The Magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

July 2020 · Volume 52 · No. 7

The Long-living Economic Legacy
of Pandemics and Plagues
The United States:
Land of Protests

Why Do People
Hate the FCCJ?

Profile:Meri Joyce

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

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JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 03

In This Issue

July 2020 · Volume 52 · No. 7

THE FRONT PAGE

Contact the Editors
no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJ
Acting Editor Geoffrey Tudor
Art Director Kohji Shiiki, tokyographics.com
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo Coordinator Michiyo Kobayashi
Publications Committee members
Geoffrey Tudor, Orient Aviation (chair)
Marina Yoshimura, Student
FC C J B OA R D O F D I R EC TO R S
President Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
1st Vice President Monzurul Huq, Daily Prothom Alo
2nd Vice President Robert Whiting, Freelance
Treasurer Mehdi Bassiri, Associate Member
Secretary Takashi Kawachi, Freelance
Directors-at-Large
Mehdi Bassiri, Associate MemberPeter O’Connor, Freelance
Warren Devalier, Associate Member
Abigail Leonard, Freelance
Kanji Kazuo Abiko, Freelance
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo, Associate Member
Ex-officio Peter Langan, Freelance
FC C J C O M M I T T E E C H A I R S
Associate Members Liaison
Keiko Packard, Yuusuke Wada
Compliance Kunio Hamada, Yoshio Murakami
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Abigail Leonard
Entertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Mehdi Bassiri
Food & Beverage
Robert Kirschenbaum, Peter R. Tyksinski
Freedom of Press Abigail Leonard
House & Property Khaldon Azhari
Human Resources Khaldon Azhari
Information Technology Yuusuke Wada
Library, Archives & Workroom
Koichi Ishiyama, Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing Warren DevalierProfessional Activities
Tetsuo Jimbo, David McNeill
Public Relations Dan Sloan
Publications Geoff Tudor
Special Projects Haruko Watanabe
Foreign Press in Japan Robin Harding

04 From the President
By Khaldon Azhari

05 FCCJ Freedom of the Press Committee Report

FROM THE ARCHIVES
06 Herbert Bix – The Meticulous Historian
By Charles Pomeroy

F E AT URES
07 The United States: Land of Protests
By Mike Tharp and Rich Read
Edited by Bradley K. Martin

10 Why Do People Hate the FCCJ?
By David McNeill

13 Pandemics and Plagues – The Unexpected
Side Effects
By Anthony Rowley

15 Pingpong Diplomacy – 50 years On
By Gregory Clark

PROFILE
17 Meri Joyce

By David McNeill

CLUB NEWSThe 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
position of Number 1 Shimbun, the editor or theForeign 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

19

Join the Film Committee; New Members; New in the Library;
In Memoriam, Hal Foster, Stefano Carrer; Svend Anderson.

22 Lens Craft

By Photographer Members

Cover shows an 18th century Italian Plague Doctor Mask. The beak was stuffed witharomatic herbs to keep foul odours and plague bugs away.
Photo: Kuma Kum on Unsplash

04 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

THE FRONT PAGE

From the President
Dear members,T

he month of June is when the incumbent board
wraps up the year’s work and holds elections for a
new board. I take this opportunity to express thanks
to my board for their efforts to run Club affairs inthis annus horribilis (horrible year, for those who didn’t study
Latin). The year from July 1, 2019, witnessed continuation of thechallenges our Club had faced since we changed our status toshadan koeki, adopted outsourcing of food and beverage andmoved to a new location.
As the board’s year began, its then-leaders were preparing toliquidate the Club, as their calculations and policies suggested
we were only a few months away from insolvency. Upon the resignation of the previous president, I was elected to lead the Clubfor the rest of the year. I placed my main focus on stabilizing ourfinancial health. As if we didn’t have enough on our plate, we’vealso had to cope with human resources changes and, starting
early in this calendar year, the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Many members called for a shutdown, but I and others thought
we needed to keep the Club as an open hub for news making
and news reporting.
In the end, although an unexpected tiny virus caused global
health, financial and economic problems, our Club remained
intact and we were able to set policies to continue our rise. This
would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts ofour hard-working staff, and a group of highly skilled and determined board members. I would like to express, on behalf of themembership, my great respect for and thanks to them.
Special thanks go to our veteran club member Bob Whiting,
who served five years on consecutive boards in the most criticaltimes. Bob is leaving the board along with Abby Leonard, who contributed greatly to the Freedom of Press committee and awards
program. Thanks go also to club member Takashi Kawachi,
the former Mainichi Shimbun editor who worked hard on thisboard as our secretary preparing the minutes. He is leaving theboard, too.
Thanks also go to our first vice president Monzurul Huq whose
quiet diplomacy helped our board sail smoothly, avoiding theicebergs of corona and others perils. Treasurer Mehdi Bassiri
worked hard in the current board heading the task force tonegotiate a possible contract with our food and beverage provider after taking over the treasurer post from a predecessor
who resigned. Mary Corbett returned to the board mid-term
and is active as usual in following the details of our governing
issues. Akihiko Tanabe, the newcomer to the board, waded right
into complex issues of human resources, house & property andfood & beverages.
More thanks to our parliamentarian, Larry Cesar, and our two
kanji, Kaz Abiko and Makoko Honjo, who are leaving the board.
Thank you all for your hard work.
Special advisers Rick Dyck, Andrew Horvat, Dan Sloan andHarumi Kumagai provided important contribution to the affairs
and I thank them.
I would also like to thank Albert Siegel for helping with the
production of the July issue of the Number 1 Shimbun while wesearched for a new editor and designer after the resignations of
the previous team.
Our search is now over, so please welcome Peter O'Connor
as the new editor along with award-winning designer and art
director Kohji Shiiki, whose work includes Metropolis and theTokyo American Club magazine. I have appointed Peter as theeditor starting with the August issue.
Peter has worked on and off on three regular publications:
Private Eye, The Times and The Irish Times (the last two as areviewer). He previously edited The Journal of Irish Studies, andhas edited 60 volumes on media history and propaganda. This
is not a conventional background for a Number 1 Shimbun editor, but the magazine can benefit from a change of tone, maintaining Club affairs at the core, with more involvement in Book
Breaks and PAC Events, a deeper engagement with the Club’s
working parts, such as the restaurant, the library and even thetreasury — but also aiming for some real exclusives, and real
insights into the nature of Japan and of the systemic changes
moving East Asia.
Finally, I want to offer special thanks to Geoffrey Tudor forhis many years of service to the Number 1 Shimbun. Geoff has
decided to retire as chairman of the publication committee withpublication of the July issue.
The FCCJ, infused with momentum and energy provided byour loyal members and staff, continues its journey prepared forthe good days to come.
● KHALDON AZHARIJULY 2020 | FCCJ | 05

THE FRONT PAGE

Freedom of The Press
CIoJ President Professor Tim Crook (a longstanding expert
and author of books on international media law) said in a May
29 statement that: “The public humiliation of a professional
news team is one of the most blatant and outrageous attacks
on freedom of the media that we have seen in a long time.”
The CIoJ, he added “stands in solidarity with those CNN journalists so improperly arrested and completely agree with CNN
when they complain such behaviour means that free and fairgathering of the news is arrested too.”
The FCCJ likewise stands in solidarity with journalists in the
U.S. and elsewhere against attacks on legitimate and essential
press freedoms.

PHOTO BY SAM BALYE ON UNSPLASH

Philippines Court Ruling Draws AlarmsIn June the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ)
issued statements through its Freedom of the Press
Committee on press freedom issues in the U.S. and The
Philippines.
Firstly, the FCCJ expressed its firm solidarity with journalists
in the USA, who according to a report on June 1 by Nieman
Journalism Lab, had been attacked by police “at least 140 times
since May 28.”
“It's becoming clear that attacks by police on journalists
are becoming a widespread pattern, not one-off incidents,”
the report stated. “While violence against press-credentialed
reporters covering the protests may still be dwarfed by violenceagainst the American citizens who are protesting, incidents arepiling up and are getting more attention in part because thejournalists being attacked include those from large mainstream
news organizations.”

London Media Organization
Condemned CNN Arrest
The Chartered Institute of Journalists (CIoJ) in London has
meanwhile condemned what it describes as “the outrageousarrest” of a CNN news crew covering the protests in Minneapolis, (USA) following the death of George Floyd.”In mid-June the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan and its
Freedom of the Press Committee were alarmed by reports that
Rappler editor Maria Ressa and former Rappler reporter Reynaldo Santos Jr. were convicted of “cyber libel” in a Philippines
court for doing legitimate and necessary reporting.
In a statement, the FCCJ said, “We believe the decision is anassault on press freedom and an attempt to stifle any reportingthat is critical of President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.
Human Rights Watch reported that the judgment was retaliationfor extensive reporting Rappler had done on Duterte's “war on
drugs”, which involved extra-judicial killings and police-linked
death squads.

Dubious Claim
Ressa was convicted on a technicality: In 2014, she made a minor
typographical change to an article linking Filipino businessman
Wilfredo Keng to drug dealing and human trafficking. Keng thenused “re-publication” as a basis to file a libel case and the JusticeDepartment quickly supported that dubious claim. This comes
after the Duterte administration shut down ABS-CBN, the country's broadcast network, which had also been critical of Duterte.
We are deeply concerned by this pattern of assaults on the press.
Ressa herself said in her acceptance speech for CPJ's Gwen Ifill
Press freedom award two years ago, that the events in her country
are related to a worldwide erosion in press freedoms, saying that
American President Donald Trump's attacks on the press, “givepermission to autocrats (like ours) to unleash the dark side ofhumanity and extend their already vast powers with impunity.”
Ressa now faces up to six years in prison. The FCCJ strongly
believes she should be allowed to go free and to continue her
important journalistic work.

06 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Herbert Bix — Meticulous Historian

FCCJ

By CHARLES POMEROYB

orn in Boston in 1938 and a 1956 graduate of Winthrop
High School, Herbert P. Bix attended the Universityof Massachusetts Amherst before serving aboard
Japan-based ships while a member of the U.S. Naval
Reserve. He then attended Harvard University, where hereceived a Ph.D. in history and Far Eastern languages. Prior
to publishing Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan in
2000, which was translated into Japanese and Chinese, he
had published in 1986 his insightful Peasant Protest in Japan,
1590-1884 that also was acclaimed for its historical detail.
Bix also earned a reputation as an astute observer of wars andempires, writing insightful commentaries in scholarly journals
and the media of both the U.S. and Japan. These include some 20
articles in The Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus between 2003
and 2015. As well, he was a founding member of the Committeeof Concerned Asian Scholars, founded in 1968 both to oppose
the Vietnam war and to expand knowledge and understandingof Asian societies.
Bix has taught at a number of universities, including Hosei
University and Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He is now
Professor Emeritus in History and Sociology at Binghamton
University in New York.

Herbert P. Bix, professor at
Hitotsubashi University, looking atquestioner Bob Neff (Business Week)
at a Club professional luncheonon August 30, 2000. Bix had
recently published his meticulously
researched book, Hirohito andthe Making of Modern Japan, in aforthright presentation of historicaldetail and insights that was to bring
him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize forgeneral non-fiction as well as the
National Book Critics Circle Award.
Seated to his left are FCCJ President
Jim Treece, Board-member Bradley
Martin, and Secretary Pat Killen.
The man to his right is 1st VP Firdous
Khergamvala.

● CHARLES POMEROY is editorof Foreign Correspondents inJapan, a history of the club thatis available at the front desk.

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 07

F E AT URE

The
UnitedStates:Land ofProtests

PHOTO BY KOSHU KUNII ON UNSPLASHF

oreign correspondents dispatched to Japan after World War II sometimes found theassignment a bit quiet for our tastes – especially after next-door South Korea, following
success of the sometimes bloody 1980s democratization movement, likewise became fairly
peaceful. Thereafter, any U.S. correspondent in search of bang-bang stories following his
or her Tokyo tour would have been well advised to go home. Americans always have been a rowdy
people, seldom more than this year. Here are a couple of FCCJ veteran correspondents’ accounts ofrioting nearly three decades apart. (-Bradley Martin, Asia Times)
First up is MIKE THARP, who was based in Tokyo for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Far
Eastern Economic Review and U.S. News & World Report. He was FCCJ president 1989-90.

08 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

F E AT URE
The United States: Land of Protests

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Rememberingthe L.A. Riots

40th Infantry Division in the L.A. Riots, 1992.

On the day the Los Angeles riots erupted
in 1992, I was in my U.S. News & World
Report home office in San Pedro. I heard
the “not guilty” verdict for the police
officers accused in the Rodney King caseon KNX Radio.
My brother, a police chief in Oregon,
had watched part of the trial when
he and his family visited Disneylandearlier that spring. Contrary to theconventional wisdom, he’d predicted
the verdict.
So when I heard it, I knew the top of
the bubbling racial cauldron that was Los
Angeles would blow.
I called the Reverend Bill Johnson, a
black minister I knew in Compton. “Areyou preaching tonight, Pastor?” He said
he was. He said I could come listen.
I drove there around 4 p.m. San Pedrois the port of Los Angeles, south ofdowntown. I saw and smelled smoke
already curling between the glittering
highrises and me.
Pastor Johnson talked about acting
reasonably, about keeping faith, about
civil disobedience, about race. In theback of the church, I took notes.
After his sermon I interviewed severalof his black congregation. They were
mostly my age (47) and older or young
kids with their grandparents.
Pastor Johnson and I were the last
to leave. He was going to take the 91
Freeway east; me, west.
When we left the church, a police
helicopter hovered a block over, its
spotlight on a scrum of black people
outside a small grocery and liquor store.
They were breaking in. He went east,
I started to go west. The rioters packed
the street, so I slowed.
Even with windows up, I could smell
smoke and fire.
I don’t know if it was a brick or a chunkof sidewalk that first hit my door side.
Others followed – and shouts of “Rodney!
Rodney!” Stuff splattered against mywindshield and back door. Fists poundedagainst my window. I kept moving.
Finally I could speed up. On the 91
Freeway I felt more fear than I’d felt
covering the Persian Gulf War for nearlyfour months a year earlier, as scared as
I ever was as a soldier in Vietnam.
In those places I was with soldiers.
Now I was on my own.
When I pulled off the 110 Freeway in
Pedro, I stopped at the 7-Eleven going
into town. I needed a beer.
At the door came this black guy mysize (6’3”) about my age. We looked ateach other.
“I’m sorry, man,” I said.
“Me too,” he said.
Tharp currently lives in Dallas, where
he writes a column for the Dallas
Morning News. This item originallyappeared in Connections, a newsletter
whose main readers are retired
Associated Press staffers.
RICH READ, who wrote the second piece,
was based in Tokyo 1987-1994, first as afreelancer and then as founding chief of
The Oregonian’s Asia bureau. He served on
the FCCJ board for four years. This year’s
protests are the second round he’s coveredin Seattle since returning home – the firstbeing the famed World Trade Organization
protests, the “Battle of Seattle,” in 1999.

Both the Left and theRight Rush to Blame
Protest Violence on
Outside Extremists
SEATTLE – Billy Williams, the top federal
prosecutor in Oregon and an appointee
of President Trump, has little doubt who
is behind the violence and destructionthat has accompanied nationwide
protests against racism by police: theultra-left movement known as “antifa.”“At some point during each protest in
individual cities, law enforcement has
noticed a more organized effort,” he said
Monday during a news conference inPortland. “Protesters fan out and engage
in the same kind of criminal conduct.”
Jo Ann Hardesty, who last year
became the first black woman to serveon Portland’s City Council, also blamesinterlopers: the ultra-right hate group
Proud Boys.
“We allow white nationalists and white
supremacists to infiltrate our peacefulprotests ... and then create the kind ofchaos and damage in our community,”
she said in a video recording released
Tuesday. “We must make that stop.”
As cities reel and Trump threatens to
deploy the military, figures across thepolitical spectrum have been quick to
defend their own citizens as peacefulprotesters while accusing outsiders offomenting the unrest.
But they have presented little
evidence to support their allegations,and like so much in the highly polarized
politics of this era, most people see
what they want to see.
To hear one side tell it, thuggish white
men are showing up at rallies withbackpacks stuffed with rocks, pipes andother projectiles, aiming to discredit themass movement against police brutality
and gain support for their own racist
agenda. On the other side, the Trumpadministration and its supporters say

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 09

F E AT URE
The United States: Land of Protests
the violence is being perpetrated byanarchists who seek to sow chaos anddestabilize the government.
But the publicly available evidence forboth perspectives remains anecdotal– such as an incident Monday night inCentennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.
Terrance Holt, a 27-year-old black man,was standing in the middle of a small
crowd of mostly black protesters whena rock flew through the air and landed
a few feet from the long line of U.S.
National Guard members.
As the crowd scattered, protesters
identified the rock thrower as a lonewhite man in dark jeans, a dark jacket, abaseball cap and a mask.
“Dude, we’re out here trying to finda better way, and you’re trying to startchaos,” Holt hollered at the man, who
strolled out of the park.
Television images of rioters smashingwindows and looting groceries, clothing,bicycles and anything else they can grab
suggest economic opportunism rather
than political motives.
In some cases, allegations of outside
interference are contradicted by recordsof who has been arrested in recent days.
In Minnesota, Democratic Gov. Tim
Walz said Saturday that well-organizedgroups trained in urban warfare tactics
were responsible for arson, looting
and shooting at police officers andfirefighters. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob
Frey said the perpetrators were not
Minneapolis residents.
“They are coming in largely from outsideof this city, from outside the region, to preyon everything that we have built over thelast several decades,” he said.
But Walz was forced to dial back his
statement after it started to become
clear that more locals had been arrested
than he had realized.
One outsider who drew the attentionof authorities was Matthew Lee Rupert,
who traveled from Illinois to the
Minneapolis protests and was charged
Monday with civil disorder, carrying on
a riot and possession of unregistered
destructive devices.

According to a sworn affidavit
submitted by an FBI agent, some ofthe evidence against Rupert comesfrom a two-hour live-video selfie in
which he loots businesses, appears tolight a building on fire and passes out
explosives and encourages protesters tothrow them at police officers.
“An explosion is audible in the video,
and Rupert repeatedly yelled, ’Good
shot, my boy,’” the agent said.
In Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance
Bottoms said people from outside themetropolitan area ignited the violence
during three nights of protest. Roughly
400 people have been arrested,
predominantly for disorderly conductand curfew violations. But according to
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, most of
the 82 people whose names have beenreleased are from the metro area.
In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel
Bowser told a news conference Monday
that the city had reached out tocommunity activists for any informationthat might help stymie the violence.
“We’re working with all of ourintelligence to figure out who’s coming
here,” she said.
Extremist groups have a history oftraveling to stir up trouble. Members of
Proud Boys, which the Southern Poverty
Law Center has designated a hateorganization, have traveled to Portland inrecent years and clashed repeatedly withmasked, black-garbed antifa activists.
But Joe Biggs, an organizer for the
far-right organization who was reachedby phone Monday at his Daytona Beach,Fla., home, said the group was sittingout the current protests and denied his
members had any role in the violence.
Biggs attributed looting to miscreantsof no particular political stripe.
“Bad people exist,” he said. “What they
really want is a new 72-inch flat-screen TV.”
Antifa is a loosely organized movement
whose followers say there is nomembership roster or formal leadership
structure. Trump wrote in a tweet Sundaythat the United States would designate
antifa a terrorist organization, although

it’s not clear that would be legal.
Contacted by phone Monday, a man
who speaks for the group in the Portlandarea but conceals his identity denied
that antifa had been involved in violence
during the protests there. He also
said activists had not seen significant
involvement of far-right groups.
Among a crowd of thousands
protesting Tuesday on the steps of
the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul was a33-year-old Latina from New York who
said she supports antifa and asked to be
identified only by her first name, Stina.
She said antifa is not a terroristgroup and that looting can serve a
political purpose.
“Instead of calling it ‘looting,’ we could
call it ‘reclaiming,’” she said. “Let’s talkabout reparations. As soon as we realize
racism is a pillar of capitalism, then we
can get somewhere.”
Edward Maguire, a professor of
criminology at Arizona State University,
said the idea of the outside agitator or
professional protesters has long been
an overblown narrative pushed by local
officials and politicians to downplay thelevel of actual conflict within a community.
“You have right-wing people blaming iton the left and left-wing people blaming
it on the right, and none of that is helpful,”
he said. “It’s all divisive and harmful.”“There are a lot of locals involvedin these protests, and we need tocraft our response to them. It’s a little
convenient to just blame everything on
outside agitators.”
Richard Read, Pacific Northwest
correspondent of the Los Angeles Times,
reported from Seattle, Jenny Jarvie from
Atlanta and Mollie Hennessy-Fiske from
Minneapolis. Laura King in Washington andAnita Chabria in Los Angeles contributed tothis report. This Los Angeles Times article
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/
story/2020-06-02/george-floyd-protestviolence-blame?fbclid=IwAR35AvcKSDtnZQ7_
IbqBW7lsyQxXFjSMSyK71kOsn7cVWuSVBhHG0K7At4 is
republished with permission.

10 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

F E AT URE

Why Do People Hate
the FCCJ?

PHOTO BY ANNIE SPRATT ON UNSPLASH

By DAVID McNEILLI

n May something remarkable happened in the world of publishing. A
minor magazine that few people had taken much notice found itself at
the center of a national row about the limits of free speech and parody inJapan.
The April edition of Number 1 Shimbun, the house magazine of the Foreign
Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ), ran a cover that combined the logo forthe 2020 Olympics with the Covid-19 virus, upsetting the organizing committeeof the Tokyo Olympic Games.
The ensuing kerfuffle led to the resignations of the magazine’s talented editor(Greg Starr) and designer (Andrew Pothecary) and prompted Khaldon Azhari,president of the FCCJ, to call a press conference where he fulsomely apologized
for causing offense.
For some, the row was a moment of schadenfreude and a chance to revisit
their long-standing hatred of the FCCJ. Bloggers predictably criticized the club
as “anti-Japanese”. Some on the fringes demanded the government revoke the
FCCJ’s status as a public benefit corporation.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/fccjの公益法人取り消しを要求します?
An article in Japan Forward, the English-language arm of the right-wing Sankei
Shimbun, called the club “an occupation-era anachronism” that “seeks to preserve Occupation-era prerogatives for foreign correspondents”, who, needlessto say, show little respect for “Japanese sensitivities.”*
https://japan-forward.com/mythbusters-self-righteous-foreign-correspondentsin-japan-claim-freedom-to-be-offensive/JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 11

F E AT URE
Why Do People Hate the FCCJ?
This framing of the FCCJ as an organization of white, burger-chomping gaijin hacks with racist contempt for the society
around them is a caricature. It is also wildly at odds with thecomposition of the Club and its role in Japan.
Fewer than 18% of the FCCJ’s 1,715 members are “foreign.”
The bulk of its membership comprises Japanese associate
members and journalists.
They include people on the left and right sides of Japan’s
political spectrum, even some who have publicly called forboycotting the Club when they don’t like this or that speaker, (inbreach, incidentally, of the Club’s rules).
Most of the Japanese members speak English. Most of theolder foreign correspondents (those who keep the club running) are deeply embedded in local life, with Japanese families
and children. To suggest, as some have done, that they takepleasure in the suffering of Japanese during the pandemic (orwish it could be worse so they could have something to report)
is offensively wrong.
The Club was set up in September 1945 by war correspondents who opposed Occupation leadership rules on thenumber of journalists allowed into Japan. It has gone throughpeaks and troughs since: pulling in reporters during wars andcrises (the Vietnam and Korean conflicts claimed the lives ofdozens of FCCJ correspondents, foreign and Japanese, someof whom are memorialized in the Club’s entryway); shedding
reporters during the lulls in between.
One reason why the FCCJ has not collapsed under the weightof its own conceit and arrogance over 75 years, and why its
members have not bolted for the door, pocketing their 13,000
yen a month in fees (for journalists) or 17,500 yen (for associates)
is because it performs a useful function in Japanese society.
Every year events at the club generate multiple stories in thedomestic media, whose representatives mostly use its facilities
free of charge. Associates and businessmen have for decades
paid for ringside seats to watch leading Japanese public figurescharm, cajole or stumble in front of the global media.
I’ve been involved with the Club for 15 years, much of thattime as chair or co-chair of the Professional Activities Committee (PAC), a group of 16 male and female journalists (including
Japanese) that organizes press events. PAC fields hundreds ofproposals annually from potential Japanese speakers who, forbetter or worse, see the FCCJ as a platform for open journalism.
Shiori Ito, for example, who accused a fellow journalist of raping her, initially came to the FCCJ because she said she could
not get a fair hearing in the local media (PAC initially turned her
request down because it was nervous of airing untested rape
allegations (some of us still feel a twinge of shame about thisbut I don’t think it was wrong, based on what we knew). Last
December she and Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the man who had justbeen convicted in a civil court of raping her held back-to-backpress conferences, widely carried across the domestic media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlK_PYxpauI

One reason why the FCCJ
has not collapsed under theweight of its own conceit andarrogance over 75 years, andwhy its members have notbolted for the door, pocketing
their 13,000 yen a month infees (for journalists) or 17,500
yen (for associates) is because
it performs a useful functionin Japanese society.”

In recent years, however, an organization that once had respectful and friendly ties with Japan’s establishment has found itself at
odds with the establishment. This became evident in 2014 whenthe Liberal Democrats (LDP) and coalition partners Komeito
reversed long-standing tradition and declined to send seniordelegates to the FCCJ to explain their policies.
The LDP and much of the government has since avoided
the Club. Last year, for example, the Ministry of Justice andTokyo Prosecutor’s Office declined repeated requests to comeand discuss the arrest, detention and escape of Carlos Ghosn,
Nissan’s disgraced boss. Arguably this silence helped negativeand sometimes inaccurate press coverage of the Ghosn caseto sweep around the world. Ironically, it has also fueled claims
that the FCCJ is more interested in bashing the Japanese government than listening to it. A sign that this de facto Abe cabinet
boycott had ended was the press conference at the Club bydefense minister Taro Kono on June 25th.
Now some might ask why should Japan’s government prostrate themselves before this Occupation-era anachronism.
Shouldn’t foreign journalists learn Japanese and attend government press conferences, like Japanese reporters do on foreign
postings (many of these reporters rely on local fixers, but point
taken). The answer is yes, and a growing number do.
A more pointed question, though, might be why doesn’t
official Japan come to a ready-made pipeline to the world. The
LDP snub began after an FCCJ press conference in 2014 by
Eriko Yamatani, chairperson of the National Public Safety Commission. Yamatani came to discuss North Korea’s kidnapping ofJapanese citizens in her capacity as Minister in Charge of the
Abduction Issue. But she was grilled instead on her alleged connections to Japan’s hard right.

12 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

F E AT URE
Why Do People Hate the FCCJ?

RODRIGO REYES MARIN

Yamatani stumbled through her assignment,
seemingly intent on not putting distance
between her office and perhaps Japan’s most
toxic racist group, Zaitokukai. The event ended
with Japan’s top cop being shouted down by aparticularly enthusiastic Japanese freelancer.
She never returned.
The press conference was relished by someas the sort of scrappy encounter that helped
make the FCCJ’s reputation, such as it is. But
where some saw rambunctious, open debate,others saw chaos. Freelancers are not allowed
such leeway at the more scripted events run by
the National Press Club.
Shinzo Abe and his cabinet are like governments anywhere, using control and spin, seeking to dominate the media narrative and avoid
encounters where it might be aggressively scrutinized. Abe himself has not been to the FCCJ
since he came with a group of LDP presidential
candidates in September 2012. Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yoshihide Suga, relented after 19months of requests, then tried to have the questions scripted beforehand (an attempt, in effect,
to turn the FCCJ into a government press club).

Holding powerful people to account is noteasy and we can all use whatever help we
can get. That’s what the FCCJ is here for, but it
might not always be. The Club has suffered afall in membership (which peaked in April 2002
at 2,164), largely because of changes outsideof its control: demography and the erosion of
the traditional business model of journalism.
Newspapers and TV companies have closed
bureaus across the world. Full-time correspondents are an endangered species.
It remains to be seen whether the spat overNumber 1 Shimbun helps hasten this decline.
Many FCCJ members are furious that the club
not take a more principled stand over the cover.
For some, it was a wounding blow to its status
as a champion of free expression. Whatever
the case, the foreign vs Japanese dichotomy
used by some to stereotype the club is decades
out of date. More importantly, it does nothing
to promote an open and tolerant society withdiverse views, regardless of whether thoseviews agree with or challenge the status quo.
Those who want the FCCJ to go out of business, should be careful what they wish for.

A sign that this de facto boycottof the Club by the Abe Cabinet
had ended came on June 25 when
Defense Minister Taro Kono gavea press conference.

● DAVID McNEILL is co-chairof the FCCJ’s Professional
Activities Committee and aprofessor at the Departmentof English Language,
Communication and Culturesat Sacred Heart University
in Tokyo. He was previously
a correspondent for The
Independent and The Economist
newspapers and for The
Chronicle of Higher Education.

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 13

F E AT URE

ARTWORK: KOHJI SHIIKI

The Long-living
Economic Legacy
of Pandemics
and Plagues
By ANTHONY ROWLEY

W

ith lockdowns against Covid-19 easing andinfection and death rates declining it would benice to think we can breathe a sigh of relief andbegin to put the pandemic behind us. But that
may be way too soon when it comes to the economic legacy
even assuming no major ‘second wave’ of infections.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has listed the problems that posea major challenge to the world's biggest economy in the
short to medium term, and they are by no means unique toAmerica. Just a few include a potential wave of business failures, continuing high unemployment plus lower wages — anda trade slump.
Other analyses suggest that the legacy of the coronavirus will
persist well beyond the medium term, and that it could extend
into unexpected areas of the global economy and into the financial system also.
It may take one or even two decades — a generation in
effect — for the economic stagnation and price declines whichhave historically been associated with such terrible episodes
to abate completely, according to research published by theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington.
And, contrary to what many stock markets appear to be anticipating as they leap joyfully back to pre-pandemic highs (evenas the pandemic continues to rage), the IMF notes that “thegreat pandemics of the past millennium have typically been
associated with subsequent low returns on assets.”
Quoting a new paper by researchers Jorda, Singh, and Taylor,
the IMF focuses on events in the aftermath of 15 large pandemics that each caused over 100,000 deaths in Europe (wheredata has been recorded to varying degrees) since the Black
Death that lasted from 1331 to 1353.
Even if the world is lucky enough to escape from the coronavirus with only a fraction of the deaths caused by past plagues,
the impact of the Covid-19 in economic and financial terms

could prove to be longer-lasting and more profound even than
was the case during those terrible events.
Research on the economic fallout of Covid-19 has so far
focused on short-term impacts, the IMF says. “However, as
governments engage in large-scale counter-pandemic fiscal
programmes, it is important to understand what the economic
landscape will look like in the years and decades to come.”That landscape “will shape monetary and fiscal policy in waysthat are not yet fully understood."
Historical studies have typically focused on single events in
one country or region and have traced outcomes a decade at
most, the IMF notes. But with major pandemics effects will be
felt across economies because the infection is widespread or
trade integration propagates the economic shock.
“The rapid and unprecedented collapse of production, trade,and employment may be reversed as the pandemic eases but
historical data suggest that long term economic consequences
could persist for a generation or more. The toll on economic
activity so far is only the beginning of the story,” that IMF warns.
Wars and plagues are often ranked as equally disastrous but
as the IMF notes they are very different in terms of economic
impact. Wars destroy a country's capital stock but trigger
reconstruction once peace returns whereas plagues destroy anation’s human capital and so no reconstruction boom follows.
What’s more, we can expect the continuation of low or zero(negative even perhaps in some cases) interest rates for theforeseeable future. While that may sound like good news forborrowers it also implies stagnant economic activity as business and household demand recovers only very cautiously.
Analysis shows that the “natural” or neutral rate of interest(the equilibrium level that can keep the economy growing at
its potential rate with stable inflation) typically declines for 20
years after a pandemic and then takes a further 20 years torecover its original level.

14 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

F E AT URE
The Long-living Economic Legacy of Pandemics and Plagues

The Pandemic Progressof the “Grim Reaper”
Over Centuries■ One thing that has made the coronavirus(Covid-19) appear so scary is the sheer
amount of publicity it has created. Past
epidemics or plagues have been far moreterrible in terms of the number of people
they killed, owing to inability of societies to
respond effectively at the time, the IMF says.
■ The “Black Death” which originated in
Asia in 1330 and went on to kill arounda third of Europe’s then population orsome 75 million people (according todata compiled by Wikipedia from various
sources) makes the coronavirus (some430,000 deaths as of mid June) look
relatively benign so far.
■ And the “Spanish Flu” in 1918 in turnoutstripped the Black Death as a killer
disease, causing some 100 million deaths.
None of the other 13 big pandemics notedby these sources comes anywhere near
to matching the grim record of the Great
Plague and the Spanish Flu.
■ Partly owing to its geographical andcultural isolation over many centuries
Japan has suffered relatively less thanfrom plagues than have other nations.
■ The so-called Spanish flu which erupted
in 1918 at the end of the First World War andpersisted until 1920 is the worst epidemic
that Japan has suffered until the present andthe death toll was infinitely greater.
■ According to official figures quoted ina Nichibun monograph, “the epidemic
which stormed Japan for about half ayear from autumn 1918 to spring 1919
affected 21,168,000, leaving more than
257,000 dead.” That compares with some
890 Covid-19 deaths in Japan as of the
beginning of June.
■ The Japanese smallpox epidemic
during the years 735 to 737 (Tenpyo era
epidemic) afflicted much of Japan, killing
approximately one third of the population
at that time. It had significant social,economic, and religious repercussions
throughout the country.

Italian Plague doctor in full kit

The IMF describes this as “staggering” and suggests that it “speaks to the large
economic effects pandemics have had over the centuries.” The analysis makes
use of “newly available data on yields of long-term sovereign debt stretchingback to the 14th century.”
The natural rate of interest,” is an important economic barometer, it notes. “Aspopulations become more frugal, the relative supply of savings increases; when
the underlying pace of growth wanes, investment becomes less attractive, inboth cases the natural rate declines to restore equilibrium.”
Still, the IMF adds.” one piece of good news is that sustained periods of low
borrowing costs are associated with higher real (inflation adjusted) wages andcreate room for governments to finance stimulus measures to counteract economic damage.” They will need all of that room - and maybe more.

● ANTHONY ROWLEY is a former president of the FCCJ. He is a co-authorof Sustainable Investment — Impact in Asia, published jointly by Asia AssetManagement and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 15

F E AT URE

Pingpong Diplomacy –50 Years On

Author Gregory Clark
meets Zhou Enlai

By GREGORY CLARK

F

renzy! That is not a word you would
normally associate with our sedate
Club. But there was a time....
The time was May, 1971, just 50
years ago. The World Table-Tennis championships in Nagoya had just ended. Rumors said
Beijing would be inviting all teams present
to visit China after the games. In those days
invites to China were rare. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was still under way. Its
reports of internal chaos and external hostility
were intimidating. Foreigners trying to get into
China risked much.

But there were also reports that said thatthe invitations represented some change inBeijing’s policies, that it was finally looking forsome kind of opening to the outside world after
five years of destructive Cultural Revolution
isolation. For those of us who had been looking
into China from Tokyo for years, here was anews chance not to be missed. Requests forvisas to cover team visits poured into Beijing’s
usually unreceptive ears.
Early off the mark, April 9, to receive what
they said were ‘laconic replies’ to their visa
requests were well-known China watcher, John

16 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

F E AT URE
Pingpong Diplomacy – 50 Years On
Roderick of AP (he had met the communist
leadership in their caves pre-war and knew
them well, he said) and the NBC office here
headed by veteran correspondent John Rich(later Club president) with Jack Reynolds, as
technical expert. They were told they could
only cover the pingpong visit of the U.S. teamand nothing else. Even so, we could only
watch with envy as they set off. Their daily
reports were headline news, culminating ina meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai himself,
where he congratulated them for opening thepathway into China.
As Tokyo-based correspondent for The Australian at the time I like every other Australiancorrespondent in town (all three of us) wason the phone immediately trying to get holdof the Australian team manager, a medical
doctor John Jackson from Adelaide, to findout if he too had an invitation. But no invite hesaid bluntly and that was that. We could only
guess at the problem, something to do with
Canberra’s virulent anti-Beijing policies at thetime maybe. Even so, and as a former China
hand who had the language, I did not want the
chance to slip away. I invited Jackson to contact
me if he came to Tokyo later and, as a result of
misunderstandings, he ended up staying in
my apartment. There by chance, I discovered
he had in fact been invited to Beijing but had
been instructed by someone in Canberra notto accept. When I asked whether he did infact want to go, and got the answer I wanted,
I immediately sent a telegram in his name tothe sports authorities in Beijing saying he now
wanted to go to China with his team and with
one correspondent (you guessed who). The
reply was immediate: Come with your team,and the correspondent.
But by then there were only three players left
in Japan and they lacked funds. So in exchange
for the mini-scoop I was offering to provide, mynewspaper promised to pay the team’s fares
to China, via Hongkong. And so off we went,
first for pingpong games in Guangzhou, thenShanghai — where we were told that another
Australian correspondent, a Mr Ssuu.. would
be joining us — and on to Beijing. There too we
got the headlines we wanted — 'first Australian
newsmen into China since 1949’ — and ourselect meeting with Premier Zhou. Mr Ssuu..
it turned out was the feisty Max Suich of the

Fairfax media group who had demanded andfinally got a visa after discovering what I had
been up to. The only other correspondent
allowed in with us was a Vince Matthews of
the Melbourne Herald (Melbourne was thebase of the one pro-Beijing Communist party
in Australia).
Back in Japan the FCCJ organised a special
event where we would relate our impressions.
Roderick spoke about China as being ‘an innocent world in which the religion called Marxism,
Leninism and Mao Tsetung thought remans
untarnished’. Reynolds said he was impressedby the ‘intensity of the faces’ as seen throughthe camera. Suich said how disappointed hewas (though at first glance he added). He wondered perceptively how the intellectual strengthof the Chinese would survive the damage of the
Cultural Revolution. I had to agree. John Rich,
the diplomat as ever, said little.
Reynolds summed it up saying that to expect
us to be experts on China was like trying towrite Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire after covering ten days of the Games in
the Colosseum.
Today we realise just how important our visits had been. Zhou, a moderate in the Chinese
leadership, had long struggled with the Cultural Revolution hardliners. He had organised
what is now called the Pingpong Diplomacy ina desperate effort to outflank them. It worked,
and together with another moderate, Deng
Xiaoping, had pulled China back from the precipice. It’s nice to think that some of us might
have helped.
Back in our home countries the effect was dramatic. The publicity given pingpong diplomacy
opened the way for Henry Kissinger and thenRichard Nixon to make their policy about-turns
over China. Back in Australia the government
had been forced to do the same, and may wellhave lost its 1972 election as a result.
For the Club it was a chance to see itself as thegateway into China. But it immediately stumbled
over the problem of membership for Taiwan
media people. Not much has happened since.

● GREGORY CLARK is a longtime regular memberof the FCCJ, a Tokyo correspondent for The
Australian and a former diplomat and academic.

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 17

PROFILERODRIGO REYES MARIN

Meri Joyce

By DAVID McNEILLA

s Kumiko Torikai, a doyen of Japanese interpreters once said, good interpreting is likeair — nobody notices it until it is polluted.
On the few times interpreters stand out it
is usually when they make a mistake. Meri Joyce canbe said to have thus quietly and assiduously toiled at the
FCCJ for years, her seamless bilingual skills underpinningcountless major press conferences. As any interpreter
will tell you, however, behind that seemingly effortlesssurface is a lot of effort.
The building blocks of Joyce’s Japanese were laid in
the small town of Hakushu in the Japan Alps. As a teenage exchange student there in the late 1990s, the Melbourne native had to adapt quickly. First to go was her
image of Japan as a uniformly high-tech society. “The
only computer in school was in the principal's office andhe never turned it on,” she recalls. Five English books saton the shelves of the library, where she was banishedduring English lessons to save the teacher’s blushes.
Children ran from her on the street.
“It was challenging,” says Joyce, smiling, during a
recent interview on Zoom. But she was also lucky enoughto find what she calls a “very welcoming” homestay
family for the duration of her one-year exchange in
Yamanashi. She is still close to them. “Within that insulated community it was not exactly warm but familiar. It
was also part of what I was looking for. And because it
was so isolated it was a good place to learn Japanese.”
Like many FCCJ luminaries, happenstance paid a partin her journey to Japan. She had won a scholarship to
Indonesia but the fall of the country’s leader, Suharto, in
May 1998, and the subsequent violent unrest put paid
to that. Joyce doesn’t know why she took to Japaneselife so easily. She had spent the first three years of herlife here (her Australian father’s job took him to Tokyo),and though she remembers almost nothing about it,
perhaps the roots were planted then. In any case, atMelbourne University two years later, she opted for a
Japanese component in her politics degree, spendinga year in Kyoto (2002-3) where she says she conquered
the language.
She stumbled into her profession, beginning as a student
when she interpreted for, among others, hibakusha survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Seeing how language and words could be a bridge
between different issues was very powerful,” she says.
In 2005, she joined Peace Boat, the Japan-based NGO.
Her first three-month voyage as a volunteer interpreter
was, in her words “right in at the deep end” – travellingto about 20 different countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle
East and Europe, interpreting daily for Japanese experts
on board and local visitors who came to talk.
Political activism is the other side – perhaps the mostimportant side – of her life. She still works with Peace
Boat and spends half her life outside Japan, much of it
campaigning against nuclear weapons or for the Global
Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, a network of civil society organizations. Her activism began
in high school. “It was during a period in Australia when
there were huge protests around the uranium mining(much of the uranium was exported to Japan). It wasalso the time of Seattle and the (anti-globalization) WTO
protests.” Her stay in Kyoto University coincided with
the U.S.-led war in Iraq, when debates about Japanese
involvement raged in student dorms.
It was through interpreting press events for nuclear-related NGOs after the Fukushima nuclear accident
that Joyce came to the attention of the FCCJ. She found18 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

PROFILE
Meri Joyce

ALBERT SIEGELInterpreter Meri Joyce takes notes during a press conference by Lee Young-Chae, professor at Keisen University and Rui Matsukawa,
member of the House of Councillors Liberal Democratic Party, who are speaking about possible solutions to Japan-South Korea tensions,
Wednesday, July 24, 2019.

the club a good fit: her activism had given her the skills
to interpret social issues, in an industry where the breadand butter work is on the corporate conference circuit.
“I’m never going to be a completely bilingual person but
being involved in the social and political side of what’s
going on in Japan gives me a cultural context that I
might otherwise lack.”
She does up to six events a month at the FCCJ. “Its likea sport - you have to do it often and stay agile.” A naturalnews junkie, she skim-reads all the main daily Japanesenewspapers to keep on top of what’s going on. “It is avery heavy responsibility,” she accepts. “Your choiceof language expressions, getting the accuracy of what
they’re saying; the tone and the message. I do take itvery seriously,” she says, especially when it’s an “ongoing” legal or political issue. “There are dozens of hoursof preparation that go into a one-hour presser,” making
sure she can cope with the gig by knowing as much as
she can about the speaker.
One way of making the job easier is to build a rapport
with the speaker - difficult when most arrive a few minutes before they take the FCCJ stage. “The technicalterms are easy to prepare for but knowing the nuancesis the hardest thing.” As for politics, she has learned toroll with the punches. “You will be interpreting for peo-ple right across the political spectrum and often you will
have to say things you would not say yourself – including
using discriminatory language. It is even more important that you be accurate and professional because if you
water down what they say it is not going to accurately
portray what they say. That took a lot of training.”
Among her FCCJ highlights was interpreting for the
lawyers of Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s disgraced boss, andtrying to explain the nuances of “sontaku” during a press
event for Yasunori Kagoike, the president of an ultra-nationalist school at the center of a political scandal
involving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife. And
who could forget meeting Pikotaro, the extravagantly
bedecked surrealist crooner who scored an unlikely
global hit in 2016 with Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen. “I still
have children of friends who come up to me about that.”● DAVID McNEILL is co-chair of the FCCJ’s Professional
Activities Committee and a professor at the Departmentof English Language, Communication and Cultures at
Sacred Heart University in Tokyo. He was previously acorrespondent for The Independent and The Economist
newspapers and for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 19

LENS CRAFT
By Photographer Members

Yoshikazu Tsuno
Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s
acrobatic team, Blue Impulse, fly
over Tokyo Skytree in a salute to
medical workers during the heightof the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic,
Friday, May 26, 2020.

20 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

LENS CRAFT
By Photographer Members

Rodrigo Reyes
Marin
Demonstrators wearing
face masks protest against
racism and violence bypolice during a Black Lives
Matter rally through Tokyo’s
Shibuya district, Sunday,
June 14, 2020.

JULY 2020 | FCCJ | 21

LENS CRAFT
By Photographer Members

Masatoshi Okauchi
Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge is lit
like a rainbow after the stateof emergency was lifted,
Monday, May 25, 2020.

22 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

CLUB NEWSNew Members
SHIGENORI KANEHIRA(REGULAR MEMBER)
Is an anchor of the investigative news program“Hodo Tokushu” (Weekly News Special) of TBS.
He has been working for TBS for more than 43
years. As a TV journalist, he has covered manystories, including the collapse of the Soviet Union while he was
Moscow Bureau chief (1991-1994), the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars as
the Washington D.C. Bureau chief (2002-2005), the end of the Cold
War (1989-1991), North Korea issues (1999-present) and so on. He loves
being a TV journalist. He says the longer he does this work, the moreconvinced he becomes that it is a vital public service because, despite
the changing media landscape, the journalist’s role is to provide
factual eyewitness accounts. He thinks that’s especially true amid
today’s armchair blogosphere-cum-journalism.
He was born in 1953, at Asahikawa City, Hokkaido.

HARUKA NUGA(REGULAR MEMBER)
Is a Tokyo-based video journalist for the
Associated Press (AP). Her main area of coverage
is Japan, covering stories from natural disasters
to unique cultural happenings. Before joining
the AP, she was a TV news producer at Reuters,
creating video content as a camerawoman and an on-air reporter.
Haruka started off her journalism career with Bloomberg TV in Hong
Kong, which is also where she grew up. She graduated from the
University of Hong Kong with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism andPsychology.
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Masayoshi J.J. Akimoto, Welsten K.K.
Takao Fukami, Izumi Kasei Sangyo Co., Ltd.
Yoshitaka Izumi, Izumi Kasei Sangyo Co., Ltd.
Yuki Izumi, Izumi Kasei Sangyo Co., Ltd.
Hiroyuki Nakagawa, SMBC Trust Bank
Hiroyuki Nakatani, Spring Field Co., Ltd.
Kenshi Suzuki, Lex Institute / Hippo Family Club
Kentaro Tomita, D.I.System Co., Ltd.
REINSTATEMENT (ASSOCIATE)
Takashi Tomita, No affiliation

New in the Library
1
Spillover: Animal
Infections and the Next
Human Pandemic
David Quammen
W.W. Norton & Company

2
The Japanese Discovery
of Chinese Fiction:
The Water Margin
and the Making of a
National Canon
William C. Hedberg
Columbia University Press

3
Urban Migrants in
Rural Japan: Between
Agency and Anomie in a
Post-growth Society
Susanne Klien
State University of
New York Press
Gift from Susanne Klien

4
Empera Fairu: Tenno
sandai no joho senso
エンペラー・ファイル：天皇三代の情報戦争
Eiichiro Tokumoto
Bungeishunju
Gift from Eiichiro
TokumotoJULY 2020 | FCCJ | 23

CLUB NEWS
Join the Film CommitteeO

ATELIER KUSHINA

n Wednesday, July 15 at
7:00 pm for a sneak preview
of “Kushina, what will yoube,” our first screening ofa female-directed, female-centric film
in more than a year. Moët Hayami’s
enigmatic first feature imagines abeautiful, beguiling world, hidden
deep in the mountains of Japan, where
women have created a colony withoutmen, living off the land and cultivating
cannabis to trade for the necessities
they can’t grow. When an anthropologist
appears one day with a male guide, after
searching for this matriarchal utopia foryears, she unwittingly alters their lives
forever. Hayami and two of the film’sstars, Yayoi Inamoto and Miyuki Ono, will
be on hand for the Q&A session. (Japan,
2018; 70 minutes; in Japanese withEnglish subtitles) — Karen Severns

Dear colleagues at the FCCJ,
Especially the veterans among us

During the “corona break”, I was kindly asked toresearch and write a short biography about my latepredecessor as Tokyo Correspondent for Danish
media, Mr. Svend Nyboe Andersen. The request
came from his daughter, who is one of my good old friends. Now
the worst corona paralysis seems to be over, but I am of course
finishing the work. This kind of detective work into the past fascinates me. The book will be published early next year in Danish.
“Svend Andersen”, as he was known at the club, was a very
active member from 1965 until 1967 and again from 1971 until
1977. He chaired several committees and was a member of theboard once, after having been a candidate several times. He
spent innumerable evenings and nights at the workroom, organized chess tournaments and art exhibitions and put his markon club life in many ways. If any of you have memories, good orbad, about anecdotes, episodes and achievements during Svend
Andersen’s time at the club, I would be grateful to hear from you.

Svend Nyboe
AndersenMy email address is arc@asgerrojle.com
ASGER ROJLE CHRISTENSEN(Long-term regular member of the FCCJ from Denmark, six years
from 1989 until 1995, and again the last six and a half years)

24 | FCCJ | JULY 2020

CLUB NEWSIn Memoriam – Hal FosterWe regret to inform members of the passing away of Hal
Foster, a longtime journalist and journalism professor
with nine years of experience in Japan. He was 75.
The Miami native worked at for Stars and Stripes Pacific in
Tokyo from 1979-86 as a news editor and executive editor.
He later was assistant managing editor at the Asahi Evening Newsin Tokyo, a business writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times anda special correspondent for USA Today covering the war in Ukraine.
Over the years he was both a regular and professional associate member of the Club.
He was a media professor at the University of Idaho and diedof a heart attack at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on June 10th.
Foster is survived by his children Angela, 48, and Dan, 47, andtwo grandchildren.

In Memoriam – Stefano Carrer(See June edition for obituary. These are later tributes from friends)

S

tefano Carrer was the rare foreign correspondent inJapan who covered the country, but also took Japan
deep into his heart. He did not simply cover Japan for hisreaders and audience, but presented the country with a love forthe place and people, and Japan became his second home. His
loss is great for his family and friends, and for those over theyears with whom he shared his words and insights about thecountry. We would like to share some memories.
He traveled throughout Japan, often in the company of fellow
journalists from other countries. Starting as a pen reporter in his
early days in Japan, Stefano gradually moved to video for Il Sole
24 Ore. This was a transition that not everyone could do, but
he managed it in a short period of time. Newspaper reporters
now are asked by editorial bureaus to handle video, and many
still feel uneasy handling video cameras. However, Stefano wasquick to learn, and simply flooded his editorial office with video
reports from Japan on issues, ranging from cos-play to Yasukuni
visits. During his decade-long tenure in Japan, Stefano also covered every important story in the country. He later returned tothe country to cover significant events after he was reassigned
to his editorial office in Milan. I met him for the last time in Osaka
for a G-20 summit. He was also the only foreign correspondent
who had accompanied the now Emeritus Heisei Emperor on hislast official visit to Vietnam and Thailand.
At the FCCJ, his warm presence was reassuring to friends
and acquaintances. He talked about matters from his personal
experience that were rich and colorful. This is what made him an
eternal traveler willing to take any hardship for the sake of news
coverage. I remember how eager he was to visit the borderareas of Bangladesh and Myanmar to cover the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017, although he couldn’t go due to bureaucratic
restrictions on both sides of the border.
Stefano was a true representative of media in the changing
news world — always true to his convictions. His small video
camera was with him wherever he went. I fondly rememberthat on some press tours he humbly requested me to hold thecamera and record while he would continue narrating.

Stefano was not only a fellow journalist in Tokyo, but apleasant companion with whom I’ve travelled around Japan.
I remember during a press tour to Hokkaido that I joined him
in a rafting competition. Neither of us were master rafters, andStefano told me a story about always ending up on the losing
side when someone joins an Italian. In death you don’t disappear, Stefano! Your dedication, professional integrity and warm
smiling presence will never be forgotten.
Monzurul HuqI

ran into Stefano on a Milan street just after he moved backfrom Tokyo. Life in Milan wasn’t as exciting for Stefano,although he was busy and occasionally got away for shortbusiness trips. In Italy, he looked for every chance to stay
in touch with Japan, such as Japan festivals, the Japan-Italy
Business Group convention, the Far East Film Festival, and theUniqlo Milan opening. If an event had anything to do with Japan,
Stefano was there. He told me that he couldn’t decide whether
to join a gym or buy a car because he tried to postpone any
decision that could tie him to the city. He was always ready toleave for Japan.
He took advantage of his Milanese salary-man status andlooked after his parents, his niece Cristina, and often spentweekends at a second house in the countryside of Lombardy.
He loved to go for walks in the mountains, resting at a local hot
spring, and drinking his favorite Nebbiolo red wine. He was passionate about opera and we went to the Scala theatre in Milan.
He invited me to the ballet as well and I gave him a cherry treethat had become too tall for my terrace in return. He took it tohis parents’ house and his father planted it in their garden. He
told me to visit to see how tall it had become.
Italian ambassador Giorgio Starace said: “I met him here in
Japan, and he impressed me with his high professionalism andhumility... He was a great man, and it’s a great loss for all of us.”Indeed, Stefano was a generous, unpretentious intellectual
whose stories inspired us, and his memory we shall keep always.
Nanako Yamamori

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