The magazine of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

April 2021 · Volume 53 · No. 4

TOKYO JUNKIE
Robert Whiting on 60 yearsof transformation

20

WAYS TO LOVE YOUR BURGER
The FCCJ Burger is back, and it's better than ever. Whether you go in with a long slow nibble or have at it full-on,
rest assured, you'll love it.
This month there's a terrific new menu from our own Iron Chef, Tadaaki Shimizu. Succulent steaks. Tenderlamb chops. Steamed mussels in a white wine sauce. Three-course dinners at mouth-watering prices. And with
the Masukomi Sushi Bar up and running again, your sushi will slip down easier than ever.
Eat, drink and watch the news being made at PAC events. Catch the latest cultural highlights at Book Breaks
and Film Previews. Or strut your stuff at Saturday Nite Live, and get on down with the best Burger in town.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. Home from home for the curious and hungry.
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THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB OF JAPANMarunouchi Nijubashi Building 5F, Marunouchi 3-2-3 Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-0005, Japanwww.fccj.or.jp E-mail: front@fccj.or.jp Tel: +81-3-3211-3161 Fax: +81-3-3211-3168

03 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

In this issue
April 2021 · Volume 53 · No. 4
Contact the Editors
no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Publisher FCCJ
Editor Justin McCurry
Designer Julio Shiiki
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo coordination Hiroko Moriwaki, Norio Muroi
Publications Committee
Justin McCurry (Chair), Peter O'Connor, Suvendrini
Kakuchi,Monzurul Huq, Robert Whiting, David McNeill
FC C J B OA R D O F D I R EC TO R S
President Isabel Reynolds, Bloomberg L.P.
Special Advisor to the President
Monzurul Huq, Prothom Alo, Dhaka
1st Vice President Andy Sharp, Nikkei Asian Review
2nd Vice President Walter Sim, Straits Times
Treasurer Mehdi Bassiri, O.B.M. Co., Ltd
Secretary Ilgin Yorulmaz,
Freelance/BBC World Service Turkish
Directors-at-LargePeter O’Connor, Freelance
Simon Farrell, Custom Media K.K.
Mary Corbett, Cresner Media
Daniel J. Sloan, Freelance/Nissan Motor
Kanji Gregory Clark, Freelance
Associate Kanji Vicki L. Beyer, Freelance
Ex-officio Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
Regular Reserve Director: Pio d'Emilia, SKY TG 24
FC C J C O M M I T T E E C H A I R SDiversity Co-Chair and Board, Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
Co-Chair and Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Publications Chair: Justin McCurry,
Board Liaison: Peter O’Connor
Website Chair and Board Liaison: Simon Farrell
Associate Members’ Liaison Chair: TBA
Board Liaison: TBA
Entertainment Chair: Sandra Mori,
Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Exhibition Chair: Bruce Osborn,
Board Liaison: Peter O'Connor
Film Chair: Karen Severns, Board Liaison: Dan Sloan
Finance Chair and Board Liaison: Mehdi Bassiri
Food & Beverage Co-Chair: Robert Kirschenbaum,
Co-Chair: Pio d'Emilia, Board Liaison: Mary Corbett
Freedom of Press Co-Chair: Justin McCurry,
Co-Chair: Simon Denyer, Board Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
House & Property Chair and Board Liaison: Andy Sharp
Human Resources Chair and Board Liaison: Walter Sim
Information Technology Chair: TBA
Board Liaison: TBA
LAW Co-Chair: Koichi Ishiyama,
Co-Chair: Suvendrini Kakuchi
Board Liaison: Peter O’Connor
Public Relations (incorporating Marketing
Membership)
Chair and Board Liaison: Simon Farrell
Membership Co-Chair: Andrew Horvat
Co-Chair: Monzurul Huq, Board Liaison: Peter O'Connor
Professional Activities Co-Chair: Tetsu Jimbo
Co-Chair: David McNeill, Board Liaison: Andy Sharp
Special Projects Chair: Haruko Watanabe,
Board Liaison: TBA
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Co-Chair: Abby Leonard
Co-Chair: Kazu Takada, Board Liaison: Ilgin Yorulmaz
Compliance Chair: Kunio Hamada, Board Liaison: TBA
Election Chair: Reed Stevenson

JUSTIN McCURRYT

his month’s issue of the Number 1 Shimbun has a decidedly retro feelto it, starting with Robert Whiting’s reminiscences about his early days
as a journalist in Tokyo and tales of the rich fabric of life to be foundin the FCCJ’s former premises in Yurakucho. Both accounts are takenfrom Robert’s new Book, Tokyo Junkie – a welcome addition to my spring reading list. Richard Varner and Peter McGill have kindly contributed tributes to Peter
Hazelhurst, The Times’ former Asia correspondent, whose many career highlights
included an interview with Nelson Mandela when he was still apartheid South
Africa’s most wanted man. Mark Schreiber has averted pandemic cabin fever by
getting out to retrace the footsteps of Japan’s wartime prime minister, Hideki Tojo,
walking umpteen miles in search of locations associated with his time in office andhis postwar trial for war crimes. Looking forward, Chie Matsumoto explains the
motivation behind a new media platform, Unfiltered, while Suvendrini Kakuchi
reports on Miri Yu’s recent Book Break appearance. Finally, congratulations toeveryone who won prizes in this year’s Swadesh DeRoy Scholarship awards.
We will be showcasing some of the successful submissions in the magazine,
beginning this month with Maria Elizabeth Thomas’s stunning photographs.

THE FRONT PAGE
04 From the President
Isabel Reynolds

COVER STORY
05 Kisha club / blacklist
Robert Whiting

09 FCCJ: Drunken brawls
Robert Whiting

FE AT URES
11 In Tojo’s footsteps
Mark Schreiber

16 Japan unfiltered
Chie Matsumoto

OBITUARY
18 Flight of the birdman
Richard Varner

21 Peter Hazelhurst as I knew him
Peter McGill

BOOK BREAK

23 Voices from the margins
Suvendrini Kakuchi

SWA DESH DERO Y MEMORI A L

25 FCCJ scholarship awards
26 Photography winner:

Japan’s changing workforce and gender roles

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Marunouchi Nijubashi Building 5F
Marunouchi 3-2-3 Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 100-0005
Tel: (03) 3211-3161 Fax: (03) 3211-3168 fccj.or.jp
Published by the FCCJ All opinions contained within
Number 1 Shimbun are those of the authors.
As such, these opinions do not constitute an official
position of Number 1 Shimbun, the editor or theForeign Correspondent’ Club of Japan.
Please pitch and send articles and photographs, oraddress comments to no.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp
Read the Number 1 Shimbun online:

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

CLUB NEWS28 New members, Join the Film Committee,
New in the library, Regular by eggs
EXHIBITION

30 Soliloquy of the Full Moon
Cover: Top: A shinkansen bullet train passes through Yurakucho in December 1964 ,two months after it made its debut. Nichigeki Music Hall is in the background.
Bottom. A shinkansen in the same location in June 2017. Nichigeki Music Hall has been
replaced by the Hankyu department store. Photos: APINDEX04 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

THE FRONT PAGE

From the President
Dear members,

T©FCCJ / JULIO SHIIKI

oday marked one of the highlightsof my time so far as president of the
club. I was honored to take part via
Zoom in the awards ceremony for
our Swadesh DeRoy Scholarship. The qualityof this year’s entries on the theme of “Isolationand Engagement: Japan at a Turbulent Time”
was phenomenal, as you will see if you take alook at the winning photos, which are on display near the reception. The award-winning
print article will appear in a future issue of the
Number 1 Shimbun. The younger generation
may be suffering in all sorts of ways under the
pandemic and state of emergency, but they
have certainly not lost any of their energy orcreativity, and that gives me great hope forthe future of journalism. I’m only sorry I wasn’t
able to meet any of the winners. I’d like to thankthe Scholarship Committee co-chairs Abby
Leonard and Kazu Takada for their hard workin organizing a highly successful competition,
despite the extremely difficult circumstances.
Turning to more mundane, but important,matters I’d like to thank all those members who
voted on our budget and business plan for the
coming fiscal year, as well as on several proposed changes to our rules. The results wereannounced by email for those who weren’t able
to attend the General Membership Meeting, so
I won’t explain them here, except to note thatthe budget was passed, along with a slightly
increased levy to replace the one that comesto an end this month. As you will have noticed,
we introduced a new web-based voting system
for the first time. After the hiccups in last year’s
Board election, which ended up wasting a lotof time and money, as well as causing heartache for a number of members, it was one of
my priorities to modernize our voting system
when I became president. While there are a few
details still to iron out, I think the new system
is clearly far superior to email voting and will
help us improve efficiency and cut costs. My
sincere appreciation goes to Reed Stevenson,
who brought his tech skills to bear on the
introduction of the new system and to Kanji
Vicki Beyer for a heroic effort in improving andclarifying parts of our bylaws. While proposed
amendments to the Articles of Association did
not reach the required two-thirds majority on
this occasion, we will be putting them to thevote again, possibly in June.
As always, a raft of interesting events continues at the Club. To highlight just a couple – next
month sees a screening of “Umibe no Kanojotachi,” a fictionalized account of the plight facing some of the foreign workers who come to
Japan on the technical intern training program.
Do also make time to watch our topical press
conference with Myanmar activists, available
on YouTube, if you weren’t able to attend.
From my office desk I can see the cherry
blossoms starting to peep through in the Imperial Palace gardens, reminding me that time’s
flying toward the end of the current Board’s
term. We’ll try to pack as much progress as we
can into the final few months.

● Isabel Reynolds has been reporting for
Bloomberg in Tokyo since 2012. She has lived inJapan for more than 20 years and been a regularmember of the FCCJ for most of that time.

INDEX05 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

COVER STORYKISHA CLUB /BLACKLISTTOKYO JUNKIE EXTRACTROBERT WHITINGTThe onlyindividuals who
could join akisha club werereporters from thedaily newspapers
and TV/radio
organizations.
Magazine
reporters andfreelancers were
not allowed.

he Japanese tendency to organize, apossible hangover from centuries of
feudalism, manifested itself in many
areas of life, from micromanaged
corporations to a by-the-numbers healthcare
system that leaves little time to get to know
your doctor. My field, journalism, was no
exception. The regulating mechanism was a
Japanese invention called the kisha (reporter’s) club, which oversaw news-source accessand content control and did it with great zeal.
It differed substantially from the system in the
United States.
In the US, if you wanted to interview someone, you got the individual’s phone number andcalled him or her directly to ask if they would
talk to you. If you had any kind of respectable
media credentials, you could get into mostpress conferences if there was room for you. It
was an open and free system. In Japan, however, the open and free exchange of information
was impeded by the aforementioned kishaclub system. And it was a serious impediment.
Every organization of any size, from theprime minister’s office to Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries to the Yomiuri Giants, had a kishaclub. Journalists who wanted to report on
the activities of those organizations had tobe accredited by the relevant club; access torepresentatives of the organization in question and their press conferences, as well as
advance access to press dispatches and copies of other official statements, was limited
to club members. The only individuals who
could join a kisha club were reporters from thedaily newspapers and TV/radio organizations.
Magazine reporters and freelancers were notallowed. Each kisha club had a captain elected by the reporters who controlled access tokisha club Q&A sessions—and made sure thequestions asked did not ruffle any feathers. It
was a scandalously biased system. In return forbeing granted access, reporters were expected
to write what they were told.
As Andrew Horvat, a former AP journalist
familiar with both Western and Japanese press
reporting customs, once explained to me: “Inthe West, we are taught to pursue the scoop,to get information other reporters don’t have.
That’s how you build a reputation. In Japan,
you are taught not to make waves. Publishinga scoop will make everyone else in the kishaclub uncomfortable and ruin group harmony,so they avoid doing it.” That analysis remains
largely true today.
Reporters in Japan could get around theserestrictions by selling their stories to the weekly and monthly magazines using pen names orby simply giving their research to fellow report-

INDEX06 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

KISHA CLUB / BLACKLISTDAVID STETSON

ers operating outside the kisha club system, so
there was always a way for important information to get out. But to do that was also to invite
expulsion from the kisha club or other forms of
retribution if the truth were discovered.
I learned my own painful lesson in this regard
in 1985 when I was asked by the prestigious
monthly magazine Bungei Shunju to write anarticle explaining the American view of theJapanese kisha club system. I accepted theassignment, researched, and wrote the article.
I included several examples of how the reporters’ clubs had prevented members of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan from doing
their jobs.
One such example involved the South Korean political dissident Kim Dae-jung, who had
been living in exile in the United States. Kim
was an important political figure—charismatic,fearless, and determined to overturn the brutal
authoritarian regime of Park Chung-hee in the
Republic of Korea (ROK).
Kim had finished second in the South Koreanpresidential election of 1971, narrowly losing toPark, and he believed a subsequent automobile
accident he was involved in to be an attempt on
his life. He fled to Japan to start an exile movement for democracy, accusing the Park regime,
which had turned into a military dictatorship,of corruption and ballot-box fixing.
On August 8, 1973, while attending a conference at the Grand Palace Hotel in Tokyo, Kim
was kidnapped by agents of South Korea’s
intelligence agency, the KCIA, working withlocal ethnic-Korean gangsters. He was drugged
and taken to Osaka, where he was put aboard
a boat, which then headed into the Sea ofJapan in the direction of the Korean Peninsula.
The agents bound and gagged him, attachedweights to his feet, and made ready to cast him
overboard. But then suddenly, a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) helicopter
appeared overhead and fired at Kim’s captors,
warning them by loudspeaker to cease anddesist. Informants had alerted the Japanese
government, which then dispatched the
JMSDF to pursue Kim’s vessel. The boat Kim
was on was subsequently escorted by the US
military to Seoul, where US Ambassador Philip
Habib was waiting to intervene on his behalf.
Kim remained alive. He was put under housearrest and banned from ROK politics. He elected to stay but continued to speak out to foreign

Robert Whiting

reporters and was subsequently imprisoned for
two years for criticizing the Seoul government.
He was then arrested again in 1980 on chargesof sedition and conspiracy and sentenced todeath. Amnesty International, Pope John PaulII, and the US government interceded, and Kim
was granted exile in America. He taught at Harvard University until 1985 when he suddenly
announced he was returning to his homeland
and would hold a press conference at Narita
Airport during a stopover on his way to Seoul.
It was a big story, one of the biggest of the year.
New York Times Tokyo correspondent Clyde
Haberman dashed out to Narita Airport toparticipate in the press conference, but he was
not allowed to enter the pressroom because he
was not a member of the Narita Airport kishaclub. Haberman furiously protested. There wassome pushing and shoving, but in the end he
was still not allowed inside.
I wrote about Haberman’s experience in the
Bungei article and quoted him as saying thatclosed-door policies of the type that prevented him from attending the Kim presser would
damage Japan’s reputation around the world,
especially in light of the nation’s growing
imbalance of payments and accusatory cries of
unfair trade. The magazine containing my story
came out on a Friday morning. At 10 a.m., I got
a call from a Mr. Odano in the Foreign Ministry,INDEX07 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

KISHA CLUB / BLACKLIST“Who are you,
Mr. Whiting?” heasked. “Why are
you writing stories
like this critical ofJapan?”“I am a freelance
journalist livingin Tokyo,” I said,“and I am writing
this story because
it is a story thatneeds to be
written. Japan
has to stop being
so insular andopen itself up or itis going to incur
the wrath of theworld.”

demanding that I report to him immediately to
explain the article. It was apparently the job of
his office to examine all potential controversial
stories in the media. More curious than concerned, I decided to go. Besides, it was only ashort cab ride from my Akasaka apartment to
the drab Gaimusho offices in Kasumigaseki,near the Imperial Palace moat and the Metropolitan Police Department.
Upon arriving I was escorted to a conference
room for an “interview” with Mr. Odano, who, in
person, looked the part of a bland government
bureaucrat in a blue suit and dark tie.
We exchanged name cards, as ritual required,mine saying “Author, Journalist” and his “Foreign
Ministry,” and then he began to grill me in English.
“Who are you, Mr. Whiting?” he asked. “Whyare you writing stories like this critical of Japan?”“I am a freelance journalist living in Tokyo,”
I said, “and I am writing this story because it isa story that needs to be written. Japan has tostop being so insular and open itself up or it isgoing to incur the wrath of the world.”
I was being overly dramatic, but what thehell; it was my first foray into the inner sanctum of Japanese bureaucracy and I figured alittle bombast would suit the occasion. I also
believed there to be more than a few grains oftruth there.
“Yes, I understand that point,” Odano replied.
“But who are you and why are you writing stories like this?”“Did I make any errors in my story? Is there
something wrong with my analysis?”“No, no. But I want to know who you are andwhy did you write this story?”
It went on like this for two or three hours.
Other Foreign Ministry officials were brought
in and they asked me essentially the samequestions, forcing me to recount the details of
my time in Japan to them.
I told them about the books I had written andthe columns and magazine stories I had done,
but every time they would come back to thesame question.
“Yes, but who are you really and why are you
writing stories like this?”Franz Kafka could not have scripted it better.
Finally, they let me go and I went home. As soon
as I walked in the door the phone rang. It was mywife calling from Geneva. She sounded alarmed.
“Bob, what on earth have you done?”“What do you mean what have I done?” I said.

“I just got a call a call from an official in theJapanese consulate here in Geneva. He askedme, ‘Who is Robert Whiting and why is he writing stories criticizing Japan?’”Amazing, I thought. Very impressive. I intentionally hadn’t told Mr. Odano or any of hiscohorts that I was married to a Japanese woman and that she had recently been hired by the
UNCHR and dispatched to Switzerland. How
they found out, I still don’t know. The War Office?
I didn’t hear from the Foreign Ministry again
about this issue, but Bungei Shunju editors told
me the government had complained to them.
And it was their guess that the Foreign Ministry thought I was working for the CIA or someother intelligence agency and was trying toundermine the stability of the nation of Japan
somehow. Perhaps it had something to do withbilateral trade friction, which was heating up at
the time.
Wow. I thought. All this for an article on
kisha clubs?
That wasn’t quite the end of the story, however. That summer I headed off to Geneva, andwhen I came back through Narita in September, I was pulled out of line at immigration andtaken into an office, where an immigration official sat me down and began the questioning. It
was the only time that had ever happened tome entering or leaving Tokyo.
“Who are you and why are you coming in andout of Japan so often?”
Eventually they let me go and stamped mypassport, but it was an unnerving experience.
As veteran journalist Sam Jameson, then the
LA Times Tokyo correspondent, explained tome one day at the Foreign Correspondents
Press Club of Japan, high above Tokyo on thetwentieth floor of the Yurakucho Denki Building: “You have to show your love for Japan. If
you do, they will leave you alone. Criticize toomuch and you’re asking for trouble.”
Unfortunately, asking for trouble seemed to
be a big part of my journalistic MO.
It came again after my 1986 interview withWarren Cromartie, who had joined the Yomiuri Giants in 1984. In it, he stated that executives in the Giants front office were “racist,”noting that they showed far less respect tothe then Giants manager Sadaharu Oh, half
Japanese and half Chinese, than they did tothe previous manager, Shigeo Nagashima, apureblooded Japanese.

INDEX08 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

KISHA CLUB / BLACKLIST

Sadaharu Oh,
left, and Shigeo
Nagashima at a
Yomiuri Giants
spring training
camp in 1967

“I’m a black son-of-a-bitch,” Cromartie said,“and I can spot a racist a mile away. They were
just rude to Oh in general. But they kissed
Nagashima’s ass. Oh, in my opinion, is worth
ten of Nagashima.”
The interview was published in the December 1986 issue of the Japanese monthly
Penthouse, nestled amidst nude photos ofwomen with their vital areas airbrushed out,
as required by Japan’s obscenity laws. Twomonths later in a meeting of PR representatives from Central League teams, the Yomiuri
Giants rep, a former reporter named Wakabayashi, announced that I was to be banned fromentering the Giants’ new park, the Tokyo Dome,as a reporter, beginning in 1987, for two years. I
could buy a ticket, if there were any left that is,
and go in; but I was not allowed on the field orin the press box.
“I’m here to guide the media,” he was quoted as saying, “and we can’t have gaijin ballplayers expressing their honne (true feelings)
to gaijin reporters.”
The team took no action against Cromartie,
however. He had finished the season with a.363 batting average, 37 homeruns and 98
RBIs, leading Yomiuri to the Central League
Championship. In fact, they gave him a new
three-year contract with a huge raise.
Blacklisted along with me was my friend
Masayuki Tamaki, one of Japan’s leading
sports journalists, who had also written articles
critical of the Giants.

Tamaki, one of the smartest people I had
met in my time in Japan, broke the mold. A big,bearded ex-rugby player with a deep infectious
laugh and an iconoclastic bent, he had dropped
out of Tokyo University, Japan’s most ferociously competitive gateway to elite careers inbusiness and government, to begin a career as afreelance journalist—at a time when freelancing
was more-or-less unheard of in Japan. I particularly admired his penchant for asking direct,
uncomfortable questions and setting things out
the way he saw them. He once drew the ire of
the High School Baseball Federation for writingthat the ubiquitously shaven heads of the highschool baseball players (a mass demonstrationof pureheartedness) participating in the annual
summer tournament at Koshien looked likethose of inmates in a Japanese prison.
He criticized the Yomiuri Giants severe training methods in a magazine article and so upset
the front office that the following year in springtraining camp he was forced to wear a yellow
hat while covering training on the Giants practice field—a symbol to Giants players that hewas to be viewed as an adversary and to notrespond to his questions.
From that time on, PR guru Wakabayashi
made it Giants policy that any publication
wanting to interview a Giants player had to submit a list of questions in advance for approval.
In addition, the publication had to submit thefinished article for approval as well. There wasalso a required fee of several hundred dollars
to be divided between the team and the player.
This policy stayed in place for years. In 1991, forexample, an NBC News crew wanted to interview
former Major Leaguer Phil Bradley about his
experiences playing with the Giants. As requested, they submitted a list of five questions:
1. How do you like Japan?
2. How do you like playing Japanese baseball?
3. How do you like playing for the Yomiuri
Giants?
4. How do you like playing for your manager?
5. How does your family like living in Japan?
The Giants front office ruled out questions 2,
3, and 4.
Wakabayashi, a former journalist who had
pursued a scoop or two himself during his longcareer, insisted that his employer, the Yomiuri
Shimbun, the world’s largest newspaper, wasindeed dedicated to the pursuit of truth andjustice—just not all the timeINDEX09 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

COVER STORYFCCJ: DRUNKENBRAWLSTOKYO JUNKIE EXTRACTROBERT WHITINGT

he move from Kamakura to Tokyo’s Toyosu neighborhood was a stroke of genius, entirely conceived,planned, and executed by my wife in 2009 upon her
retirement from the UNHCR, before the area cameinto prominence as the planned site of the 2020 Olympic Village. With many athletic venues likethe existing Ariake Sports Center in
the immediate vicinity, not to mention its selection as the location of themassive new Tsukiji Fish Market, thereal estate value skyrocketed.
Also, it was good once again to beliving in the center of the city, where
Tokyo’s legendary energy and discipline showed no signs of abating,although men now wore makeup andskinny suits. It was striking that despite
the presence of fast-food outlets
everywhere—McDonald’s, Shakey’s,
Wendy’s, et al.—the city’s denizens
somehow managed to avoid the obesity epidemic that had hit the UnitedStates, a country that was more andmore being defined by overweightpeople, potholed highways, and vending machines that didn’t work.
From our high-rise residence we
had a spectacular view of the spanking-new Sky Tree (2012) in neighboring Sumida. It is the tallest broadcasting and observation tower in the world(and second tallest structure after the Burj Khalifia). A three-stop
subway ride took you from Toyosu on the Yurakucho Line to the
Ginza, with its high-end stores and moneyed Chinese tourists.
I bought my first iMac and MacBook Pro at the flagship Apple
store there. iPhones, tailored for Japan by Softbank, were all therage, shoving Panasonic and other domestic flip-phone manufacturers out of the market. Half the pedestrians on the street
were now checking email and texting on iPhones as they walked.

Easy access to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan
was another of the pluses of living in Toyosu. I had become amember decades earlier, and the club had played an important role in both my work and social life. I even served on the
Board. I particularly liked the Main Bar, located on the twentieth floor of the Yurakucho Denki
Building, which offered a panoramicview of the Tokyo skyline and ringside seats to many a drunken argument between journalists. Now it was
just four stops and a one-minute walkaway, which meant I could join in the
fun every night.
Established in 1945 by and forjournalists who landed in Japan at
the end of World War 2 with Douglas
MacArthur, the Club provided essential services to facilitate the task oftransmitting the news of Japan to theworld when no such facilities existed
in war-torn Tokyo.
At the time, except for a few magnificent Western-style buildings andthe Imperial Hotel, which survived the
incendiary bombing in the last days of
the war, there was barely an identifiable street remaining. With the helpof the Occupation authorities, thejournalists had quickly secured someliving and workspace in a ramshackle
former restaurant, moving in five to aroom, not counting their new live-in Japanese girlfriends, using
sheets for partitions. This annoyed BBC correspondent John
Morris, who prudishly insisted that the sex act was meant to be
performed in private.
“Drunken brawls were frequent,” wrote Morris in a memoir
entitled The Phoenix Cup, “and there were times when firearms
were discharged in the club. It was a cross between a waterfront
sailors’ bar and a brothel.”INDEX10 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

FCCJ: DRUNKEN BRAWLS

Whiting, right, hosts a
2017 press conference atthe FCCJ by Major League
Baseball commissioner
Rob Manfred.

The FCCJ playeda central role incoverage of major
news events
throughout the20th century
and into the 21st,
including the
Olympus andNissan scandals,
both of which
illustrated theperils of being aforeign executive
in a Japanesecompany.

The FCCJ quickly became the hub of theinternational community that reemerged fromthe ashes of war. Unlike the US service–men andmembers of the Occupation Headquarters, who
had privileges to procure American supplies
at the military exchanges, most journalists inTokyo had to make do shopping at local stores,
which rarely carried what they wanted. Anykind of half-decent whisky, cheese, or ice creamwas very hard to come by. Club members, whohailed from all over the globe, wrote home tofamily and friends for recipes. Japanese cooks
working at the FCCJ were given survival courses
for making pizza and hamburgers, which they
had never seen, much less tasted.
Before long the regulars congregating each
day in the bar were a Who’s Who of the region’s
most celebrated writers—including Pulitzer
Prize winners who had covered the front linesof World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam—as wellas politicians, entertainers, royalty, and Asia’sbusiest spies.
James Michener would be holding courtin the dining room, talking about his latest
novels to be turned into hit movies in theyears since his breakaway blockbusters South
Pacific, Sayonara, and The Bridges at Toko-ri,
all of which deeply influenced the world’s viewof the Asia-Pacific region. Ian Fleming could
also be seen at the FCCJ night after night in
1962 with former colleagues from the Sunday
Times, doing research for You Only Live Twice.
Every businessman and spymaster of noteneeded to be there, such was the convergenceof news and deal-making at the club. Walls
were covered with photos of famous individuals who had made appearances: Muhammad Ali, Gina Lollobrigida, Ronald Reagan,
Willie Nelson, the Emperor and the Empressof Japan, a young and surprisingly articulate

Donald Trump, Roger Moore, George Soros,
Rachel McAdams, MLB Commissioner Rob
Manfred. The Crown Prince and Princess Michiko danced together at the Club’s fortieth-anniversary party. A famous prize-winning Italianjournalist made history late one night by entertaining a young lady on the nineteenth-floor
Club pool table, completing his task despite an
unexpected interruption by a Club employee.
The flustered employee bowed, apologized forthe intrusion, and quickly exited. The journalist
bowed back from his semi-prone position andresumed what he was doing.
The FCCJ played a central role in coverage ofmajor news events throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, including the Olympus
and Nissan scandals, both of which illustrated
the perils of being a foreign executive in a Japanese company. Olympus appointed England’s
Michael Woodford as CEO in 2011, but he lost
his job shortly after he disclosed a major
accounting fraud. Woodford was fired, and thescandal led to the resignation of the company’s
entire board and the arrest of several senior
executives, but he was later awarded £10 million in an out-of-court settlement with Olympus
over his dismissal. Woodford had abandoned
an earlier proxy fight to take control of thecompany after it became apparent Olympus’s
institutional investors were uncomfortablewith the Englishman’s combative style. Lebanese Carlos Ghosn became hugely famous in
Japan, first for leading the restructuring andrevival of struggling Nissan Motors in 1999,
then later for his arrest in the winter of 2018
for allegedly understating his compensation,a circumstance brought about by his enemies
within the corporation. Ghosn spent months
acquainting himself with Japan’s criminal justice system, undergoing interrogation several
hours every day without his lawyer present
and sleeping in an unheated cell with the lighton all night. Eventually granted bail, which cost
him more than ten million dollars, but denied
permission to see his wife, Ghosn fled to Beirut,
smuggled out in a box from Kansai Airport.
In the midst of a national press corps thatranked last among G7 nations in the annual
Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, the FCCJ remained resolutely independent, giving a voice to political protestors andrefugees frequently turned away from Japan’s
National Press Center, including the Dalai Lama.

INDEX11 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

F E AT URE

IN
TOJO’SF O O T S T E P STOKYO IS A
TREASURE TROVE
OF SITES CONNECTED
TO JAPAN’S WARTIMEPRIME MINISTERWIKIPEDIA - CC BY-SA 4.0

MARK SCHREIBERL
An official portrait of Tojo
disseminated on December 2,1942 during the first anniversaryof the Great East Asia War.

ast December, I learned from a colleague that I was living fairly close to
the former residence of the late Army
General and former Prime Minister
Hideki Tojo. After determining its location on
my computer, I drove over for a look-see on themorning of New Year’s Day.
Perhaps as a pretext to get me out of the houseduring the pandemic, I then embarked on aneffort to deepen my admittedly shallow knowledge of the man who served as Japan’s prime
minister from October 1941 to July 1944. While

this article adopts a piecemeal approach, what
I have learned so far has made me want to delve
deeper into the life of the man who, during thefirst years of World War II, was lumped together
in Allied propaganda with Hitler and Mussolini.
The son of an army general with roots in theformer Nambu domain of Iwate Prefecture,
Tojo was born on December 30, 1884, in what
is now Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward. He spent most of
his life in the capital, and died there, executedby hanging in Sugamo Prison on December 23,
1948, making him one of the last of the leadersof Axis powers and their client states to be put
to death after the war.

INDEX12 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

IN TOJO’S FOOTSTEPSEri Hotta wrote in Japan 1941:
Countdown to Infamy.

Kwantung Army HQ; right: Bancho
Elementary School

As a boy, there was little doubt Hideki
would follow his family tradition of serving
in the military. He first attended the Bancho
Elementary School, located close to Ichigaya Station, and later a nearby branch of thePeers’ School (Gakushuin).
In March 1905, Tojo received his commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry of
the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1912, on his
third attempt, he gained entry into the Army
War College, a stepping stone to the senior
ranks. This achievement was said to havegreatly pleased his father, who died the following year.
In 1918–19, Tojo was sent to Siberia as part of
the Japanese expeditionary force that intervened in the Russian Civil War. After WorldWar I armistice, he served as military attacheat the Japanese embassy in Berlin between
1919 and 1922.
From 1 March, 1937 to 30 May, 1938, Tojo
served as chief of staff of Japan’s Kwantung
Army. Its headquarters in Ryojun (Lushun orPort Arthur, now a district of Dalian city), hasbeen preserved as a museum.
In August 1937, he commanded the Chahar Expeditionary Force in a victory against
Nationalist Chinese troops in Operation Chahar. He was recalled to Japan in May 1938 toserve as vice-minister of war. In July 1940, he
became army minister in Fumimaro Konoe’s
second cabinet and left an indelible stamp on
the wartime conduct of Japan’s soldiers.

On January 8, 1941, Tojo introduced“Instructions for the Battlefield,” elaborating on ideal soldierly conduct. The code ...
included the notorious passage, “Do not
suffer the shame of being captured alive.”
This order glorifying death would betaken as a command to commit suicide in
the face of impending capture and would
come to have a devastating impact. It was
printed in booklet form, and was distributed to every soldier despite the country’s
serious paper shortage. And ordinary
citizens could purchase the phonographrecording of Tojo’s recitation of it.
Following the resignation of Konoue, Tojo was
appointed prime minister on 17 October, 1941,
in the vague hope that he could somehow control the hawks in the military. But by this time
the forces had been put in motion to wage war
against the Western powers, and Tojo foundhimself in an untenable position.
In the room next door [in the prime minister’s
residence], Tojo’s wife Katsu slept with two
daughters, who were still schoolgirls. She
could easily hear the sounds of documents
shuffled and Tojo pacing the floor, whichsuggested something consequential was
about to happen. On the night of December
6th and the early hours of December 7, Katsu
and her daughters heard sobs. At first suppressed, the sobs became louder and turned
into unrestrained weeping. Katsu rose fromher futon, opened the door in the hallway
and peeped into the room. There she saw
her husband crying while kneeling in the“seiza” position on his futon. Tojo, a soldier

INDEX13 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

IN TOJO’S FOOTSTEPS

Tojo’s former residence;bottom images: Heiwajima
motorboat race course

who always brimmed with self-assurance
and who never demonstrated weakness,cried, making no attempt to brush away
his tears. Katsu and her daughters sensed[his] demeanor was on the verge of collapse, and seeing him in that state caused
them to weep as well.
— From Tojo Hideki to Tenno no Jidai,
Masayasu Hosaka, (Chikuma Bunko, 2005)
In response to a question concerning the difference between himself, Hitler and Mussolini
during the 81st session of the Diet on 5 February, 1943, Tojo said:“Tojo the person is merely an ordinary
citizen...I am not in the least different fromany one of you. Only I have been given the
responsibility of ... prime minister. That iswhere we differ. Such a person shines only
when shone upon by the light of His Majesty,
and without that light I would be as nothing.
I am able to be honored because I enjoy thetrust of His Majesty and is [sic] appointed
to this position. Therein I am of an entirely
different character from the gentlemen ofEurope who are known as ‘dictators.’”— From Party Politics to Military Dictatorship,
Shinobu Seizaburo, (1967)

One thing Tojo shared with his two European
counterparts was having been targeted forassassination. Historian Masayasu Hosaka,writing in Nikkan Gendai (March 23 and 24,2021), documented five plots hatched against
Tojo’s life in his waning months as prime
minister. The best known was a scheme by
Tomoshige Tsunoda, an army major and veteran of the fighting in China. Infuriated by Tojo’s
fabricated proclamations of “great victories,”
Tsunoda, together with a police judo instructor
named Ushijima, hatched a plot to kill Tojo bysuicide- bombing his car. Their scheme had thetacit approval of Gen. Kanji Ishihara, a vocal
opponent of Tojo. Tsunoda was arrested in September 1944 – after Tojo had already resigned –dismissed from the army and sentenced to two
years in prison.
Tojo’s former residence at Yoga 1-chome,
10-4, Setagaya Ward (described as “modest”),
is identified by this marker. The property now
belongs to the Rissho Kosekai religion. When
American intelligence officers came to arrest
him on September 11, 1945, he attemptedsuicide using a pistol taken from a captured
American airman.
After discharge from the U.S. military hospital in Yokohama, Tojo was confined at the former Omori POW camp, situated on reclaimed
land in Tokyo’s Ota Ward. The spectator
grandstand of the Heiwajima motorboat race
course roughly occupies the footprint of theoriginal camp.
The most unpopular man in the Omori
camp is Hideki Tojo, the man who ledthem all in the war as premier and war
minister. Now, because they consider
that he failed ... and shamefully bungled
his suicide in September, all but themost despicable of his fellow prisoners
ignore Tojo. They seem to feel that he istechnically dead. They do not admit him
to their walks in the prison compound.
They do not play “Go” with him. Whenhe seats himself at meals, they scrupulously avoid his table. And when hewalks out of his barracks, they casually
get out of his path.
— “Lord Tojo is treated with silent contemptby camp’s other prisoners” (LIFE magazine, 12
November, 1945)

INDEX14 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

IN TOJO’S FOOTSTEPSThe witness
dock from which
Tojo testified
can be seenin the photo's
center.

On December 8, exactly four years after theattack on Pearl Harbor, Tojo was transferredto Sugamo prison. Hosaka wrote that his MP
guards at Sugamo, pleased to have such anillustrious personage under their watch, “regularly pilfered Tojo’s soap, toothbrush and towel
as souvenirs”.
The International Military Tribunal for the Far
East, held from May 1946 to November 1948,
took place in the grand hall of what was formerly the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Now

called the Ichigaya Memorial Hall, it is situatedwithin the Japan Defense Ministry complex.
The remaining wing of what was a much larger
building has been restored to its original stateand is open to the public for daily tours.
On November 12, 1948, the tribunal handed
down death sentences to Tojo and six otherclass-A war criminals. Details of their final days
were recorded by Sugamo prison chaplain Shinsho Hanayama. At 5 pm on December 22, theseven were served a last meal of rice, miso soup,INDEX15 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

IN TOJO’S FOOTSTEPS
Citing a declassified transcript of a meeting of the G2 Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, held on November 26,
1951, “… it was the consensus of this groupthat any such action (to a request for theremains) would be extremely inadvisable... the answer should take the line that theremains of the persons involved were irretrievably destroyed ... At the time [disposalof the remains] was treated as a closely
guarded secret and even now, the facts
are uncertain.”This monument, in a smallpark adjacent to the Sunshine
60 building in Ikebukuro, waserected on the site of the Sugamo
Prison gallows. The inscription
reads “Eikyu heiwa wo negatte”(for the sake of eternal peace);bottom: Kuboyama crematory
in Yokohama, site of Tojo’s
cremation.

— The Secret Journey of General Tojo’s
Ashes, Eiichiro Tokumoto, Number 1 Shimbun(August 2015)

grilled fish and meat. They went to the gallows
just after midnight on December 23.
Former Tokyo governor Naoki Inose is convinced that the date the seven Class-A war criminals went to the gallows was purposely selectedby Gen. MacArthur.
MacArthur must certainly have been awarethe date coincided with the crown prince’s
15th birthday, and the staging of the executions on December 23 was intended
to serve as a “delayed action device”. In
MacArthur’s mind, when Crown Prince
Akihito eventually ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne and December 23 becamea public holiday, Japanese would receivea not-so-subtle annual reminder that theemperor and other members of the imperial family were able to evade prosecution
for war crimes. But MacArthur’s stratagem
was foiled by Hirohito’s longevity. Fourdecades were to pass and by the time theemperor’s birthday became a new public
holiday on December 23, 1989, few Japanese recalled the date’s significance.”— Naoki Inose in Shukan Gendai magazine(December 26, 2008 - January 2, 2009)
Tojo’s cremated remains were not sent to his
family, and accounts vary as to what actually
happened to them.

Torii gate at the Yasukuni Shrine

Moves toward Tojo’s rehabilitation camewell before the controversy over his enshrinement at Yasukuni. In 1950, the Japanese government designated Tojo’s status not as an
executed criminal, but as “having died whilein performance of public duties,” thereby
entitling his widow to a survivor's pension andmilitary pension.
On October 17, 1978, Yasukuni shrine’s
head priest, Nagayoshi Matsudaira, secretly
enshrined 14 class-A war criminals, including
Tojo. The enshrinement came to light the following April and remains a sticking point in Japan’s
relations with Asian countries to this day.
● Mark Schreiber writes the Big in Japan and
Bilingual columns for The Japan Times.

INDEX16 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

F E AT UREJAPAN UNFILTERED
A NEW, AD-FREE MEDIA PLATFORM FOCUSESON THE MARGINALIZED AND VOICELESSCHIE MATSUMOTOM

any of us who have worked injournalism and clashed with editors and sponsors have at one
point or another toyed with theidea of starting our own media platform. We
fret about independence, but running a media
company without corporate sponsorship isvery difficult.
Last December, I and several friends decided
to grasp that nettle with Unfiltered.coop, it is an
ad-free online news site that has started taking
slow but steady steps towards being an independent news organization.
Unfiltered is owned by journalists and read-ers who hold its shares. The news platform is
paid for by membership and subscription fees.
The cooperative currently has 12 journalists –most of them women – from Japan and several
other countries.
Our aim is to collectively protect media
independence and focus on underrepresented
sections of society. We want to protect andpromote their rights and to become, in a real
sense, the people’s press.
The reason we choose a cooperative model also lies in an attempt to steer away fromthe tech giants (Google, Facebook, Apple
and Amazon) and choose a cooperatively
owned domain.

INDEX17 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

JAPAN UNFILTERED
The idea to establish a new Internet news sitecame about because some of us felt the needto break free of the restrictive and unfair gatekeeping that exists at news organizations.
Women are still in a minority in the media
industry. Some of our reporters have foughtwith editors who dismiss stories that containthe word “gender”, or who say that stories
about gender issues “don’t sell.”Reporting on labor issues invites potential
conflict with advertisers and corporate sponsors when disputes emerge at these companies. Even when they don’t, executive decisions
at media organizations may assume otherwise.
Media and journalists exercise sontaku attheir companies and tend to filter out information that might provoke reprimands or discipline by bosses, or be met by resistance when
they try to challenge the status quo.
Sometimes there are clear signs of pressure
from the establishment. Journalists themselves
can often become institutionalized, because,
for example, they are considered privileged (atleast in Japan), and that can lead to misjudgments about a story’s news value.
The sense of privilege enjoyed by corporate
journalists interferes with reporting when thevoices of the underprivileged and underrepresented are screened out.
The cooperative style of Unfiltered encourages
fairer gatekeeping and newsroom management.
Rather than operating based on a pyramid-style newsroom presided over by a chief
editor, with multiple reporters working at
more junior levels, Unfiltered members thinkhorizontally, which means no one member
has more power or authority than another.
There are no managers.
We believe the absence of hierarchy among
Unfiltered members will help keep them closer
to the ground and better able to report on theneeds and concerns of ordinary people. Its
objective is to dig deeper into the lives of thesepeople and identify social issues that othermedia organizations might miss.
Unfiltered journalists are motivated not justto tell stories but to empower their interviewees and the people who feature in their stories,
and to generate grassroots social movements.
Those of you who have worked in overseas
media may well share my irritation when
editors thousands of miles away ask us tofind “quirky Japan” stories, or when that time

Women are still in aminority in the media
industry. Some of ourreporters have foughtwith editors who dismiss
stories that contain theword “gender”, or who saythat stories about genderissues “don’t sell.”comes around again to report on annual orseasonal events.
While recognizing the importance of monitoring politics and the economy (which admittedly comes with its share of quirkiness), wepay much closer attention to three groups
whose contribution to Japan is often overlooked: women, foreigners and workers.
For example, we have recently written about
overworked staff at public health centers
during the Covid-19 epidemic, and will soon
run a series of interviews with immigrantsthat sheds light on the lives of people who
seek asylum in this country, revealing a side to
Japan that is rarely seen.
Joining Unfiltered by itself does not create
people who are fair and equal minded, so we
aspire to continue training and educating ourselves to instill a better understanding of socialand minority issues, as well as to improve ourjournalistic skills.
We also plan to promote exchanges between
our reporters and readers, many of whom areinterested in learning from journalists and hearing their “untold” stories. These exchanges will
also give readers the opportunity to discuss theissues and challenges they face in their daily
lives, and for journalists to act on them.
Taking on the role of watchdog of people
in power means we inevitably encounterpressure, and even threats. Journalists need asecure and safe space to pursue their mission
to keep democracy safe. We hope to make ourown small contribution.
● Chie Matsumoto is a journalist and an adjunctmedia instructor in the Faculty of Law at Hosei
University

INDEX18 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

OBITUARY

FLIGHT OF THE
BIRDMANREMEMBERING PETER HAZELHURST, AN IRREPRESSIBLE
REPORTER WHOSE ADVENTURES TOOK HIM FROMAPARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA TO THE FALL OF SAIGONRICHARD VARNER“T

hey took off the blindfold. Sitting in front of me
was Nelson Mandela, the most wanted man inSouth Africa.” – Peter Hazelhurst, writing in The
Sunday Express, May 14, 1961, about Mandela’s
last interview before his release from prison in 1990.
Peter Hazelhurst skirted the edge to protect Nelson Mandela
from the South African Gestapo, shrewdly inserting the blindfold ruse into the lede of his story. After the piece ran, Peter was
hauled in and squeezed by the iniquitous Colonel A.T. Spengler,of the police’s Special Branch, the notorious unit that harassed
anti-apartheid groups with tactics from spying to torture andassassination. Spengler wanted to know where Peter had found
Mandela. The pressure was intense because The Special Branch
had a history of doing away with people who’d rankled them –such as Mandela and Hazelhurst. The young journalist, still in
his twenties, didn’t crack.
Peter once said to me with his devil’s grin: “I told the bastard
Spengler to read my story … I’d been blindfolded.” Spengler
was infuriated, knowing in his gut the blinfold was a dodge tocover Mandela’s tracks, but in the end, he was ordered to let

COURTESY OF RICHARD VARNERPeter Hazelhurst, the birdman, sports
his homemade canvas wings, 1958

INDEX19 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

FLIGHT OF THE BIRDMAN

Hazelhurst’s reporton his interview with
Nelson Mandela in
The Sunday Express,
May 14, 1961

PHOTOS COURTESY OF RICHARD VARNER

the cheeky pressman go, albeit very reluctantly and only after
hours of brutal questioning. The South African regime was evil,
but not stupid. Peter’s Mandela story was already out there, so if
the South African reporter, with his English ancestors, abruptly
disappeared inside the Special Branch, the international hullabaloo would have only fed the Mandela legend.
Back then the threat of black revenge haunted white South
Africans like Spengler, and the thought of paying for apartheid’s
sins with their blood scared the bejesus out them. In 1961, Mandela granted this interview to allay such fears, telling Peter hepromised “a new non-racial constitution to bring about a new
non-racial and democratic South African society”.
On February 11, 1990, some three decades later in Cape Town,
Mandela repeated his assurance after his release from prison.
“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought
against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together inharmony and with equal opportunities,” he said.
Listening to this speech all those decades later, Hazelhurst
was stunned by how Mandela had left prison with his non-racial
message unchanged. Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom, describes his 27 years of incarceration –the many days
he spent perched on a rock pile making little ones out of big
ones, all the time prevented from seeing his children. I spokewith Peter in December 2020 back in his beloved South Africa,
not long before he died of Covid-19. His last words were of how
inspired he still was by Mandela leaving prison untarnished byhate, ready to hone his ideal of non-racism into a weapon to killapartheid. Peter died, however, believing that much had beenleft undone.
It’s easy to kill an enemy in the mountains but hard to kill
the one in the heart.
Chinese General Wang Yangming (1472-1529)
In the late 1950s, Peter broke into journalism in the mostunlikely of ways. He started out as a birdman, a rare speciesof skydiver who jumped out of airplanes without a parachute.
Instead, they used canvas wings, and Peter’s were homemade, double stitched by his aunt to prevent them fromcoming apart at the seams. Peter did fudge it with an emergency chute pack, which is no doubt why he was one of therare surviving former birdmen. His daredevil antics caught
the attention of the press, and Peter was interviewed by areporter who would later recruit him as an apprentice pressman, as they call reporters there. Churning out stories for
The Sunday Express, Peter was befriended by people such as
anti-apartheid activist Ruth First, who was later assassinatedby a letter bomb made by the Special Branch, according toPeter’s sources. Ruth had recommended Peter to Ahmed
Kathrada, Mandela’s prison mate, who in 1961 showed up at
Peter’s office in search of a trustworthy pressman with theguts to risk interviewing Mandela.

Hazelhurst and Amed Kathrada, half a century after Kathrada
introduced him to Mandela

Peter is remembered for this Mandela interview, but his
reporting in 1966 of the Rhodesian embargo finally sent him
over the border, fleeing his beloved South Africa as persona non
grata – a fortuitous break that lead eventually to his internationally renowned byline. Clearly, he’d caught the South African government with its breeches down. He’d been stringing for papers
in the UK, where Prime Minister Harold Wilson had been reluctant
to invade Rhodesia to overturn white rule and opted instead tosupport an embargo purportedly to force out Ian Smith. Petersuspected the embargo was a charade, and Rhodesia did lastanother 13 years. The country’s survival was due in no small partto South Africans who were eager to prop up whites in Rhodesia,
and Peter had picked up a report of Afrikaners sending convoysof oil-laden trucks over the border at night to break the embargo.

INDEX20 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

COURTESY OF RICHARD VARNER

FLIGHT OF THE BIRDMAN

Hazelhurst, then almost 70, on his last birdman jump

Peter and his wife, Jo, drove up north toward the Limpopo
River, which divided the two countries, for a whiff of what was
happening and saw black clouds of diesel exhaust layering thesunset from hundreds of tanker lorries revving their motors
in the brown fields as they waited for darkness to descend
so they could steal across into Rhodesia. Peter left Jo in the
car to take a quick look around, but she soon found herself
encircled by blue-eyed Boers. She artfully launched into
a tirade about how her husband had left to buy farmland
but had got lost, “[It’s] unfortunate for us … but, pray, whatbusiness is this of yours?” she asked in a daunting voice that
could scare hell out of the devil. And so, the formidable Jo
Hazelhurst sent those Afrikaner security-men, likely from theSpecial Branch, on their way with their ears stinging. According
to Peter’s account, her indomitable spirit saved their lives,
for the embargo breakers could have murdered them in cold
blood and would have done so with impunity had they realized
what her husband was doing.
In 1967, Peter and Jo, now stateless, landed in London, where
William Rees-Mogg was editor at The Times. Peter’s Mandela
interview and exposé of the so-called Rhodesian oil embargo
were his credentials. During his job interview at The Times,
the conservative Rees-Mogg spoke but a few pithy sentences.
“Peter, hullo. Good finally to meet you. I’m shipping you out as
our Asia Correspondent. Before you leave, do spend some timein our library and look over the clips,” he said.
Rees-Mogg had sent Peter out to report on half the world’s
people. “That’s what it was like to have worked at the old Timesof London … you went where the story took you and not to follow anybody’s agenda,” Peter once told me. He reported for The
Times for 15 years, covering everything from wars to high techrobots, and visiting every country in Asia except Laos and North
Korea, only to get canned by Rupert Murdoch. He moved on to
the Straits Times of Singapore and after seven years there, suffered the same fate, only this time at the hands of Lee Kuan Yew.

The Hazelhurst anecdotes are legion – from the hilarious to
the perilous. In 1969, he’d been assigned to write about the wedding of the crown prince of Nepal, but the king had left instructions at the gate that no one with a foreign press ID was to be
admitted to the sacred ceremony. Peter pocketed his press
card, and instead flashed at the baffled guards the back of abox of Chiclets chewing gum as his “ID”. He was the only foreign
reporter to get access.
On April 27, 1975, three days before the fall of Saigon, Peterand Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Michel Laurent, werein Xuan Loc, Vietnam, when incoming mortar shells started toburst near them. First in front of them, then behind, and thena third in front of them, only closer this time – a lethal exercise
Peter recognized as bracketing. He hissed at Michel: “We needto get out of here.” The French photographer winced, but his eye
remained stuck to his camera viewfinder. Peter took the now
angry Laurent by the elbow, dragging him away, just before afourth shell exploded where they’d just been standing. The nextday, Laurent wanted to go back to the scene with Peter, who said
no. “If we go back, we die,” he said. That day – April 28, 1975 –Michel Laurent did go back to Xuan Loc, where he became thelast foreign journalist to die in the Vietnam War.
Peter lived to report the fall of Saigon … and then for another46 years. He accomplished much, winning the UK’s International Reporter of the Year award (Britain’s answer to the Pulitzer)
in 1971 for his stories on the Bangladesh Liberation War. Peterwas beloved by many, but hated by some: South Africa’s Special
Branch, despots and media magnates. But he once told me how
he was singularly proud to have had the honor of researchingand designing the plaque hanging in the FCCJ that bears thenames of his colleagues – fellow foreign journalists like Michel
Laurent who had died in Indochina.
About 15 years ago, when Peter was pushing 70, and nursing
a back already bowed from his birdman injuries, he got the urge
to skydive just one more time and asked the local jump club in
Johannesburg to take him up in a plane. Given Peter’s legendary status in South Africa as the last surviving birdman, the club
reluctantly found a way to comply. Peter thought the jump hadgone so well that he wanted to do it a second time. At that point,
we knew that the only way we could stop him was to threaten
to tell Jo.
Peter spent his latter days using a wheelchair due to backinjuries dating to the 1950s. “The wheelchair is super-charged,
and, of course, I always wear a crash helmet so I can tear aroundthe retirement village,” he joked.
There was only one Peter Hazelhurst: birdman, pressman …
and friend.
Cheers, Old Son.
● Richard Varner is a retired television journalist. He served on the
FCCJ board of directors in 1987 and is the author of The Journalist’sChildren, a novel about life at FCCJ 30 years ago.

INDEX21 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

OBITUARY

PETER HAZELHURST
AS I KNEW HIM

Peter Hazelhurst interviewed at home in Johannesburg by Fuji TV, 7th December 2012

PETER MCGILLThe FCCJ in the early 1980s could
be slightly intimidating to a young
journalist. Deference to elders was
expected, and often the wisest
course was to keep a respectful distance.
Turn the corner into the main bar on the 20th
floor of the Yurakucho Denki Building and you
would often pass three old men playing liar dice.
The American invariably smoking a cigar had
been in the Office of Strategic Services during
World War II. The diminutive Frenchman would
occasionally display a tattoo on his forearm from
Auschwitz. The gent in white hair who spoke
German-inflected English and perfect Japanesewas deceptively shabby; his father had studied
music under Gustav Mahler and was a brotherin-law of Thomas Mann. It would take years togain the confidence of some of these old timers.

Peter Hazelhurst was utterly different. To
start with, he was rarely still, but paced the
FCCJ floors like a hungry fox. When he paused
prowling, it was to pick up a toothpick, or steal a
French fry, and he would sit with hands clasped
on a chair rest, ready to spring to his feet. I wondered if he missed smoking cigarettes.
New FCCJ members would soon makePeter’s acquaintance and find themselveslistening to his daring escapades and scoops.
(The only instance where Peter may have beena tad elastic with the verité was his entry into
journalism. Did he really parachute, almost
literally, into a newsroom? His brother David,
to whom he bore an uncanny resemblance,
became a newspaper hound in South Africa in
the late 1950s and was also lauded as a press
legend on his death in 2015.)

INDEX22 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

PETER HAZELHURST AS I KNEW HIM

Peter Hazelhurstwith Emiko McGill
and Ayaka, FCCJ,
13th November 1988

When I was still
24, I asked Peterfor advice on an
exotic holiday
destination.
Peter urged me totake Emiko, myfuture wife, to the“tropical paradise”
of Sri Lanka.
We duly arrived in
Colombo in July
1983, blissfully
unaware that 16
years of civil war
was about to erupt.

Peter was possessed of a ready and disarming charm. There was warmth and openness,and genuine interest in and care for others.
This combined with boyish enthusiasms, and apuckishness that showed in an impish grin andtwinkling eyes.
The closer you were to Peter the more likely you were to fall prey to his pranks. Robert
Whymant, who tragically died in the 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami, was a good friend as
well as sparring partner. Whymant wrote for
the Guardian while Peter was with The Times.
On one occasion, they both agreed on a tactical truce. Neither would file that night. Peterkept his word, but pretended to have broken it,
forging a head office ‘herogram’ congratulating him on an outstanding scoop. He ensured
Whymant read it the following morning.
Whymant’s fury at the “betrayal” was one ofPeter’s favourite anecdotes.
Peter also had a keen eye for absurdity. In thebowels of the old FCCJ Library, he told everyone of a gigantic tome called India at a Glance.
By the time I knew Peter, he was relaxing into
his work as Tokyo correspondent for the Straits
Times. Fortunately, or not, the demands madeby the Straits Times on its Tokyo correspondent were far from onerous, and were easily
met by Peter, who worked out of the FCCJ withinvaluable Japanese language assistance from
Koichi Ishiyama.
This left plenty of time for Peter to pursue
personal interests. Chief among them was the
new world of Japanese video discs. The FCCJ

video room on the 18th floor became Peter’s
man cave to which we were all invited. Few ofus managed to resist his film suggestions.
Peter could be very persuasive, and in another life, would have made a first-rate salesman. It
was thanks to Peter’s energetic promotion of a
new Brother electric typewriter-cum-mini-word
processor that Whymant, Georges Baumgartnerand I each bought one - and soon regretted it!
When I was still 24, I asked Peter for advice
on an exotic holiday destination. Peter urged
me to take Emiko, my future wife, to the “tropical paradise” of Sri Lanka.
We duly arrived in Colombo in July 1983,
blissfully unaware that 16 years of civil war
was about to erupt. From the swimming poolof the Galle Face Hotel, we progressed by car
into the interior, touring tea plantations, staying in the colonial Hill Club, visiting the Templeof the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy. It was while
we were being chauffeured around botanicalgardens that news came through on the radioof Sinhalese massacres of Tamils. It was notlong before we heard gunshots, saw smoke
rising from buildings and bodies floating in alake. Twenty-four hour curfews were imposed
during “Black July” and we were only able toreach the pristine beaches of Trincomalee by
giving a free ride to a chief of police. We shared
a compartment of the first train to Colombo
with armed soldiers. At a Tamil refugee camp,
soldiers pointed their rifles at me. Thankfully,
their officer used to read The Observer while
training at Sandhurst and was pleased to meet
one of the paper’s correspondents. There wasstrict censorship, but from our room at theGalle Face, I managed to phone through a story
which made the front page of The Observer.
David Lammers, then with the Associated Pressin Tokyo, asked me to smuggle some rolls of AP
film back to Japan.
Our daughter Ayaka was born in 1988. Twenty-five years later, she was working for Fuji Television in London when Nelson Mandela died.
Ayaka was sent to South Africa for coverage ofthe funeral. She learnt how Peter had secretlyinterviewed Mandela as a most wanted man
and later testified at his trial. Ayaka arranged tomeet Peter at his Johannesburg home and Fuji
broadcast her interview.
● Peter McGill was president of the FCCJ from1990-91INDEX23 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

BOOK BREAKVOICES FROM
THE MARGINSFRESH FROM WINNING THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD,MIRI YU EXPLAINS WHY HER KOREAN BACKGROUNDIS CRITICAL TO HER WRITINGSUVENDRINI KAKUCHI

T

he award-winning author Miri Yu iscommitted to shining a light on the
lives of marginalized communities. Yu,
who was born in Japan but has South
Korean nationality, has won plaudits for her sensitive portrayals of their struggles and dreams.
Her latest book, Tokyo Ueno Station, won the2020 National Book Award for translated literature, for the English translation by Morgan Giles.
During a recent Book Break at the FCCJ, Yu
said her writing was a vehicle for people whose
voices are rarely heard. “The core focus in mywriting is to listen carefully to the stories ofpeople who are treated as if they are no longer
human in our society. I document their lives totell the truth,” she said.
In Tokyo Ueno Station, the spirit of the deadprotagonist, Kazu, who was born in 1960, thesame year as the current emperor, Naruhito,
relates a story of sadness and vulnerability,
incorporating themes of a migrant laborer
from northeastern Japan and his work on
Olympic construction sites in Tokyo, as well as
the March 2011 triple disaster.

INDEX24 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

VOICES FROM THE MARGINS“My particularexperience as a
Korean in Japan
inspires mycreativity”

Kazu lives in one of the so-called ‘tent cities’in Ueno park, foraging for food and visiting
soup kitchens. Arriving from depressed cities,
Japan`s homeless are mostly elderly, maleblue-collar workers who provide cheap labour
to sustain the city`s many construction projects. They eke out a living, and block out theirpain with alcohol, all the time setting money
aside to support their families back home.
Yu’s characters live, isolated and ignored, inthe park, which is known for its chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms. The stark contrast
between the majesty of the flowers and thelives of the park dwellers shatters the commonly held image of modern Japan as an affluent society, its people cocooned in gleaming
cities. Japanese society, says Yu, hides things it
would rather others didn’t see. In that way, herwriting forces us to reckon with our own place
in a complacent society.
Yu is exploring a similar message in a bookshe is currently writing. Titled JR Jobansen
Yunomori Eki, it will focus on the lives of workers currently braving the risk of radiation as
they help decommission Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant, which was wrecked by the
March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Yu approaches her writing meticulously,
spending days interviewing the men from herhome in the Odaka district of Minamisoma, acity located near the nuclear plant, where runsa bookstore called Full House and a theater
space called LaMaMa ODAKA.
Her background makes her forensic examination of Japan’s underbelly all the more convincing. She is the eldest of four children born
into a poor Korean household whose motherfled during the 1950-53 Korean War and later
worked as cabaret artist in Japan. Her father
repaired machines in a pachinko parlor, a sector of the gambling industry managed mostly
by ethnic Koreans deprived of other opportunities to progress in their adopted country.
Yu’s parents struggled to provide for theirchildren, and their marriage ended in divorce.
Confronted by an abusive father and bullying
at school, Yu graduated from middle school andspent time wandering around in search of a new
beginning, a journey interrupted several times
by thoughts of killing herself. The discovery,
with the help of Japanese artists, of her artistic
talents helped her emerge from that tunnel.
“My particular experience as a Korean inJapan inspires my creativity,” Yu said. “Mycontribution to Japanese literature is where
I have found a place as a writer, added Yu,
who won the prestigious Akutagawa award
in 1996 for her novel Family Cinema.
Yu spoke of her love of hiking in the Japanese Alps and the close relationship she hasdeveloped with her neighbours in Odaka,
who call her “Miri-san”. Her bookstore andtheater space are incredibly popular, and she
hosts a local radio show that recently interviewed more than 600 disaster survivors.
She is among several members of the ethnic
Korean zainichi community who have turned
to writing.
During and immediately after Japan’s 19101945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula,many Korean authors wrote about identityand belonging in works published in Japanese.
Research has also uncovered how the Chinese and Korean languages influenced earlyJapanese literature. Man’yoshu, a collection ofeighth century poetry, includes Korean works.
That continuous assimilation between two
close geographical neighbours has created a richseam of Korean literary creativity in Japan. Yu’s
success is yet another landmark in that process.
● Suvendrini Kakuchi is Tokyo correspondent for
University World News in the UK.

INDEX25 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

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

The FCCJ is delighted to announce thewinners of this year’s Swadesh DeRoy
Memorial Scholarship awards

P enWinner:Kaori Kohyama, Waseda University
Runner-up:
Shoko Naito, University of the Sacred Heart

V ideoWinner:Momoko Hatakeyama, Chuo Univeristy
Runner-up:
Himari Semans, Waseda University

Pho t ogr aph y
Winner:
Maria Elizabeth Thomas, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

FCCJ Swadesh DeRoy Memorial Scholarship CommitteeINDEX26 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

FCCJ SCHOLARSHIP PHOTOGRAPHY WINNERJAPAN’S CHANGINGWORKFORCE AND
GENDER ROLESMARIA ELIZABETH THOMAS, A STUDENT AT RITSUMEIKANASIA PACIFIC UNIVERSITY, ON THE IMAGES THAT SECUREDHER THE PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE IN THIS YEAR’S SWADESH
DEROY MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS

The resident drag queen of Beppu, puts some finishing touches to her makeup

Ilive and study in the town of Beppu in Oita prefecture. Beppu is known for its hot springs and for its cultural
diversity – due in part to the booming student population at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Thereis a wonder and a mystery in the way that the students and local inhabitants coexist. Japanese culture
is steeped in conservative ideals of heteronormative gender roles and modesty, but my photography
reflects the changing landscape of gender roles in Beppu. Our generation is radically challenging the ideasof binary roles in society. My photographs reflect the power of the female body in expressing sexuality, menembracing makeup and the breakdown of gendered fashion. The future of gender as we know it is fluid andlimitless, and my hope is that my photos express that and show others that even in a tiny town like Beppu,change is on the horizon.
I intend to invest my prize money in professional camera equipment (the photos I submitted were all taken
on a friend’s camera). I also plan to travel around Japan, meet people and capture the daily lives of marginalized sections of society.

27 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

INDEX

JAPAN’S CHANGING WORKFORCE AND GENDER ROLES
Top: My Friend “Onion”
eats sushi in front of aconvenience store
Bottom left: Rossi, acisgender male from the US
who danced professionallyfor the Houston Ballet
before coming toOita to teach English.
I photographed him infront of this tree on a rainy
day, and was taken by thejuxtaposition of the tree
against his form. He still
dances on the weekends
and hopes to get back to it
full-time soon
Bottom right: Andi – a dearfriend of mine – a cisgendermale from Indonesia posesin the alleyways of Kitahama
in a tube top that he said
is “the fiercest piece ofclothing” he owns.

INDEX28 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

CLUB NEWSNew members

ASSOCIATE MEMBERTOMEO ROBERT D. GRESSARD“Tomeo” was born in France of a
Caribbean mother and a Polish-German
father, and so was introduced to cultural
diversity at a young age. He relocatedto the US at age 13 to complete his
studies in Chicago. With a mixed background in art (music) andinternational diplomacy and public relations, he spent timein New York around recording celebrities working with Keith
Diamond’s production company. Tomeo was later introduced
to Japan and started making trips to Asia, completing several
successful consulting and concept architecture projects andbusiness establishments. Eighteen years ago, on the birthof his second child, he set up a public relations organization
to improve Japan’s global communications and corporate
governance. The resulting Marine Foundation was launched inTokyo in March 2013. The foundation is now registered on fivecontinents, where it helps develop regional economies. Tomeo
believes that the path to happiness is to serve others for the
betterment of society.

ASSOCIATE MEMBERKOICHIRO NISHIHARA is a physician
who worked in hospitals until 10 years
ago, but now conducts traveling medical
examinations. His work has taken him
to the scenes of natural disasters andincidents throughout the country,
particularly in Kagoshima prefecture and Fukuoka prefecture.
He would be delighted to discuss his work with members of theFCCJ.

ASSOCIATE MEMBERNOBUO WAZAKI
Phillip Securities JapanREGULAR MEMBERRENÉ SLAMA has been appointed
as AFP’s Tokyo bureau Chief. An
experienced international journalist
with AFP for more than 35 years, he waspreviously posted in Dubai, Bangkok,
New Delhi, Islamabad, New York, London
and Paris. Altogether, he has spent almost a third of his
career in Asia. He was the AFP Bureau Chief for Pakistan and
Afghanistan (1989-1992), for South Asia (2000-2004) and forSouth-East Asia (2005-2009). He also headed the AFP Dubai
bureau, covering the Gulf and Yemen, between 2014 and 2019.
Earlier, René Slama was an AFP correspondent at the United
Nations in New York (1993-1997) and in London (1984-1986)
during the Thatcher years. As a political reporter in Paris (19871988), he covered presidential and legislative elections during
the Mitterrand era. Besides journalistic activities, René Slama
has carried out several missions for AFP’s management (19981999 and 2010-2013) to develop new information services on
the internet. Recently, in 2020, he took part in a process toreform the AFP-Paris newsroom. Slama is a graduate of theEcole Superieure de Journalisme (ESJ) of Lille in France. He ismarried and has three children.

PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTASSOCIATE MEMBERHIROKO INOKUMA
FreelanceINDEX29 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

CLUB NEWSNew in the library1
Poisoning the Pacific:
The US Military's Secret
Dumping of Plutonium,
Chemical Weapons, andAgent Orange
Jon Mitchell
Rowan & Littlefield

2

3

Civil and Political Rights
in Japan: A Tribute to Sir
Nigel Rodley

Tomorrow, the World:
The Birth of U.S. Global
Supremacy

Saul J. Takahashi (ed.)
Routledge
Gift from Lawrence Repeta

Stephen Wertheim
The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press

Join the Film CommitteeO● Karen Severns©2020 E.X.N K.K./EVER ROLLING FILMS

n Tuesday, April 20
at 7 pm for a sneak
preview screeningof Along the Sea,
the timely new docufiction
from director Akio Fujimoto,who brought his award-winning Japan-Cambodia coproduction Passage of Life to FCCJ
in 2017. His sophomore featureilluminates the plight of Vietnamese technical trainees inJapan, providing rare accessinto lives and struggles that are
gravely underrepresented on
the big screen, even as immigrant numbers increase. Alongthe Sea takes another torn-from-the-headlines subject, focusing his compassionate lens on three young Vietnamese women
who feel compelled to flee from their exploitative employer, although it means losing their legal status. They begin new work insnowy Aomori and their living conditions improve … until one day, an urgent hospital visit is needed. With no ID, no care can beprovided, and this leads the young women to make a dangerous decision. Fujimoto and producer Kazutaka Watanabe will bejoining us for the Q&A session. (Along the Sea, Japan/Vietnam, 2020, 88 minutes, in Japanese and Vietnamese with English andJapanese subtitles).

INDEX30 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITIONSOLILOQUY OF
THE FULL MOONARTWORK BY KŌZŌ CHIBAAPRIL 5 TO MAY 7, 2021

At a time when it is difficult to ignore our concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic, I am
grateful to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for the opportunity to holdthis exhibition. I recently held a virtual gallery on the Internet, an experiment that
could be considered a success in regards to its health and safety measures. However, I cannot help but feel that the focus was more on the dissemination of data than the viewingof art. As an artist, I am excited at the thought of holding this exhibition in a real space, allowing
people time to experience the warmth of the work as they travel through the world created in
my pictures and enjoy the absurd worldview presented there. I would like to take this moment
to offer my heartfelt gratitude to Bruce Osborn and his wife, Yoshiko, for making this exhibition
possible, to Koike Keiko of KEPT, my father and mother for their unflagging support, and all myfriends for their help.

Kōzō Chiba:
Born: November 14, 1971, the second son of the manga artist, Chiba Tetsuya. Studied art in Yōichirō’
Kawaguchi’s laboratory in the computer graphics department of the Japan Electronics College.
After graduation, he worked as a CG animator for Recruit Eizō Active as a VJ (visual jockey)
working in collaboration with musicians and other artists in Japan, China and UK. He formed themusic visual unit band Futon Logic. Among its members was photographer Bruce Osborn, who
led the visual section. Performances included a concert at London’s Institute of Contemporary
Arts. In 2011, Chiba participated in the charity event, 3/11 Charity, planned by the T-make unit
comprising Naomi Masuko and the illustrator Keiko Koike. In the same year, he established theillustrator unit KEPT with Koike. Website: http://kept.tokyo/gallery

INDEX31 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITION

Soliloquy of the Full Moon - Artwork by Kozo Chiba: April 5 to May 7, 2021

Soliloquy of the Full Moon
Di-dah, di-dah-dah, peeINDEX32 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITION

Soliloquy of the Full Moon - Artwork by Kozo Chiba: April 5 to May 7, 2021

White Whale
A white whale appears amid the great, cobalt blue waves.

INDEX33 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITION

Soliloquy of the Full Moon - Artwork by Kozo Chiba: April 5 to May 7, 2021

Moon Moon RiverA bright red sunrise, the flowing moon river and soaring moon
tower, stretching up into the distant sky.

INDEX34 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITION

Soliloquy of the Full Moon - Artwork by Kozo Chiba: April 5 to May 7, 2021

Temple on the Move
Riding on the back of giant yellow cat, the temple wants to getmoving so they won’t sink into the groundINDEX35 | FCCJ | APRIL 2021

EXHIBITION

Soliloquy of the Full Moon - Artwork by Kozo Chiba: April 5 to May 7, 2021

The Jellyfish Tale
I want to hear the story of the great jellyfish, it can be the same
story, I can listen to it any number of times…

www.fccj.or.jp