The magazine of The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan

June 2018 · Volume 50 · No. 6

Charles Smith
1935 ~ 2018

Tributes:
Remembering
Charles Smith

Memoirs:
Mr. Smith goes toTokyo (Part 3)

Sayonara Rejection:
Self-Publish yourown book

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JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 03

In this Issue
June 2018 · Volume 50 · No. 6

Publisher FCCJ

From the Archives

Editor Albert Siegel
Fuku Nabe Bugyo Geoffrey Tudor
Art Director Kohji Shiiki
Editorial Assistant Naomichi Iwamura
Photo Coordinator Akiko Miyake
Publications Committee Members
Albert Siegel
Geoffrey Tudor
Martin Koelling
Ayako Mie
Emiko Jozuka
Johann Fleuri
Tomomi Yokomura

Walter Cronkite – Trusted Anchorman
by Charles Pomeroy

A Fond Farewell to Charles Smith
by Anthony Rowley

5

FCCJ BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Remembering Charles Smith

6

Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo (Part 3)
by Charles Smith8

Self-Publish Your Book!
by John Boyd

10

I Dislike Kim and Trump but Hope They Succeed in Their Summitryby Bradley K. Martin

13

President Khaldon Azhari, PanOrient News
1st Vice President Anthony Rowley,Singapore Business Times
2nd Vice President Gregory Clark,
Writer/Columnist
Secretary Mary Corbett,Professional Associate Member
Treasurer William Kortekaas, Associate Member
Directors-at-Large Milton Isa, Associate MemberPeter Langan, Asia Times
Robert Whiting, Author, Freelance
Yoichi Yabe, Freelance
Kanji Yoshisuke Iinuma, The Oriental Economist
Associate Kanji Makoto Honjo, Associate Member

4

Features

FCCJ COMMITTEE CHAIRSAssociate Members Liaison Milton Isa
Compliance Kunio Hamada
DeRoy Memorial Scholarship Abby Leonard,
David SatterwhiteEntertainment Sandra Mori
Exhibition Bruce Osborn
Film Karen Severns
Finance Willem Kortekaas
Food & Beverage Robert Kirschenbaum,
Mehdi Bassiri
Freedom of Press Abby Leonard
House & Property Khaldon Azhari
Human Resources Khaldon Azhari
Information Technology Albert Siegel
Library, Archives & Workroom Koichi Ishiyama,
Suvendrini Kakuchi
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O’Connor
Membership Marketing Anthony Rowley
Professional Activities Fred Varcoe, Ayako Mie
Public Relations Dan Sloan
Publications Albert Siegel
Special Projects Haruko Watanabe
Membership Andrew Horvat, Peter O'Connor

Club News
Associates Make Their Voices Heard at Candidate Speak-Out
by Anthony Rowley

15

Last Month in Photos
Club Members Share Their Best Shots

16

Photo Exhibition: Days of Light - Peter Oxley

18• New in the Library• New Members

19

Foreign Press in Japan Robin Harding

PITCH US YOUR STORYThe Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan
Yurakucho Denki Building, North Tower 20F,
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04 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

From the Archives

Walter Cronkite – Trusted Anchorman
by CHARLES POMEROYW

PHOTOS FCCJ

alter Cronkite, long-time anchorof CBS Evening News who was
known as “the most trusted
man in America,” spoke at theClub on May 22, 1981, some two months after
his retirement. Seated to his left is Jack Russell(NBC), FCCJ president, and to his right is Terry
Anderson (AP), both noted journalists of thetime. Terry himself would make the news four
years later when he was abducted in Lebanon
by Muslim terrorists and held captive for almost
seven years.
Cronkite was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri,
on November 4, 1916, but lived in Houston, Texas, from age 10 after his family moved there.
He dropped out of university in 1935 during his
junior year to concentrate on journalism, andthen worked as a radio announcer before joining the United Press (UP) in 1937. After making
a name for himself covering major battles asa war correspondent during World War II, hejoined CBS in 1950 and covered news ranging
from political conventions and elections to
the 1960 Winter Olympics. As host of otherpopular programs, he also narrated historicalre-enactments and documentaries.
Cronkite’s reputation for trust further
strengthened after 1962, when he took over as
anchorman for CBS’s nightly newscast – soon

expanded from 15 to 30 minutes and in 1963 re-named
CBS Evening News. Highlights
included his coverage of John
F. Kennedy’s assassinationin November of 1963; Viet
Nam, (he commented editorially in 1968 on the futilityof that war); the Apollo moon
missions of 1969 and 1970;
Watergate in 1972; and the
Iran hostage crisis of 19791981. Accuracy and depth ofcoverage got the credit when
his newscast surpassed NBC’s
long-time Huntley-Brinkley
Report viewer ratings in 1970.
Thereafter it reigned as the top-rated program
until his retirement in 1981.
Excepting nights when he concluded withcommentary, Cronkite ended his broadcasts
by intoning “… And that’s the way it is,” whichbecame his hallmark. Early in the Iran crisis headded to this a count of the days U.S. citizens
had been kept hostage. He displayed it until
the end of their 444-day captivity. Indeed,
the man knew how to retain the attention ofviewers.
Although Cronkite’s long career on CBS
ended with his retirement on March 6, 1981,
he remained active as a special correspondent covering political and cultural events,and even John Glenn’s second space flight in
1998, as well as narrating documentaries andtaking part in panel discussions. In addition tohis many other awards and honors, the journalism school at Arizona State University wasnamed after Cronkite.
Walter Cronkite died on July 17, 2009, atthe age of 92. A further honor was extensive
documentation of his life now preserved at the
University of Texas at Austin.
And that’s the way it was.
● Charles Pomeroy is editor of Foreign
Correspondents in Japan, a history of the clubthat is available at the front desk.

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 05

Tributes

A FondFarewellto Charles
Smith
by ANTHONY ROWLEY

C

harles Smith was not just a gifted journalist; he was truly a gentleman and ascholar – always courteous in mannerand scholarly in his approach to work.
A classics graduate from Magdalen College,
Oxford, Charles might have been at home inacademe but instead he chose journalism – andjournalism was fortunate for that.
Charles spent a lifetime in the profession.
After a stint on a newspaper in Argentina, hejoined the Financial Times in the early 1970's,
from which he moved to the Far Eastern Economic Review. He passed away on May 18 at
the age of 82 after suffering – gallantly anduncomplainingly, as befitted his character –from malignant lymphoma since early 2015.
"An upstanding man whose intelligence andcivility was excelled only by his honesty," saidcolleague and former Far Eastern Economic
Review editor Philip Bowring in one of a wealthof tributes to Charles that have flowed in.
Charles helped "raise the profile" of the
Financial Times during his time there, wrote
Jurek Martin, a former foreign editor of thepaper. He was, in the words of former colleague Tracy Dahlby, a "complex, sophisticated and interesting man." Charles was a "dearfriend and great reporter," as the FCCJ's Bradley Martin put it. A man of "many admirable
traits" who "wrote with elegance and without
artifice," added veteran journalist Mike Tharp.
And, as FCCJ president Khaldon Azhari wrote
in the Club's official obituary notice, Charles "wassuperb at his craft and widely respected by his
peers and by the many Japanese he encountered in his reporting activities." During his longreporting career, Charles focused mainly onpolitics, business and economy. After leaving
the Review, he wrote for several publications
including Institutional Investor magazine.
Lofty in height at around 193cm, Charles
also stood tall in many other senses of theword. "I always looked up to him," said former
Tokyo bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal
Urban Lehner.

There was something almost schoolmasterly in his bearing, but something almost
boyish in his frequent delighted chuckle andhis equally frequent warm and genuine smile.
Modesty and authority existed side by side
within Charles, and while he was kind andgood humored, he was an exacting taskmaster who could command respect from thoseworking with him.
After joining the Financial Times, he worked
for a while in London covering Asian affairs
before being posted in Tokyo in 1973 as bureau
chief. When his assignment in Japan came toan end, he joined the Far Eastern Economic
Review as its Tokyo bureau chief in order tostay in Japan, which he loved.
The FT was, and is, a somewhat dour andaustere institution that is well regarded within
the international financial community while
the Review was a more rumbustious and often
inspired publication that was well regarded within the Asian political and diplomatic community.
The fact Charles was successful in bothworlds was testament to his ability to see manysides of a story and adapt to different environments and people. He was well respectedamong the Japanese in Japan and the Chinese
in Hong Kong with whom he worked, as well as
among his foreign colleagues.

Charles was a respected figure among themany Japanese government and other officials
whom he frequently met and interviewed. In
particular, former senior Bank of Japan official
and FCCJ Associate member Shijuro Ogata,for whom Charles organized frequent lunches
at the Club, was a close friend and admirer – asentiment that was fully reciprocated.
Charles was a well-known presence within
the FCCJ. Whether serving on the Board of
Directors, asking polite but incisive questionsof guest speakers at professional luncheons
and briefings, taking charge of various musical events or simply socializing in his invariably good-humored way in the bar, everyone
respected him.
Music was one of his true passions. A gifted musician and accomplished cello player
himself, Charles often performed with family
and friends, including at the FCCJ where herepeatedly served on the Music Committee.
Despite his illness, he maintained his playing,
to the delight of his many musical friends.
Charles' funeral service at Scott Hall on
the Waseda University campus was deeply
moving, with his widow Katsuko-san and theirdaughters Sara and Yumi comporting themselves with great dignity. It is hard to forget
Yumi-san playing a violin tribute to her father
there despite her tears. Charles was proud ofthem and they of him. He also had three children by his first marriage.
Katsuko-san aided Charles greatly in thelatter stages of his career in journalism, helping for example to compile "league tables"of investment analysts for the Institutional
Investor among other things. She was also acharming presence by the side of Charles on
numerous professional and social engagements at the Club.
Charles had only recently finished writing
his memoirs, which began serialization in the
April and May issues of the Number 1 Shimbun under the title "Mr. Smith goes to Tokyo."
A memorial get-together is planned at theClub in the near future. Charles will be sorely
missed by the very many, including myself
who held him in very great and affectionate
regard. God bless him.

● Anthony Rowley is a former Business Editor
and International Finance Editor of the Hong
Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review
and has spent some 40 years writing on Asianaffairs from Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.
He currently writes for the Singapore Business
Times, among other publications.

06 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

Tributes

Remembering Charles Smith
Resilient Kindness"Resilient kindness" is a wonderful expression, andmuch what Charles was and meant for so many of his
friends and colleagues.
—ROBERT DELFS, FEER

Regrets

An Upstanding Man
An upstanding man whose intelligence and civility
were excelled only by his honesty. We first met in
1973, were colleagues for the next twenty years, andwere always in touch in the years that followed. A
lunch with Katsuko and Charles at their home last Julyprovides a delightful memory of our last meeting, notto forget Charles’ subsequent enlightening comments
on a manuscript I had sent him. A fond farewell.
—PHILIP BOWRING, Financial Times andFar Eastern Economic Review

Calm Judgement
Someone I always respected for his calm judgment
and kindness.
—HUGH SANDEMAN, The Economist

A True Gentleman
It must have been in the early 1970s when I first met
Charles, in the Nikkei Building “Gaijin Ghetto,” wherequite a few news organizations had their Tokyo
bureaus. My first impression of him was of a quiet,
wise man with dignity and patience, sitting in thecorner with a gentle smile on his face. Over more thanfour decades, Charles remained the same. This is hard
to explain, but I felt good to know that Charles Smith,
who knew Japan so well, was always there with us.
With his departure, we lost such a dear and importantfriend. He was a true gentleman and a great journalist.
We will miss him.
—HIDEKO TAKAYAMA, The Baltimore Sun,
Newsweek, Bloomberg NewsA Gentle Man
A gentle man. I miss him.
—MASAHIKO ISHIZUKA, Nihon Keizai Shimbun

Friend and Mentor
He was a friend and mentor. From the moment I set
foot in Japan as his colleague in 1987 to the time I left
in 1990 he was a wonderful guide. I learnt a lot fromhim. not least a philosophy of life I would call resilient
kindness.
—NIGEL HOLLOWAY, FEER

Regrets, I've had a few, and one of mine is not having
gotten to know Charles Smith better. He was acongenial colleague — the guy down the hall I always
enjoyed talking to. He and I were regulars together
at the monthly salons of Shijuro Ogata of the Bank ofJapan, and as much as I was charmed by Ogata-san I
often learned as much about the Japanese political
economy from Charles’s questions and observations
as from the urbane central banker. Charles was acivilizing force in the wilds of the Gaijin Ghetto. He
enjoyed a good time as much as anyone but he neverstopped being a cellist. I always looked up to him.
Last summer, for the first time in a couple ofdecades, we met again at the FCCJ and had somegood conversations and to my delight, he offered toshare early drafts of his memoirs with me. Throughthem I got to know Charles better, which only mademe wish all the more that we had crossed over theline from colleagues to friends back then. If, like me,
you wish you had known Charles better, I suggest you
read his memoirs in Number 1 Shimbun. As modest
and self-deprecating as these memoirs will remind
you Charles always was, what will impress you most inthem is what a complex, sophisticated and interesting
man he was. I am terribly sad that he is no longer withus. Charles was the kind of guy you had to respectand be fond of. I am grateful I got a chance to see him
again last summer during the Ghetto Rats reunion andespecially grateful to have read his very interestingmemoirs. May he rest in peace.
—URBAN LEHNER, Wall Street Journal

When Richard married Keiko-san, I gave one of thetoasts. After the mass kampai, I introduced Charles,
the next speaker, as the best foreign correspondent
in Japan. This was in a room filled with foreign
correspondents. Richard, who was Robin to Charles’s
Batman, in a typical Brockton, Massachusetts
irreverence then referred to the three-person
chamber ensemble in which Charles played cello as
the “Chuck Smith Band.” With typical good-natured
aplomb, Charles gave it one of his soft brays.
That suggests one of Charles’s many admirable
traits. He kicked ass and took names but never took
himself too seriously. He was like a killer whale in acloud of krill, sifting through facts and stats and briefs,
emerging on the other side with what Watergate
reporter Carl Bernstein calls “the best obtainableversion of the truth.” Charles wrote with elegance andwithout artifice. This, for example, from his memoir:“For a couple of months after the news from theMiddle East turned ominous, the consumption supertruck stayed in overdrive. It was good that the truck
eventually turned out to have brakes.”
The best gift I could ever give the Far Eastern
Economic Review came in 1984 when I finished athree-year tour as FEER’s Tokyo bureau chief. I washeaded to The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco
office. Derek Davies and Philip Bowring were FEER's
top editors, and both were ready to lambaste me– until I gave them Charles. He was leaving the FT
and wanted to stay in Japan. FEER suddenly had an
opening in Tokyo. An arranged marriage! They mightwell have said, OK, Buck, don’t let the doa hit you in thearse on your way out.
Charles’s legacies? A million well-chosen words
over nearly a half-century explaining Japan. Cellorecordings. Dozens of friends unanimous in theirview of you as a gentle man. And, Chuck, a bond is an
instrument of indebtedness of the bond issuer to theholder. Got it? Me neither. Cheers, Chuck.
—MIKE THARP, WSJ, FEER, U.S. News & World
Report, Club President 1989-90

Wit and CharmCharles had been through such a lot in recent years,
yet he emerged with his trademark wit and quiet
charm very much intact. I admired his resilienceand was happy to be back in touch with him in thelast year or so. We traded emails about his memoir
and the odd reminiscence, and I was reminded of his
gentle manner and incisive mind. With respect andadmiration for a valued colleague and friend, withdeepest condolences to Katsuko, and with gratitude
for the memories,—TRACY DAHLBY, FEER, The Washington Post,
Newsweek

The Chuck Smith BandCharles Smith and I stood at a corner in Tokyo's
Otemachi business district. (At six feet four inches(193 cm.), Charles was one Japan correspondent I
literally had to look up to. As we dutifully stood to
wait for the WALK signal, Charles raised his big headas if sniffing the air. “What's a bond? Do you knowwhat a bond is, Mike?” I was flummoxed. This was the
Financial Times’s bureau chief. In my view, he was
the best foreign correspondent in Japan. And he wasasking me for the meaning of “bond”? I stuttered
drivel. We resumed walking to a briefing at theIndustrial Bank of Japan.
Charles and I were neighbors in the Gaijin Ghetto,
a corner of the 8th floor of the Nihon Kezai Shimbun
building. I spent seven years in his orbit there. We also
fraternized at the Press Club and at Geoff Tudor andRichard Hanson’s getaway on the Miura Peninsula.

The Messiah at The FCCJCharles was a dear friend. Among our great
adventures, I think our biggest was organizing a
December holiday-season sing-along of Handel’sMessiah at the Press Club. Charles did most of thework, including recruiting members of the Chuck
Smith Band to serve as the orchestra and bringing in
professionals as conductor and vocal soloists. Thiswas such fun we did it for several years.
I was pleased that he entrusted me with the taskof editing his memoirs – and I’m even more pleased
that he finished them. Current readers of Number 1
Shimbun are beneficiaries. There we can read in detailabout how one of the great reporters dealt with theJapan story in its heyday. Rest in peace, Charles.
—BRADLEY MARTIN, Baltimore Sun, Asian WSJ,
Newsweek, Asia Times, Bloomberg

Smith-San Turned The Page
Smith-san and I worked together on FCCJ’s Music
Committee in 2006 and both of us worked as hard
as professional producers. We scheduled a concert
every month. Because our membership had little
interest in classical music, both of us had to selltickets month by month for a year to our outside nonmember friends as well as negotiating with musicians
and arranging the concerts. Fortunately, we were able
to invite really world-class musicians despite the tiny
reward we were able to offer for their performance.
When Smith-san was a boy he wanted to be a

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 07

Tributes
professional pianist, but his father insisted it would
be impossible for him to live on music. Following hisfather’s advice he found another talent in journalism.
But he really loved music and was himself a good celloplayer. Since I also played cello once, as a memberof an orchestra, we had similar tastes in music. That
made working together a lot of fun.
Perhaps the most exasperating experience we had
was the sudden cancellation of a brass music concert
that Smith-san organized. We sold all the tickets –over a hundred – to our friends, we made programs,
and the wind players themselves had been practicing
hard to play for “the foreign correspondents.” Then,out of blue, we were told to cancel the concert only
a few days before the scheduled date. A European
foreign minister was going to visit the club, andjournalism takes priority here. As it turned out,
the foreign minister didn’t show up at all, and we
received no apology.
Despite such problems, Smith-san fully enjoyedthe concerts. Sometimes he turned the music pages
for a pianist who was accompanying a violinist, and
we all enjoyed watching a foreign correspondent
turning pages on the stage. Smith-san wasparticularly exuberant when he shared dinner with amusician after a concert. He was the perfect host forsuch occasions.
—MAKI WAKIYAMA, Professional Associate
MemberThis only began to break down in the 1980s, mostly
because of the initiatives of reform-minded Japanesebureaucrats, led, ironically, by the Bank of Japan,
previously notoriously close-mouthed like mostcentral banks. Charles pecked away diligently at such
morsels as were available and dug out some that were
never designed to see the light of day. He developed
a particularly sharp understanding of the workingsof the Ministry of International Trade and Industry(MITI), widely seen as the powerful architect of theJapanese economic miracle.
David Pilling, a successor in Tokyo a quarter of acentury later, remembers him as “the sort of person
who puts the ‘gentle’ into gentleman. He was never
one to flaunt his deep knowledge of Japan or his
intellect” and was always willing to listen to “people
half his age.”
But as he dug his claws into Japan, so did thecountry into him. Like several other foreign
correspondents of his generation, he never wanted toleave Japan, so when the FT decided his time was up
after ten years, he left the paper and became Tokyo
bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Apart from two years as an editor for the magazine
in Hong Kong he remained in Tokyo for the rest of hislife. Personally shy, even ascetic, his great indulgence
was his cello, which he played with Tokyo ensembles
he put together. He is survived by his wife Katsuko,
their two daughters and three older children from anearlier marriage.
—JUREK MARTIN, FT, Club President 1985-86

Charles The Professional
When Charles Smith moved to the Far Eastern
Economic Review from the Financial Times’s Tokyo
Bureau – which in 1984 was two doors away on thesame floor in the Nikkei Building – I was at the Review.
We often went together to interview many famous
people and some not so famous. It always impressedme that when interviewees referred to past incidents,
history or cultural matters, Charles could respondknowledgably to almost all of them. I felt so proud ofhim, and often said to myself, “See our correspondent!
What a professional he is!”—KAZUMI MIYAZAWA, FEER

Calming and Erudite
I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing ofCharles. I will always remember him as a calming
and erudite influence on the FCCJ and I was honored
to have him serve as Secretary on the board during
my presidency. He was one of our most talented
members, and my time at the Club and in journalism
has been greatly enriched by knowing him.
—STEVEN HERMAN, Voice of America;
Club President 1997-98

A Great Role Model
Financial Times ObituaryCharles Smith, who raised the profile of thisnewspaper’s coverage of Japan in the 1970s and ‘80s,
has died in Tokyo at the age of 82. He was the second
FT bureau chief in the Japanese capital, arriving in
1973 six years after the first office had been closed
down, and serving until 1984. Born in London on June
13, 1935, his mother was Dame Annis Gillie, a pioneer in
Britain among female doctors. It was an uncle, Darsie
Gillie, a Paris correspondent for the Guardian, who
inspired his interest in journalism and he first joined
the FT as a graduate trainee in 1959, having graduatedfrom Magdalen College, Oxford, with a degree inclassics. But he left the newspaper to work for an
English language newspaper in Buenos Aires before
returning as the FT’s Latin America and, later, Far East
Asia editor.
His specialty was detailed reporting on Japanesebusiness and the wider economy. That fit the times
as the country consolidated its remarkable recovery
from the devastation of World War Two but remained
reticent on the international stage. It’s politics werethen considered too opaque to be worthy of muchattention. Prime ministers, all from the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party, came and went every two years
without apparently materially influencing policies.
It was not an easy beat for a foreign correspondentin Tokyo. Japanese institutions, including governmentand corporations, remained mostly closed tointernational reporters. The Japanese “press club”
system, which controlled access to ministries andcompanies alike, specifically excluded non-natives.

When I arrived in Tokyo in 1983 as an enthusiastic but
essentially ignorant young foreign correspondent for
The Economist, to have Charles Smith in the next-door
office in the then Nikkei building’s “Gaijin Ghetto” wasa joy and a great bonus. He was not just welcoming
but very supportive in an utterly un-condescending
way, offering guidance and suggestions freely andpatiently but without ever trying to impose them.
Then, and in his next career at the FEER and beyond,I found Charles to be the essence of what a goodjournalist should be: painstaking in his research, fairin his judgments and always interested in the story
rather than the byline. He was a great role model for
us all.”—BILL EMMOTT, The Economist

Entertaining and Incisive
Charles was an old-fashioned figure of an Englishmanat the FT office, along the corridor in Nikkei’s Gaijin
Ghetto, but took the nickname “Chuck” from younger
American denizens like Richard Hanson and Mike
Tharp in good spirits. We both jumped respective
ships to the FEER in the 1980s. When on the deskin Hong Kong I had the pleasure of editing his
understated but always entertaining and incisive copy
from Tokyo, including a wonderful cover story on theJapanese farm lobby Nokyo.
Later he followed me as regional editor in Hong
Kong and was diplomatic in protecting us from someof the crazier inputs from the ideologues imposed into
the magazine by Dow Jones after they began theirill-conceived makeover, including at one memorable
re-education camp when we were all summoned to
Hong Kong to be told how to write.
Then and in recent visits to Tokyo, I enjoyedhis company and the way his reserved mien often
broke up in a bray of sudden laughter when he saw
a humorous side. I never got to hear Charles and
Katsuko play their music. I wish I had. We will all
miss him.
—HAMISH McDONALD, Sydney Morning Herald,
FEER

A Good Companion
Among FCCJ Regular members I must be one of few
who neither worked with nor competed against
Charles at any time in the many decades that we wereboth members of the FCCJ. I knew Charles only as adinner companion at the Main Bar but I shall miss his
company very much. Dining with Charles was a realpleasure. It meant a good hour of completely civilized
conversation. The topics ranged from vegetarian
cuisine to classical music. Talk of vegetarian dishes
was usually short because the club offered very few
choices. Charles invariably chose the grilled cheese
sandwich. His knowledge of music, however, was vast.
I had played the French horn but had given up long
before. Charles kept on with the cello and played itvery well. We rarely if ever discussed club politics.
Charles never raised his voice, rarely criticizedanother member, and if he disapproved of something
it would be by means of a shift in the intonation ofa word or perhaps a meaningful pause. Others may
remember Charles as a first-rate journalist but for me
he was a model of conviviality and camaraderie, themuch talked-about but rarely achieved goals of ourClub. I shall miss him very much.
—ANDREW HORVAT, Associated Press, Southam
News, Los Angeles Times, The Independent,
American Public Radio; Club President 1988-89

Gladly Would He Learn and
Would He Teach
One of my first tasks on taking up my new job in JAL’s
public relations department in the autumn of 1974 wasto write a speech for my boss, Tonao Senda, on the
future of transpacific trade, which he was to deliver at
a conference in Vancouver.
Clueless, I sought the help of Charles Smith, who
happily spent time giving me a thorough briefing fromwhich I was able to put together a fairly respectabletext. For the next 44 years he continued to be thesame friendly, helpful mentor — always ready to sparetime to give a helping hand or an opinion.
—GEOFFREY TUDOR, Former International PR
director, Japan Airlines

08 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

FeatureMr. SmithGoes to
Tokyo
PART

3

by CHARLES SMITH

KOHJI SHIIKI

When Charles Smith arrived inTokyo in 1973 as Financial Times
bureau chief, he had no idea hewould end up spending most of
the rest of his life here. Reaching
80 and having been diagnosed
with malignant lymphoma, he set
about writing his memoirs. Whenhe finished the project recently
Charles – still an enthusiastic FCCJ
member – consented to sharewith us some memories from along and interesting career. The
series began running in the April
issue while he was still alive. On
May 18 Charles died, at age 82,of respiratory failure. We arecontinuing to run installments.
Here is the third.

Officials of what was then called
the Ministry of International Tradeand Industry could get on thewrong side of the law. I may havesuggested in my last installment that MITI
had answers for everything, but I remember
one case from early in the post-oil crisis era inwhich Vice Minister Eimei Yamashita seemed
to be lost for words. This involved the questionof whether the allegedly infallible ministry had
forced the 21-member oil refining industry to
retract product price increases.
I later realized that I was seeing an institutional conflict between the (not quite) unchallenged leadership of blue ribbon bureaucrats
whose power could be traced back to wartime Japan, on the one hand, and a single
agency with postwar American roots, the Fair
Trade Commission. The FTC, established in
1947, was a creation of the Occupation witha mission of policing the US-ordained 1945
Anti-Monopoly Act.
In May of 1974 the FTC accused the oil refiners of having violated the Anti-Monopoly Act
six months earlier by conspiring to raise oil
product prices. The companies, among them

affiliates of American and European oil majors,mounted vigorous defenses. What was more
serious was that, behind its assault on thecompanies, the FTC seemed be attacking MITI
for its practice of giving extra-legal advice toindustry on prices.
Without identifying him by name or title,
I used a quote from Vice Minister Yamashita
admitting that MITI had given administrative
guidance to the refining industry to restrain
price increases in 1973. But Yamashita argued
that “advice” was different from price enforcement and was not something covered by theAnti-Monopoly Act. Nevertheless, lower downin the same FT story I had MITI confessing thatits practice of advising private companies on
prices “might need some overhauling.”
I came across the MITI-FTC interface justonce more in my later reporting career. When
researching the background to planned production cut in the petrochemicals industry in
the 1980s, I learned that MITI officials planningthe cuts had taken the trouble to join a petrochemicals export mission outside Japan so as
to be able to break the law without confronting
the FTC. Did MITI deserve points for ingenuity?

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 09

FeatureINCOMES POLICY, JAPAN
Alongside this example I can recall one case, inthe months after the oil shock, in which things
came badly unstuck – although this didn’t
directly involve bureaucrats. It was a problem
with what some western countries would
probably call incomes policy. That wasn’t what
it was called in Tokyo, because the Japanese
authorities, unlike some hapless UK counterparts, knew better than to lose face by being
seen trying to interfere directly in private sector pay levels.
During the 1970s the wages of permanent
employees in a dozen major Japanese industries were settled once a year in the impressively named Shunki Toso (Shunto) or Spring
Wage Struggle.
The way Shunto worked was that companies in one major industry, often thefive big steel makers, agreed (apparently
independently) on a percentage base-up for
their workers as an example to the rest. The
government looked on without comment,
but the employers’ leaders, especially insteel, often included men who held top positions at Keizai Dantai Rengokai (Keidanren),the Federation of Employers’ Organisations.
This was industry’s mouthpiece for exchanging views with Kasumigaseki bureaucrats
and receiving guidance on a wide range ofpolicy issues.
Over five years up to 1974 Shunto wage
awards had climbed sharply every year,
reflecting the growth of the economy andaccelerating rates of inflation – but, mostimportantly, not overtaking gains in productivity. That year things were different. The
base-up settlement for major industries camein at 32 per cent, more than double productivity gains and a whopping 13 per cent over the1973 awards.
On the evening when I had to write about
this disaster I remember walking the streetsnear my office in something close to a funkas I wondered what to write. How could sucha thing have happened? Did it point toward
the collapse of the admired Japan system for
informally regulating nearly everything?
The story that I wrote later that night was apatched up job. It was headlined “Why Japan’s
latest wage settlement has a European air.”But it had nothing to do with Europe. Producers, I later discovered, could actually afford
the extravagant settlements because they
had taken advantage of supply bottlenecks(not just in toilet paper) to gouge panicky
consumers with sharply higher prices in thesecond half of 1973.
The oil industry, probably the biggest shortterm gainer from crude shortages, had paid
what, according to my story, were “secret”
bonuses to its management level staff inJanuary.
It sounded like, but wasn’t, the dawn ofsupremacy for organized labor. A year later the
Shunto awards came in at around 15 per cent,still above price rises but below the growthrate of productivity. The bureaucrat-employer
combine seemed to have restored order. But
perhaps they didn’t do it alone.
This time, I believed, politicians had indirectly involved themselves because they had
locked the economy into its worst recession for
20 years through interest rate increases andrestrictions on bank lending imposed via the
Bank of Japan. This was almost the first timethat I had seen politicians helping bureaucrats
out of a seriously awkward patch by manipulating the economy for political ends.
Of course the Ministry of Finance wasinvolved. But the initiative lay with Takeo
Fukuda, at the Economic Planning Agency,
who had become the patron saint (my phrase)of post-oil shock austerity. As I’ve previously
mentioned, Fukuda was one of the Liberal
Democratic Party’s top faction leaders.
Some time in 1976 I scored a minor hit with
the FT foreign desk in London by admitting
belatedly that Japan wasn’t always run by a
two-way partnership (see the second entry inthis series). I suggested it could also be viewed
as a game of Scissors, Paper and Stone among
bureaucrats, business people and politicians.
The idea was that bureaucrats influenced
companies in ways already described, but politicians had an edge over bureaucrats because
they enacted the laws that the men in the ministries needed to do their jobs. The third sideof the triangle was that business exercised
control over politicians by providing much of
the cash needed for one (always the same)
party to win elections, and for individual MPs
to manage their constituencies.
At the top of the system corporate money
went directly to the ruling party to pay forelection campaigns. At the bottom the flow
was via factions and was indirect. Individual
MPs struggled for survival in multi-seat constituencies where the sharpest conflicts were
between members of different LDP factions,
not between the LDP and opposition parties.
What counted in these fights was an MP’s ability to help voters with anything from job offers
to patronizing baseball clubs.
It cost a lot. MPs had government salaries, buttravel costs to and from Tokyo mounted up. Constituency MPs eked out money from factions by
selling to companies expensive party tickets.

When I first became aware of how theruling LDP ran its affairs it seemed to me tobe not so much a party as an ad hoc systemfor distributing favours at various levels –money and jobs to individual voters at theconstituency level and chunks of power andprivilege to factional bosses at the top.
The LDP itself had its origins in ad hoc-ism
It had been created in 1955 through a merger of the Nihon Minshuto (Japan Democratic
Party), led by Ichiro Hatoyama, and the Jiyuto(Liberal Party), led by Shigeru Yoshida. The
main purpose for the merger was to block
the road to power of the still powerful forcesof socialism and communism. The LDP issaid to have been born with financial help
from the US Central Intelligence Agency. But
when CIA funding dried up in the early 1970s
the party survived and flourished, while leftwing groups retreated to the fringe.
In later years the Liberal Democrats’ holdon power occasionally seemed to be threatened, and once it lapsed altogether. But the
party survived, or struggled back to office,through its ability to co-opt others. By thetime I reached Tokyo in 1973 the Komeito
or Spirit of Fairness Party – the offshoot ofa Buddhist sect, aggressively radical at theoutset – had become a tame junior member
in a series of LDP-led coalitions.
By then there were two keys to what
seemed to have become a permanent LDP
hold on power. One was wheeling and dealing with the opposition. The other – paradoxically – was the faction fighting that in thosedays seemed to be a permanent feature oflife in the LDP. Factional battles drew headlines while the real tensions in Japanesesociety often found expression behindclosed doors.
You could call this Japanese-style democracy, but the effect was to keep one party
semi-permanently in power.
In 1955 when the LDP was created two ofJapan’s closest neighbors, Taiwan and South
Korea, were being run by authoritarian single-party governments that grossly lacked
democratic credentials. It was only thanks
to East Asian politeness that they sometimes
were not called dictatorships. By the late1980s both countries had reached a point
where two or more parties were competingfor power in what seemed to be democratic elections. Meanwhile, in Japan, the LDP
reigned in (almost) solitary glory.
Japan’s political system had come to seem
like a fly in amber: the spirit of democracy
permanently trapped by the realities ofpower.

10 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

FeatureSelf-Publish
Your Book!
Say Sayonara to
Rejection and Helloto Self-Publishing

SHUTTERSTOCK / KOHJI SHIIKI

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 11

Featureby JOHN BOYD

B

ack in 1859 Charles Dickens penned a
cutting-edge tale that began, “It was
the best of times, it was the worst oftimes.” When he wrote those famouswords, he had a different revolution in mind
than the one disrupting today’s book-publishing industry, but they describe perfectly thetransformation that’s changing how books are
now published, bought and read.
Driving this change are self-publishing or
indie (independent) authors who are exploiting the technologies of e-books, e-reader
devices and online bookstores. As a consequence, the means of publishing is shifting
inexorably from the publishing houses tothose who actually create the novels andnon-fiction we read – the writers.
Yet until recently, the efforts of the vast
majority of authors to get published neverproduced so much as a flicker of light – unless
it was the burning of an automated rejection
slip. Their attempts were extinguished fromthe get-go by the industry’s gatekeepers:
the literary agencies with their slush-pilejunior readers, then their mentors the literary
agents. The fortunate few works that were
accepted for representation went on to face
the toughest hurdle of all: the acquisition editors of publishing houses who mostly say nay
rather than yea to agents’ pitches.
In some cases, the gatekeepers toss manuscripts because the writing or content doesn’t
pass muster. But as often as not, reasons forrejection include the reading tastes of individuals, agents’ workloads, the publishing needsof the moment or season, market trends, distribution-channel capacities and marketingbudgets of publishers.
Examples? Top selling author J. K. Rowlingof Harry Potter fame and fortune told fans on
Twitter she had been turned down by agents“loads” of times. Stephen King had his firstnovel, Carrie, rejected over and over. John leCarré when he first shopped around The Spy
Who Came in From the Cold was informed hedidn’t have a future in writing.
To the joy of millions of readers, theseauthors did not give up. However, we can only
imagine how many great stories have been
lost to us because so many rejected writers
became discouraged and quit after trying in
vain to get published.
The situation began to change in 2007
when Amazon released its Kindle electronic
books reader. Despite the $399 price tag andlow-resolution (800 x 600 pixels) screen, it

sold out in less than six hours, and would-be
buyers had to wait five months before more
became available.
Yet Amazon was not the first with sucha device. Three years earlier in 2004, Sonyunveiled its LIBRIé e-reader in Japan andbegan selling it overseas a year later —albeit
to little fanfare. In 2014, acknowledging thedominance of the Kindle e-reader, Sony saidsayonara to the market.
Why? Well, Amazon began life as an online
bookseller. It understood from the start thatthe reading device was the razor while thebooks it sold were the blades. So alongside its
e-reader, (which has been regularly upgraded,refined and reduced in price), Amazon opened
its complementary Kindle eBooks store.
Authors found it relatively easy to self-publish their works through the store. And because
there were no costs for paper, warehousing or
distribution, Amazon paid the creators handsome royalties compared with those from traditional publishers. Amazon also made it supereasy for readers to buy books: literally with one
click. What’s more, the books came without thelimiting digital rights management software
attached. DRM is supposed to stop pirating
but ends up turning frustrated customers into
pirates – as Sony found out to its cost.
In addition, Amazon added what has become
its signature ingredient, neatly summed up
here by Indie author and industry guru David
Gaughran in his Let’s Get Digital book on
self-publishing, now in its third edition.
Amazon … show[s] you the book you aremost likely to purchase, not what the[traditional] store manager thinks you
should read, or what that big publisher
is paying to push, or what critics thinkis “most important.” Amazon looks at
your purchase history, browsing history
and reading activity, and then suggests
books it thinks you will like…. And Amazon is completely agnostic not just to
the type of book or who published it, butalso the price. Amazon’s recommendation engine will recommend a book by
someone like me over one published by
Simon & Schuster if it thinks a reader ismore likely to purchase my book, even
if my book is significantly cheaper.
As a result of these moves, Amazon is now thelargest online bookstore in the world, and its
Kindle arm accounts for a guesstimated 70
percent of the indie market in English, withApple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Google Playvying for the remainder.

This change is proving to be a bonanza
for many mid-list authors – sellers but notbestsellers – who are frustrated with the poorterms offered by the traditional publishers.
And it presents an enticing new opportunity
for previously unpublished writers. The result?
A publishing revolution is underway.
According to the latest Author Earnings market report, US online sales of print and e-books
for the last three quarters of 2017 totaled $4.4
billion. Indie-published books accounted forroughly $1 billion of these sales and their shareis growing.
Hence, even successful traditionally published authors are choosing to self-publish.
One example: Barry Eisler, author of the Japanese-American John Rain assassin series,
made headlines in 2011 when he turned down
a $500,000 deal with St. Martin’s Press for two
books. Instead, he preferred to self-publish. Hecited creative control of his works (titles, bookcovers and book descriptions) and the belief
he could earn more as his reasons.
With the bona fides of indie publishing now
established, we’ll take a look at how you go
about self-publishing based on the experiences of three FCCJ members: Charles Pomeroy,
Bradley Martin, and yours truly.
■ Charles Pomeroy had written Tsunami
Reflections – Otsuchi Remembered, a memoiron the devastation caused in the town of Otsuchi by the earthquake and tsunami that hit
Japan in March 2011. Otsuchi is the hometownof his wife and the place where they had built
their retirement home.
Pomeroy turned to self-publishing after“finding it almost impossible to attract theattention of a traditional publisher without aliterary agent.”
Upon investigating indie publishing ande-books on the Internet in 2012, he foundTelemachus Press, a publishing services company. It took care of the editing, cover design
and book layout that included a number ofphotographs. “So I became a micro-publisher operating under its imprint,” Pomeroy
explains. He receives 70 percent of the sales
price: $5.99 for an e-book and $14.99 for the
print-on-demand (PoD) paperback version.
“Not offered, however, are marketing andpromotion services, a major drawback,”
he says. “The author is stuck with that
responsibility.”
Telemachus uses Amazon and Smashwords
to distribute the e-books, and Ingram Content
Group to produce and distribute the PoD
books, which are available in North America,
the UK and Australia. As the micro-publisher,

12 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

Featurehe had to arrange things with these companies himself, something of a headache until
Telemachus helped guided him through theprocess. In total, Telemachus’s fees came tojust under $4,000.
■ Bradley Martin actually got his foot in thedoor that bars the way to traditional publishing when the agent for his nonfiction book
took on his Nuclear Blues, a suspense thriller.
“But before he could make a sale, he fell ill anddied,” says Martin.
After querying other agents without success, Martin decided last year to self-publish.
Upon researching the subject, he chose
BookBaby, a publishing services company like
Telemachus. He found they had a good reputation for producing quality PoD books.
“And I was also attracted by the percentageof the book’s price that BookBaby promised,especially those sold through its own store,”says Martin. “I also liked the idea of leaving
the company to handle my digital distribution,
first with Amazon for a 90-day exclusive, andthen also with Barnes & Noble, Apple and theother online stores.”Martin did not avail himself of all of BookBaby’s services. He found a Seoul-based cartoonist to produce his book cover, and he tookcare of the interior design and editing. “I also
did all the promotion myself,” says Martin. “So
I had quite a feeling of accomplishment when
the thing came out. Publishing was a lot easier
and a lot more fun than I had imagined.”
BookBaby did the digital formatting anddistribution to the online stores. And as partof the $3,600 deal, it shipped 100 PoD books
to Martin in Japan. He recently ordered 25
additional copies sent to his US address forbook signings. The bill including shipping was$354.29.
■ In my case, I turned to self-publishing after
my suspense thriller Killing Time in Tokyo was
rejected by over fifty agents. My first simple
query letters frankly deserved to be rejected, but as I honed my presentation skills andrefined the novel, the automatic rejection letters became personal and encouraging withwords like, “This is not for me at the moment
but you should try a different agent.”
Still, after 50 such efforts …
Not having the financial means or desire to use
a service company, I did everything myself—
except for designing the book cover. For thelatter, I went to Pinterest, an online social
network pinboard site focused on collecting

I turned to self-publishing after mysuspense thriller Killing Time in Tokyo
was rejected by over fifty agents.

images, photos and the like. I searched for“Asian book covers” and found a premade cover that appealed. However, the background
was of a Chinese city, so I paid the designerextra to change it to a Tokyo cityscape. Total
cost, a very reasonable $100 in 2016.
I worked with the same designer, BeetifulBookCovers.com, to custom design the coverfor my second suspense crime novel, The
Girl Who Danced Her Tears Away. It took fiveattempts to produce the cover I wanted. Cost:$300.
As for layout, I use Scrivener for word processing. This has a feature that converts content into Mobi files used by Amazon, and ePub
files used by all other online stores includingApple, the second largest store after Amazon.
This feature does have a steep learning curve,
however.
Note, though, you may not need anything
more that Microsoft’s Word. Amazon has
become more flexible of late and now accepts
a variety of file types it will automatically convert including docx files. So if you have everything laid out as desired, Word will suffice.
Publishing your book on Amazon’s Kindle
store is straightforward. You fill out a typicalonline form and are given a Your Books page
where you are invited to Create a New Title.
Simply upload your book cover and content
file to get started.
Next, choose from a list two categories
you want the book to appear in when readers search on Amazon for book genres. I’ve
checked Fiction > Mystery & Detective >International Mystery & Crime; and Fiction >Thriller > Suspense.
You are also given a choice of adding seven keywords to optimize the chances of yourbook being found. Choose words or phrases
readers may use to narrow down their search.
For example, three of my choices are Japanand Asian crime fiction, sexual seduction andblackmail, and revenge and retribution.
Next, you choose what territories you want
to sell your book in, and then add the sales
price. Between $2.99 and $9.99 Amazon pays
70 percent royalties. Below and above that
range, you receive just 35 percent of the sales
price.

Then you hit the Publish button and that’s it!
I began this article saying these are the best oftimes and the worst of times for the publishingindustry: for as we’ve seen, Indie authors now
have a way to bypass the gatekeepers, while
traditional publishers wring their hands as
their control over distribution withers away.
Nevertheless, it’s by no means happinessand high-on-the-hog living for all publishedauthors. While tens of thousands are making aliving from self-publishing, hundreds of thousands are struggling. The bad news is that, given anyone can now publish, zillions of authors
are doing so. But after family and friends havebought copies of your masterpiece, how doyou get anyone else to even see it?
The answer is to put on your marketing hat.
Begin by making sure your cover is professional and tells the reader at a glance what you
book is about; ditto the title and book description. Search Amazon Best Sellers to see what’s
successful.
Consider advertising. Targeted Facebook
and Amazon ads are popular, but you needto study how to make these effective. Google
such subjects and do the necessary research.
There are also a number of online sites thatwill charge fees to advertise your book to theirsubscribers.
For more help search for online sites catering to indie authors. Do searches for “20 books
to 50K,” “Kboards” and “Reedsy” to get started
and to stay clear of scammy “service providers.” Podcasts are another rich source of information. Check out my Medium review of best
podcasts for authors: http://bit.ly/2I0bvmx.
You can also email me at John.g.Boyd@gmail.
com if you have a question.
Good luck!

● John Boyd covers the SciTechBiz scene inJapan as well as current events.

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 13

FeatureI Dislike Kim and Trump
But Hope They Succeed in
Their Summitry

SHUTTERSTOCK

by BRADLEY K. MARTINI

n the interest of full disclosure, let mecome right out and acknowledge holding serious grudges against a couple ofnewsmakers I often write about.
One is Donald J. Trump. My disapproval of
him is generic, shared by over half of my fellow
Americans and much of the rest of the world’s
population.
With the other guy, Kim Jong-un, it’s more
personal. Besides all Kim’s other bad deeds,
I blame him for interfering with my plans tomorph from workaday Pyongyang watcher
to world-renowned and fabulously wealthy
bestselling novelist.
Several years ago I sent my New York agent
a draft of a first novel, Nuclear Blues, in which
I imagined the downfall of the Kim dynasty. Hisverdict was: “Deserves to be published.” Before
he could follow through, though, he fell ill anddied. To make a sale to one of the major publishing houses you generally need an agent, so
I started searching for a replacement.
I’d failed to anticipate Seth Rogen and Evan
Goldberg’s 2014 announcement of a Sony Pictures movie, The Interview, whose plot bore
a slight resemblance to mine. (I’d say theirs is
Animal House to my Fargo.)
The Interview didn’t show in Pyongyang
theaters. The chief scheduler there, Kim
Jong-un, felt offended that he’d been made abuffoon in a farce featuring a couple of doltish
American assassins.
Hackers retaliated with a massive cyberattack, capturing and distributing Sony’s
unreleased movies and internal emails. Facing
hacker threats of violence, major American
theater chains declined to show The Interview.
Estimates of the damage to Sony ranged
up to US$100 million. Although North Korea
denied involvement, American officials fingered Kim’s cyber commandos.
The Sony caper didn’t scare me. I don’t havetens of millions to lose, for one thing. And
since then, I’ve grown accustomed to being
the target of hack attacks. I even had a visit
from a pair of US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to warn that, apparently related to
my work, “state-sponsored” hackers “in the
Far East” were trying to break into my email. I
invested in protective measures.
The book publishing industry, on the other
hand, had a lot more to lose and could hardly
avoid taking note of what had happened toSony. My project for fictional regime change
in North Korea turned toxic. If literary agents
responded to my queries at all, they wrote
something vague like “Not for me.”Finally giving up my quest to find an agent
and a traditional publisher, I went ahead andself-published Nuclear Blues.

I knew my choice was a recipe for likely
obscurity. After all, few brick-and-mortar
bookstores stock self-published books. The
largest mainstream publications typicallyhave rules against reviewing them.
Sure enough, Nuclear Blues is not flying off
the shelves. For this I say, my voice drippingwith bitter sarcasm, “Thanks, Kim Jong-un.”
And now those two fellows I dislike plan tosit down together and talk about an end toa state of war that’s lasted for nearly sevendecades. As if they were rubbing it in, theirsuccess would deal another blow to Nuclear
Blues by creating credibility problems for its
near-future plot.
So I want them to fail, right? Wrong. As
someone who’s spent four decades hoping to
make sense of North Korea before the peninsula explodes, I’m cheering for their success.
In my youth I ushered for two years at
professional wrestling matches in my hometown, Marietta, Georgia. The good guy always
occupied a fixed corner of the ring (southeast), while the opposite corner was always
reserved for the bad guy – an extra clue to any
fan in need of help deciding whom to boo andwhom to cheer.
One of the tasks of my boss, the promoter,
was making sure an equal number of goodguys and bad guys showed up for work. Occasionally there were gaps in the lineup causedby budget problems or no-shows.
One night the promoter himself, long sinceretired from wrestling, had to don a pair oftrunks to fill out a card. He was popular among
regular fans as their genial Saturday night host
Elmo Chappell, but when he showed up in thenorthwest – bad guy’s – corner under his oldring name of Red Dugan they showered him
with verbal abuse.
My point in relating this anecdote is, if Kim
and Trump want to form a tag team, take off
their meanie masks and be good guys for achange that’s just fine with me.
Anyhow, I have an ace up my sleeve.
Self-publishing software has developed to thepoint an author-publisher can prepare a newedition with the push of a button.
If Trump and Kim defy all odds and come up
with a sound agreement I’ll shout “Huzzah!”even as I’m modifying my novel’s plot so thatit’s NOT overtaken by events.
● Bradley K. Martin is a longtime
correspondent and Club member. Bradley K.
Martin’s other book is nonfiction: Under the
Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea
and the Kim Dynasty. A version of this story was
published by Asia Times.

VOTE!

FCCJofBoard
Directors Election

Cast your vote by absentee ballot or at the club office by June 27th,
or in person at the AGMM on June 28th at 6:30pm.
Your participation is important. We need at least one-half of the Regular membership forthe meeting to reach a quorum. Please remember to vote and attend the AGMM if you can.
Check the FCCJ website for all the latest updates.

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 15

Club News

Associates
Make Their
Voices Heard
at Candidate
Speak-Outby ANTHONY ROWLEY

W

hat are the key challenges
facing the FCCJ in the coming
Board year, as seen throughthe eyes of candidates forelection to the positions of Associate Member
Directors and that of Associate Kanji? At arecent Speak-Out session at the Club, candidates cited a series of concerns to which they
intend to address their talents and energies if
elected.
Improving Club governance was high on thelist of candidates' concerns, as was the issue
of giving Associates a stronger voice in FCCJ
affairs. The need for improved food and beverage services at the Club, and the questionof who should provide these, was an issue indebate, as were matters relating to the role of
the Club Kanjis.
Current FCCJ Treasurer Willem Kortekaassuggested that “the Club’s governance should
be further improved. The statutory requirement of planning has been neglected in thepast. It is necessary to develop a mission
statement and business plan that will form
the basis of making the club relevant again,
for journalists in the first place but also for
associate members. Communication with themembership and external communications
should be improved.”
The financial situation of the club, said
Kortekaas “will be severely impacted by themove. We now have to work at increasing ourrevenues, especially by attracting more members. We also need to continue our efforts tonegotiate better terms and conditions with
Mitsubishi. We have started soliciting donations from members to build up our financial
strength. We now need to start looking for
financial donations as well as donations in
kind from corporations and other externalsources.” He added, “We make poor use of thebusiness knowledge and experience of Associate Members.”
Club Secretary Mary Corbett said, “We are

currently standing at a vortex of unprecedented changes: the move to a new facility coinciding with the implementation of a new foodand beverage operation model. While there isenormous opportunity to enhance the Club
experience for members, there are elements
which until recently had proceeded without
benefit of stakeholders’ knowledge and standto damage the wellbeing of the club.
“Management and membership needunprecedented collaboration to secure our
future. Governance and, in particular, transparency need to be thoroughly revamped.
Checks and balances must be implemented
to address a community in flux and flagging
institutional memory It may be too late to
be questioning the wisdom of the pre-lease
which was signed over three years ago, butneither should we accept the vagaries ofdecisions which have not been approved [butwere] arbitrarily incorporated into the terms
after the fact. The FCCJ should not accept theclosing of the ground floor main entrance at 9p.m. Nor should it pay for corrections to deeply flawed design elements, which did not meet
Health Ministry and industry guidelines. The
20 percent increase in rent was reported to us
as an increase of 20 percent floor space, when
the new design all but eliminates any increasein usable space.”
Candidate Mehdi Bassiri proposed that theClub “go back to its own in-house operation offood and beverage.” He explained that “pastBoards of Directors of the club, by signing atleast two faulty contracts, first with Mitsubishi to move the Club to the new Fuji building
and, second, to outsource the club’s food andbeverage operation, have made enormous
mistakes.”
The new Fuji Building into which the FCCJ
is due to move has, Bassiri argued, an “irreparably faulty design and layout, which would
make the Club's food and beverage operations
very difficult. Outsourcing not only has madesome of the Club’s original items disappear[but also] most of the time, foods are uneatable. I believe if someone as experienced as
myself in food and beverage [had been] amember of the BOD in the past, [he or she]would have convinced other BOD membersof [such] problems, and therefore not only
would the Board have insisted on having aperfect space [but also] we would not haveexperienced this big problem with food andbeverage operations. My goal is to convince
new BOD members to go back to our own
in-house operation of food and beverage, andin future [the F&B] contract [should] be moretransparent to Associate members.”

Current Board member Milton Isa noted that
the Club “has gone through tumultuous times
during these four years with six presidents,
much finger pointing and the usual complaints.
This year was the fourth year for Associates/
Professional Associates to have been able toserve on the Board. With so many things thatare happening at the FCCJ, continuity is certainly an advantage for any incumbent Director.
Koeki Hojin status will hopefully bring us moreprestige and donations but it will also mean that
our responsibility for public service and proper
governances in operating the club will be undermore scrutiny. The plan to relocate the FCCJ in
few months would need a very concerted effort
by all to include financial as well as volunteers
and, recruiting new members.”
He added: I am still concerned with thepolitics surrounding how the club is managed
today and would definitely try to bring somesense of reality in its covenants and operations.
The Professional and Associate members havedifferent needs, but the ultimate objective isthe long-term existence of the FCCJ.”
Makoto Honjo, the current Associate member Kanji and a candidate for the same positionon the new Board, noted, “Kanji and its corporate equivalent kansayaku are required underJapanese corporate law to, among others, independently check and report on the workings of
BOD members. Honjo said that over the past
two years, his work along with that of Regularmember Kanji Yoshisuke Iinuma had “especially focused on providing a balanced account to
the BOD and the General Membership on thefollowing two fronts: understanding the discussions pertaining to the move to the Marunouchi Nijubashi Building and communicating our
findings on where we stand and why, and promoting the understanding of the governancestandards required of FCCJ as a Public Interest
Incorporated Association (Koeki Shadan Hojin)
under Japanese Law."
Uichiro Kinoshita, who is also running for
office as Associate member Kanji, was absent
from Tokyo and unable to make an oral presentation at the Speak-Out. In a subsequent
statement, he said that “the Kanji is expected to
execute tasks stipulated in the Public Interest
Incorporated Association Law. I also would liketo stress that we may have to seriously consider
the way we restore the club-like atmosphere of
FCCJ.As an associate member for a period of abit less than 30 years, I witnessed the obvious
loss of FCCJ’s unique and unrivaled circumstances [that had] been carefully fostered andaccumulated by members and staff highly
aware of its importance. Let’s restore it to beenjoyed and appreciated by all members.”

16 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018

Feature1

Last Monthin Photos
Club Members Share
Their Best Shots
1. Participants showing their full body tattooed, possibly members of theJapanese mafia or Yakuza, attend the Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa district on May
20, 2018, Tokyo, Japan. The Sanja Matsuri is one of the largest Shinto festivals inTokyo, and it is held in Tokyo’s Asakusa district for three days around the third
weekend of May. Large groups of people dressed up traditional clothes carry
Mikoshi (sacred portable shrines) between the streets near to Sensoji Temple
to bring blessing and fortune to the inhabitants of the neighboring community
at Asakusa during the second and third day of the festival. The annual festival
attracts millions of visitors every year. Photo by Rodrigo Reyes Marin
2. Hamish Stewart (up) and Chris Feauai-Sautia of the Reds tackle Grant
Hattingh of the Sunwolves with the ball during the 2018 Super Rugby Rd 13
game between Australia’s Queensland Reds vs Sunwolves from Japan at Prince
Chichibu Memorial Stadium on May 12, 2018, Tokyo, Japan. The Sunwolves beat
the Reds 63-28. Photo by Rodrigo Reyes Marin

2

3. Heron hooded dancers perform during the Daigyoretsu or Large Parade of Sanja
Matsuri Festival at Sensoji Temple in Asakusa on May 18, 2018, Tokyo, Japan. The
Daigyoretsu Parade is a large procession of priest, city officials, musicians, geishasand dancers dressing Edo Period costumes through Asakusa streets until Sensoji
Temple. This is one of the Three Great Shinto Festivals in Tokyo, that is held on thethird weekend of May. Photo by Rodrigo Reyes Marin
4. Fully bloomed cherry blossoms and a pagoda are displayed before a World
Heritage, Mt. Fuji at Arakurayama Sengen park in Fujiyoshida city in Yamanashi
prefecture, west of Tokyo on Aprl 8, 2018. Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno

JUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 17

Feature3

4

18 | FCCJ | JUNE 2018Club News

Days ofLight
by PETER OXLEY
An homage to the people of Cambodia

PHOTO
EXHIBITION
June 2 - July 6at the FCCJJUNE 2018 | FCCJ | 19

Club News

New in the Library1.

Another Asia: Rabindranath
Tagore & Okakura Tenshin
Rustom Bharucha
Oxford University Press

4.

New Members
2.

3.

Communicating: A Guide to PR
in Japan 2018
Dentsu Public Relations
Wiley Publishing Japan
Gift from Dentsu Public
Relations Inc.

60 Years of Japanese Antarctic
Research Expedition: A News
Agency As Eyewitness
Japan Press Research Institute(ed.); Kyodo News (ed.)
Japan Press Research Institute
Gift from Kyodo News

ASSOCIATE MEMBERS●● Amy Jackson, Pharmaceutical
Research And Manufacturers
Of America (PhRMA)●● Masayo Endo, Freelance Koho●● Kohkichi Fujiki, Fujiki
Transportation &Stevedoring Co., Ltd.
●● Hiroshi Hayashi, Hayashi
Jimusho●● Yuko Kanamaru,
Mori Hamada & Matsumoto●● Yuto Matsumura, Mori
Hamada & Matsumoto●● Reiko Sugioka, Rei Co., Ltd●● Masatake Yone,
Mori Hamada & Matsumoto

5.

PITCH US YOUR STORYThe Naked WorldEli K. P. William
Talos Press
Gift from Eli K. P. William

Echoes: Writers in Kyoto
Anthology 2017
John Dougill (ed.); Amy Chaves(ed.); Mark Richardson (ed.); Alex
Kerr (preface)
Writers in Kyoto
Gift from Eric Johnston

Please send your story ideas tono.1shimbun@fccj.or.jp, and be sure to note
whether you have (or have access to) visuals.
Our rates are ¥20 per published word,¥20,000 for a front cover photo.
Photo essays: ¥15,000 for full-page photos and¥5,000 for smaller shots.
All payments will be made in credit
to your member account.

Pilates

Takae method
For a healthy life
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