinformation.
Just as Covid-19 emerged in China — placed
177th in the 2021 index — before spreading
throughout the world, so the censorship virus,
in which China is the world’s undisputed specialist, has spread through Asia and Oceania
and gradually taken hold in much of the region.

Starting with Hong Kong (80th), where Beijing
can now interfere directly in this semi-autonomous “special administrative region” under thenational security law it imposed in June 2020,
which poses a grave threat to journalism.
Vietnam (175th) also reinforced its controlof social media content, while conducting awave of arrests of leading independent journalists in the run-up to the Communist Party’s
five-yearly congress in January 2021. They
included Pham Doan Trang, who was awarded Reporters Sans Frontieres’ Press Freedom
Prize for Impact in 2019.
North Korea (up 1 at 179th), which has noneed to take lessons in censorship from its
Chinese neighbour, continues to rank among
the Index’s worst performers because of its

INDEX06 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

CENSORSHIP AND DISINFORMATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFICWIKIPEDIA

A teen protesting
against the military
coup in Yangon

totalitarian control over information and its
population. A North Korean can still end up in
a concentration camp just for looking at thewebsite of a media outlet based abroad.

Blocking journalism
At least 10 other countries — all coloured red or
black on the World Press Freedom map, meaning their press freedom situation is classified as
bad or every bad — used the pandemic to reinforce obstacles to the free flow of information.
Thailand (up 3 at 137th), Philippines (down 2 at
138th), Indonesia (up 6 at 113th) and Cambodia(144th) adopted extremely draconian laws ordecrees in the spring of 2020 criminalising any
criticism of the government’s actions and, insome cases, making the publication or broadcasting of “false” information punishable byseveral years in prison.
Malaysia (down 18 at 119th) embodies thedesire for absolute control over information.
Its astonishing 18-place fall, the biggest of
any country in the Index, is directly linked to
the formation of a new coalition government
in March 2020. It led to the adoption of aso-called “anti-fake news” decree enabling

the authorities to impose their own versionof the truth — a power that the neighbouringcity-state of Singapore (down 2 at 160th) has
been using for the past two years thanks to a
law allowing the government to “correct” any
information it deems to be false and to prosecute those responsible.
In Myanmar (down 1 at 140th), Aung San Suu
Kyi’s civilian government used the pretext of
combating “fake news” during the pandemic
to suddenly block 221 websites including manyleading news sites in April 2020. The military’s
constant harassment of journalists trying tocover the various ethnic conflicts also contributed to the country’s fall in the Index.
The press freedom situation has worsened
dramatically since the military coup in February 2021. By resuming the grim practices of thejunta that ruled until February 2011 — including
media closures, mass arrests of journalists andprior censorship — Myanmar has suddenly
gone back ten years.
Pakistan (145th) is the other country in thisregion where the military controls journalists.
The all-powerful military intelligence agency,
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continues toINDEX07 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

CENSORSHIP AND DISINFORMATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC
make extensive use of judicial harassment,
intimidation, abduction and torture to silence
critics both domestically and abroad, where
many journalists and bloggers living in self-imposed exile have been subjected to threats
designed to rein them in. Although the vast
majority of media outlets reluctantly comply
with the red lines imposed by the military, thePakistani censorship apparatus is still struggling to control social media, the only space
where a few critical voices can be heard.

Throttling information

A new prime
minister in Japan(down 1 at 67th)
has not changed
the climate of
mistrust towards
journalists thatis encouraged by
the nationalist
right, nor has it
ended the selfcensorship that isstill widespread in
the media.

Instead of drafting new repressive laws in orderto impose censorship, several of the region’s
countries have contented themselves withstrictly applying existing legislation that was
already very draconian — laws on “sedition,”“state secrets” and “national security.” There is
no shortage of pretexts.
The strategy for suppressing information isoften two-fold. On the one hand, governments
use innovative practices often derived frommarketing to impose their own narrative within
the mainstream media, whose publishers arefrom the same elite as the politicians. On theother, politicians and activists wage a mercilesswar on several fronts against reporters andmedia outlets that don’t toe the official line.
The way India (142nd) applies these methods is particularly instructive. While the
pro-government media pump out a form of
propaganda, journalists who dare to criticize
the government are branded as “anti-state,”“anti-national” or even “pro-terrorist” by supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). This exposes them to public condemnation in the form of extremely violent social
media hate campaigns that include calls forthem to be killed, especially if they are women.
When out reporting in the field, they are physically attacked by BJP activists, often with thecomplicity of the police. And finally, they arealso subjected to criminal prosecutions.
Independent journalism is also being fiercely
suppressed in Bangladesh (down 1 at 152nd), Sri
Lanka (127th) and Nepal (up 6 at 106th) — thelatter’s rise in the Index being due more to falls
by other countries than to any real improvement in media freedom. A somewhat lessviolent increase in repression has also been
seen in Papua New Guinea (down 1 at 47th), Fiji
(down 3 at 55th) and Tonga (up 4 at 46th).

Censorship virus
In Australia (up 1 at 25th), it was Facebook that
introduced the censorship virus. In response
to proposed Australian legislation requiring
tech companies to reimburse the media forcontent posted on their social media platforms, Facebook decided to ban Australian
media from publishing or sharing journalistic
content on their Facebook pages. In India,
the arbitrary nature of Twitter’s algorithms
also resulted in brutal censorship. After being
bombarded with complaints generated bytroll armies about The Kashmir Walla magazine, Twitter suddenly suspended its accountwithout any possibility of appeal.
Afghanistan (122nd) is being attacked byanother virus, that of intolerance and extreme
violence against journalists, especially women journalists. With no fewer than six journalists and media workers killed in 2020 and at
least four more killed since the start of 2021,
Afghanistan continues to be one of the world’s
deadliest countries for the media.
A new prime minister in Japan (down 1 at67th) has not changed the climate of mistrust
towards journalists that is encouraged by thenationalist right, nor has it ended the self-censorship that is still widespread in the media.
The Asia-Pacific region’s young democracies, such as Bhutan (up 2 at 65th), Mongolia(up 5 at 68th) and Timor-Leste (up 7 at 71st),
have resisted the temptations of pandemic-linked absolute information control fairly
well, thanks to media that have been able toassert their independence vis-à-vis the executive, legislature and judiciary.
Although imperfect, the regional press
freedom models — New Zealand (up 1 at 8th),
Australia, South Korea (42nd) and Taiwan(43rd) — have on the whole allowed journalists
to do their job and to inform the public without any attempt by the authorities to impose
their own narrative. Their good behaviour
has shown that censorship is not inevitable intimes of crisis and that journalism can be thebest antidote to disinformation.

● Daniel Bastard is Asia-Pacific director
at Reporters Sans Frontieres. Cédric Alviani isdirector of the organization’s East Asia office.

INDEX08 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

F E AT URE

BEIJING’SMEDIAEXODUS
Foreign journalists in China areleaving the country amid mounting
government harassment
REGIONAL REPORTER

O

perating in China, never straightforward for foreign correspondents, has grown much harder.
A year ago, the problems might
have appeared confined mainly to American
media organizations, part of tit-for-tat moves
feeding increased tensions between China andthe United States. In February 2020, the administration of then-President Donald Trump said
employees of five state-run Chinese media
organizations, including Xinhua, the state wire
service, would have to register with the State
Department when operating on American soil,
just as foreign embassies and other diplomatic
missions must do. In March, it slashed the number of journalists allowed to work at the American arms of major Chinese media outlets, from
160 to 100. In June, four more Chinese media
outfits were designated as foreign missions,
including the state-run network, China Central
Television (CCTV). The overseas branches ofChinese media organizations are routinely
used as bases for state intelligence-gathering.
The response was swift, with the government
in Beijing saying that it was revoking the accreditations of correspondents with The Washing-

ton Post, The New York Times and The WallStreet Journal. At least 18 journalists with these
papers were expelled in the first half of last year.
It was made clear that none would be welcomein Hong Kong. Several have relocated to Taiwan.
Think of it for a moment: America’s three leading dailies are prevented from covering from theground the world’s second biggest economy
and this century’s most consequential story ofa rising power.
As for Australian media, with an impressive
record of China reporting dating back more thana century, not a single correspondent remains in
China. The last two, Bill Birtles of the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation and Mike Smith of
The Australian Financial Review, flew home in
September. They left amid worsening bilateralrelations following accusations of Chinese interference in Australian public life and academia,
and a call by Scott Morrison, the Australianprime minister, for an international inquiry into
the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a topic about which China is highly sensitive. Bothreporters were interrogated by police and bothallowed to leave only following interventions byAustralian diplomats. A Chinese-born Australian, Cheng Lei, a prominent news anchor with
China Global Television Network (CGTN), hasbeen detained since August, allegedly on the
grounds of “endangering China’s national security”. The International Federation of Journalists
calls her detention “without cause or reason”.
And now the BBC’s Beijing correspondentof nine years, John Sudworth, has followed
American and Australian colleagues in moving
to Taiwan, along with his wife, Yvonne Murray, areporter with RTÉ, Ireland’s public broadcaster,and their children. Sudworth’s ground-breaking
reporting, among other topics, on the treatment

INDEX09 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

BEIJING’S MEDIA EXODUS

One in six
journalists
surveyed by
the Foreign
Correspondents’
Club of China areforced to live andwork in China on
short-term visas of
between one andsix months. During
the pandemic, theweaponization ofvisas has grown,
including with anear-total freeze
on new approvals
for journalists
seeking to relocate
to China.

of ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, has long angered the authorities.
Vitriol directed at the BBC more generally has
increased since February, when Britain revoked
the UK broadcasting licence of CGTN becauseof its being politically controlled. Sudworth said
that intimidation, surveillance and threats oflegal action had made it increasingly hard for
him and his colleagues to film.
The growing threat of detention in China has
increased journalists’ vulnerability, providing
motivation enough to seek to leave. An opposite dynamic operating during the pandemic
has kept many other foreign correspondents inplace. Various categories of foreigners resident
in China are allowed to leave and return, provided they submit to quarantine regulations
upon landing. Journalists, however, remain the
only group of resident permit holders refused
re-entry. Nor are the authorities allowing family
members abroad to travel to China. Some foreign correspondents have not seen their closefamily for over 15 months.
The Chinese authorities have long used thethreat of visa revocation, or the withholdingof approval for new visa applications, as a tool
for seeking compliant behaviour from foreign
media organizations. One in six journalists
surveyed by the Foreign Correspondents’ Clubof China (FCCC) are forced to live and work in
China on short-term visas of between one andsix months. During the pandemic, the weaponization of visas has grown, including with anear-total freeze on new approvals for journalists seeking to relocate to China.
The pandemic has provided cover for other,largely unprecedented, moves to frustrate foreign journalists’ efforts to do their job. New surveillance systems and controls on movement
have been used disproportionately on foreign
correspondents. Many have experienced local
goons telling them to leave an area or be quarantined on the spot. Provincial propaganda or
public-security departments often force local
entities to cancel planned interviews withforeign media, even for light stories such as
those about food. In the FCCC’s annual surveyof media freedoms, published in March, ninein 10 respondents had experienced interviews
cancelled by subjects barred from speaking toforeign media. Nearly every journalist travelling to the border regions of Xinjiang and Inner
Mongolia last year experienced harassment.

Many of these experiences are not new.
What is new, the FCCC reports, are “dramatically stepped-up efforts” in 2020 to constrain
the work of foreign correspondents. Previously, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with which
all foreign media have obligatory relations,offered a window into the dynamics among
the various institutions of state. Relatively cosmopolitan, it understood the value to China ofgood foreign reporting on the country; often,
its officials would distance themselves fromthe more thuggish treatment of correspondents by other arms of the state. No longer.
The ministry has upped its attacks on foreign
media organizations and individuals as part ofits new “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
Perhaps most chilling of all are new risks
to the Chinese colleagues of foreign correspondents. By law, Chinese news assistants,
researchers and translators must be approvedby the Diplomatic Service Bureau. The advantage to foreign bureaus is the level of protection this stipulation was once presumed togive Chinese colleagues. That can no longer
be taken for granted. On April 23, plainclothes
security officers detained a Chinese news
assistant at Bloomberg in Beijing whom theauthorities subsequently said was suspectedof endangering national security — a catch-all
term that can lead to lengthy detention without
legal recourse or assistance. Researchers andnews assistants, a brave and committed groupof mainly young, highly motivated Chinese, are
an invaluable resource to media outlets. Theirsafety is now in question, and bureaus are
struggling to find ways to protect them.
These mounting obstacles and risks come ata time when foreign coverage of China grows
only more important. China’s own media landscape has been severely constrained under
President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the houndingof individuals who last year attempted to use
social media to report the pandemic and its
consequences has underscored how citizen
journalists are not be tolerated either. That theforeign media have led on the crucial stories
of recent years — from the wealth amassed
by Communist Party leaders, to the detention
camps in Xinjiang and China’s assertivenessabroad — is testament to their skill and persistence. In the past year, the dangers to suchreporting and to those who carry it out havegrown markedly.

INDEX10 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

F E AT URE

IN THEJUNTA’SCROSSHAIRSThe military coup in Myanmar has
triggered a collapse in media freedom
WIKIPEDIA

A protest in the Hledan area of Yangon

BEN DUNANT

A

colleague delivered the news of thecoup to me in a 5 a.m. phone call.
“The state counsellor and president
have been taken by soldiers,” shesaid, referring to Myanmar’s top civilian leaders, Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint.
The message was easy to understand but
hard to digest. Myanmar’s military had hit
a switch on February 1 and the country hadchanged tracks, heading towards a future thatmany of us preferred not to think about.
Journalists braced for the worst as rumors

flew of plans for mass detentions. Editors hastily arranged safe houses for their reporters
and abandoned their offices. However, in thedays right after the coup, arrests remained limited to a small number of elite politicians andwell-known associates of the ruling party, theNational League for Democracy. The military
had evidently planned their takeover as a swift
decapitation of Myanmar’s democratic leadership. The calculus seemed to be that, bereft of“Mother Suu”, any ensuing protests would lackdirection and quickly fizzle out.

INDEX11 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

IN THE JUNTA’S CROSSHAIRSBEN DUNANT

A Yangon newsstand that once
heaved with publications was by
mid-March stocking only a coupleof obscure weeklies, thanks to thebanning and collapse of Myanmar’s
main private newspapers.

The protests were indeed hesitant at first,
with several NLD leaders urging caution, butthey spontaneously grew to hundreds ofthousands, possibly millions, of participantsin towns and villages across the country. Withsecurity forces initially showing restraint, thesedemonstrations were like street parties. Whole
families took part, and young people turned up
in fancy dress and placards pasted with caustic, often bawdy jibes aimed at the military andits chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
When the protests failed to fizzle out, themilitary’s patience snapped and from March
onwards, anyone bold enough to protest risked
sniper fire and arrest, with the likelihood of torture in detention and multi-year prison sentences. The Thai border-based Assistance Association
for Political Prisoners has counted more than 750
civilian deaths at the hands of security forces
since the coup, and more than 3,000 arrests.
Journalists, too, have become prey to the junta. What at first seemed like a decision to leave
the press alone, and to concentrate instead on
taming social media with website blocks andinternet blackouts, morphed in early March
into a widespread crackdown. Five prominent
media organizations were banned on March
8 and journalists continue to be detained. The
Reporting ASEAN website says that, as of April
26, 43 remain behind bars out of 77 arrested
since the coup. Some have been dragged fromtheir homes at night, others bundled roughly
into police vans while covering protests. Whileno journalists are among the dead, a reporterat the publication I work for, Frontier Myanmar,

was shot in the hand while covering a protest in
Mandalay on March 27.
Media outlets have responded in different
ways to the crackdown. Myanmar’s biggest-circulation private newspaper, 7Day News, immediately folded when it was named among thefive banned organizations and even took down
its website and Facebook page with millions offollowers. Conversely, the four other banned
outlets — Democratic Voice of Burma, Khit Thit
News, Mizzima and Myanmar Now — have continued publishing online, with their staff in hiding
or in exile. Other well-established organizations
such as Myanmar Times and The Voice havestopped publishing voluntarily, though poor
finances likely loomed large in their decisions.
For those, like myself, who have worked in
Myanmar newsrooms over the past decade,the collapse of press freedom has been hard tobear. Few of us know it at the time, but we were
living through a charmed chapter in Myanmar’s media story.
When I began working in the country in 2014,
every month seemed to bring a fresh publication to the newsstands of the commercial capital, Yangon. Some of the new titles were worthy
additions to Myanmar’s public sphere, thoughmany more were obscure vanity projects andbrash commercial ventures from businesspeople who saw independent media as virginterritory. Although quality was at a premium,
the November 2015 election that installed the
NLD in government was accompanied by an
unprecedented level of coverage, debate andscandal, to the public’s benefit.

INDEX12 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

IN THE JUNTA’S CROSSHAIRSBEN DUNANT

BEN DUNANT

Right: A demonstration in February
outside a cinema on central
Yangon’s Sule Pagoda Road
demands the release of detained
civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi andan end to military rule.
Bottom: A young man at a February
protest holds up a printed sheet
declaring state broadcaster MRTV tobe “fake news”. After the coup, themilitary seized control of all state
media, which have since faithfully
reported the junta’s narrative to adisbelieving public.

The sector soon ran into trouble, though. As
the people got the first government of theirchoosing in more than five decades, they also
got online. The opening up of the telecommunications industry in 2014 brought the price ofa SIM card from several hundred US dollars tolittle more than a dollar. Cheap SIMs delivered
regular internet to tens of millions of Myanmar
people for the first time, and within just a few
years, smartphones were everywhere andFacebook was the country’s favourite news
source. This robbed conventional media of its
appeal to advertisers, and formerly profitablenews organizations began shedding staff andparing down expenses.
In this financial reckoning, Myanmar was
merely catching up with a global trend that
low internet penetration had previously kept atbay. However, it was particularly unfortunate ina country that lacked a roster of legacy media

outlets with many decades of experience inindependent reporting and well-established,
loyal readerships. Although organizations like
DVB, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima had previously done vital reporting in exile, and others like
Myanmar Times had pushed the boundaries
of censorship within the country, independent
media in Myanmar was young and fragile.
Insolvency was accompanied by other problems, including the government’s efforts to discipline critical journalists with criminal charges,
for instance in the case of Reuters reporters Wa
Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who spent more than
500 days in prison under the Official Secrets
Acts for exposing a massacre in 2017 of ten
Rohingya men in Rakhine State. Journalists
who criticised the popular NLD administration
also faced public scorn, which hurt morale
across the press corps.
These difficulties seemed to amount to acrisis at the time, but in retrospect, they were
temporary setbacks. The threat now facing
Myanmar media is existential: Army snipers do
not distinguish between reporters and frontline protesters, and every published word canbe used against an organization by a regime
that treats all criticism as sedition. Buoyed bymassive public support, the country’s journalists are largely determined to keep doing theirjobs, whatever the risks — but with no end insight to Myanmar’s nightmare, I fear their work
will come at the cost of lives and futures.
● Ben Dunant is managing editor of Frontier
Myanmar magazineINDEX13 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

F E AT URE

PROTECTINGPRESSFREEDOMJULIO SHIIKI

London-based Chartered Institute of
Journalists has long history of defending
journalists around the world
ANTHONY ROWLEY

F

reedom of the press, freedom ofspeech and free access to official
information are all articles of faithwith Britain’s 137-year-old Chartered
Institute of Journalists (CIoJ).
The institute believes that actions speak
louder than words when it comes to safeguarding these key freedoms.
The same principles are applied by the
London-based institution when it comes toaiding member (and sometimes non-member)journalists in other ways including financiallyfrom its various benevolent funds — somethingthat has been a godsend for many during theCovid-19 pandemic.
The CIoJ (to which this writer has belonged
since the 1970s) could arguably serve as a rolemodel to press clubs and other journalism
associations when it comes to how to approach
the issue of press and other media freedoms
from a holistic standpoint.

It campaigns actively on behalf of individualjournalists. Its president, Tim Crook, noted in a
recent issue of the CIoJ monthly magazine, The
Journal, that “our support for the campaign tosecure the release of Philippines journalist Lady
Ann Salem (known as “Icy”) was successful.
“An appeal court in Manila ordered her release.
We wrote to the Ambassador of the Philippines
in London expressing our concerns about her
detention [and] our daily vigil on social media
contributed to the campaign to secure her
freedom,” said Crook, who is an emeritus professor and historian at Goldsmiths, Universityof London.
The CIoJ, Crook said, had also “adopted thecase of Australian broadcaster, Cheng Lei, who
has been detained in China since August 14th
2020. She was allegedly detained on the spurious charge of communicating state secrets
overseas, which is another way of trying to
make journalism a crime”.

INDEX14 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

PROTECTING PRESS FREEDOM

Winter 2020/1

TheJournal

Magazine of theChartered Instituteof Journalists

Serving professional journalism since 1912

Fighting for freedomof informationThe Chartered Institute of Journalists(CIoJ) is breaking new ground in aseries of test cases on Freedom ofInformation.
The Institute is currently battling five
Freedom of Information cases at theFirst Tier Tribunal (Information Rights)
and Upper Tribunal in a campaign toachieve proper recognition for the rights
of journalists, academic researchers andNGOs to government information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office
is refusing to hear the CIoJ President,
Professor Tim Crook’s appeals against
the block by MI5 and MI6 for access tohistorical files more than 70 years old. The
First Tier Tribunal, which hears appeals
on FOI cases, has actually barred any
access to justice by saying it does not have
any jurisdiction and will not even hear
the appeal against the refusal to hear theappeal.
Professor Crook’s three longstanding
investigative projects have huge public
interest significance and are clearly part ofthe ‘social watchdog’ role recognised by thehighest European Court of Human Rights
as deserving the right to state information.
They have resulted in published books
and a BBC television drama series.

Appeals

There are also two appeals before theUpper Tribunal where Professor Crookand the CIoJ are challenging the refusal
to recognise the European Court of
Human Rights Grand Chamber rulingin 2016 saying there is a qualified rightunder Article 10 to state/government
information. Strasbourg changed thelaw and extended the reach of Article 10
in freedom of information requests in acase from Hungary four years ago called‘Magyar’.
The UK government was the onlyintervening country opposing the moveto recognise a standing right for access togovernment information under Article 10

European Court of Human Rights building by CherryX CC BY-SA 3.0

Freedom of Expression, which along withall the other Human Rights was enshrined
into UK law by legislation in 1998 andenacted in the year 2000.
Every argument put forward by UK
government lawyers was turned down
in a high majority ruling of 15-2 by theGrand Chamber unequivocally declaringthat there is a qualified right specificallyfor journalists, academic researchersand NGOs undertaking the public
interest social watchdog role of seeking
information in a democratic society.
But the UK government, the ICO(which regulates FOI in England) andthe Information Tribunal system haveblocked and opposed every move to apply
the new ruling. In the Magyar ruling,
the Strasbourg court explained that theright to state information for journalists
should be recognised because: “It has
been the Court’s practice to recognise
the essential role played by the press
in a democratic society and the special
position of journalists in this context. It
has held that the safeguards to be afforded
Continued on page 3• Chartered Institute of Journalists isthe only UK journalist body fighting
to put freedom of expression law at
the heart of freedom of information
process• European Court of Human Rights
gave special recognition to journalists,
academic researchers and NGOs byextending Article 10 to include theright to state information in 2016
• But
UKgovernment,
FOI
tribunal system and Information
Commissioner’s Office are stubbornly
blocking implementation• CIoJ President Professor Tim Crookhas five FOI appeals fighting theissue and challenging absolute blocks
to historical archives managed by
Met Police, MI5 and MI6• He is seeking access to information
on government spying of staff andstudents at Goldsmiths, Universityof London, vetting and spying onleft wing BBC writers and producers,
and the case of WWII MI6 officer
Alexander Wilson recently made into
TV drama series Mrs Wilson

The official organ of the CIoJ and has been in publication since 1912.
It reports the activities of the institute and industry developments.

“A free press isthe unsleeping
guardian of every
other right that
free men prize”

The institute fights for individual journalists
elsewhere in the 30 countries where it has
members. It is involved, for example, in a campaign for the release of Al Jazeera journalist
Mahmoud Hussein, who has been “detained
without due process, charge or trial in Egypt”
for more than four years.
Journalism “should never be a crime,” the
CIoJ has declared. One of its more illustrious
members, erstwhile journalist, statesman andBritish prime minister Sir Winston Churchill
who joined what was then the Institute of
Journalists in 1936, noted famously that “a freepress is the unsleeping guardian of every otherright that free men prize”.
Preserving press freedoms (and wider freedoms of speech) goes beyond just battlingon behalf of individual journalists. The CIoJ
has urged the UK parliament "to legislate forthe protection of journalists and their sources by recognising a public interest defence
for news gathering.

“An across-the-board public interest defense inprofessional media cases is an essential pathway
to providing the necessary protection for thesocial watchdog role of journalists and journalism that sustains democracy and basic liberty ina fair and stable society,” the Institute argues.
Crook, meanwhile, attacked as a “Snoopers
Charter” UK legislation passed in 2016 (The
Investigatory Powers Act) which he claimed
would create an open door for secret snoopingon journalists and their sources. Under the legislation,” any investigation into any kind of public
interest story based on a leak or whistle-blowing
source can be defined as a serious crime, Crooknoted. And if the “mother of parliaments” in the
UK can endorse such legislation, it is “open season” for others to do likewise.
The CIoJ is also fighting to put freedom of
expression law at the heart of the freedom of
information process.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights
gave special recognition to journalists, academic researchers and NGOs to have accessto certain state information. But, says the CIoJ,
the UK government is “stubbornly blocking”
implementation of the law and thus the social
watchdog role of journalism.
The CIoJ has been representing the interests of its members for well over a century. It is,in its own words, an “independent organizationthat promotes standards and ethics throughout the profession,” including through courses
in teaching law as it affects journalists.
The institute is the oldest professional bodyfor journalists in the world. It was founded as
the National Association of Journalists in 1884,and six years later was granted its Royal Charter by Queen Victoria, to protect and serve
those employed in the field of journalism.
The institute combines the role of professional society with that of a trade union — known as
the IoJ(TU). The institute’s union section protects members’ interests in the workplaceand campaigns for better conditions forworking journalists.
Apart from being concerned with protectionof journalistic freedoms, the CIoJ promotes
standards and ethics for the media and theprinciples of “honest reporting, independence
and being apolitical”.
● Anthony Rowley is the Tokyo correspondent forSingapore Business TimesINDEX15 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

F E AT URE‘I AM NOT AFABRICATOR’FCCJJapanese journalist hounded by nationalists says
he will not abandon ‘comfort women’ cause
DAVID McNEILLM

ost newspaper journalists would
love to have an article remembered a week after it was published. Takashi Uemura is stilldealing with the fallout from something hewrote for The Asahi Shimbun 30 years ago.
Uemura’s reports in Japan’s flagship liberaldaily on Kim Hak-sun, the first wartime “comfort woman” to publicly reveal her history,
was seen at the time as a landmark in national
atonement. The backlash was slow but, eventually, crippling.
Nishioka Tsutomu, an academic associatedwith the nationalist right, fired the first salvo
against Uemura in the conservative magazine
Bungei Shunju. The criticism gradually built
into a campaign of denunciation that branded
the Asahi reporter a “fabricator” whose work
was tainted by anti-Japanese bias.
When Uemura left the Asahi in 2014, a job
offer at Kobe Shoin University was retracted
after the university received death threats andhate mail triggered by an article in anotherweekly, Shukan Bunshun.
Unwittingly, Uemura had become the central
figure in the conservative right’s hatred of theINDEX16 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

‘I AM NOT A FABRICATOR’“Journalism isunder attack fromthe authorities,
and not justhere. History
is a constant
flashpoint inJapan. The biggest
difference (withelsewhere) is thatin other countries
the inconvenient
past is being
remembered while
here it is being
erased.”Asahi, and in the toxic disputes over World War
2 history that have poisoned Japan’s ties with
South Korea.
His public vilification was fueled by the Internet. Blogs, message boards and social networking sites spread his writings, image andprofile. A picture of Uemura’s daughter, who
is half Korean, was published online. Anotheruniversity in Hokkaido that had offered him an
adjunct position was targeted by bomb threats.
Sakurai Yoshiko, a journalist close to the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said Uemura“must be held accountable” for hurting Japan.
Initially stunned by this campaign, Uemura
fought back, speaking at friendly conferences
and penning a piece for Shunju in a bid to argue
his case. Backed by unions and supporters, helaunched lawsuits against Nishioka and Sakurai.
A central issue in these legal fights was
the claim that Uemura did not himself talk to
Kim (he used a taped interview) and that he
implied that she had been forcibly taken. The
key dispute in the historical debate over comfort women is the extent to which force wasused against them — the right argues that they
were willing prostitutes.
If Uemura has any regrets about penning
the article that has defined his life since thesummer of 1991, he wasn’t showing them at
the FCCJ. “I have great pride that I was able toreport on that moment when the first survivor
started to give testimony,” he said.
Sitting beside him was filmmaker Shinji
Nishijima, who has made a new documentary
about Uemura’s professional and legal struggles. “Target” tells the story of a reporter who
spoke “truth to power” and suffered the consequences, said Nishijima.
“Journalism is under attack from the authorities, and not just here,” he said. History is aconstant flashpoint in Japan, he added. “Thebiggest difference (with elsewhere) is that inother countries the inconvenient past is being
remembered while here it is being erased.”
If the FCCJ event was any indication, however, the right’s attention has moved on. Whereas
previous press conferences by Uemura drew
hecklers and haters among large crowds, justa handful turned up to hear him at the FCCJ.
The few comments under his video on the
FCCJ website were mostly hostile. “He has noshame,” said one.
One reason for this indifference, perhaps, isthat his five-year legal battle has petered out.
A defamation lawsuit against Sakurai and thethree publishers who carried her work was
defeated in the Supreme Court last November (a local court in Sapporo had earlier ruledin 2018 that Sakurai’s work had damaged his
reputation but not defamed him; Tokyo District
Court said in 2019 that Bunshun had defamed
him but dismissed claims for damages).
Uemura’s suit against Nishioka and Bungei
Shunju, meanwhile, was dismissed in March
2020. (Uemura did win a separate harassment
lawsuit and damages against a person who had
threatened him on Twitter).
These days, Uemura has his own pulpit —though far less powerful than the one provided
by either his former employer, or to his detractors in the Sankei Shimbun. Since 2018, he has
been an editor with the small leftwing magazine Shukan Kinyōbi, which reported his court
proceedings even as much of the Japanese
media more or less ignored them.
Uemura brandished a cover of one recent
edition of the magazine carrying his picture
and the headline: “I’m not a fabricator.” Kinyōbi
published the entire verdict of a ruling in January by the Seoul Central District Court, ordering the Japanese government to compensate
12 survivors of the comfort women system.
For some, the verdict was another depressing sign that Japan and South Korean pull everfurther apart in their interpretation of events
that occurred 80 years ago. For Uemura, however, it was a rare but welcome vindication.
“The biasing of history is spreading and it is
becoming taboo to speak about comfort women in Japan.” But in Korea, the comfort women
are winning, he added.
He flatly rejected the claim that his initial
Asahi article was to blame for starting thewhole comfort women debacle. “That’s not thecase at all — it is because the survivors themselves started to speak out.
“We will not give into this pressure. Not until
until all women who suffered under the (comfort women system) are compensated.”● David McNeill is professor of communications
and English at University of the Sacred Heart,Tokyo, and co-chair of the FCCJ’s Professional
Activities Committee. He was previously acorrespondent for The Independent, The Economist
and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

INDEX17 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

BOOK RELEASENYBOE’S

JAPAN
Danish journalist Svend Nyboe Andersen
was a radical, colorful figure who divided
and inspired his FCCJ colleagues
ASGER RØEJLE CHRISTENSEN

I

n 1965, the Danish journalist Svend Nyboe
Andersen moved to Japan with his family
to work as a correspondent for the Danishpress. He was a true pioneer.
Twenty-four years later, in 1989, I did thesame, although I was certainly much less of apioneer. Nyboe and I both worked for a longtime for the liberal Danish newspaper Politiken,
and spent a long time at our base at the FCCJ.

My book, Nyboe and his Japan, which will be
published in Danish on May 17, is a biography
about my predecessor, whom I barely knew, withfocus on his years in Japan. I have tried to write
an interesting tale about a talented and curious
man and his time — and also offer a glimpse into
Japan during a period of great change.
The book was written in close collaboration with Agnete Nyboe Andersen, Nyboe’sINDEX18 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

NYBOE’S JAPAN

Nyboe with a groupof children in South
Korea in 1974

daughter and my old friend and colleague. The
book is about much more than a single man ina single country. ”Your father is a huge inspiration for anyone who dreams about leaving
the beaten path,” one of the manuscript’s first
readers said in a note to Agnete.
The translated excerpts below are takenfrom the book’s chapters about Nyboe’s life
and work at the FCCJ during his second stayin Japan, from 1971 to 1977. Having divorced
in Denmark, Nyboe met Yukari Hayasaki, who
would become his girlfriend, after arriving inJapan. Yukari helped as an interpreter andassistant, and, like her partner and colleague,
was a frequent visitor to the Club.

Revived, with long hair
We had an appointment to meet at the reception of the Club, which had moved to a new
address in upmarket Marunouchi. We wereboth nervous and therefore early. We noticed
each other and established we had got the right
person. “Are you Yukari?”. “Are you Asger?”
Walking through the Club to the Main Bar, we
passed the wide corridors of the new premises,adorned with memorable photographs fromthe Club’ history.
“That guy”, Yukari said as we passed a photo of one of the coryphaeuses of Club history,“was suspected of being a CIA agent in the 70s
by some people at the Club”. And it was still thesame in the nineties, I told her. Yukari looked
around as we reached the new Italian café-like
Main Bar. “Svend would not have liked the newClub,” she said.

It was June 2020, in the middle of the corona
virus pandemic. We wore masks and sat a little
apart, as we were supposed to. Yukari, now 70,
was excited and nervous about visiting the Clubfor the first time in decades, even though it was
far from the same place she once knew. We sat
down at the most discreet table we could find,and she told me with a small smile behind themask about the first time she met Nyboe.
“I was still a student, and then one summer
I met him in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel.
He was there to meet a colleague from a
Danish weekly magazine, and I also had an
appointment. I was early and he looked at
me and smiled. We starting chatting. I was
studying English literature, so I thought itwould be a good opportunity to practice alittle English, right?”.
They had a drink together. You always had adrink with Nyboe during those years. Nyboe's
friend, a journalist from Familie Journalen,arrived. He was looking for "exotic things" inJapan that he could buy to take home to his
boss. He asked Yukari to go out into city andhelp him find some souvenirs — for a fee. Svend
said to me: “Why not? You should do that”.
“That’s how it all started.”
Nyboe was back in Tokyo. “Revived, withlong hair,” as one of his good friends and colleagues, the Indian journalist Swadesh DeRoy,later described his reappearance at the Club.
“I enjoyed Svend's company. He had a sardonic sense of humor and intelligence, eventhough he was dressed like a homeless man”,
another Club veteran, Bob Kirschenbaum, told
me about his impressions of Nyboe during thesame period.
Nyboe had left Denmark for Japan for a second time to conduct assignments for Danish
newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. It was
still hard to make enough money. His divorce
and finances were far from settled with his former wife. Money was a perennial problem, but
now he had Yukari to help him. They becamea couple — and only after that she became his
news assistant. It is very important to her toemphasize that things happened in that order.
“People perceived me as his assistant, but
first and foremost I was his girlfriend. Only thenI became his assistant. It is so typical that they
have an assistant and then they start a relationship. I didn’t like that some of his Japanese
friends looked at me in that way”.

INDEX19 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

NYBOE’S JAPAN
Although she told me many times that she
was not a professional, neither as an interpreter nor an assistant, she enjoyed working with
Nyboe. “I have never met anyone like him. He
was so open to everything. He accepted allthings, without prejudice, without discrimination. I really liked that. There are so many ways
to look at things. That was what he told me, andthat was what I liked so much”.

A drink or two
The FCCJ space
was different
from theJapan outside.
It appealed
not only tocorrespondents,
for whom it wasan immensely
practical
workplace,but also to
many Japanese
members who
liked the “exotic”
atmosphere.

Much of Nyboe’s and Yukari’s lives and routines
revolved around the Club. More often during
the house of darkness.
“He did not have an office. Usually, he worked
in the Club’s workroom, where there was a kindof telex. When he worked at night, he was very
concentrated”, said Yukari.
“His routine was to wake up in the morning,which would sometimes mean mid-afternoon.”
After checking if there was anything new toreport, he went to the Club, where he had “adrink or two and a chat with colleagues”. Nyboe
engaged “very energetically” in this community.
It was here that ideas were created, reversed,
refined or dropped again. It was here that strong
collegial friendships developed. They wereabsolutely crucial hours of the day.
At the time, there were very few Westerners
on the streets of Tokyo. The FCCJ space wasdifferent from the Japan outside. It appealed
not only to correspondents, for whom it wasan immensely practical workplace, but also
to many Japanese members who liked the“exotic” atmosphere.
After focusing on what the day had to offer
in terms of news, Nyboe typically spent his evenings writing letters and planning projects. Finally, around midnight, he contacted the editorial
offices back home in Denmark by collect call.
After the reports of that day were later handed on to the home newsrooms via telex, Nyboe
would typically go with Yukari to their regular
pub a few blocks from the FCCJ and meet othercolleagues. They had beer and whiskey, andYukari always drank ginger ale, just like she
did when she met me. “He did not want to go
home, even though it was the middle of thenight. Then we played chess”, Yukari told me.
Nyboe was a skilled chess player with several
tournament victories behind him, but Yukari
was good enough to catch up with him.
Undeniably, a lot of alcohol was consumed

during the day. According to a Scandinavian
friend and colleague, Nyboe had a special
fondness for Sapporo beer and schnapps. But“he never drank so much that he lost control ofhimself and became drunk. It was almost as if
alcohol did not affect him to the same degree
as it affected the rest of us”.
Yukari often spent the entire day at the Club
helping Nyboe. “I was not a professional interpreter, so I made a lot of mistakes. But he justsmiled and backed me up, quickly moving onto the next question. His Japanese ability was
not very good. But he had a good sense of what
was being said when we did these interviews.
Whether the answer was friendly or hostile orcritical, he understood ….”
When he attended professional lunches withwell-known and influential speakers, Nyboe frequently asked questions that were completely
different from those posed by colleagues fromother countries. “He had an ability to look atthings from a different angle,” Yukari said.
“People said to each other, ‘Aah, now Svend isasking a question. Maybe it will be interesting.’
He was just an ordinary Danish journalist, but
he got other people interested through hisquestions. That’s how I felt.” Often, colleagues
from all over the world would leave the roomwith a new idea for a different and less predictable angle on the news story of the day.
Nyboe was an active member of the Club
community. The FCCJ was his second home,and he wanted to make his mark on the place.
He chaired the decoration and exhibitioncommittee, and at other times led the entertainment and planning committees. He helped
establishing an active chess club and served on
the editorial board of the Number 1 Shimbun.
Despite his efforts, for the club’s old guard,
including its then managing director, Nyboe wasalways the “wild Dane”, said Yukari. “He was notan establishment type. He was against snobbish
people. The way he was dressed … his long hair.
At one point he had very long hair. It wasn’t
that long when I met him.” In those days, mostcorrespondents in Tokyo wore a jacket andtie at work, believing that was what everyone
expected of them. At the very least, they kept atie in their pocket to slip on when they attended
press conferences or were due to meet someone. “But not the Scandinavians”, Yukari said.
Svend’s good friend, the Swedish journalist Lars
Hansegård, was equally unorthodox.

INDEX20 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

NYBOE’S JAPANhe was “always very upset about the Danes’
preoccupation at that time with owning theirown home, instead of traveling and doing
something interesting with their lives”.

The ‘Scandinavian table’

Nyboe in Japan’sSouthern Alps in the
1970s. The photo wastaken by his friend
and mountaineering
companion Susumu
NakamuraIn the evening — or rather late at night —Nyboe and Yukari returned to their modest
apartment near Nezu station. Their circadianrhythms were determined by their work. But
their work-life balance had its downsides.
In 1972, Nyboe’s 16-year-old son, Lars, spent
six months in Tokyo, after dropping out ofschool in Denmark. His father was too busy tospend much time with him, so Lars wrote to his
younger sister in Denmark, complaining that
he was bored and missed his friends. There islittle doubt that Lars felt let down by his father
during those lonely months in Tokyo.
Nyboe had been independent in his youth
and had even sailed on international container
ships in his teens. He expected others to beequally free spirited, but not everyone wasable to live up to his expectations. At work, he
was deeply serious, focused and cut no corners. And he expected the same from otherpeople. He was particularly dismissive of what
he perceived as Danish mediocrity and petty
bourgeois attitudes. In his daughter’s words,

During Nyboe’s time at the FCCJ, one of thethree correspondents’ tables was known as
the infamous “Scandinavian table”. “The atmosphere at the Scandinavian table was as pleasant and all-encompassing as it was unique”, saida frequent guest at the table, who described it as“an institution within an institution”.
Conversations around the Scandinavian tablecovered everything under the sun: jobs, Japan,
private lives, Club politics and the news. “TheScandinavian table was always there when wearrived at the Club at lunchtime or in the afternoon”, Yukari said. “There was Lars Hansegård
from Swedish Radio, another Swedish woman,
Monica Braw, Claes Bjerner and his Japanesewife, Tamiko, and Inger-Johanne Holmboe. Henrik Richter, a young Finnish photographer spent
a lot of time at the Club. Svend and Lars werevery close friends … and also Inger.”
The lingua franca at the Scandinavian
table was usually a mixture of Swedish andinter-Scandinavian. The regulars helped, supported and inspired each other, and they had
fun at the same time.
It was nice group to be part of, and it generated so much laughter and noise that thepeople around the Scandinavian table, with
their strange language and informal attire,
were sometimes seen as provocative by theAmerican colleagues — then in the majority —at neighbouring tables.
One of Nyboe’s Scandinavian colleagues
and friends spoke of “Club McCarthyism”,
recalling that fraternizing with the Scandinavian table was perceived by some as an “act oftreachery”. At the time there had been a bitter
public row about the Vietnam War between
the Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, andUS President Richard Nixon. Many Americans
looked askance at Sweden, so "it goes without
saying that some elements of the Club perceived us as the devil’s advocates”, Nyboe’s
friend recalled.
The Club was perceived as a place largely
for white men, with Americans the dominantnationality. Nyboe, who at the Club was known
as Svend Andersen, joined forces with Lars

INDEX21 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

NYBOE’S JAPANThe “Scandinavian table” atthe FCCJ in the mid-1970s.
Nyboe is on the phone, withLars Hansegaard to his left
and Greg Clark on the far leftof the photo.

He was a little bitof a radical, almost
hippy-like in his
views, and thatmade some clubmembers angry.

Hansegård — already a friend from his first stayin Japan to cover the 1964 Tokyo Olympics — asthey became embroiled in Club politics.
Nyboe saw himself as part of a group
opposed to the Club’s American majority who,
he believed, were uncritical in their attitude
towards their country's tragic war in Vietnam.
Nyboe was “either intensely loved or hated”, but“only a few could resist his charisma”, DeRoy
wrote in the Number 1 Shimbun when Nyboe
left the Club a few years later to become editorin-chief of a local newspaper in Denmark.
During his time at the club, Nyboe became
the leader of a powerful movement at the Club
that, for the first time in its history, rattled thecage of the FCCJ establishment. His crusade
was such that, at one point, he almost provoked
those in charge to introduce a strict dress codefor members, DeRoy wrote.
Nyboe dressed casually, in keeping with thespirit of the times, but in Club terms he wasseen as a pioneer. But he was not scruffy. He
was always clean, valued personal hygiene andshaved daily. Ironically, his personal dress code
is now the norm at the FCCJ.
A frequent guest at the Scandinavian table
was the Australian correspondent and ex-diplomat, Greg Clark, who became a close friendof Nyboe. “I knew Svend well, better thanmost,” Clark said. “He was a little bit of a radical, almost hippy-like in his views, and thatmade some club members angry. But he had avery strong and attractive personality. For me,a battered survivor from the years we spentfighting against the Vietnam War, these were
all important qualities.

“It was basically an American club, andSvend was anti-American. But he didn’t careand occupied with his group a table in the mainbar. Some wanted him thrown out of the Club,
but I always enjoyed sitting at Svend’s table.”
The so-called anti-Svend faction wereangry about more important things than his
taste in clothes.
Nyboe had many Japanese friends and contacts. He was good at networking, long before
the word became common parlance. He met
representatives of Chongryun, the organization representing North Korean residents ofJapan, and in the evenings, he played chesswith colleagues from Tass, the Soviet news
agency — an activity that, given the Cold War
context of the time, only further aroused suspicions among some of his American colleagues.
To an extent, the ditch-digging and factionalism went over Nyboe’s head. “Svend neverturned his back on anyone,” one Scandinavian
table regular recalled. “He dealt with his harshest critics with a benevolent interest and adesire to understand their views.”
While he was far removed from the Club
mainstream, Nyboe was heavily involved in the
club’s activities and politics. During his second
stay in Tokyo in the 1970s, he ran for the board
every year, becoming an ordinary board official in 1974.
Two years later, when he ran for president for
the first and only time, he finished second outof three candidates. The imaginative campaign
posters he put up around the Club appealed
implored members, in large type, to “Think
Big — Vote Andersen”. With his trademark
instinct for irony, he embellished the poster
with a drawing of a large male gorilla. Later,that same poster hung over the bed at Nyboe
and Yukari's home in Roskilde, Denmark.
After returning to Denmark, Svend Nyboe
Andersen served as editor-in-chief for
Aftenavisen Roskilde Tidende, a local daily
paper, for four years until, in May 1981, he succumbed to cancer, an illness that had alreadyresulted in a leg amputation in 1975. He wasjust 49.
● Asger Røejle Christensen was a regular memberof the FCCJ from 1989 until 1995, and again from2013 until January this year. He is still an ex-Kanto
regular member and looks forward to visiting theClub again as soon as Japan reopens its borders.

INDEX22 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

F C C J S C H O L A R S H I P AWA R D S

PREYINGONA
PANDEMIC
An edited version of the winning essay in this year’s
FCCJ Swadesh DeRoy Scholarship awards
KAORI KOHYAMA

E

nd of March 2020. While the news
was telling us how unusual it wasfor Tokyo to have snow, I was sittingby the window of a café in the deep
cold, facing two women, desperately trying tofigure out how to get home.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, I had received amessage from a classmate, 11 years after we had
graduated. “I’ve heard about your success, I’dlove to catch up,” she said. Feeling a slight senseof apprehension that the text had not mentioned her intentions, I concluded she might
have something special to discuss in person.

As soon as I arrived at the café, I found a
stranger standing next to my friend, who,
according to her, was “a person as importantas my mother” and wanted to join us for coffee.
As bizarre as snow in March, the three of us
started our meeting at a table a long way fromanyone else in the café. As we made chit-chat,I gradually felt that my initial suspicions might
have been wrong. Just when it was about time
to hit the road, my friend broke the ice.
“After all, I guess you can’t really know what
happiness is, don’t you think?” she said. “Butthere’s something I've been doing lately ….”

INDEX23 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

PREYING ON A PANDEMIC
This was my first experience of a solicitation
to join a cult. My tea had gone cold and I had
little desire to finish my cake. After hours oflistening to stories about what had happened
to believers, I finally succeeded in escaping
due to an imaginary curfew. I ran home in theheavy snow.

Covid recruitment drive
After the World Health Organization declared
Covid-19 a pandemic in March 2020, Japan
experienced an explosive increase in infections. In this unpredictable situation, there
seems to have been a rise in something otherthan Covid-19 cases: recruitment by cults thattake advantage of growing anxiety amongpeople, according to experts.
“During times of pervasive social anxiety,people reportedly create relationships on ashort-term basis”, said Kimiaki Nishida, president of the Japan Society for Cult Prevention
and Recovery (JSCPR). Solicitation throughsocial networking services seems to be the
new norm during the pandemic, Nishida
added. Hiding their identities and intentions,members contact people who are struggling
with loneliness and seeking social connections, gradually exploring their insecurities
and weaknesses.
Kensho-kai, the group that approached thisauthor, is a self-proclaimed Buddhist organization that has been charged with assaulting
people and forcing them to join in at least 23
cases since 1974, according to the Asahi Shimbun digital database.
An examination of tweets — but not retweets
or bot posts — containing “Kensho-kai” (顕正会) and “recruitment” (勧誘) between November 2019 and November 2020 revealed striking results. While the spike from March andonwards is clear, the peak came in April, when
the greater Tokyo area was undergoing voluntary lockdown.
Taken together the tweets showed thatthese groups’ recruitment style can be categorized as follows: home visits, handing out flyers
on the street, and using personal connections.
During the period of “self-restraint” during the
pandemic, house visits appeared to be themost common form of approach — a sensible
strategy given that more people were working
from home.

Repeat after me
On March 26 2020, the day after the governorof Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, held an emergencypress conference to announce the country’s
first state of emergency, Asai Shoei, the headof Kensho-kai, declared at a monthly meetingthat the “great plague and depression” were“the prelude to missionary outreach,” addingthat “increasing membership would save
Japan and eventually, the entire planet”.
Suzuki Aika, a fourth-year law student inTokyo, was recruited by Kensho-kai back inJuly 2020. That process also started with acasual invitation to lunch by a friend from highschool. And in another echo of my experience,
the third person joining them was a stranger to
Aika. “When I saw my friend brainwashed like
that, I was really shocked to see what her initialdefiance eventually led to,” Aika recalls.
Aika continued to reject the group’s advances. “They were begging me to repeat theirsutra just once, telling me it would save mefrom Covid,” she said. She felt uncomfortable
and left the restaurant. “Later, I knew it was
their way of converting people into believers.”
In 1995, Kensho-kai simplified its recruiting
guidelines, stipulating that chanting the sutra
once equals agreement, and that members
can apply on behalf of others without theirsignatures.
“In this turbulent and evil world, ‘signing andstamping’ may cause unnecessary misunderstandings and suspicions in others,” Asai said
at a general meeting, according to the July 1995
issue of The Kensho Shimbun. “The important
thing is to make them practice their faith, notthe value of a single application form that has
been signed and sealed. Chanting for the firsttime is the very initiation into Buddhism.”

Longing for connection
The longing for social connections accelerates
recruitments, Nishida from JSCPR said. It is
not uncommon for high school and college
students to join cults, he added. Typically, a student at a famous university approaches highschoolers under the guise of “guidance” tohelp them enter their university. After the student passes the entrance exam, they become
closer and build a relationship of mutual trust.
By the time the “mentor” finally introduces thejunior student to the cult, there is hardly anyINDEX24 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

PREYING ON A PANDEMIC
psychological space left for them to harborsuspicions, a psychologic effect known as Pluralistic Ignorance. This mechanism has been
made significantly easier online, where there isno third person giving advice.
In addition, cults masquerading as volunteer
groups or organizers of overseas educational
tours have long operated at Japanese universities. The problem now, however, is that the
pandemic enables them to directly approach
freshmen who are unable to attend on-campus
classes and establish relationships in a private,invisible space. These cases are extremely difficult to identify and address.
Is there any harm in joining one of thesegroups? After all, Japan is a democratic country where freedom of religion is guaranteed
under the principle of the separation of religion
and state. Citizens are therefore free to believein whatever religion they like, regardless ofwhether it is established or new.
According to Nishida, many of emerging
cult activities are problematic because they
are inherently designed to violate the humanrights of individual believers. Their purpose is
to make money, acquire power, satisfy the sexual urges of the founder - or all of the above.
Whatever the group’s goals, mind control is thefavoured means of achieving them.

New believers themselves
start to justify theunjust exploitation of
resources, the abuseof their educational
opportunities and theirindividual freedoms. As
a result, the exploitation
continues unchecked.

“Cults blame a recruit’s ‘unbelief’ whensomething bad happens, so once a believer
joins, he or she clings to the faith more andmore,” said Nishida, adding that in some cases, people become so absorbed in their faiththat they stop accepting the advice of others
after just a few months. Those who become
involved in such activities begin to undergo
dramatic changes in their diet, clothing andvalues, feel alienated from the people aroundthem and prioritize their new relationships in
the group.
Psychologically speaking, every time an
individual makes a commitment to the group,
it makes it even harder to escape and seek outside help, even while the abuse of escalating.
New believers themselves start to justify theunjust exploitation of resources, the abuse of
their educational opportunities and their individual freedoms. As a result, the exploitation
continues unchecked.

Before it’s too late
According to a report in the December 2020
edition of The Kensho Shimbun, the cult had
2.22 million members, an increase of about 4%
over the year up to November.
If the group had acquired new believers atthat pace since its foundation, its total membership would now be larger than the population of Japan, Nishida said. Claims about
extraordinary recruitment numbers are part ofcult propaganda.
Even so, the fundamental motive to join acult — a strong desire to connect with people — has been amplified during the pandemic.
That, combined with a rise in online and offline
recruitment drives, means these groups arelikely to exploit people’s sense of loneliness.
As Japan enters a fourth wave driven by
new Covid-19 variants, people with financial
problems or mental health issues could turnto new religions and cults for help, or simply
for someone to talk to. Although virtual communication makes it more difficult, checking
on each other's mental health has become
more important than ever. Noticing a slightchange in their behavior, and then acting on it,
could end up keeping them out of the clutchesof the cults.
● Kaori Kohyama is a student at Waseda University.

25 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

INDEXCLUB NEWSNew members

ASSOCIATE MEMBERKAZUYO FUJIE was born in Tokyo in 1946.
She graduated from Keio University (Library
and Information Science) in 1969 and thenworked as a librarian at Keio University
library for several years. Her hobbies aretravelling, writing haiku, watching movies, cooking, walking
and going to the theater.

ASSOCIATE MEMBER
KATSUYA ITO
Nikkei Ryutsu Co., Ltd.

ASSOCIATE MEMBERNORIAKI NAGASHIMA was born in
Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, in 1931. The
city is famous for Shimizu no Jirocho, ayakuza gangster and Japanese folk hero at
the end of the Edo period and the start of
the Meiji era. Nagashima graduated in economics from Keio
University in 1952, just before Japan’s education system wastransformed by the US-led occupation forces. After graduating,
he worked for a shipping company in Kobe for five years, andis now chairman of Lloyd, Inc., a chemical spray manufacturer
based in Tokyo.

ASSOCIATE MEMBER
YUKA NAGASHIMA was born and brought
up in Tokyo. She has one daughter andidentical twin boys. A nature lover, herhobbies are skiing, surfing, golf, trekking,hiking, camping, and traveling. She
graduated from Tamagawa University in 1982 and thenworked in the overseas department at Koa Fire & Marine
Insurance Co. Ltd. From 1985-1987, she studied in Britain
and later worked as a tour guide at the M.O. Tourist Co. Ltd.
In 1995, she started work at Lloyd as an office clerk and has
been president of the company since June 2014. In December
2015, she also became president of Unatech, a 100%
subsidiary of Lloyd.

ASSOCIATE MEMBER - REINSTATEMENTKENICHI SUZUKI is acting generalmanager in the public relations departmentof the Constitutional Democratic Party ofJapan. He is a member of the International
Academic Society for Asian Community and
the Japan Commission on Global Governance.

PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST ASSOCIATE MEMBERALEXANDRA HONGO Alexandra “Ally” Hongo is a writer, editor and translator based in Tokyo. Originallyfrom Bulgaria, she has lived in Japan for over 20 years, during which she has worked at and written forvarious English-language media, including The Mainichi, Japan Today, GaijinPot, Tokyo Weekender andSavvy Tokyo, where she was editor-in-chief for over three years. As a writer, Ally’s greatest passion is finding
inspiration from the people she interviews (among her favorites are bridal designer Yumi Katsura, Shibuya
Mayor Ken Hasebe and former astronaut Naoko Yamazaki) and places she visits in Japan. Ally is based in Tokyo, where she
lives with her husband, son, and two dog-like cats. She is fluent in Japanese, English, her native Bulgarian and can also order acup of coffee in French and Russian.

26 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

INDEXCLUB NEWSNew members

REGULAR MEMBERBENJAMIN GROSSER works in managerialand coordinating positions for ARD German
TV. He initially worked at the ARD German
TV studio in Stockholm, Sweden, before
joining the team in Tokyo on January 1, 2019as a project manager. From January 2021, he will take over theprovisional management of ARD German TV, Studio Tokyo
from the outgoing correspondent and bureau chief, until a
successor is chosen.
Benjamin Grosser gained experience in handling major
events and crises, such as the terrorist attack in Stockholm in
2017, the 2018 Russia-US summit in Helsinki, Finland, and theG20 summit in Osaka in 2019. Together with the team in thestudio, he is looking forward to the postponed Tokyo Olympic
Games — a challenging task, due to Covid-19, for an event that
he is sure will be very special.

REGULAR MEMBERDAVE McCOMBS is Asia-Pacific editor at
Brightwire and founder of Julio Platforms,
a startup that helps high schools expand
and improve their student news media
programs. Between 1998 and 2021, he
was an editor at Bloomberg and most recently oversaw Asia
coverage of telecommunications, media and conglomerates,
a beat that encompassed Asia’s largest family-dynasty
companies, sports business and entertainment.
While he’s dug out a few minor scoops in recent years on
the sports business beat, including record large endorsement
deals for tennis stars Kei Nishikori and Naomi Osaka, he’s also
been a featured reporter on Bloomberg television broadcasts
for two decades. Previously, as a staff writer at The Daily
Yomiuri, he delivered a scoop about Marco Polo magazine thatwas followed by all major media in Japan and that led to theresignation of Marco Polo editor Kazuyoshi Hanada. Marco
Polo had published an essay by a Holocaust denier, a decisionthat first led Volkswagen AG to pull its advertising and then to
the editor’s departure.
McCombs has also covered Asia's bond markets, foreignexchange trading and commodities, including a daily column
on platinum trading. He has been in Japan for almost three
decades, and was editor of the late Tokyo Journal magazine,
a staff writer at the Los Angeles Downtown News and a copy
editor for MacMillan Publishers. He enjoys tennis, live music
and beer.

INDEX27 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

CLUB NEWSNew in the library
1
On the Frontiers ofHistory: Rethinking East
Asian Borders
Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Australian National
University Press

2
A Foreigner’s Cinematic
Dream of Japan:
Representational Politics
and Shadows of War in
the Japanese-German
Coproduction New Earth(1937)
Iris Haukamp
Bloomsbury Academic
Gift from Iris Haukamp

4
When the Waves Came
MW Larson
Chin Music Press
Gift from MW Larson

5
JR Shinagawa Eki
Takanawa-guchi
JR品川駅高輪口

Miri Yu
Kawade Shobo Shinsha
Gift from Kawade Shobo
Shinsha3
The Revolution as a
Dinner Party: Across
China with Edgar Snow,
Mao Tse-tung, Joseph
Stilwell, Chiang Kai-shek,
and Sun Yat-sen
Matthew Stevenson
Odesseus Books
Gift from Matthew Stevenson

6
JR Takadanobaba eki
Toyama-guchi
JR高田馬場駅戸山口
Miri Yu
Kawade Shobo Shinsha
Gift from Kawade Shobo
ShinshaJoin the Film Committee

On Tuesday, May 18, at 5:30 p.m. for a sneak preview screening of the animated masterwork
True North, which traces a young man’s harrowing experiences inside one of North Korea’s six

known political prisoner camps, where an estimated 120,000
innocent people of all ages are living in subhuman condi-

tions, scrambling to survive starvation, disease, torture andresearching the camps, conducting dozens of interviews withsurvivors and former guards, before creating his fictitious
characters. Although the story is set against the backdrop of
an impossibly brutal environment, encompassing some of
the worst human rights abuses of our time, True North finds cracks of light in the darkness. Shimizu will be joining us for the Q&A session,
along with Human Rights Watch Japan director Kanae Doi and No Fence secretary-general Yoon-Bok Song. (True North, Japan/Indonesia,
2020, 94 minutes, in English with Japanese subtitles).
● Karen Severns© 2020 SUMIMASEN

backbreaking labor. Director Eiji Han Shimizu spent 10 years

INDEX28 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITION

888Zenya
PHOTO EXHIBITION
BY MASANORIKAMIDE’
MAY 8-JUNE 4, 2021

O

n Christmas Eve 2020,
the number of people
newly infected with thecoronavirus in Tokyo
reached 888 on a single day. Going
to the downtown area, chatting atbars and on dance floors was nolonger something that could beenjoyed freely. The title 888Zenya[The Night Before 888] evokes thebustling energy of Tokyo’s streetsthat everyone loved before theirlives were changed by the virus.
Kamide, a musician who had
been at the center of Tokyo’s entertainment scene since the 1980s as
a professional DJ, was distressed
when Tokyo’s neon lights were temporarily switched off after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. As a result, he transformed frombeing a creator of entertainment to a recorder of events. The images are the work of a man who
has now watched over Tokyo for 10 years; whose love for the city’s neighbourhoods and people
has lasted four decades. He has been able to grasp the miraculous and rare scenery of the city
by cycling around the city at night. Kamide’s images liven up the darkened streets — a fuse withwhich to relight the nightlife in a new age.

About Masanori Kamide:
Born in Osaka, Kamide was active as a DJ and musician for 30 years. After the 2011 Great East
Japan Earthquake, he shifted his focus to photography and now takes photos of a variety of subjects, from street style to portraits, with a focus on people. Kamide won the 2017 Ken Domon
Cultural Award Encouragement Prize for his photo collection Monochrome Blues, which capturescommunities, such as the legendary Fussa discos and Kabukicho pole dancers, from the inside.
https://www.masanorikamide.com

29 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

30 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

31 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

32 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

33 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

34 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

35 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

36 | FCCJ | MAY 2021

EXHIBITIONINDEX

888Zenya – Photo exhibition by Masanori Kamide: May 8-June 4, 2021

www.fccj.or.jp