TOKYO, March 13, 2023—Except after the 47 samurai triumphantly trudged through downtown Edo with the head of their master’s rival in the 1703 ‘Chushingura’ vendetta incident and a post-World War II reconstruction period, Japan’s journalism has been subservient to authorities, selling government spoon-fed information and entertainment in large characters with sketches on cheap paper to people of the then world’s largest metropolis.
And it had become even more so over the past decade when the late assassinated Shinzo Abe was serving as prime minister (even though some major media entities struggled unsuccessfully for independent fact-based impartial reporting). And now under the current minister, Fumio Kishida’s reign, and thanks to the three years of Covid impact, the press freedom looks as if irreversibly broken.
Television media are now almost fully under government control. Hiroshi Sekiguchi, who hosts the Sunday Morning TBS TV station show, said in the March 12 program that Abe’s aide once commented ‘the government needs to make clear that errant programs must be controlled’ regarding ‘political impartiality’ of television media under the Broadcasting Law.
The comment was included in a document in which comments of former telecom minister who currently is the minister of economy and national security, Sanae Takaichi, favoring regulating the media. Takaichi said in last week’s Diet (parliament) testimony that she had no knowledge of making such comments, and thus, ignored Sekiguchi’s claims and with it, rejecting opposition demands to confirm that she favored controlling the media.
The television media are not saying anything perhaps save Mr. Sekiguchi, passively reporting and broadcasting who said what in most confusing manner that the general public are not likely to show interest. Instead, television programs are broadcasting about whether workers are wearing the face-mask after the government altered the mask-mandate to individuals’ discretion from March 13, as well as the fourth consecutive victory of the Japanese baseball team in the World Baseball Classic tournament.
This is a form of the major media’s ‘self-governance and restraint’ to handle things that upset politicians off the front page. So, as had been the Edo period ‘Kawaraban’ one-page bulletin, fun news is prioritized and the politically complicated and uncomfortable (for politicians and bureaucrats) are relegated or not reported at all – except when major events unfold, like the 1703 Chushingura and 2022 shooting death of Abe.
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Insight Into the Future