The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

July 2017 Volume 49 No. 7 ¥400

“The independence of thepress is facing serious threats:a weaksystem of
legalprotection,
persistent
government
exploitation of a media
lacking in
professional
solidarity							. . .”David Kaye, UN Special
Rapporteur on Freedomof Expression, 2016

THE GOVERNMENT
AND ITS VARIOUS
DISAGREEMENTS
WITH THE UN

Linda Linda:
from FCCJ to TV,a star from the 1950s

Kazunori Takada:
the Bloomberg
bureau chief profiled

Ping pong redux:
when table tennis
served up a scoop

Vol. 49, Number 7

July 2017contact the editors

no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJ
Editor Gregory Starr
Art Director Andrew Pothecarywww.forbiddencolour.com
Editorial Assistants Naomichi Iwamura,
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications committee members
Dan Sloan, Nissan (chair);
Geoffrey Tudor, Orient Aviation;
John R. Harris, Automobile Magazine;Peter Langan, Asia Times; Yoichi Yabe, Freelance

An early issue of
the Japan Times

In this issue
The Front Page
From the President by Khaldon Azhari
The 2017-18 FCCJ Board of Directors
From the archives: Japan’s favorite optimist

p14
4
4
5

Best frenemies: Japan vs. the UN
by David McNeill

6“I love Linda”
by Eiichiro Tokomoto

8

ProfileKazunori Takada
by Justin McCurry
Scoop!: Team workby Gregory Clark
A new owner for the Japan Times
by Tim Hornyak
Club News
Exhibition: Agion Oros Athos
Photographs by Hirohito Nakanishi
In Memoriam: The Dean Of Japanese BaseballJoin the Film Committee. . .
SPC tour to Tokyo Immigration Bureau
New Members/New in the library
FCCJ

JULY 201710

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

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14

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The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Yurakucho Denki Building, North Tower 20F,
1-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0006.
Tel: (03) 3211-3161 Fax: (03) 3211-3168 fccj.or.jp
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

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FRONT PAGE

ELECTION RESULTS

FROM THE ARCHIVES

THE 2017-18 FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORSJAPAN’S FAVORITE OPTIMISTFrom thePresident
I WOULD LIKE TO thank the FCCJ members for theiractive participation in the 2017 elections and theirvoting for continuity and stability as the Club is sailingthrough high waves.
The “old-new” Board welcomes new board
members from the Regular Member ranks, Yoichi
Yabe and Greg Clark, and new and returning board
members from the Associate ranks.
Yabe is a photojournalist. Greg Clark, who willserve as second vice president, almost needs no
introduction, as he is a prolific writer and true Japanand Asia hand.
On the Associate side, we welcome Willem
Kortekaas, a veteran financial expert to serve as
treasurer, and Mary Corbett, who was reserve director
on the previous board, to serve as secretary.
Returning board members will be Anthony Rowley
and Peter Langan, two veteran correspondents.
Anthony will serve as first vice president.
Bob Whiting, who served as FCCJ Treasurer for two
years and was instrumental in his relentless efforts to
fix the FCCJ financial situation – especially related tothe move project – and led the negotiation to makethe best deal with our outsourcing partners, will stayon board as a director. Milton Isa will also remain on
board providing his outstanding expertise in businessand management.
With a high sense of respect and appreciation
I would like to thank the three departing board
members, Todd Crowell, Said Carlson and Yuchi
Otsuka.
Todd is a veteran journalist and expert writer on
military affairs. Said helped the dinosaurs on theboard, myself included, see our profession througha young journalist’s eyes as we move into newmedia and high technology. Otsuka helped with the
management, especially in the HR Committee.
I would also like to thank David Satterwhite, theClub’s outgoing secretary, and hope that David willcontinue to serve the Club as chair of the scholarshipcommittee.
And special thanks to our parliamentarian, Bradley
Martin, who helped us navigate, in style and with agreat performance, our way through Robert’s rules.
Ahead of us we face another challenging year to
tackle issues including the move, the outsourcing, IT
and publications, some structural reforms and theneed to introduce more journalist members. The
board needs your help.
And I assure you that we have an open-door policy.
Please contact any one of us if you have any issues you
would like the FCCJ Board of Directors to address.
In the words of Thomas Babington Macaulay morethan 150 years ago, we all want the FCCJ, with yoursupport, to “remain the gallery in which the reporters
sit and become a fourth estate of the realm.”– Khaldon Azhari
4

Directors-atLarge
President

Khaldon Azhari,
PanOrient News

Milton Isa,
Associate Member

1st Vice PresidentPeter Langan,
Asia Times

Anthony Rowley,Singapore Business Times

2nd Vice President

Robert Whiting,Author, Freelance

Gregory Clark,
Writer/columnist

Secretary

Mary Corbett,Professional Associate Member

Yoichi Yabe,
Freelance Photographer

Kanji
Treasurer

Willem Kortekaas,
Associate Member

Yoshisuke Iinuma,
The Oriental Economist
For more biographical information,
go to our website: www.fccj.or.jp
Associate Member Reserve Director: David Satterwhite,
Professional Associate Member

Makoto Honjo,
Associate Member

Parliamentarian: Bradley Martin,
Freelance
JULY 2017

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JULY 2017

Ezra Vogel, Chairman of Harvard University’s Council on East Asian Studies,
spoke to Club Members on Aug. 16, 1977. This followed his participation in
an FCCJ seminar a year earlier in his previous post as director of Harvard’s
East Asia Research Center and preceded by almost two years the publicationof his controversial book, Japan As Number One: Lessons for America in
1979. Japan as Number One made him famous, with the Japanese version
becoming a non-fiction best seller, and ensured a huge turnout for his next
professional luncheon in January of 1980. Seated to Vogel’s left, pen in
hand, is CBS News’ Bruce Dunning, noted for his coverage two years earlierof the Danang evacuation during the Vietnam war. (Bruce suffered fatal
injuries from a fall in his New Jersey apartment and died in August 2013 at
the age of 73.)
Born in Ohio in 1930, Ezra Vogel earned a Ph.D. in social science from
Harvard University in 1958 before traveling to Japan, where he carriedout research for two years before returning to Harvard. There, hebecame an assistant professor, while expanding his studies to include
China and the Chinese language. He became a tenured professor in
1968, and in 1972 became the director of Harvard’s East Asia ResearchCenter, a position that led to his participation in the FCCJ professionalseminar in 1976. It had long been Vogel’s practice to make annual trips
to Japan and other countries in East Asia, which was why – following his
move to chairmanship of Harvard’s Council for East Asian Studies—he
was invited to speak at the FCCJ on East Asian affairs. When he next
appeared at the Club on Jan. 7, 1980, to discuss Japan As Number One
some eight months after its publication, his appearance attracted awall-to-wall crowd.
Ezra Vogel went on in 1980 to become Harvard’s director of theProgram on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International
Affairs, a post he held for seven years. Additionally, he chaired a groupfor undergraduate East Asian Studies (1972-1991), twice served as
Director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies (1973-1975 and1995-1999), and became the first director of the Asia Center (19971999). He retired from teaching in 2000, the same year he revisited
his earlier theme with a follow-up entitled Is Japan Still Number One?
After retirement, he wrote another book, Deng Xiaoping and theTransformation of China, a reminder that the focus of much of his pastwork had been on China as well as Japan.

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

FEATURE
UNITED NATIONSBest frenemies:
Japan vs. the UN

Japan’s reluctance to rise above UN slights, despite its
huge financial contribution to the organization, smacks of anational inferiority complex, says Kaori Hayashi of the University of Tokyo. The government insists that foreigners are
ignorant of how things work here but is hopeless at explaining why, she says. “They feel very insulted about these people
who are now aware of Japanese culture. What do they know
about Japan?”“Government ministers don’t know what to do about such
criticism,” Hayashi says. “They don’t know how to react andthey don’t want to spend time on it. They don’t discuss things
intellectually – it’s not a value in this system. It doesn’t belong
to politics. In the Western tradition, freedom of expression issituated in the core of political values; in Japan it is far less so.”

Unlike countries that tend to bury unwelcome
reports from the international body, theJapanese government takes them personally.
by DAVID MCNEILL

Kaye’s report was shoddy
and biased, the Sankei said.
That was but a warm-up forwhen it called him a liar

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JULY 2017

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AP PHOTO/LEE JIN-MAN

B

laring headlines seem tocheck for factual errors, to give
follow David Kaye. Earlier
us a chance to correct and thethis year, on April 21, thegovernment to make its counter
UN’s special rapporteur for freestatement,” he says. “That playdom of expression got a roastinging of the rapporteur struck mein the British tabloids for warning
as unusual in the context of athat age verification for online
democratic country and it politiporn could violate international
cized the issue. The report islaws on freedom of speech. “Medrestrained and technical and the
dling UN chiefs attack measures
response overstates how politito protect kids from sick online
cal it is. They could have just saidfilth,” screamed the Sun.
that the proposal deserves study,
The response to Kaye’s reportthen bury it.”He says/she says
on Japan’s media was barely more
Above, a statue in Korea to commemorate "comfort women:"measured. Days before he arrived
SUCH IS OFTEN THE fate of UN
the UN and the Japanese government disagree over whatin Tokyo to brief the government,
reports
elsewhere.
Britain,they agree on about the women. Opposite, David Kaye, UN
a draft of the report was leaked
which has in recent years fallen
Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the FCCJ.
to the Sankei Shimbun, a newsfoul of several UN rapporteurs,
paper that also takes a dim viewshrugged off Kaye’s warning thatof finger wagging by meddling foreigners. Kaye’s report wasage checks would facilitate cyber-snooping by the state. “This
shoddy and biased, it said. That was but a warm-up for June
government is proud to be putting in place robust measures
14, when the newspaper called him a liar.
to keep children safe from net porn,” said a mandarin at the
A group of elderly university professors said Kaye’s alarm
department for culture, media and sport, “There is no quesshould be directed toward his own country: America. Thetion of the government collecting data on viewing habits.”
Academics’ Alliance for Correcting Groundless Criticisms
That’s the way to do it – with just enough polite bureauof Japan said in a May 2 statement that the rapporteur had
cratic disdain to muffle the sound of the report dropping into
jumped to conclusions after being led around by the nose forthe dustbin. Instead, Japan bristles. A letter in May by Josepha week by journalists “who were chosen based on “political
Cannataci, a UN-commissioned expert on the right to privaconsiderations and expediencies” – code for lefties. “Profescy, questioning the merits of a new conspiracy bill, sparked asor Kaye’s alarmist language is sharply at odds with the actual
blistering row. Cannataci’s assessment was “extremely unbalsituation in Japan, where freedom of expression is fully guaranced,” thundered Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and “hardly
anteed by law and custom andthat of an objective expert.”
fully enjoyed and practiced on a
Two years ago, the government
daily basis throughout all sectors
angrily challenged a rapporteur’sof Japanese society,” they fumed.
dubious claim that many JapaInstead, there were “great chalnese schoolgirls had engaged inlenges from big countries lacking
amateur prostitution. A year
freedom of opinion and expresbefore that it publicly swatted
sion,” such as Russia and China.
away censure of its stingy sysKaye, who talked to 100 journaltem for asylum seekers: UN Highists, editors and civil rights experts in Japan, emerged more
Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said the system
bemused than bruised at his reception. Sanae Takaichi, thewas rigid and restrictive. It was hardly controversial: in thecommunications minister, repeatedly declined to meet him,
decade to 2013, Japan gave asylum to just over 300 refugees.
saying she was “busy”; Koichi Hagiuda, the deputy chief cabiThen there was the odd spat in June over the government’s
net secretary, said the rapporteur’s findings were based onclaim that the UN secretary general endorsed its 2015 deal on“hearsay.” All par for the course, says Kaye, though he calls the
Korean “comfort women,” herded into Japanese wartime milSankei leak by someone inside the government “surprising.”
itary brothels. Antonio Guterres said so when he met Abe in“Usually the draft report is sent to the government to
Italy, insisted Yoshihide Suga, the government’s top spokesman. No he didn’t, said Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane
David McNeill writes for the Independent, the Economist and other
Dujarric. “The truth is what the Japan side has announced,”publications. He has been based in Tokyo since 2000.
retorted Suga, unconvincingly.

THIS MAY HELP DRIVE the longstanding hostility to a 1996 UN
report on the wartime military brothels. Radhika Coomaraswamy, a special rapporteur on violence against women, called
for an apology and compensation for comfort women. Japan
has repeatedly tried and failed to have the report pulled, evendispatching its human rights’ ambassador to try to directly
talk to Coomaraswamy.
So the bad-tempered response to
Kaye did not come out of theblue. But Japan’s concernsthat the UN is being politicized have grown under
Abe. In 2015 Tokyo
threatenedtostop
funding UNESCO. The
trigger was a decisionby the heritage bodyto add Chinese archival
documents on the 1937
Nanjing Massacre to its“Memory of the World” register. Japan subsequently
withdrew its threat and paid
¥3.85 billion in unpaid dues.
Tokyo’s charges rang hollow to some. It too was accusedof political opportunism
when it registeredmuch of its earlyindustrial
heritage with UNESCO. South Korea
said Japan was
hiding the history of forcedlabor at some ofthe sites. That
dispute ended

FCCJ

JULY 2017with a compromise in which Japan agreed to explain that
Koreans had been taken to some sites and “forced to work
under harsh conditions.”
The UN seal of approval – or disapproval – is important topatriots like the professors who make up the Academic Alliance. Because of its association with the United Nations, the
Coomaraswamy report with its “grave errors” has come intocurrency throughout the world, and “the dignity of Japan . . .
in the international community has been immensely damaged for more than two decades.” Only a fresh UN special
rapporteur and a “new report free from factual error” will
put things to rights. The best of luck with that.
As the UK and Japanese reaction shows, tension is inevitable in the relationship between governments and rapporteurs, insists Kaye. “It’s a problem if there isn’t.” The mistake, he says, is assuming their reports are hostile insteadof opportunities for public debate. The 46 professors who
signed that statement accusing him of “unfair and biased
views” preferred to shoot from the sidelines, he says. If theyfelt so strongly, they could have met him face-to-face. ❶WHAT’S IN THE REPORTDavid Kaye is one of over 50 human rights rapporteurs for
the Human Rights Council, which replaced the discredited
Commission on Human Rights in 2006. The unpaid
position consists of three tasks: Communicating directlywith governments around the world; conducting country
visits (Kaye covers Japan, Tajikistan and Turkey) and writing
thematic reports.
The council has come under fire, and not just in Japan. Oneof the most frequent criticisms is that it is disproportionately
concerned with problems in liberal democracies while failingto bring gross human rights violators elsewhere to book.
America has threatened to leave. Yet, concludes a recent
review by the Economist, the organization is improving and“helps make the world a better place.”
Kaye was at pains to stress what Japan got right. His report
said there is a strong legal framework that protects freedomof expression, on the net and elsewhere. “But we must always
be vigilant to protect that framework. My report identifies
areas that I think should raise concerns for all people inJapan who believe in democracy and the institutions that
protect human rights.”
Media independence was his key concern. The government
should create an independent broadcast regulator, hesaid, pointing out that Japan did have one, but the firstpost-Occupation government in the 1950s abolished it.
Now broadcasting is under the control of the minister ofcommunications. “Article 174 of the Broadcast Act hangs likea Sword of Damocles over the head of the media in the eventthat they do some report that the government doesn’t like,”
Kaye said.
Kaye’s other concern was the lack of solidarity among
media companies. “Journalists are loyal to their companies
rather than journalism itself. Journalists see pressure in their
day-to-day work not to cover issues that could be sensitive.
That creates an atmosphere where media independence isdifficult to establish.”
These observations were based, he said, on his experienceof comparing other democratic systems. “My hope isthat they become part of public debate.” The report was
submitted to the Human Rights Council in June.” After
that, it is in the hands of the Japanese public to decide if therecommendations are worth pursuing.”

7

FEATURE
ENTERTAINMENT
The Lone Ranger, Highway Patrol and others, all of which were
overdubbed in Japanese. One station had come up with theidea of producing a drama based on I Love Lucy, and they wereseeking an American female who could speak Japanese. Afteroverhearing Linda ordering dishes in Japanese at the pressclub, one of the directors involved with the show promptly
approached her about appearing on the program.
Linda agreed, and on April 6, 1958, at the Sunday evening
prime time of 7 p.m., she made her debut on JOKR-TV (nowTBS), in the first episode of “Aoi Me No Tokyo Nikki” (Blue Eyes’
Tokyo Diary). The sponsor was Snow Brand Milk Products, andthe director was Takanori Yamamoto.
Linda portrayed Shirley, wife ofGeorge Parker, the Tokyo correspondent for a fictitious U.S. magazine
called Slick. Her hubby George wasplayed by Ken Nilsson, a disc jockey
who had studied Japanese at the Military Language Institute in Monterrey, California. The couple’s American
friend was played by George Furness,an attorney who had defended Class-A
war criminals during the International Military Tribunal for
the Far East.
There was some striking irony in the make-up of the production staff. Near the war’s end Yamamoto, at that time auniversity student, had been conscripted into the military
and trained, as a would-be Kamikaze pilot, to crash an aircraft armed with a single 250kg-bomb into a U.S. naval vessel.
Now, only six years after the San Francisco Peace Treaty cameinto effect, ending the occupation of Japan, Linda was performing in a TV situation comedy made with the cooperationof a defense attorney for accused war criminals and a former
would-be Kamikaze pilot.
The basic story plot was that the young American couple
would go out to run down stories about things they encountered in Japan. For example, one day George explained to
Linda that only men could attend geisha parties. She and herfriend discuss the matter and decide to disguise themselves
as geisha girls and entertain their husbands.

ago I shook hands with Emperor Hirohito. But when Crown
Prince Akihito’s engagement to commoner Michiko Shoda
was announced, did the Tokyo papers ask me for comment?
No, they asked my wife.” Her celebrity status reached thepoint that in the press club bar, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Press Club president Keyes Beech was jokingly referred to by a colleague as “Mr. Linda Beech.”
In 1960, when then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi – grandfather of the current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – revised the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, anti-U.S. sentiment boiled over.
When Jim Hagerty, President Dwight Eisenhower’s press secretary, arrived at Haneda Airport hewas besieged by hostile demonstrators, requiring him to be evacuated by
a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter.

Linda Linda!

by EIICHIRO TOKUMOTO

Linda Beech on set“I love Linda”

AP PHOTO/AKIO MURAKAMI

After overhearing
Linda ordering dishes
in Japanese, one of thedirectors approached
her about appearing
on the program.

A chance encounter in the press club’s dining room
led to TV stardom for a woman whose husband wasa Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent.

Looking back on the FCCJ’s history of over seven decades,
many stories can be found of people whose lives werechanged by chance encounters at the Club. One of them
was the mother of two young boys, who arrived in Japan in
the 1950s as the wife of an American correspondent, before
going on to stardom in a Japanese TV comedy drama. In tempestuous times when anti-American sentiments were on therise in the country, she was referred to by some – in one case,by an American correspondent – as “the best ambassador.”
Linda Corley Mangelsdorf was born in Boston, Massachusetts in April 1925. When she was three, her family relocatedto Honolulu, where her father was employed as a geneticist
for the sugar-cane growers. There, she picked up a smattering of Japanese language from the family’s maid, a JapaneseAmerican nisei.
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Linda, who had stayed
overnight at a friend’s house, heard the roar of aircraft flying
overhead, followed by explosions. She saw low-flying aircraft
whose wings bore the red circle of the Japanese Hinomaru
headed in the direction of the Pearl Harbor naval base. At theage of 16 she became one of the American civilians bearing
witness to the Japanese attack on the U.S.
Linda first attended Stevens College in Columbia, Missouri,
and later transferred to the University of Hawaii, where she

8received her degree. In 1949, she came to Tokyo as an industry
labor relations analyst for Supreme Command Allied Powers.
She made the acquaintance of Keyes Beech, a correspondent
for the Chicago Daily News. Beech had worked as a war correspondent in the Pacific Theater, and was well known for his actsof derring-do, having been the first correspondent to reachthe summit of Mt. Suribachi during the battle of Iwo Jima. He
served as FCCJ president from July 1948 to June 1949, and later
received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Korean War.
Linda had intended to pursue graduate studies in Asian Philosophy, but became engaged to Keyes and the two married inJune 1951. She once was heard to remark laconically, “I never got
my master’s degree but I got a husband.” The couple returned to
the U.S. but came back to Japan in 1955, and Linda had settled
down to a mundane existence as the mother of Keyes Jr. andBarnaby. Then one day, while eating lunch in the dining roomof the Tokyo Correspondents’ Club (forerunner to the FCCJ),
she struck up a conversation with a Japanese TV director.
TELEVISION BROADCASTING IN JAPAN began in the 1950s with
NHK programming, which was then followed by several commercial TV networks. At the time, the biggest problem facing the broadcasters was the shortage of content. The gap
was filled by popular American programs, such as I Love Lucy,JULY 2017

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THOUGH LINDA COULD CONVERSE in Japanese, she wasunable to read it, so the program’s entire script was written
in the romaji, which she would memorize before each broadcast. (American actress Charlotte Kate Fox, who starred in
the NHK drama Massan three years ago, also memorized herlines from an alphabetized script, so Linda can be regarded
as her predecessor.)
With the popularity of TV just beginning to take off in Japan,
the Blue-Eyes saga became a hit sensation. The sheer noveltyof a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American female speaking Japanese was enthusiastically received by TV viewers, and when
Linda went on shopping expeditions at Ginza department
stores, people lined up to ask for her autograph. The weekly
U.S. magazine The Saturday Evening Post was to eventually
feature an article by Linda’s real-life husband – correspondent Keyes Beech – titled, “I Lost My Wife to Tokyo TV.”
Linda once was ticketed by a traffic cop for exceeding the
speed limit. As the story goes, when she appeared in traffic
court, the judge, who turned out to be a fan of her show, madethe other offenders wait, holding up the “court for an hourwhile he discussed in detail practically every show in which
Linda had appeared. Then he apologetically fined her theequivalent of $4.18 and let her go.”Linda received similarly deferential treatment in the media.
As Keyes Beech recalled in a self-deprecating tone, “Ten years
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JULY 2017

ACCORDING TO AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT Terry Turner, when themarchers in an anti-U.S. demonstration happened to spot Linda passingby, they cheered and rushed forward
to grasp her hand, shouting, “Lindasan, Linda-san!” Then they returned to their “zig-zag” snake
dance and resumed chanting “Down with America!” Observing this, Turner described her as “the best ambassador thiscountry had in that beleaguered city.”
Around the same time, Nippon Columbia issued a disc titled“I Love Tokyo,” marking Linda’s debut as a vocalist. She also
appeared as a model on Sapporo Beer promotional posters. In
a matter of two years, Linda had truly blossomed into Japan’s
most popular foreign celebrity.
In his article in The Saturday Evening Post, Keyes Beech
included an interview with director Yamamoto, in which he
was quoted as saying, “We thought about all the outstanding
differences between East and West and how to transfer Western humor into Japanese and vice versa. Then we made animportant discovery. We discovered that while Americans andJapanese live differently, they will laugh at the same things.
What’s funny to one is funny to the other. The strength of theshow rests on common humanity.”
Keyes supposed that the show’s viewers were probably
mostly adolescents but believed it appealed to all ages,
leading him to conclude, “Young Japanese like it because
it brings a modern young American couple into their living rooms. Older Japanese like it because they see a pair of
Americans trying to live up to old and disappearing customs
that they cherish.”“Tokyo Blue Eyes has had an unexpected result,” he wrote.
“Although calculated to sell cheese, it has also helped sellAmerica, in that it has brought Americans and Japanese closer
together. And it hasn’t cost the United States taxpayer one cent.”
While Blue Eyes Tokyo Diary was to forever change the lifeof one American woman from Hawaii, it also turned out toserve as the ultimate in “soft power” – enhancing the imageof Americans in Japan. It was, no doubt, not the first, and certainly not the last time that the hand of fate moved across atable over lunch at the press club dining room.
The Beeches were to eventually depart Japan, and the couple later divorced. Linda earned a doctorate in psychology
and worked in the mental health field. She passed away at age
86 on Jan. 5, 2012. Her ashes were scattered at the panoramic
Waipio Valley beach, at the northern tip of the Big Island of
Hawaii. ❶Eiichiro Tokumoto, a former Reuters correspondent, is an author andinvestigative journalist.

9

SERIESPROFILE

Kazunori Takada
by JUSTIN McCURRY

I“I thought about what
I enjoyed doing most,and realized it was
writing.”

ANDREW POTHECARY

f half the job of great reportingis simply being in the right placeat the right time, then Kazunori
Takada can justifiably claim to havestruck gold.
His appointment in 2011 as deputy
head of Reuters’ bureau in Shanghai
came just before relations between
Japan and China went into a steep
dive following the decision by thethen prime minister Yoshihiko Noda
to nationalize the disputed Senkaku/
Diaoyu islands. Demonstrators took
to the streets of several Chinese cities, and some Japanese businesses
were forced to temporarily shutter
their premises.
Takada had conflicting emotions.
He was excited to be in the thick of amajor international news story, butconcerned about his family’s safety. During one protest, a stone wasthrown at the kindergarten attended
by his two-year-old daughter. “Whenthe island protest blew up it was pretty frightening,” says Takada. “To see
hundreds of people marching down
the street chanting anti-Japan slogans
and carrying banners makes you aware that you’re in a foreign country surrounded by people who don’t have very positive feelings towards your country.”
If it hadn’t been for a tricky Japanese-language test, the40-year-old Yokohama native might never have pursued acareer in journalism that late last year saw him propelled to
become Bloomberg’s Tokyo bureau chief, where he oversees
a team of around 140 reporters and editors.

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JULY 2017

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ing details of Obuchi’s condition down
their phones. “I realized that’s what it
takes to be to be a journalist. You haveto detach yourself from the news in away. It’s not easy, but that was a learning experience.
“As Wyatt Earp said: fast is fine, but
accuracy is everything. You can shootfast, but if you miss there’s no point,
you’re going to get shot. It’s the samething with the wires. You can be fast, but
if you’re wrong, then it just causes moredamage than being slow. But if you’re
fast and you’re accurate then that’s bingo – and that’s what we’re after.”

AS THE HEAD OF a major international
bureau, Takada finds much of his time
is taken up performing managerial
duties and attending internal meetings, but he still tries to find the time to
file. “A full-time manager will never be
respected in the newsroom. You have to
be in the trenches with the journalists,
and that’s my approach. It’s easy to say,‘Let’s interview so-and-so,’ or ‘Get thisquote,’ but you forget how difficult thatcan be at times.”
After two years on the Reuters general news desk, Takada spent three and a half years covering Asian markets – anarrangement that allowed him to combine his love of writing
with his background in finance. “I was initially skeptical, but
as it turns out – and this goes back to why I got into journalism in the first place – I just enjoyed writing, and withmarkets I had more chances to write. I was able to get anunderstanding of financial journalism, and looking back thatprobably decided my career path for the next 16 or 17 years
and eventually brought me to Bloomberg.”
AFTER GRADUATING FROM THE International Christian UniThe shift in the global media focus to China is a common
versity in Tokyo with a degree in international relations, helament among Tokyo-based journalists. Takada, too, recogwas hired by a major Japanese bank as a graduate trainee, butnizes that the environment for Japan-based news organizalasted just seven months. “The tasks that are given to gradtions is tough, but he is confident that there will always be an
trainees are just mind-boggling,” he says of a job he quickly
appetite for Bloomberg’s brand of journalism.
grew to loathe.
Takada’s peripatetic career has also included stints for Reuters
His route out of the financial industry and into journalismin Singapore and Wellington, New Zealand – where, inevitably,came after he failed a test in which he was asked to write thehe caught the rugby bug – but it is his five years in Shanghai
names of all of the bank’s domestic branches in kanji. He wasthat have left the biggest impression, along with his education
offered the chance to retake, but the test had convinced him
at an ultra-liberal elementary school in San Francisco.
that it was time for a change. “I thought about what I enjoyedWhile Takada would not be drawn into discussing his plans
doing most, and realized it was writing,” he says.
to expand Bloomberg’s coverage, he is keen to mine the richAfter joining Reuters in Tokyo in 1999, Takada spent theseam of stories revolving around China and Japan, and to offer
next two years on the general news desk, covering everythingan antidote to the one-dimensional coverage their relationshipfrom floods in Nagoya to the final days of the premiership
receives in sections of the Japanese and international media.
of Keizo Obuchi. The announcement that Obuchi had fallen“There are a lot of untold stories that
into a coma after suffering a strokeneed to be told – about the fact that on
brought home the pressures of being aJustin McCurry is Tokyo correspondent for thethe surface it looks pretty bad, but when
wire reporter. “I was so shocked that I
Guardian and Observer newspapers in London
and writes for the Lancet medical journal. He
you look beneath the surface there arefroze, although I was supposed to sendalso reports on Japan and South Korea forstrong ties between the two countries.
headlines live,” Takada recalls. Around
France 24 TV.
Not everything is doom and gloom.” ❶him he could hear other reporters yellFCCJJULY 201711

FEATURE
JOURNALISM

Scoop! Team work

How a chance call to Nagoya and an aversion to tatami matsled to a major change in Australia’s China policy.
by GREGORY CLARKM

y scoop begins back in the cold, wet spring of 1971.
The world table tennis championships were underway in Nagoya, when we discovered that all theparticipating teams were invited to visit China after the
tournament. Even the Americans have been invited. But theAustralians, it seems, have been ignored.
I urgently set out to contact Dr. John Jackson, the Australian team manager, whom my office finds visiting a factory
outside Nagoya. When asked why the team won’t be going to
China, Jackson simply says that for some reason there was noinvite for the Australian team. In any case, he says, his team
had already planned on more training in Japan, followed by avisit to Taiwan.
I assume that Australia has been ignored because its antiBeijing policies are even more strident than Washington’s.
Still, I suggest he call me if he visits Tokyo.
A week later he rings, asking for help with a place to stay.
I give him a ryokan address, but an hour later he calls back.
They are insisting he has to sleep on straw mats. He wants a
hotel, he says, not a horse stable.
It is early evening, and finding somewhere cheap to stayin Tokyo on a rainy night will not be easy. Reluctantly, I say
he and the team member traveling with him can stay at myplace. I’ll let them use my bed in the bedroom, and I will sleep
on straw mats in the tatami room.
Over the next few days, we meet occasionally over breakfast. Four days later, I tell him what a pity it was he did not
get the invitation to go to China, and pass him that morning’s
Japan Times. Splashed across the front page is a photo of the
U.S. team in Beijing, shaking hands with Premier Zhou Enlai
12

the young radicals had come to him,demanding my immediate expulsion
from China for unacceptable behavior – particularly the defamation of
Chairman Mao.
Only after six hours of all-nightdebate was he finally able to persuade
the fanatics to allow me to stay – on
one condition: that I must make anapology. I take stock for a moment. I
have spent years learning Chinese and
THE NEXT MORNING, THE group,
studying China’s policies without prejwhich includes myself and anotherudice. I have defied my own governAustralian journalist from the very
ment and single-handedly organized
conservative, anti-communist MelAustralia-China relations
the skeleton of a ping pong team thatbourne Herald, are standing at the Lo
The author meets Premier Zhou Enlai.
Beijing wants so badly to visit.
Wu crossing, waiting to get into ChiAnd when I finally get to China, I discover that there arena. He, rather than someone from the less rightwing Sydneysome people here who want me expelled on my very first evebased Fairfax group, has been invited because Melbourne
ning. So I stomach my pride and do what Mr. Yu says; I am
hosts the miniscule pro-Beijing faction of the miniscule Ausallowed to stay.
tralian Communist Party.
After an exhibition match in Guangzhou we head for
But for some reason, after handing over our documents,
Shanghai. Mr. Yu interrupts yet another boring ping pongwe find ourselves standing for hours in the hot sun at the Lo
marathon, saying he has some good news. A fellow AustralianWu frontier. Eventually a stern-faced guard emerges to telljournalist will be joining us from Tokyo.
us that we cannot enter China because the players all have
It is a Mr. Ssss . . . (Yu’s Shanghai accent is not helping).
unused Taiwanese visas in their passports. And I have a used
But he needs say no more since I have already guessed thatvisa from Taiwan.
Mr. Sss . . . is Max Suich, the Fairfax man in Tokyo. The highI insist that our mission is important for China and thely-competitive Suich has been on the phone to Beijing daily,
world, and – after numerous calls back and forth with thedemanding a visa. Beijing has relented, but only after a week
responsible Hong Kong office, we are finally allowed to boardof constant calls (as I am told later by the FCCJ front desk).
the one daily train to Guangzhou. My relief is considerable.
At Guangzhou we are met by a small delegation of boilerWHEN SUICH DOES GET the visa, he flies direct to Beijing,plate communist officials. Fortunately, it includes Mr. Yu – aarriving a day before us. He even tries to scoop me. He sends
youngish, sophisticated official sent down from Beijing by
off a story telling the world that he is the first Australian jourthe Chinese Foreign Ministry to look after us. He takes us tonalist to arrive in the Chinese capital since the 1949 revolution.
the famous Dongfang Hotel – the city’s main hotel for welUpon arrival in Beijing, we are given the welcome usucoming foreign guests. But our euphoria is brief: we find thatally reserved for potentates from friendly African countries.
Beijing has not yet organized our press accreditation cards.
There is a large official banquet, and the next day we are takSo if I want to cable the story my newspaper wants so badly
en to the Great Hall of the People to meet none other than– “First Australian Journalist into China since 1949” – it will
Premier Zhou Enlai.
cost one U.S. dollar a word, and I have to pay before midnight.
I still have a photo of the head of the Australian ping pong
Lacking funds for an in-depth report, all I can do is file a“team” being welcomed by the prime minister of the world’s
brief story saying that we are all in China, and that the firstlargest nation. I also have a rather faded photo of myself
breach in the wall of traditional Australian hostility to China
meeting Zhou. He is looking straight at me. I am bowing
has been made. The Herald man is much more aggressive.
slightly, Japanese style. I come away from the meeting withHe sends a 3,000-word opus on the welcome we have been
two lasting impressions. One is that there are cracks in thereceiving – that the girls look nice beneath their Mao coshastily built Great Hall. The other is Zhou’s extraordinarily
tumes, that the food is splendid and the beer tastes good.
magnetic presence.
Unfortunately, he does not have the $3,000 needed to send
Ping pong matches over, Suich and I ask for a formal briefall this back to Melbourne. He tells the cable office he will pay
ing on China-Australia relations, at which we are told thatlater, and heads for the room that we are sharing. We are both
Canberra’s hostile attitude to China could lead to a major
exhausted. I have hardly slept for three days.
reduction in wheat purchases from Australia.
Our reports create a furor back in Ozland, and encourage
AT EXACTLY MIDNIGHT, NOT long after we’ve stretched out inthe head of the opposition Labor party, Gough Whitlam, tothe sticky south China heat, there is a frantic knocking at thevisit China at the moment Henry Kissinger is making his
door. We open it to find that a group of angry young radicals
secret visit on behalf of the U.S. President Nixon. The kudos
want to know why the Herald man has not paid his cable bill.
helps Whitlam storm to victory at the next election in 1972,
Since my colleague does not speak Chinese, I try to explain.
immediately giving Beijing the official recognition it wants.
I also tell them that Chairman Mao has instructed young radiA perfect example of scoop power! ❶cals to serve the people, and they clearly are not doing anything to serve my prostrate colleague. The radicals are not
Gregory Clark was Tokyo Bureau chief for the Australian, 1969-74,
impressed, and march out swearing vengeance.
and is now a frequent contributor to the Japan Times.
At breakfast the next morning the meet-and-greet friendwww.gregoryclark.net
liness of the night before has evaporated. I am now being
Ogimura, is famous for all he hasdone to promote sporting ties with
China. I contact him and he agrees
to push the Australian players into
stopping their training, and makethe trip. One remains adamantly
opposed, so I find myself a mere 24
hours later heading for Hong Kong
with my now four-member team.

in the Great Hall of the People. He and his team could havebeen part of the global sensation, I tell him.
HIS EYES NARROW. “TO tell the truth, Greg,” he says, “we wereinvited to China. But the Australian government insisted
that we visit Taiwan after Nagoya. They even organized thevisas for us.”I ask if he would like to go to China and be famous. He
agrees, and I head to the local post office to send a cable in his
name to the Beijing sports authorities saying he now wants toaccept their earlier invitation. I add a request for permission
for one journalist, Gregory Clark, to cover the visit.
Beijing replies immediately with an invitation, and Clark is
invited to come along. But there are problems facing Dr. Jackson: one, much of his team has scattered; two, while there
are members still training in Tokyo, he doesn’t know how tocontact them; and three, even if he puts a team together, they
have no money to get to the Hong Kong and Lo Wu border
post – the only entry point to China.
A frantic telephone search of Tokyo’s dingy training halls
finds three team members. With Jackson and his friend thatmakes five; hopefully enough of a “team” to warrant a Chinese welcome.
In deep secrecy, I tell my newspaper, the Australian, that if
they can cough up the fares to Hong Kong for our “team,” I candeliver a world-shattering scoop – or, at least, an Australiashattering one. Sydney comes back very quickly saying yes.
But the three players we tracked down want to continue
training in Japan, and are reluctant to go to China. Then I
remember that Japan’s table tennis association chief, Ichiro
JULY 2017

FCCJ

viewed with intense loathing and silence by the staff, andwhen Mr. Yu shows up, the radical students are with him. Mr.
Yu is looking very worried. He takes me aside and tells me thatFCCJJULY 2017

We invite other journalists to share accounts of your scoops with
our readers. Email the editors at no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
13NEWSPAPERS
Shortly after its 120th birthday and a complete design redo, Japan’s oldest
paper gets a new, little-known proprietor with no news background.

A new owner for
the Japan Times

Owned by Nifco since
the early 1980s, theJapan Times was bought
by News2u last month.
Daimon, noting that the newspaper
was a pioneer in creating a web
experience that adapts to user
devices. “This is an exciting
opportunity for the JT to better
engage with our readers in thedigital era and widen our reach.”by TIM HORNYAKTWITTERATI EYEBROWS SHOT UP in
June when news broke that the Japan
Times, the country’s oldest and largest
English-language newspaper, had beensold. Parent company Nifco, the plastic
components maker that has controlled
the paper for over 30 years, announced
it had sold it to News2u Holdings, aTokyo media firm that distributes news
releases. One Twitter user, @taro3yen,
was quick to post a photoshopped
version of the paper’s June 12 edition
with “The Japan Press Release” as the
new masthead.
(Full disclosure: I am a contributor
to the Japan Times.)
In a brief release, the JT said thatas a 100-percent-owned subsidiaryof News2u, it would continue asa newspaper with its mission of“reporting the news on Japan andthe world to both its domestic andinternational audiences.” It said thenew owner’s resources would give it
a bigger online presence and makeit more useful to readers. Financial
details of the deal were not disclosed.
“We hope to enhance our digital
capabilities and reach using News2U’s
expertise and know-how in thoseareas,” says JT managing editor Sayuri
14

THE JT RECENTLY CELEBRATED its 120th
anniversary with an extensive revamp.
First published on March 22, 1897, thenewspaper has been around almost
as long as modern Japan itself andhas survived while English versionsof leading broadsheets Asahi Shimbun
and Mainichi Shimbun have not. Having
changed its name and absorbed otherpapers during the 20th century, the JT
was brought under Nifco’s control in
the early 1980s and purchased outrightin 1996, not long after circulation hit
75,000 copies. That has plunged over
40 percent to 44,000 today, echoing
declines in other developed countries,
though online readers and a growinginternational audience have shored up
the drop. Insiders said it was a goodtime for the property to start fresh
under a new owner.
“The Japan Times had a great run
under Nifco over many years, throughthick and thin,” says William Saito, an
entrepreneur who served on the paper’s
advisory board. “I think the sale is lessa commentary on the state of Japanand the growing interest among a
global audience than a clear indicationof how technological progress ischanging the face of news media.”
Nifco had grappled with the rapidlychanging media landscape while trying
to cut costs. The JT teamed up with theInternational New York Times in 2013
and included more wire copy in its print
edition, but that hasn’t halted the dropin circulation. Nifco’s latest financial
report shows its “other” businesssegment, consisting mainly of thenewspaper, eked out a small operating
profit of ¥8 million in fiscal 2016.
Income had been improving after an
ad-revenue slump, but operating losses
continued for years. Rumors of a sale orclosure had long swirled. The clincher
was the death of Nifco Chairman
Toshiaki Ogasawara late last year.
“Shareholders have been very
unhappy about the fact that JT was
eroding Nifco’s profit and becoming
more like a liability, and there has
been always pressure to sell it, I’ve
heard,” said one former employee ofthe newspaper, who had hoped a major
brand like Rakuten would pick it up.
“But Chairman Ogasawara defended JT
as it was like a crown to him.”

Step up
See aheadStand out

THE JT’s NEW OWNER is an unknown
in Japan’s English-media circles. It
was established in 2001 to distributepress releases, but also createswebsites and other media. CEO Minako
Kambara Suematsu is a Gakushuin
University-educated scion of theHiroshima-based Kambara family,
whose ancestor Katsutaro Kambara
established Kambara Kisen shipping
company in 1903. Aside from her media
enterprises, she’s senior managing
director of the family’s Tsuneishi
Holdings, a ¥200 billion concern withbusinesses in shipbuilding, logistics,
energy and leisure.
It’s unclear exactly why Kambara
was interested in the JT. News2u
declined an interview request and did
not answer questions. In a Japaneselanguage blog post put up after newsof the sale, Kambara noted the paper’s
solid reporting as well as the need fortrustworthy information in the era of
fake news. She also insisted News2u is
not a PR firm.
“I am convinced that the ability toaccess primary information and theability to send it in English has great
potential by using the internet,” shewrote. “I want to think about creating
an information platform vital forreaders by digitally informing the worldabout Japan while maintaining theindependence of the Japan Times.” ❶Award-winning, bilingual, content-creation

Tim Hornyak is a freelance writer who has
worked for IDG News, CNET News, Lonely
Planet and other media. He is the author of
Loving the Machine: The Art and Science ofJapanese Robots.
JULY 2017

FCCJ

and communication agency.
Contact us: unique@custom-media.com | www.custom-media.com | www.bij.tv

FCCJ

JULY 201715

CLUB NEWSIN MEMORIAM: THE DEAN OF JAPANESE BASEBALLFCCJ EXHIBITIONFAMILY, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES gathered at the
FCCJ on May 20, to honor and remember long-time
baseball journalist Wayne Graczyk, who helped to makethe national game easier to understand and appreciate
for generations of fans and players alike.
Tributes came from both Japanese professional
baseball and Major League Baseball representatives,sports media, as well as current and former baseball greats,
including Sadaharu Oh. Colleagues, such as the Japan Times’
Jason Coskrey, told stories of how Wayne helped them toraise their reporting games, always with a constructive good
humor and passion to tell the best story possible.
Friends including Marty Kuehnert, Bob Whiting and MLB’s
Jim Small, relayed the many moments of Wayne’s unsolicited
help and unflappable positive attitude, as well as his

unrelenting search fora good cheeseburger.
Bobby Valentine,
former manager of the
Chiba Lotte Marines,
was also there.
The memorial event
was concluded by a touching video retrospective by son
Randy, and words of remembrance from wife Yoshiko. And,as Wayne would have it on a beautiful Saturday afternoon,baseball, with the Yomiuri Giants playing the Yokohama
BayStars, in a replay of their 2016 Climax Series donnybrook.
The BayStars defeated the Giants 6-4, with Utsumi taking theloss for Yomiuri and Lopez with a big blast for Yokohama.
– Dan Sloan

JOIN THE FILM COMMITTEE . . .
. . . at 19:00 on Thursday, July 27 for a sneak preview of the internationally acclaimed
Out of My Hand, a searing drama set in Liberia and New York City, directed by Takeshi
Fukunaga. His award-winning debut marks just the second time a foreign crew has
shot a film in Liberia, and features powerful performances from several first-timeactors. Cisco (Bishop Blay, in a raw, commanding debut) is a rubber plantation worker
in the Liberian countryside with a loving wife, two small daughters, and a groupof friends who stick up for each other. But he’s smart enough to know they’re all
expendable. When his union calls a strike that proves disastrous, he seizes the chanceto escape his crippling poverty and follows his cousin to New York City. There, he findsa job as a taxi driver, a welcoming community of fellow Liberians, and a life that’s not
so different from back home. For a time, he avoids interactions, fearing any hint of
trouble. But then a ghost from the past rises up to haunt him. Jacob (David Roberts),
a former child soldier with a burning rage, is the one person who can unleash Cisco’s
own demons. Writer-director Fukunaga will join us for a Q&A session following thescreening. (USA/Liberia, 2015; 88 minutes; English with English/Japanese subtitles.)– Karen Severns

Agion Oros Athos Photographs by Hirohito Nakanishi
IN NORTHERN GREECE LIES a placeshrouded in mystery and registeredas a World Heritage site. Agion Oros
Athos is a peninsula and mountainsacred to worshipers of the Greek
Orthodox Church, and while it isGreek territory, it is also recognized
as an independent and autonomous
religious nation
According to legend, Mary (themother of Christ) walked ashoreon this beautiful peninsula after
encountering a storm while at sea. It
is also said that St. Athanasios built
his monastery on Mt. Athos after
finding a rich vein of fresh wateron the mountain. The monastery
hosts 2,000 monks who live andpray there, and women have been
forbidden to enter since 1406.
Tourists are limited to only 10 people
per day.
The monks continue many othertraditions, such as using the Juliancalendar, which is 13 days behind themodern one and counting six o’clockin the evening as midnight.
I worked in close contact withthe monks after receiving special
permission to photograph inside themonastery. ❶16

Hirohito Nakanishi wasborn in 1979 in Tokyo. His
photography, focusing on
culture, entertainment,
fashion and beauty, as
appeared in magazines,
books, advertising andwebsites. In 2014, hebegan photographing
Agion Oros Athos, andhas been back four times.
Photographs from thisproject have appeared at
the Canon Gallery, and inmany magazines, including
National Geographic Japan,
Bungei Shunju, Geijutsu
Shincho. Another show
is planned for the Canon
Gallery from September.

JULY 2017

FCCJ

SPC TOUR TO TOKYO IMMIGRATION BUREAU
AFTER MEDIA REPORTS OF “hunger strike” protests byforeign detainees against conditions at the Tokyo Detention
Center of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau of theJustice Ministry, the FCCJ Special Projects Committeeorganized a visit on June 7 to investigate the situation. The
reports also included the forceful removal of a few detainees
who had refused to return to their quarters.
Shigeo Ogata, Public Liaison Officer at the Detention
Center, explained to the four FCCJ Regular-Member
participants that six detainees had been taken to the Center’s
hospital, but five of them were released on the same day.
Only one remained in the hospital for a few days as he had
swallowed the edge of an electric shaver.
According to Ogata, the total number of detainees as of

FCCJ

JULY 2017

June 5 was 551 men and 177 women; of the total, 77 detainees
were Chinese nationals. A request to inspect a vacantdetainee room was rejected for privacy reasons. He also
stated that nurses and doctors provide regular health checks,
and halal and vegetarian dishes are offered to those who havereligious dietary restrictions.
Under Japan’s immigration and refugee laws, 13,361 people
from 108 countries and regions were ordered to leave Japan
during 2016.			
– Haruko Watanabe
Below, left, Li Miao (with camera) and Aki Miyazaki interview
Public Liaison Officer Shigeo Ogata (left) and Public Relations
Officer Atsushi Sakai (right). Right, Shigeo Ogata, briefs Aki
Miyazaki, Li Miao and Khaldon Azhari.

17

COURTESY OF THE GRACZYK FAMILYCLUB NEWSCLUB NEWS

New
Members

REINSTATEMENT (REGULAR MEMBERS)AKIRA SAITO graduated from Waseda University in 1966. He later
attended the University of California at Berkeley where he got
a Master’s Degree in Journalism in 1968, and joined the Yomiuri
Shimbun, where he served in New York and Washington D.C. He
returned to the Tokyo office in 1970 as a Foreign News Department
staffer and was later posted to the city desk. In 1976, he returned to
Washington, covering two widely-publicized sandals – Lockheed andKorea-gate – as well as two presidential elections, later becoming
Washington bureau chief until 1996. Although he has “semiofficially” retired, he still considers himself an “active journalist”
despite his age.
YOSUKE WATANABE is a senior feature and editorial writer at
Kyodo News. Watanabe studied at Sophia University in Tokyo andHoly Cross College in Worcester, Mass. U.S. as a Rotary scholar. He
joined Kyodo News in 1983, and has been stationed in Washington
D.C., Shanghai and Hong Kong. Watanabe was twice the Beijingbureau chief, from 2004-2008 and 2013-2016, where he held postson the board of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China.
PROFESSIONAL/JOURNALISTASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Brian Covert, Freelance

Kazuhiro Bai, Reitaku University
Kiyotake Hara, STEM PLUS JAPANMasahiro Ishikawa, System SoftASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Yasuyuki Abe, Hutchison Whampoa
Japan Limited

Masatoshi Sakane, JETRO
Hidenori Takei, Mitsubishi Corporation

New in the
Library

Nanyaku waei kogo jiten
Michihiro Matsumoto
Sakurasha
Gift from Michihiro
MatsumotoPacific Burn: A Thriller
Barry Lancet
Simon & Schuster
Gift from Barry Lancet

Pachinko
Min Jin Lee
Grand Central Publishing
Gift from Min Jin Lee
The Tales of Ise
Donald Keene (fwd.);
Peter MacMillan (trans.
and commentary)
Penguin Books
Gift from Peter McMillan“The independence of thepress is facing serious threats:a weaksystem of
legalprotection,
persistent
government
exploitation of a media
lacking in
professional. . .”
solidarity
David Kaye, UN Special
Rapporteur on Freedomof Expression, 2016

THE GOVERNMENT
AND ITS VARIOUS
DISAGREEMENTS
WITH THE UN

PITCH USYOUR STORY

and support yourClub magazine

Please send your story ideas tono.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp, and be sure
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Our rates are ¥20 per publishedword, ¥20,000 for a front coverphoto. Photo essays: ¥15,000 for fullpage photos and ¥5,000 for smaller
shots. All payments will be made incredit to your member account.

Linda Linda:
from FCCJ to TV,a star from the 1950s

Kazunori Takada:
the Bloomberg
bureau chief profiled

Ping pong redux:
when table tennis
served up a scoop

Hodo shashinten kinen
shashinshu. Dai 57 kai(2016 nen)Tokyo Shashin Kisha
KyokaiGift from KumikoHatanaka (Tokyo
Press Photographers
Association)

Growing crops and character in the Fuji foothills:

The Ichimura Nature SchoolSee, we’ve
all got
dirty
fingernails!

Kankoku kenkyu nosakigake Sai Shoben:
nikkan kankeishi o ikita
otoko.
Akira Hashimoto
Michitani
Gift from Akira
Hashimoto
East Asian Strategic
Review 2017
The National Institute for
Defense Studies
Gift from The National
Institute for Defense
Studies

The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

July 2017 Volume 49 No. 7 ¥400

Jomo Shinbunsha
Jigyokyoku Shuppanbu
Gift from Hideki Tomizawa

Eigo de yomu hyakunin
isshuPeter McMillan
Bungei Shunju
Gift from Peter McMillan

Yoshida’s Dilemma: One
Man's Struggle to Avert
Nuclear Catastrophe
Fukushima - March 2011
Rob Gilhooly
Inknbeans Press

Tanaka Kakuei saigo no
intabyu
Osamu Sato
Bungei Shunju
Gift from Osamu SatoWhat’s a high-tech outfit like Ricoh doing down on the farm, using traditional, low-tech methods togrow vegetables? Letting kids experience the joys (and frustrations!) of growing food from seed toharvest. It’s the Ichimura Nature School Kanto, an educational non-profit organization established by
Ricoh in 2002 to mark the birth centenary of Kiyoshi Ichimura, our founder.
Located at Ashigarakami, near the foothills of Mount Fuji, the Nature School runs throughout the
March-November growing season, giving children a chance to “learn how to live from Mother Nature.”

Itaria hakushaku ito
no machi o yuku: meijininen no joshu shisatsutabinikki
Hideki Tomizawa

Every other week, from Friday after school until Sunday afternoon, 28 boys and 28 girls come to spend
the weekend working the fields and growing 40 varieties of vegetables. In step with the plants, whatgrows over the nine-month program is the youngsters’ self-reliance, teamwork and leadership skills.
The aim is to “develop yourself by thinking together, using each other’s ideas, and doing field work
together with the blessing of nature.”
Since 2002 almost 800 kids have gone through the program, which has won awards from theJapan Philanthropic Association and Japan’s education ministry. Meanwhile, alumni groups are
spontaneously organizing summer camps and other farming activities. After 15 years it’s clear
the nature school has been a seed well planted.

18

JULY 2017

FCCJ

RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
PR Department
8-13-1 Ginza, Chuo-ku,
Tokyo 104-8222
Tel: 03-6278-5228
Email: koho@ricoh.co.jp
www.ricoh.com

“Foreign journalists are
particularly affected by
the strict observance ofKisha club rules. They are
typically excluded from Kisha
clubs and thus from thepress conferences that are
fundamental to the systemof access to information. The
Special Rapporteur received
reports of foreign journalists
who abandoned potentiallytough-minded investigative
stories to avoid being
excluded from Kisha groups.”
David Kaye,
Report of the Special
Rapporteur on the
promotion andprotection of the rightto freedom of opinionand expression,
May 29, 2017
“Media Independence,”
1:3:36