The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

October 2019 Vol. 51 No. 10 ¥400

CrisisInvestigating the story of the century
Part 2 of an urgent series

In this issueVol. 51, Number 10

October 2019contact the editors

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

From the President by Peter Langan
4
Freedom of the Press:
4
Statement by the Hong Kong Journalists Associationand Hong Kong Press Photographers Association
From the archives:
5
The controversial professor
by Charles Pomeroy
FEATURES

Investigating the story of the century
by James Fahn

6

Queen of the (subtitled) screen
by Gavin Blair

9Page 9:Film subtitler
Natsuko Toda (left)
at her dinner evening
at the Club, withspecial projects chair
Haruko Watanabe

A finger in the eye of the powers-that-beby David McNeill

10

PROFILEBen Dooley
The New York Times
by Julian Ryall

12

CLUB NEWSLens craftby photographer Members
In Memoriam: Charlie Cole; Press conference voices;
Join the Film Committee; FCCJ Exhibition;
New Members; New in the library
FCCJ

OCTOBER 2019

14
14-19

Editor Gregory Starr
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.itsumo-music.jp/design
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications committee members
Gavin Blair, Freelance (co-chair)
Geoffrey Tudor, Orient Aviation (co-chair)
Warren Devalier, Associate Member
Sonja Blaschke, Freelance
Albert Siegel, Freelance
FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS
President Peter Langan, Freelance
1st Vice President Monzurul Huq, Daily
Prothom Alo
2nd Vice President Robert Whiting, Freelance
Treasurer Willem Kortekaas,
Associate Member
Secretary Takashi Kawachi, Freelance
Directors-at-Large Khaldon Azhari,
PanOrient News
Mehdi Bassiri, Associate Member
Warren Devalier, Associate Member
Abigail Leonard, Freelance
Kanji Kazuo Abiko, Freelance
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo,
Associate Member
FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Members Liaison Keiko Packard,
Harumi Kumagai
Compliance Kunio Hamada, Yoshio Murakami
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Abigail Leonard,
David SatterwhiteEntertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Willem Kortekaas
Food & Beverage Robert Kirschenbaum,
Peter R. Tyksinski
Freedom of Press Abigail Leonard
House & Property Peter Langan,
David Satterwhite
Human Resources Willem Kortekaas
Information Technology Albert Siegel
Library, Archives & Workroom
Koichi Ishiyama, Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing Abigail Leonard,
Willem Kortekaas
Professional Activities Tetsuo Jimbo,
David McNeill
Public Relations Rosa Argyropoulos
Publications Gavin Blair, Geoff Tudor
Special Projects Haruko Watanabe
Foreign Press in Japan Robin Harding
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Marunouchi Nijubashi Building 5F
Marunouchi 3-2-3 Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-0005
Tel: (03) 3211-3161 Fax: (03) 3211-3168 fccj.or.jp
Published by the FCCJ All opinions contained within
Number 1 Shimbun are those of the authors. As such,these opinions do not constitute an official positionof Number 1 Shimbun, the editor or the Foreign
Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
Please pitch and send articles and photographs, oraddress comments to no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Read the Number 1 Shimbun online:
fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimbun
Cover photo: Fire consumes the Amazon rainforest in
Altamira, Brazil, on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.
(AP Photo/Leo Correa)

3

The Front Page

FROM THE PRESIDENTFREEDOM OF THE PRESSThe Club was happy to hostthe Japan National Softball
Team in September, in whatshould be another in a seriesof events in the run up to
next year’s Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Five players attended the evening on Sept. 11,
along with the head coach and other officials.
We set off a space for the team to show theirskills and I can testify that while the ball may
be pitched underhand, it certainly moves fast.
The team autographed balls for lottery winners,
one of which is now in the Club’s display cabinet
along with an autographed bat.
Another benefit of this event was that since
the team will be playing some its Olympic
matches in Fukushima as part of efforts to assist
the region’s recovery efforts, some saké from
Fukushima was on hand for tasting. A big thanks
to the PR Committee for organising this event,with special appreciation to Kazuhiro Tawa for his
liaison with Japan’s National Softball Team.
The Board met on Sept. 20 and among otherthings the General Manager reported thatrevenues in the Main Bar rose 3 percent yearon-year in August, which is a trend we wish toencourage.
The Shochu Night later that day was packed
and coincided with the screening in the Main Barof the opening game of the Rugby World Cup,which made for a busy night. Thanks to all who
helped make the events happen.
The Membership Committee reported thatthe number of members continues to treadwater, with departing members equalling thosejoining in August. Reasons for leaving were again
mostly age- or retirement-related. However, thecommittee did report an uptick in new journalist
members for the month (4) and student
members (5).
As mentioned in a previous message, theClub will soon be issuing its own pre-paid cards
for visiting journalists and other guests. This willallow visitors to register at the front desk andpurchase a card that can then be used to pay forfood and drink services in the Club. The card canbe reloaded with cash credit.
Much more to report, but running out of
space.
Will conclude with the announcement thatformer FCCJ President Suvendrini Kakuchi
is now a Life Member following a unanimous
vote by the Board to recognise her services to
the Club as president and in many other roles.
Please join me in offering her congratulations
and thanks. See you in the Club.
Peter Langan
4

The controversial professor

Statement by theHong Kong Journalists
Association andHong Kong Press
Photographers
Association“Journalists have notobstructed [police]
enforcement of the law;
we have monitored theirviolation of the law.”

THE HONG KONG JOURNALISTS Association (HKJA) andHong Kong Press Photographers Association (HKPPA) on
Sept. 12 made a joint call for the government to stop police
violence against journalists covering the anti-extradition
bill protests.
The police, they said, should apologize for their increasing
attacks, both physical and verbal, against front-line
reporters in the past three months.
The two journalists’ groups issued their demands at a jointpress conference, which was aimed at countering police
accusations against journalists who covered the protests.
They include claims that reporters had blocked police
operations, with some in “zero distance” with officers, andthat there were “fake reporters.”
The groups demanded that the police stop making
unfounded accusations and reiterated their call for an
independent investigation into the way police handledreporters during the protests. HKJA Chairperson Chris Yeung
said in the press conference: “Claims that reporters haveobstructed police officers in carrying out their duty havenever been substantiated with evidence.”“They were tactics taken by the police to justify theirabuse of power and violence against journalists,” Yeungsaid. “Journalists have not obstructed their enforcementof the law; we have monitored their violation of the law.
There are growing hostilities among atleast a sizeable segment of the police force
towards journalists, as shown in theirdeeds and words.”“Press freedom is under threat,”
Yeung said.
The two groups said there were a long
list of cases clearly showing that media
footage and pictures of the clashes andarrests have helped the public know thewhole truth. If journalists had been barredfrom reporting at the protest areas, stories
such as the presence of undercover police
officers among the protesters and theserious head injury of a young student at
the Tai Po MTR station would have neverbeen able to see the light, they said.
Responding to police claims that there
were “fake reporters,” the two associations
OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

have called on the police to explain what
they meant by “fake reporters” and whatevidence they have.
HKJA executive committee Lam Yinpong and a HKPPA representative gave
more details of police violence, including
a case when a number of reporters were
pepper sprayed in Mong Kok. Worse, theysaid failure of police officers to show theiridentification numbers made it difficult
for reporters to lodge a formal complaint.
The two groups also made an appeal
to the public not to harass, bully andobstruct the work of journalists at theprotests, which they say will adversely
affect people’s right to know. The publicshould not target journalists fromcertain media organizations that they
feel discontented with because of various
reasons, they said.
During demonstrations, rallies andclashes between police and protestors,
they said members of the public should try
to keep a distance from reporters to avoid
confusion and misunderstanding. ❶Professor Saburo Ienaga, controversial historian and educator,
speaking at the Club on Sept. 2, 1997, following a partial court
victory in his ongoing fight against what he called censorship by theJapanese government in their screening of his high-school textbook.
Giving him full attention is former 1987-88 FCCJ president Naoaki
Usui (McGraw-Hill).

HONG KONG FREE PRESS/TWITTER

Dear Members,

FROM THE ARCHIVESFCCJOCTOBER 2019

Born in Nagoya in 1913, Saburo Ienaga graduated from the Universityof Tokyo in 1937. In 1949, he became a professor at the Tokyo
University of Education—a venerable institution founded by thegovernment in 1872 that became the University of Tsukuba in 1973—
where he later became a professor emeritus. From 1977 until 1984,
he taught at Chuo University. He authored some 50 books, including
several in English, and in 1984, was awarded the Japan Academy Prize.
Ienaga’s long struggle against government textbook screening
dated from the early 1960s, following alterations and deletions
required by Japan’s Ministry of Education in revised editions of his
1947 high-school textbook. According to the ministry, the revisions
were required because of factual errors and matters of opinion.
It took until 1997 until Japan’s Supreme Court found in a rulingthat the government’s removal of his description of biologicalexperiments on people in China by the Japanese Imperial Army’s
Unit 731 during WWII was illegal.
It was only a partial victory: the Supreme Court also rejected
his claims of illegal removal of four other descriptions of wartime
atrocities. Despite it only being partially successful, however,Ienaga’s fight against what he called censorship of textbooks by theministry’s screening process continued even after his retirement. It
apparently had a beneficial side effect in that it encouraged otherauthors of Japanese school textbooks to include descriptions ofJapanese wartime atrocities.
Ienaga was nominated by Noam Chomsky and other scholars for
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and again in 2001. In his later years,
he suffered from Parkinson’s disease, which may have affected hisbattle with the government.
He died on Nov. 29, 2002, at the age of 89.

– Charles Pomeroy
editor of Foreign Correspondents in Japan,
a history of the Club that is available at the front desk
5

Climate crisis: Part II of a series

Investigating thestory of the century
In the second installment of our series, we look at the environmental
impact of government rules, foreign aid, and carbon credits
By James Fahn

GOVERNMENT RULES AND SUBSIDIESThe public sector obviously plays a vital role in determining
the extent to which all of us, including private companies,
address the challenge of climate change. Most investigative
journalists should already be on the lookout for ways in which
vested interests like fossil-fuel companies are influencing
government policies.
But they may not be aware of all the arcane ways such lobbying affects climate change. It could be through the passageof restrictions on the development of renewable energy forexample, or relaxing rules on safety and other forms of pollution in order to make fossil-fuel production cheaper.
One area that generally does not receive enough attention
is how government subsidizes the industries, particularly
fossil fuels, that cause greenhouse-gas pollution. One study
in the journal World Development estimates such global subsidies at over $5 trillion per year, and that doesn’t take into
account the support for other polluting industries, such as
cattle ranching. Many of these subsidies are damaging in other ways, too. For instance, governments often support theirfishing fleets by providing them with cheap petrol, damaging
fish stocks as well. So, is your government trying to prevent
climate change, or actually making it worse?

NASA, BRIAN LARY/freeimages.com, illustration ANDREW POTHECARYFOREIGN AID, INVESTMENT AND EXPORT CREDITS6OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

Journalists need to keep track not only of what goes on in theirown countries, but also what their governments are doing
abroad. In the United States, for instance, even as coal-fired
power plants are being shuttered, coal exports have grown
rapidly in recent years. Similarly, China is planning to reduce
its use of coal at home, but Chinese interests are involved in
more than 200 coal projects around the world.
The OECD has set up rules to guard against providing
export credits from wealthy nations for the construction ofcoal-fired power plants, but there are some allegations thatthey’re being skirted. Similarly, vows by the multilateraldevelopment banks that they will follow the Paris Agreement
and not back dirty development have to be monitored.

ILLICIT POLLUTION AND FALSE REPORTING

Even when governments are able to put good rules in place, it
is a struggle to enforce regulations and monitor compliance.
Most greenhouse gases are invisible and odorless, so polluters can be tempted to hide their emission or provide false
reporting. In recent years, for instance, we’ve learned thatFCCJOCTOBER 2019some of the world’s most reputable car companies, when
they were not lobbying for relaxed fuel efficiency standards,
installed software in their cars aimed at deceiving monitors
about how much pollution they’re emitting.
There have also been alarming reports recently about
cheating on the emission of ozone-destroying substances,with suspicion falling on Chinese practices. We can imagine
similar scandals arising if ever the world gets serious about
limiting greenhouse-gas pollution. Rules about measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) are the subject ofintense negotiation and disagreement at UN climate treaty
talks. The question of “who does the accounting” for greenhouse gases is relevant in any country which is claiming
progress in reducing emissions.

CARBON CREDITS AND OFFSET SCHEMES

Just as emissions of greenhouse gases need to be monitored, so do the offsets designed to counter those emissions.
Offsets, sometimes known as carbon credits, allow polluters to compensate for their own emissions by supporting
emissions-cutting or carbon-storing projects elsewhere.
Since the atmosphere is a global commons, the logic behind
it seems impeccable, but critics argue they are inherently
unfair in allowing the wealthy to pollute more.
Some projects have been derided as “greenwashing,” whileothers are said to have little impact, or even cause more
harm than good. Then there are the cases of outright fraud.
Once again, the question is: Who’s doing the counting of
how emissions are “offset?” The answer varies from nation
to nation, but identifying the government or private agency
responsible for overseeing carbon credits or offsets is often
the first step toward determining their legitimacy.

UNEXPECTED OR UNDER-REPORTED IMPACTS

Reporting on the impacts of climate change can be tricky,
because linking climate change to, for instance, specificweather events is notoriously difficult. Even when attribution is possible—and the science of determining attribution is getting better all the time—in most cases we can only
determine that a particular event was exacerbated by global
warming, not caused by it.
By and large, the media has been doing a better job over
the years of reporting on climate change impacts, and haseven started reporting on secondary or “knock-on” effects,
such as how climate-induced migration and resource stress7

Climate crisis: Part II of a series

Club event: the language of film

(IPCC) making it clear that the issue isis causing conflict in the Middle East
BY DEMONSTRATING THE
becoming increasingly urgent.
and the Horn of Africa. This needs toAnd what about the scientists? Clibe explored more in other regions,
UNDERLYING APPROACH OF
mate deniers, politicians and sometoo, such as Central America.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
media pundits have taken to claimThe enterprising journalist needs
AND BEING OPEN ABOUT
ing they’re biased, too, because
to investigate the many factors,
they get funding to do research on
including but not limited to climate
THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC
climate change. There have beenchange, that can lead to catastrophic
CERTAINTY, YOU AREseveral attempts to cast doubt on
weather-related events. For instance,
STRENGTHENING YOUR OWN their actions, most notoriously
the conditions that created the wildwhen the private emails of some clifires which have torn through Cali- CREDIBILITY AS A JOURNALISTmate researchers were hacked andfornia in recent years have certainly
released to the public back in 2009.
been exacerbated by climate change,
But it was eventually shown that the researchers had done
but they’re also due to forest management practices and tonothing out of bounds of the ordinary scientific process.
development patterns that have been building more housIndeed, the very questions they had of one another are thees deep in the woods. Sources can include scientists who
essence of the scientific method itself—a process that has
are researching such phenomena, but also others—such as
been repeatedly exploited by those interested in undermininsurance companies—that keep track of the data that lie
ing climate science. (On the other hand, the perpetrators
behind such events.
behind the hacking incident have never been caught.)
There will still be some impacts that surprise. Some people
More broadly, the peer-review process is generally considliving inland from the coast, for instance, may be surprised
ered an effective filter to help us reach scientific truth, as bestthat they, too, are affected by rising sea levels as they push
as we can understand it. Even when mistakes are made, suchup the water table underneath their land, potentially causing
as when an IPCC report suggested that Himalayan glaciers
more flooding. Also in recent years, there has been speculacould melt by 2035, they eventually get exposed and corrected.
tion that climate change has weakened the jet stream, thus
In recent years, for instance, there was a claim that global
possibly unleashing the polar vortex on regions to the south,
warming had gone on a “hiatus”—that warming trends had
although this is far from certain.
slowed or stopped for a few years—but again it was eventuWhile there are still some areas that seem to be underally shown that this was just a statistical mirage due to shortreported and worthy of more investigation—ocean acidifiterm events and a lack of data. All the more reason for jourcation, for instance, or the public health impacts of climate
nalists to keep a close watch on the latest scientific findings,
change—there have also been cases when the impacts of cliand stay in touch with trusted researchers.
mate have been overstated. This raises a fundamental matterin reporting on climate change:
As is common in the sciences, research findings on cliMONITORING THE SOLUTIONS
mate change impacts are always framed in ranges of likeHumanity’s response to climate change has so far been tepidlihood and probability. Including such uncertainties mayon the whole. But eventually, it will have to become stronger
appear to undercut your claims, but in fact it generally serves
if we are to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate
to enhance your credibility. By demonstrating the underlychange, and that means journalists also need to investiing approach of the scientific method itself, and being open
gate the solutions put forth to prevent and adapt to climate
about the limits of scientific certainty, you are strengtheningchange. Renewable energy projects using solar, wind andyour own credibility as a journalist and a source, for the pubgeothermal power are becoming ever cheaper and more poplic, of scientifically-grounded information.
ular, but like any other infrastructure projects, they could be
subject to corruption and abuse.
Meanwhile, some of the more traditional types of alternaACTIVIST GROUPS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS
tive energy—notably large hydropower projects and nuclear
This list wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the need
power plants—come with controversies of their own, andto investigate activist groups working on climate issues, their
may in fact pit local environmental interests against global
goals and where they get their financial support. The focus
supporters of climate action. Solely in terms of their carhere has largely been on climate-denier groups and how theybon footprint, the reservoirs kept behind dams can release
operate. In the US, this has followed a long line of industrylarge quantities of methane due to decay of vegetation under
funded groups who seek to obfuscate scientific findings
water. And like other types of infrastructure projects, buildrelated to the environment and public health, most notoriing and maintaining these facilities requires a lot of fossil
ously those funded by the tobacco industry. They have been
fuels. Really, in order to judge any activity’s impact on thehelped by relatively new rules that make it easier for “darkclimate, full life-cycle analyses need to be carried out. ❶money” to support nonprofit groups.
What about the activist groups on “the other side,” those
Next month: Part III of “Investigating the Story of the Century”:
fighting for stronger action to address climate change? There,
Monitoring the proposed solutions.
too, journalists should demand transparency, and should be
able to report on who is funding their activities. One major
James Fahn is Executive Director of the Earth Journalism Network at
difference is that climate action groups generally have sciInternews. He is also a lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism atence on their side, with 97 percent of climate scientists
the University of California at Berkeley, where he teaches international
confirming that climate change is real and being caused byenvironmental reporting. First published on the Global Investigative
humans, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Journalism Network website. Reprinted with permission.
8

OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

Queen of the (subtitled) screen
The country’s most famous writer of film subtitles played
to a full, star-struck crowd at a recent dinner event

By Gavin Blair
THERE CAN BE FEW countries in theworld where a movie subtitler is ahousehold name. Thanks to Natsuko
Toda, 83, Japan is one such a rarity.
Having produced the subtitles for wellover 1,500 films, as well as performinginterpreter duties for visiting directors
and actors, Toda’s name is a regular
fixture on movie posters, and she hascome to be something of a celebrity inher own right.
At a packed dinner talk show at
the Club on Sept. 12, the sprightly
Toda had the mostly older Japaneseaudience eating out of her hand as
she entertained with anecdotes andinsights from her many decades inthe business. “I thought only about 10
people would show up,” opened Toda,
laying on the modesty. “And it’s usually
women who want to do subtitling thatcome to hear me talk, so I’m surprised
to see so many men here.”Japan has traditionally been one of
the few countries where audienceschoose subtitled imported films overdubbed versions, with some territories
only releasing the latter, noted Toda.
But Japanese audiences want to hear
the original voices of their favoritestars, she said. “When I began to watch
films after the war—and there weren’t
many released because of the situation
at the time—everything was subtitled,”
she recalled.
SHE WENT ON TO suggest that one
reason younger audiences may havegravitated toward dubs in recent decades
was a decline in the ability to read andcomprehend kanji quickly enough.
Another shift over the years has been thegrowing number of titles rendered into
katakana rather than creating Japaneseinterpretations of film names. Toda
pointed to David Lean’s Summertime
starring Audrey Hepburn, which was
released in Japan in 1955 under the title
Ryojo, meaning a person’s mood while
traveling. “Such an elegant title wouldn’t
be used today, it would almost certainly
be released as Samataimu in katakana,FCCJOCTOBER 2019

Natsuko Toda at the Club
because everybody understands that
now,” rued Toda.
When Toda was trying to break into
the industry, there were about ten
subtitlers, all male, who dominatedthe business. She began working at afilm distributor, gaining experienceby doing small pieces of translation
work. “I had studied English throughschool and college, but had never reallyspoken English until I was about thirty,
everything was on paper. Then I was
suddenly asked to interpret for an
actor who was coming from Hollywood.
I was terrible and thought I would
get fired, but there were few people
around who could do it,” said Toda.
She went on to say that she is still notconfident in her interpreting ability
and prefers to work on subtitles.
Toda began to get movie subtitlingwork in her thirties, but was not able
to make a living at it until her forties.
Toda explained the tight deadlines that
subtitlers work to, usually having just aweek to ten days to complete a movie,
sometimes from a version that is still
being edited.
“YOU GET THE CALL and are thensent a script. There’s no way I candecipher gangsters’ accents in movies,
for example, so the English text isessential. There is basically no time forresearch on the background or historyof the story,” she explained.
While working within such time
restraints, the biggest challenges

are shortening dialogue to fit on thescreen and rendering jokes, especially
wordplays, into Japanese, according
to Toda. “People can read about threecharacters per second, and audiences
don’t come to the cinema to read thesubtitles, but to watch the film, so they
have to be short,” she said.
Toda then recounted how shetranslated a play on words from a
recent Bond film, to spontaneous
applause from the room. This wasfollowed by the screening of scenes
from The Godfather and Mission
Impossible, with attendees challenged
to translate small chunks of dialogue
from each. After a few brave attempts
from the crowd, Toda revealed herversions; cue more applause.
During an extended Q&A session,
Toda was asked about everything fromthe most handsome Hollywood stars
she had worked with to the biggest
prima donnas—but diplomaticallydemurred from naming names. She
repeatedly emphasized that a movie
must be subtitled by a single person
to guarantee consistency of style andexpressions, perhaps in response torumors that she has outsourced workon some films.
Despite her dominance in theJapanese film industry, she has notbeen without her critics. Toda wastaken off the subtitles for Full Metal
Jacket after director Stanley Kubrickgot wind that the profanity in the film
was being watered down. After the
first Lord of the Rings film, a groupof Japanese Tolkien fans petitioned
the local distributor about what theyclaimed were mistakes in subtitles
caused by a lack of familiarity with thesource material.
Asked about how technology willchange subtitling, Toda suggested itwill have little effect, even thoughautomated systems are already being
tested. “But then I never imagined actual
film would disappear and be replacedby digital,” she acknowledged. ❶Gavin Blair writes for publications in Asia,

Europe and the US.

9Feature: Investigative journalism

A finger in the eyeof the powers-that-be
O

Waseda Chronicle, led by ex-Asahi journalists,
looks for important stories ignored by themainstream media
By David McNeill

10

THE CHRONICLE, (IT TAKES its name from the Institute of Journalism in Waseda University where it was founded in 2017)
wants to plug this gap in investigative journalism. The mainstream media, argues Watanabe, has been narcotized by its
press club system, in which official sources, from the government down, drip feed information to the press pack.
“It doesn’t occur to most journalists to go and chase downstories in foreign countries,” Watanabe says. “And it’s not justforeign reporting—it’s anything outside their beat. They aretrained to focus on daily briefings: ‘The police say this; The
Ministry of Finance says that.’ They prioritize the voices ofauthority and that they cozy up to those voices. It’s a weakness in journalism here.”
These problems have been cited with banal regularity in jourOCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

WHEN YOU START FROM THE PRINCIPLE
THAT YOU’RE ON THE SIDE OF THE
VICTIMS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRYABOUT BEING NEUTRALDAVID McNEILL

ne autumn day five years ago, journalists at the Asahi Shimbun looked
up from their desks to see their boss
holding an impromptu press conference on
the newsroom TV screens. For months, thenewspaper had been taking flak over an article
about the Fukushima nuclear accident. Now
Tadakazu Kimura, its president, was apologizing to the nation and announcing that thearticle in question was being retracted.
Hideaki Kimura, who wrote the piece, and
Makoto Watanabe, who ran the special investigative section that carried it, watched inastonishment as the president stood up,
flanked by the paper’s heads of editorial
affairs and public relations and bowed low forsix seconds. Neither reporter knew what wascoming. But then Kimura straightened up, andvowed strict punishment for “all concerned.”
For many, the humiliating mea culpa, coming on the heels of another Asahi retraction ofarticles on “comfort women” a month earlier,
was a mortal wound to Japan’s flagship liberal newspaper. For Kimura and Watanabe,though, it was the end of the line, and both
quit soon after.
But despite the slap in the face, both stayedin the journalism profession. Today, they canbe found running the Waseda Chronicle, an
online, non-profit investigative newspaper outof a small office in Tokyo.
When we met, Kimura had just returned
from a reporting trip to the Philippines, sourceof most of the bananas consumed in Japan.
Hideaki Kimura (left)
Unknown to most consumers, the industry is
and Makoto Watanabe
a black hole for human rights, he says, withinstances of strikebreaking, intimidation ofworkers,evenmurder. It’s exactly the sort of story the big
The non-profit investigative cyber-paper
media should be doing, he says. “But they ignore it.”nalism surveys, most notably in the annual “World Press Freedom Index” produced by Reporters Without Borders. Globally,
Japan ranked 67th in the latest ranking, a notch of five places
up from the previous year but still the worst in the G7 group ofindustrialized nations. A copy of the survey is pinned to the wallin the Chronicle’s office.
Though still just a few years old, the paper has demonstrated a talent for nosing around in the nation’s underbelly.
It was the first media outlet to report on how prefectural
governments set up eugenic review boards after the Second
World War, competing to perform the most sterilizations. In
one shocking detail, a board commemorated the milestone of
surpassing one thousand surgeries.
An estimated 25,000 people were sterilized under the 1948
Eugenic Protection Law, which targeted people with hereditary conditions such as epilepsy and learning disabilities.
Local doctors reported cases of suspected disabilities thatin some cases were just troublesome teenagers, according torecords of board discussions obtained by Kimura and Watanabe. The youngest person sterilized was just nine years old.
The victims were finally offered a paltry compensation package of ¥3.2m each this year.

THE PAPER HAS ALSO carried a series of articles on how
Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising company, has been paying Kyodo News Agency to run articles on pharmaceuticals.
Another reported on the construction of coal-fired power
stations in Indonesia by Japanese and South Korean companies using technology that fails pollution standards in theirown countries.
The pickup of these stories in the local Japanese media has
been negligible, the two journalists lament. In 2017, however, the FCCJ awarded the Chronicle its Supporter of the Free
Press Award, recognizing its importance in a climate that
includes “growing self-censorship” and press clubs that leave
journalists struggling to serve the public interest and fulfill
their “role as democracy’s watchdogs.”
The FCCJ nod was important, says Watanabe. In fact, it wasa talk at the Club in 2014 that helped nudge him into action.
Professor Tatsuro Hanada, the Waseda Institute’s then director, demanded that the Asahi reverse its Fukushima decisionand stand up to the forces attacking it. The press conference
was a clarion call to free journalism in Japan but only Watanabe and Kimura responded.
“The birth of Waseda Chronicle is a consequence of that suppression of investigative journalists, who subsequently left
the Asahi,” Hanada said in his award acceptance speech.
The key task, however, for any such enterprise is how to
avoid being crushed by economics. With no advertising, theChronicle is supported by crowdfunding and donations. A
few successful examples of this model exist: ProPublica, an
American nonprofit online newsroom that has won five Pulitzer Prizes, runs with the help of large charitable foundations.
In Japan, the investigative magazine FACTA, which first broke
FCCJOCTOBER 2019

the Olympus business scandal in 2011, survives thanks to subscribers and an initial rich donor.
The Chronicle has no such largess, laments Watanabe, andJapan’s culture of charitable funding is comparatively undeveloped. One reason for publishing in English is to broaden thepaper’s reach—but translation and copy editing add to the cost.
To save money on his banana story, Kimura flew economy
class and stayed in the houses of local labor union members in Mindanao, where the plantation is based. The pricetag for his entire two-week reporting trip came to less than¥250,000. He is unfazed by how this might have colored hisstory. “When you start from the principle that you’re on theside of the victims, you don’t have to worry about being neutral,” he says.
The need for independent journalism to monitor corruption, censorship and the growth of personal surveillance has
rarely been more acute, says Watanabe. He cites the growing use of DNA technology in Japan. “The DNA of about one
in every 100 people is stored on record,” he says. “It’s not
destroyed, as it should be. But the media doesn’t like to write
about the police, so it’s a dangerous situation.”
WATANABE NOTES THAT THE mainstream media has steered
clear of the Dentsu pharmaceutical story, which he spent
10 months researching while at the Asahi, because of thechokehold the huge ad agency has over advertising. Deference to authority, to power and money are always threats,
as he knows from his time at the Asahi. In a recent series ofarticles, he returned to his role as head of the paper’s Promethean investigation on the Fukushima disaster.
The climax of that coverage, and the piece that started all
the trouble, claimed that workers at the crippled Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plant disobeyed manager Masao Yoshida during the worst of the crisis and decamped to the nearby Dainiplant in March 2011.
The article, well at odds with the official narrative of bravesamurai holding out against lethal odds, predictably infuriated Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the government andthe Asahi’s conservative rivals. Yet, Watanabe and Kimura still
believe it was accurate. Yoshida had openly contemplated theruin of east Japan, says Watanabe, so was it so hard to imagine
that his foot soldiers might panic and flee the field of battle?
“Yoshida is quoted in his transcript as saying that ‘All of
the nuclear materials could escape and spread. Our image
was that of a catastrophe for eastern Japan.’ He ordered 720
staff members to remain at the Daiichi plant. Contrary to thatorder,” says Watanabe, “650 people—about 90 percent of theentire staff—fled to the Daini site. More than 80 percent of
those people had not returned by March 16. This is all recorded in a TEPCO video conference. However, no one cares aboutsuch inconvenient facts.”
His answer to the perennial question of “What is journalism and why do we do what we do?” seems obvious: to monitor abuse of power on behalf of the people who buy newspapers and watch the news. When watching President Kimuraleave the dais after his disastrous apologetic press conference in 2014, Watanabe says his mind focused on one thing:“What would the ordinary people of Fukushima think about
what had just happened?” ❶David McNeill writes for the Irish Times and the Economist, and teaches
media literacy at Hosei and Sophia Universities.
11Series: Profile

Ben Dooley

The New York Times
By Julian Ryall

TOMOHIRO OHSUMIA

12OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

the local bureau of Kyodo News. Initiallyfter almost five years reporthired as a news assistant, he was sooning from Beijing, Ben Dooley“I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT
given free rein to chase down his own
says Japan is a breath of fresh
THAT CORRESPONDENTS
stories, primarily in the State Departair—both professionally and personNOT EXOTICIZE THE PLACE
ment and then in the White House. Durally. The Japan business corresponWHERE THEY ARE POSTED” ing his four years with Kyodo, Dooley
dent for the New York Times, Dooley
was promoted to a staff-writer position
arrived in Tokyo in February and says
and was informed that the agency had
his first reaction to being here was toan opening in China for an English-speaking correspondent.
be grateful for the lack of pollution in the city.
Around 18 months after taking up the position, he moved“There were days when I would look out of my window inover to Agence France-Presse and was covering domestic
Beijing and I wouldn’t be able to see to the other side of theChinese politics, business and, increasingly, human rights
road,” he said. “After being there for a few years, I developed
issues. “When I first went to Beijing, I did not really have an
a natural sensitivity to air quality and while there is still polinterest in human rights issues because it looked like things
lution here, it’s not the same as in China.”
were getting better. But it became apparent that things were
Originally from what he describes as “a small town on theactually getting much, much worse, far more quickly than
Chesapeake Bay in Virginia,” 40-year-old Dooley says he is also
anyone expected,” he said.
grateful for the relatively unfettered access to government
agencies, academics and corporate leaders. Asked about the“TO ME, NOTHING WAS more important to write about than“hurdles” that he has come up against in his reporting in thethe persecution of people by their own government,” Dooley
last seven months, Dooley says they are relatively low.
said. “The Uighurs is the most obvious case, but there were a“They don’t seem like hurdles because I’ve just come from
lot of horrible things happening to people all over the country.”
China, where it is so difficult to report on anything and to
He went to China wanting to write good things about thejust do your job,” he said. “It’s refreshing to come to Japancountry, but it was very difficult when so much that wasand to be able to walk into METI [The Ministry of Economy,
negative was going on. “It became more and more oppresTrade and Industry] and be briefed on an issue by an official
sive. Everyone believed—and hoped—Xi [Jinping] would be
who is at least being reasonably frank with you.”a reformer and would open the country up when he came to
Dooley credits his present position to “a good degree ofpower, but those hopes quickly disappeared.”good fortune.” He completed a degree in Asian studies at the
Towards the end of his fourth year in Beijing, a friend conUniversity of Virginia, where he “fell in love with kanji chartacted him to let him know that the Times was looking foracters.” “They were just so very different to anything that I
a correspondent with experience and language skills to be
had seen before and there was something very graceful andbased in Tokyo. It was, he says, another stroke of luck.
expressive about them.”
After a spell training at the paper’s headquarters while hewaited for his accreditation to come through, Dooley arrived
HE ADMITS THAT LEARNING sufficient kanji to be able to getin Tokyo in February. Contrary to some suggestions thatby “did not come easy,” but—after 18 months with a SouthAmericans in general are not very interested in what is going
Korean Internet startup and as a PBS online video producer
on beyond their borders, Dooley says readers of the New Yorkin Washington DC—he honed his language abilities during
Times do care about what is happening around the world.
two years in a mountain town in Aichi Prefecture with the“My job, my challenge is to make the news interesting andJapan Exchange and Teaching program.
enjoyable to the readers,” he said. “At the same time, I don’t
In 2005, he returned to the US and took a Masters in East
want to do the vending-machine stories or write about sex
Asian Studies at Stanford University. It was during his time atrobots. I think it’s important that correspondents not exotiStanford that his career path veered off. “I had thought thatcize or fetishize the place where they are posted. And I think
I would go into government, but I attended a lecture by Billthat has sometimes been a problem with coverage of Japan.”Keller, then the executive editor of the New York Times, and I
Instead, Dooley said, he wants to get his teeth into the longot it into my head that journalism would be an interestingger-term investigative stories, similar to some that he purand fun thing to do.
sued in China.
Correspondents do not, of course, simply walk into plum“Those would be my first love in journalism. It would beoverseas assignments, although Dooley felt that his knowlbetter for the world as a whole if those stories were not outedge of Asia, some of its languages, culture, economic andthere, but we all know they are.” ❶political issues, meant that he would be most valuable to anews organization in this part of the world.
Back in Washington but with an eye on Asia, Dooley joined
Julian Ryall is Japan correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.
FCCJ

OCTOBER 201913

Photographer members

Lens craft

Face off medallists
Japan clinch the mixed-team gold
medal at the World Judo Championships
in Tokyo on Sept. 1, while silver went toFrance and bronze to Brazil.
by Rodrigo Reyes Marin

Dance off performers
Sakaikami High School’s team (fromOsaka) perform at the Japan HighSchool Dance Championship, “Dance
Stadium,” in Yokohama on Aug. 16.
by Yoshikazu Tsuno

Club news
At
the
Club

IN MEMORIAM

Charlie ColeFeb. 28 1955 – Sept. 5 201914

CHARLIE COLE, ONE OF the four photo
journalists who captured the iconic
image of the Tiananmen protester“Tank Man” in June 1989, passed awayin September in Bali where he had lived
for some 15 years. He was 64. He leaves
Rosanna, his wife.
Well-known in the Asia-Pacificregion, Charlie was resident in Japanfor much of the 1980s and 1990s andwas a regular visitor to the Club alongwith buddies the late Greg Davis and“Rambling” James Gardner.
Writer Bradley Martin drew on him
for a character in his latest novel,
Nuclear Blues.
Cole, covering the Beijing prodemocracy demonstrations for
Newsweek, received the 1990 World
Press Photo award of the year.

“THERE ARE A LOT OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN JAPAN WHO ARE
INTERESTED IN DOING SOMETHING ABOUT SOCIAL ISSUES,BUT DON’T GET THE INFORMATION ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES,OR DON’T HAVE PEERS TO SHARE THEIR INTEREST.
I HOPE OUR ACTIVITIES WILL INSPIRE PEOPLE WHO HAVE
THE WILL, BUT NOT THE COURAGE OR KNOW-HOW.”– Geoff Tudor
OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

FCCJ

OCTOBER 2019

Hiroto Inoue, 19, Co-founder, Fridays for
Future Tokyo, “Marching in the Global
Climate Strike,” Sept. 17
15

Club news

CLUB EVENT

Bangladesh
night
The Club had a successful evening
celebrating “The Rhythms and Colorsof Bangladesh” on Sept. 4. Left, theAmbassador of Bangladesh, Rabab
Fatima (center in the black and pinksari), is surrounded by singers anddancers (left to right, Papiya Rahman
Piky, Sangya Ghose, Tania Islam Mithun,
Gerome Gomez, Shammi Akhtar,
Ashim Mallik and Mabud Sarker).
Attendees were also treated to delicious
Bangladeshi cuisine.

Photos: Albert Siegel
16

Left, the evening was introduced by theClub’s 1st Vice President and reporterfor the Bangladesh Daily Prothom Alo,
Monzurul Huq.
OCTOBER 2019

FCCJ

Club news
At
the
Club

FCCJ EXHIBITION

THE PAPER

by Sunto Hiroshi

I studied delicate nihonga-style painting from a young age. Then,a few years ago, I started using stiff, oil-paint brushes to create
thick, line paintings of people.
One of the things I learned from this is that a thick line is not aline, but a surface.
Next I photographed the finished painting and turned it into
an image.
However, being an experienced graphic designer, I found that I
was not satisfied with the resulting image. It was then that an oldfriend suggested
I added information to the picture and print it.
This marked the birth of “THE PAPER,” a free newspaper thatoffers a complete contrast to the modern trend of delivering
information digitally over the internet.
The works in this exhibition illustrate the path that led to thecreation of “THE PAPER.”
Hiroshi Sunto was born in 1955. He began his career at Nippon Design

Center and later moved to the design office Breakfast. In 1985, he opened
Sunto Graphics and has designed album covers for over 130 musicians. In
addition, he has been the creative director for a number of magazines.

JOIN THE FILM COMMITTEE. . .
. . . on Oct. 3 at 5:00 pm for a very special TIFF-FCCJ
collaborative event with legendary director Yoji Yamada, whose
hotly anticipated Tora-san, Wish You Were Here, has been selected
as the Tokyo International Festival Opening Film. Joining theinternationally acclaimed director to discuss the 50th anniversaryof his beloved Tora-san character, as well as to share highlightsof this year’s 32nd edition of the festival, will be TIFF Festival
Director Takeo Hisamatsu and Japan Now Programming Advisor
Kohei Ando. Following a screening of his new film with English
subtitles at Shochiku, Yamada will appear at FCCJ for a Q&A
session focused on the latest title in the series he launched
in 1969, resulting in 49 films over a 28-year period (a world
record). Shochiku is releasing 4K digital restorations of all 49
previous films, culminating in the nationwide release of this 50th
installment on Dec. 27.
— Karen Severns

At
the
Club

“I WOULD LIKE [SHINJIRO] KOIZUMI, OUR NEWENVIRONMENT MINISTER, TO SHOW LEADERSHIPAT THE UN CLIMATE ACTION SUMMITBY COMMITTING JAPAN TO INCREASE ITSPROMISED EMISSION REDUCTION FROM
26 PERCENT OF 2013 LEVELS BY THE YEAR
2030 TO 30 PERCENT.”
18

NEW MEMBERS
REGULAR MEMBERS“REGARDING THE
OLYMPICS, THE
GOVERNMENT AND
THE COMMITTEE ARE
TRYING TO CONVINCEEVERYONE THATTHE GAMES ARESUSTAINABLE.

Takeshi Fujitani is the deputy managing editor
at the Asahi Shimbun. He earned a BA in Liberal Arts
at International Christian University, Tokyo and MA
Developing Studies at School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London. He joined the Asahi in
1987. He was later assigned to the office in Rome in1997 to cover the Pope’s millennium visit to the Holy
Land, Kosovo Crisis, and wars in Zaire and Rwanda.
In 2004, he moved to Jakarta, covering the first direct
presidential election as well as string of terrorist
incidents. During the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Takeshi was one of the firstforeign journalists to report from the disaster-stricken area. From 2009 hereported from South and Southeast Asia regions as Asia Editor. Fujitani has
co-authored two books, John Paul II and Living After Tsunami.

WE WHO ARE
INVOLVED WITH
CLIMATE CHANGE
ISSUES BELIEVE THATIS FAR FROM THE
TRUTH. WE SEE THE
GAMES, THOUGH,
AS AN OPPORTUNITYTO TAKE ACTION,ESPECIALLY WITH ALL
THE PEOPLE VISITINGFROM ALL OVER
THE WORLD.”

Barry M. Kawaguchi is the slot editor for the Asia
& Japan Watch English-language digital newspaper
website of the Asahi Shimbun. He started his career at
the Ogden Standard-Examiner in Ogden, Utah, where
he got his bachelor’s degree from Weber State College.
Kawaguchi had two decades of daily newspaper
experience in the US, working for various papers asa sportswriter, news reporter, bureau chief, business
reporter and assistant city editor. From 2002 to
2011, he served as the English-language copy editor
for the Asahi Weekly, an English-teaching weekly newspaper of the Asahi
Shimbun. He now leads a team of six English-native speaking copy editors
in rewriting translations of articles from the vernacular Asahi Shimbun for aWestern audience.
PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALISTASSOCIATE MEMBER
Status Change (Associate To Professional/
Journalist Associate)
Katsuyoshi Ozaki, Krey Office

Takuro Kajiwara,
18, Student member, Fridays for
Future Tokyo, “Marching in the
Global Climate Strike,” Sept. 17

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Olga Vlietstra, Servcorp Ltd.
Kiyoshi Aoki, Haruna Beverage Inc.
Toshiyuki Hirooka, CapitalInternational K.K.
Motoaki Ibano, M’s Holding
International Corporation
Takeyoshi Komatsu, Mitsubishi Electric
Corporation

Koichi Kamachi, Kamachis OfficeYasuhiro Maehara, The Securities Analysts
Association of Japan
Rumi Nakamura, Japan Airlines Co., Ltd.
Yoshihiro Orihara, Ebitami LLC
Koichi Seri, Mitsubishi Corporation
Eisuke Shiozaki, Mitsubishi Corporation
Mai Tanaka, No affiliation
Takashi Yoshida, Meiwa Corporation
Morikazu Yamada, Kitanomaru Law Office
Ryojiro Yamamoto, PE&HR Co., Ltd.
REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE)
Keiichi Yamamura, GIGA Prize Co., Ltd.

NEW IN THE LIBRARY

Saori Iwano, 16,Student member,Fridays for Future
Tokyo, “Marching in
the Global Climate
Strike,” Sept. 17

Gentle Black Giants: A History
of Negro Leaguers in Japan
Kazuo Sayama ; Bill Staples, JR.
Nisei Baseball Research Project
Press (NBRP Press)

FCCJ

OCTOBER 2019

Tokyo: City of Stories
Paul Waley
Weatherhill
Inhabitation: A Novel
Teru Miyamoto;tr. by Roger K. ThomasCounterpoint

Night in theAmerican Village:
Women in the
Shadow of the U.S.
Military Base in
Okinawa
Akemi Johnson
The New Press일본 정치론 (Japanese Politics)
Akio Igarashi
Myeongin Culture History
Gift from Akio Igarashi

19

Climate