What is for sure though is that Japan’s freelance journalists include a select group of resourceful and determined investigative reporters. Delving into topics that that major media organizations can’t, or won’t, touch they fight a continual battle against obstructive officialdom, the threat of legal action, even physical attack.

Every month a group of writers, editors, journalists and artists meets in Ochanomizu, central Tokyo. The “Shuppan Network” union has 200 members and is the only labor union in Japan specifically for freelance writers and editors. Among their members are a number of freelance investigative reporters like Kenichi Kita. Kita says that some of Japan’s best-known investigative reporters are the ones who work outside of the major media corporations, but that overall Japan has too little investigative reporting. “If you look at the media in total, there is definitely not enough,” he says.

Kita writes on Japan’s controversial consumer-loan companies for the weekly magazines. He says that the weekly magazines rely heavily on freelancers. The best known writers, like Kita, will have their own bylines – other articles will be compiled from the research of a team of reporters and be published anonymously. Freelancers contribute to chaotic mix of scandal, entertainment news, political analysis, gossip and rumor, but also hard-hitting investigative reporting. Kita contrasts that with the bland output of Japan’s broadsheets. “It’s a fact that about half the articles in newspapers are based on announcements of some kind,” he says.

Freelancer investigative reporters, however, face formidable obstacles. Reporter Yu Terasawa is well known for an ongoing court case against Japan’s press club system. For 17 years he has been covering police corruption cases, but as a freelance he has been systematically denied access to the official information distributed through Japan’s press clubs. “It is obvious that official institutions should treat all journalists equally – but they don’t,” says Terasawa. His most recent suit against the government over the press clubs is now being deliberated on by Japan’s Supreme Court.

Without the protection of a major media organization, freelance journalists can also be easy targets for intimidation. Terasawa had his phone tapped by one of Japan’s controversial consumer loan companies, Takefuji Corporation, after he wrote articles critical of the company. Takefuji’s president was eventually sentenced to a suspended prison term. Another freelance investigative reporter, Katsuhisa Miyake, was sued by the same company in 2003 and ordered to pay 110 million yen (935,000 US dollars). That potentially bankrupting ruling was overturned, but Miyake’s counter-suit to seek compensation from Takefuji is still in progress.

Many freelance journalists point to an alarming trend where companies target individual journalists through the courts. The amount awarded in libel cases have ballooned. “I have been threatened by companies,” says one established weekly magazine freelancer and author, who requested that his name not be used. “I am trying to keep a low profile. There are rumors that some Japanese companies are hiring private detectives to investigate reporters who write about them.”

If freelancers are sued for libel or have problems with their employers, there is little support available. Very few freelancers join a union. According to Shuppan Network member Reiko Kado, that might be because most freelancers have deliberately opted out of Japan’s group-orientated work environment. “A lot of Japanese freelancers just don’t want to be in any kind of organization,” she says. “They are lone wolves.”

There is little training available for aspiring freelance investigative reporters, either. “Probably, many young people who could make good investigative reporters end up in other jobs,” says Yu Terasawa. Japan has few journalism schools and training is almost exclusively on the job. Newspapers can teach their new staff the ins and outs of the newsman’s job, but other cub investigative reporters tend to be on their own. “The weekly magazines don’t have the money or the time to train investigative reporters,” says Terasawa.

Yet, despite the obstacles, there have been a number of major scandals broken by freelance journalists and weekly magazines. Mostly recently, Japan’s consumer loan companies have been a cause-celebre for investigative journalists. A steady stream of revelations about the companies’ unscrupulous tactics has emerged and the government has moved to regulate the industry more strictly.

A number of well known freelancers have carved out reputations for themselves covering other topics neglected by newspapers and TV. Weekly magazine investigative reporter Mika Yanagihara started writing about car accidents 15 years ago. Now she covers police accident investigations and the insurance industry. Other articles have also detailed what she describes as an alarming number of suspicious suicides and accidents where no autopsy was performed. She has published 25 books and has several ongoing magazine series – one of her books was even turned into a TV drama.

But why can’t the newspapers with their vast resources pursue these issues, too? And why is so much investigative reporting left up to the weekly magazines and freelancers? “The newspapers won’t take one incident and investigate it [over time],” says Yanagihara. “They just report when there is news.” Newspaper journalists tend to get shifted around the company from department to department, she says, and from regional bureau to bureau, too. “Even if an individual journalist wants to pursue a story, it’s too difficult.”

She also suspects that advertising income is an issue when magazines consider stories about, for example, major automobile manufacturers. Although that’s not to say there aren’t problems with the weekly magazines as well. “I was once told by an editor, ‘sorry, we have an insurance ad this week, so we can’t take your article.’”

Shunsuke Yamaoka is another one of Japan’s best-known freelance investigative reporters. His articles on corporate scandals run in the weekly magazines, but he was in the news himself when his house suffered an arson attack last year. “They called me before I wrote the article to warn me off,” says Yamaoka. “I know who did it.” After the attack, which burnt out his entrance hall and melted his air-conditioner, Yamaoka had to leave his apartment. “The other people living in the apartment block were scared and forced me to move out.”

The attack didn’t stop Yamaoka’s work though, and he is now running a highly successful subscriber-based news website. “I am probably the first freelance journalist in Japan to make money out of their own news website,” says Yamaoka. He first set up the website in October 2004, and in May this year, when the site was receiving 50,000 hits a day, he decided to start charging money. All the content is written by Yamaoka, mostly about corporate scandals. A year’s subscription costs 9000 yen (76 US dollars) and he already has 1100 subscribers — with 100 new people signing on a month. Yamaoka has already made enough money to set up an office and hire a member of part-time staff.

“To put it simply, I am writing the stories that the newspapers won’t publish,” says Yamaoka. He explains that the newspapers and TV will only start to report on a story when the police have already made an arrest. “If the journalists are just going to wait for the police, what’s the point in having journalists?” asks Yamaoka pointedly. The website has a notice on its front page appealing for “whistle-blowers and information (cases with public benefit only)” along with Yamaoka’s fax number. He says that useful tips come in regularly.

One third of the articles are about stock-exchange listed companies. Yamaoka suspects that many of the subscribers are investors hoping to get unreported stock-related information. “If it was only regular news then I doubt anyone would pay a subscription for it,” he says. The listed company-related articles get about twice as many hits as those on politics.

His new job isn’t without its worries, however. “Of course, there are risks: [the companies] might sue me,” says Yamaoka. “Sometimes I get strange telephone calls.” He is no stranger to the courts having been sued 15 times during his 18 year long career in journalism (and won 12 times). “It’s tough now because I have to pay for all the legal fees myself.” He has several ongoing cases.

So what does the future hold for Japan’s freelancers? Perhaps it’s not all bad news. The Internet has enabled journalists like Yamaoka, as well as a huge number of amateur and professional bloggers, to reach readers directly. Japan has also seen the launch of several citizen journalism websites, most recently a local version of South Korea’s hugely successful OhmyNews. In 2001, Japan’s Freedom of Information Act came into force, making it much easier for freelancers – or indeed anyone – to access official information.

For investigative journalists the official walls that obstruct their research – and a fully free press in Japan – are certainly still standing strong. But then again, perhaps a few cracks have begun to show?

As a writer for weekly magazines, he has experienced their ambivalent relationship with Japan’s more respectable media. The latter are often amongst the weeklies’ targets, but newspapers and TV journalists use the magazines as an outlet for stories they can’t publish themselves. “There are gaps where [newspapers and TV] can’t report,” says Yoshitomi. “It’s the weekly magazines who fill those.”

But he also warns that the weekly magazines are losing their freedom to cover the stories other media won’t touch. Weekly magazine editors face rocketing libel payments, political pressure, even physical violence and the threat of arrest. In 2004, infamous scandal magazine, “Uwasa no Shinso” (“The Truth Behind the Rumours”) folded after a series of libel cases and a violent assault on its editor. On July 4th this year, the publisher of scandal magazine, “Kami no Bakudan” (“Paper Bomb”), was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment for criminal defamation. Freelance journalists say that a proposed anti-conspiracy law could further intimidate editors and restrict reporting.

While Yoshitomi is frank about what he calls the weeklies’ sometimes “sloppy” reporting, he stresses that scandal magazines and tabloids have an important role to play in the media – especially when large media organizations are vulnerable to pressure from the powerful. “If you want to understand about Japan, it’s not enough just to read the newspapers and watch TV,” he says. “You need newspapers, TV and weekly magazines.”

Japan Media Review: As a weekly magazine writer what kind of stories do you cover?

Yuji Yoshitomi: Basically, as far as weekly magazine reporting on Osaka goes, it is mainly “incidents.” In the eyes of the Tokyo media – and it’s the same for TV, newspapers or weekly magazines – the only news from Osaka worth picking up is about the Hanshin Tigers baseball team or murder cases. They have no interest in politics.

For example, when I wrote my book “Osaka Bankrupts,” it was a big issue in Osaka last year. Newspapers and TV were reporting on the Osaka government every day. In Tokyo, it was reported only briefly –Tokyo people didn’t know about the fuss in Osaka.

Tokyo weekly magazines don’t carry stories about Osaka politics. If they did, I don’t think people would read them. Osaka people know all about Tokyo from Osaka newspapers and TV, but the opposite is not true; Tokyo newspapers and TV don’t report about Osaka.

JMR: Why aren’t there any Kansai-based weekly magazines?

YY: I wonder why? There used to be one, but it didn’t sell. It seems that Osaka news by itself doesn’t sell. Unless it is some big Osaka murder case or scandal, people are not interested. Even people living in Osaka, they want news from Tokyo first.

JMR: How distinct are the Osaka and Tokyo media?

YY: Twenty years ago the tone was quite different between Tokyo and Osaka [newspaper editions]. Now, virtually all the Osaka newspapers have the same stance as the Tokyo papers. If there is an incident in Osaka, the papers will use more space and report it widely, but the political stance is the same whether it is Tokyo or Osaka.

JMR: What about other media?

YY: What’s interesting is that TV is different. For example, although Asahi Television is based in Tokyo, a company in the same business group, Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, is based here [in Osaka]. It is part of the same Asahi group, but they don’t broadcast the same thing.

The programs made in Tokyo are broadcast here, but there are Osaka-made “information programs” [news and entertainment shows] too. They are pretty extreme – they can freely broadcast things that can’t be said in Tokyo.

JMR: What kind of things?

YY: In Japan the imperial family issue is pretty much a taboo topic. It’s a delicate issue and the Tokyo media are very careful to be respectful. The Osaka media, on the other hand, are friendly to the imperial family, but they will be frank, too.

It started with entertainment news. Most entertainment journalists are based in Tokyo. If they report anything too extreme, they will get pressure from the big production companies. But if they come to Osaka, they can say what they want in the Osaka media.

After that, political journalists and commentators in the Osaka media started freely saying things which they can’t say in the Tokyo media. At the moment, if you are looking for a clear difference between the Tokyo and Osaka media – it’s the TV stations, and the information programs.

JMR: Are there fewer taboo topics in the Osaka media?

YY: No, that’s not the case. There are several major taboo topics in Japan; organized crime gangs, North Korea, the Burakumin [Japan's social class of former outcastes] and Soka Gakkai [an influential and controversial Buddhist sect]. As far as these taboos are concerned, there isn’t much difference between Osaka and Tokyo. The Osaka media might say things slightly more clearly, but it doesn’t really apply to the major taboo topics.

Historically there have been more Burakumin communities in the Osaka area [than in Tokyo]. The Osaka media know that, so they are more nervous about reporting the issue than Tokyo. On the other hand, Tokyo is more nervous about reporting the imperial family issue.

JMR: What sort of role do the weekly magazines play in the Japanese media?

YY: The newspapers don’t report 100 percent of the situation in Japan. Take the issue of the imperial family. The imperial household journalists knew that the Crown Prince and Masako were planning to get married, but they didn’t report it because of pressure from the Imperial Household Agency. The story was first reported by foreign media. And the information had been passed on by the weekly magazines.

The things that newspapers and TV want to say, but can’t say, get said by the weekly magazines. The things the weekly magazines can’t say, they used to pass on to “Uwasa no Shinso” [a now-defunct scandal magazine]. But Uwasa no Shinso has folded; that’s a shame.

JMR: Why did Uwasa no Shinso fold? Was it because the media became freer and its role disappeared?

YY: It’s the opposite. The Japanese media isn’t getting freer at all. The reason Uwasa no Shinso folded was because the editor didn’t have freedom [to write].

JMR: Aren’t the Japanese media freer to write about taboo topics these days?

YY: It has got easier to write about those taboo topics, but it is much harder to write about political scandals. People who have power can use the authority of the police. These are the days when the editor of a publishing company like Rokusaisha can be arrested without anyone minding. It’s a time when it is extremely difficult to write about scandals concerning those in power – politicians and bureaucrats.

JMR: Why doesn’t a replacement for Uwasa no Shinso appear?

YY: For one thing, producing a magazine is expensive and very risky. Even if you produce it, you don’t know if it will sell or not. And even if it does sell, you can get taken to court. Libel payments are getting larger recently. Before they were less than 1 million yen or thereabouts. Now they are close to 10 million yen [about US$85,000].

The Japanese people need a magazine like Uwasa no Shinso, but there are too many risks now. No one will produce magazine like that.

JMR: What kind of relationship is there between the newspapers and weekly magazines?

YY: The relationship is bad. The reporters on the spot are friendly, but the companies don’t get on. That’s because the weekly magazines’ targets aren’t just people in authority, politicians, the presidents of big companies. They also target newspapers and TV – mainstream media.

JMR: Aren’t the weekly magazines themselves often criticized for inaccurate reporting?

YY: It’s not the TV and newspapers that say the weekly magazines write lies. It’s the politicians. Though it is true there’s a sloppy side to weekly magazine reporting. Say there is an incident in Osaka. The only weekly magazines who have Osaka correspondents are Friday and Flash. [The weekly magazine reporters] can’t cover enough ground and the reporting is sloppy.

Newspapers and TV have an extremely wide range of targets for reporting: sports, politics, the imperial family, incidents. But there are gaps where they can’t report. It’s the weekly magazines who fill those gaps. There are many examples where politicians have resigned because of weekly magazine scoops.

Each medium only tells part of the story. There is no medium that covers the whole picture. As a journalist, you need to read the left wing Asahi, the right wing Yomiuri, and after that the weekly magazines. If you want to understand about Japan, it’s not enough just to read the newspapers and watch TV. You need newspapers, weekly magazines and TV.

The object of freelance journalist Katsuhisa Miyake’s concern is a conspiracy bill now being debated in the Japanese Diet. He believes that the law, which would make conspiracy to commit any of 619 different crimes an offence, could used to obstruct the work of investigative journalists in Japan.

Miyake has reason to be wary. In 2003 he was sued by Takefuji over articles he wrote on the consumer loan company for weekly magazines. He lost and was ordered to pay 110 million yen [935,000 dollars]. It was several years before Miyake could overturn the ruling on appeal. “It was preposterous. I couldn’t pay it. I would have gone bankrupt.”

He fears that the law could make it easier for large companies and politicians to intimidate investigative journalists through the threat of arrest. “Even the Diet representatives themselves who are debating the conspiracy bill don’t know what it is for,” he says, arguing that its main aim is simply to increase police power. “If the police or prosecutors decide to arrest someone, this law will make it extremely easy for them to do so.”

The bill was first introduced to the Japanese Diet in 2003 to ratify Japan’s signing of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. “It is Japan’s duty to ratify the treaty,” stresses Judicial Affairs Committee member and vocal supporter of the bill, Katsuei Hirasawa. He says that the law would be a powerful tool to fight against organized crime in Japan and abroad. Having spent over 25 years working in Japan’s Police Agency, he also believes that a conspiracy law is needed to strengthen police powers and protect the rights of victims. “[Opponents to the law] are saying you should crack down on crime after it has happened. It is too late then.”

Despite the backing of a large Diet majority from Prime Minister Koizumi‘s landslide victory in last September’s election, the bill has been twice rejected and revised. Now it has been postponed until the next Diet session. The delay and revisions were prompted by strenuous objections by lawyers, the Japanese press and opposition parties.

Lawyer and opponent of the bill Yuichi Kaido says that the concept of conspiracy is largely absent from Japanese law, restricted to only the most serious crimes. Unlike in the United States or the United Kingdom, where conspiracy laws have a long history, he says, Japanese law is closer to French or German law. Police can typically only make arrests after a crime has actually happened. “Japanese people can’t understand the concept of issuing punishment even though no crime has yet been committed,” he says.

The original draft of the bill made members of any “group” subject to arrest for conspiracy. Critics expressed concern that the law could be used against NGOs or unions. Although the bill has since been revised to apply specifically to groups with a criminal purpose, Kaido argues that the definition is still too vague. “It is the police who will decide whether or not a group is a criminal group,” he says. He is also concerned that once a member of an otherwise innocent organization was arrested, the group would be de facto classified as criminal.

Kaido notes that government officials have said little about how evidence of conspiracy will be collected. Wire-tapping, heavy-handed interrogation and tip-offs are likely tools for the police, he argues. Even conspiracy members who later change their minds will still be subject to arrest; only conspiracy members who go the police will be treated leniently.

The threat of arrest is a powerful tool for intimidation because once arrested, suspects have few rights, says Kaido. “For 23 days they can interrogate a suspect day and night. In a very serious case the interrogation can continue for 10 or 12 hours every day,” he says. Bail is rarely granted. “Almost everyone confesses to the Japanese police.” Until recently, interrogations were unrecorded, and even now prosecutors can decide when or when not to record. There are also persistent allegations of torture, says Kaido. “If you look at the totality of criminal cases, torture is very rare—but it is also rare for people to deny the charges. Among those cases, torture is not uncommon.”

Former National Police Agency official Hirasawa emphatically rejects the Japan Federation of Bar Associations’ arguments. “[Their] opposition to the bill is absolutely groundless and mistaken. They haven’t studied the bill,” he says. “They are just doing their best to protect the human rights of offenders. They have no interest in the rights of victims.”

To the charge that the law could be used to intimidate NGOs, unions or journalists, he says only groups whose purpose was crime would be targeted. “Why would the law to apply to journalists? It would be inconceivable for journalists to be targeted by the law; they are not a criminal group. If their purpose was reporting, the law wouldn’t apply.”

He also argues that Japanese police have far less power than their foreign equivalents and have to be sure of a conviction before making arrests. “In Japan, 99.97 percent of people are found guilty in court after they are arrested,” he points out. “Take a look at America, Britain, Europe – it is 60 or 70 percent at most. You can easily see that foreign police are making more wrongful arrests.”

Opposition party, the Social Democratic Party of Japan is against the conspiracy bill. “There is no need to destroy Japan’s system of criminal law and create a conspiracy law,” says leader and former lawyer Mizuho Fukushima. She compares the anti-conspiracy bill to the science fiction film “Minority Report” in which Tom Cruise’s character is arrested for a crime he has yet to commit. “It won’t really be to fight against organized crime groups,” she says. “There is a high probability that it will be used against NGOs, unions, and infringe on various kinds of freedom of expression.”

She fears the law could be used to stifle opposition to right-wing projects, including reform of the peace constitution, a new education law to promote patriotism and expansion of the U.S. military bases in Japan. “The right to freedom of expression to protest against the [Iraq] war is being severely curtailed,” Fukushima says, pointing to the arrest of the “Tachikawa three,” peace activists who were arrested for distributing anti-war leaflets to the mail boxes of a Self Defense Forces housing unit. “This law could be a tool to further suppress anti-war freedom of speech,” she says.

Earlier in June, several hundred people gathered in Hibiya Park in Tokyo to demonstrate against the bill. The meeting, where Diet member Fukushima also spoke, was held a stone’s throw from the Ministry of Justice and the National Police Agency. The gathering included trade union representatives, peace activists and consumer groups.

Freelance journalist Hitomi Nishimura was at the meeting to represent “Opinion Makers Against the Conspiracy Law,” a group of journalists, writers, broadcasters and bloggers. The group has produced a DVD, a series of downloadable movies and an anti-conspiracy law blog that gets 1,500 hits a day.

“Journalists who report on those in power won’t be able to do their jobs,” says Nishimura. She suggests that without the support of large media organizations, the threat of arrest would be enough deter freelance journalists from investigating the powerful. If they are arrested, the loss of weeks of pay, whether or not charges are brought, could be disastrous. And the same applies to small magazine publishers. Last July the publisher of a scandal magazine, “Kami no Bakudan,” was arrested and charged with defamation. The magazine had published a series of articles on Aruze Corporation, a pachinko gambling machine maker. The publisher was released more than 6 months later. The magazine alleges ties between the company and the local police.

Another member of the group, freelancer Yu Terasawa says that he has particular reason to be worried about the law. “I write about illegal police activities,” he says. “If I tried to get incriminating internal documents through an intermediary, I could be arrested for conspiracy to theft.” Unlike even a defamation prosecution, the police could take action before an article was researched, never mind published. He points out that there is no independent police watch-dog in Japan, and he fears that the law would make it even easier for the police to impede investigation by freelance reporters.

Economics journalist Ryuji Shinohara notes a vast difference in the position of freelance journalists and those working for large media organizations. “Politicians are more afraid of freelancers who earn 3 million yen a year than big media journalists who earn 30 million,” he says. Japan’s press club system means that mainstream media journalists can’t rock the boat because they risk the very real threat of being denied access to sources. He argues that it is up to Japan’s freelancers to provide independent reporting – something that would be made even more difficult by the conspiracy law. “The main newspapers have their own influence with the police. It’s the small publishers and freelancers who will have problems.”

Ironically, even when “Opinion Makers Against the Conspiracy Law” attempted to attend Diet deliberations on the conspiracy bill they bumped up against all too familiar obstructions. On arriving at the Diet Judicial Affairs Committee, they were unable to get press seats, as those were reserved for the press club members.

Despite the bill’s postponement, given the strength of the ruling coalition majority, commentators expect it to pass sooner or later. If that happens, freelance journalists as well as NGOs and activists will have a nervous wait to see how the new law is applied. Many argue that they have little reason to trust the authorities. A recent editorial in the Asahi Shimbun echoed their concerns: “We cannot deny that distrust of police and the court system underlies the public’s anxieties regarding the conspiracy bill.

Japan has one of the fastest aging populations in the world and one of the lowest fertility rates (fewer than 1.3 children per woman). Much of Japanese industry is now realigning to face the demographically inevitable, and the computer and Internet industries are no exception. If UN Population Division predictions are correct, by 2050 more than 40 percent of Japanese could be over 60. Next year the first of seven million baby boomers, born in the early post-war years, will reach the Japanese retirement age of 60. With time and money on their hands, they are predicted to go online in droves. In Japan, the new generation of Internet users could well be the older generation.

There are already signs of a shift. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ 2005 white paper reports that 26 percent of people over 60 were using the Internet in 2005, up from 10 percent in 2001. Along with an increase in the number of children going online, it’s a sign that surfers have become a more diverse group than the men in their 20s, 30s and 40s who caught the first Internet wave.

In particular, the Internet is attracting men in their 50s and older, says Souichiro Nishimura, marketing vice president of market research company Net Ratings. “It’s not just that the number of men over 50 using the Internet has increased… the amount of time the group spends online has increased greatly, too.” He points to a survey last year by the Japan Advertisers Association which found that, for the first time, 50-something and older men made up the largest segment of net users in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

Perhaps some of those middle-aged Internet users have been attracted by Japan’s active and growing blogging community. As of April 2006, there were more than 8.7 million blogs in Japan, almost twice as many as just six months before, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Providers have been quick to accommodate older bloggers. Nifty, one of Japan’s largest Internet providers, has set up a special blog service for seniors, called Golog. It is a counterpart to their popular Cocolog service. Sixty percent of Golog’s users are men; 22 percent in their 50s and almost 10 percent in their 60s. “Blogs are popular with middle-aged and older people,” says Hajime Inoue of Nifty’s Promotion Department. “The reason is that they are easier to set up and update than HTML webpages. If someone explains how to do it carefully, it’s easy for users to start on their blog.”

Printing company Toppan has also set up a blogging service for seniors, called Re:log. The site’s top page reads: “Of middle-aged men, by middle-aged men, for middle-aged men. A hobby-orientated blog community.” Below are links to featured blogs on photography, travel and food. Re:log Product Manager Hidetaka Yazawa explains that they have “narrowed down” the service’s functions to make it easier for older readers to use. Most users are in their 50s and the oldest in their 80s. The site provides a pared-down selection of blog templates and concentrates on the core functions of posting text and photos. Toppan is also cooperating with Mamion, a chain of computer schools, to produce manuals for senior citizens explaining how to set up blogs.

Ninety-five percent of Re:log’s users are men. “We started with the assumption that men don’t have much of a social network compared to women,” says Yazawa. “Especially in Japan, when men leave their company they don’t have anyone to socialize with.” The blogs provide an opportunity for retirees to make friends online. Eventually, Toppan plans to fund the service with advertisements targeted at their middle-aged and elderly male users, probably for photography, travel, adult learning or financial services.

Japanese providers have also set up general portal sites for senior surfers. One, NEC’s Station 50 includes news, travel and financial information. In mid May one front page item was a nostalgic feature article on the events of 1974. Another portal site, Yahoo Japan’s Yahoo Second Life, had articles on baby boomer retirement, on how to use Internet search engines and on shopping for fishing equipment.

But market research company Net Ratings’s Nishimura points out that such sites have not been particularly successful so far. “Users have become much more Internet-literate recently. A single portal site with all the information assembled in one place isn’t necessarily what’s needed.” He argues that it is more important to provide content in a friendly way for senior citizens, such as using larger fonts.

Computer helplines also find themselves affected by the changing demographic of users. DIS Technical Service Co.Ltd says that they are getting more calls from senior citizens in the past couple of years. They now provide special training to their operators. “Older customers aren’t used to explaining precisely what they want to do with the computer,” says Manager Takeshi Fujioka. “[We train employees to] listen carefully to the customer and ask questions to find out what the problem is.”

For those senior citizens completely new to the keyboard and monitor, a large number of computer classrooms have popped up in Japan in the last decade. They have followed the first Internet wave, then the recent increase in broadband connection rates. (Japan now has one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world at 16.4 percent). Home Computing Network (HCN) has opened more than 300 schools since 1996. The average age of their students is 60, and about three quarters are women, mostly housewives.

It was HCN that decided to open “Sereno Saloon,” the experimental school that aims to reach out to a different group than the chain’s regular customers. The students are in their 70s and 80s, rather than 50s and 60s, and in addition to learning basic computer skills, they use special “brain training” software developed by Kanji Akahori, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The software is similar to popular software sweeping Japan at the moment, particularly software available for the Nintendo DS hand-held console.

The school also uses more analogue “anti-brain aging techniques.” In a small classroom with a semicircle of desks laid out in front of a digital whiteboard, students begin each class with finger exercises and performing tasks such as counting from 1 to 120 as fast as they can. One special class called “face exercise English” uses English pronunciation practice to rejuvenate facial muscles. The school also has a relaxation room with a massage chair and a virtual reality boxing game for light exercise.

“Normally, at a computer school you try and learn the skill as soon as possible,” says Nagatomi. Although students at HCN’s other schools typically progress though six-month beginner, regular and advanced courses then leave, HCN hopes that students at the brain training school will stay longer.

“Basically we want students to keep coming. There is no graduation,” says Nagatomi. They hope that students will see the classes more as a hobby or social activity than as goal-based study. The school is also more expensive than HCN’s other schools. A year’s worth of classes (about 70 to 80) starts from 220,000 yen [a little under $2,000]. HCN plans to introduce brain-training classes to other schools in their chain, too.

In Japan, where some older people have been enthusiastic technological early adopters, maybe it’s not so surprising that senior surfers are catching up with their juniors. “It’s a practical thing, that you can use in your daily life,” says Michiyo Onouchi, a 55-year-old housewife who has been studying computing in a small private class with a group of friends for a year. “I couldn’t do anything at first, I hadn’t touched a computer. We began from learning how to switch it on.” Now she couldn’t do without it. Among other things, she has learned how to surf the Internet, check the weather forecast and train timetables and make Japanese New Year’s greeting postcards. “My son lives in Germany, so the most useful has been learning to send e-mails and use chat programs like Skype,” says Onouchi cheerfully.

This show-house in a northern Tokyo suburb is one of several ongoing trials of earthquake warning technology in Japan. Set up by JEITA, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association, it uses information received over the Internet from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and their nationwide network of earthquake sensors. JMA’s computers analyze data on the first swift-traveling tremors that arrive from the epicenter of a major earthquake to predict where and with what strength the earthquake will strike.

The system can then produce a warning of a few seconds to as long as half a minute, which should be enough time to take minimum precautions to prevent serious injury, says Shinya Tsukada of the Seismological and Volcanological Department of JMA. “You can’t pack up your belongings and run away, but at least you might be able to get under the table.” In March, a JMA-hosted study group of researchers, business representatives and officials from public organizations, issued an interim report regarding the progress of such research and ways that it might be used.

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone areas of the globe–20 percent of the world’s magnitude 6 and greater earthquakes occur here. Each year, there are more than a thousand earthquakes powerful enough to feel, and major disasters are frighteningly common. In 1995, Japan experienced its most destructive quake of the post-war period, the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake, which killed 6,435 people in and around the city of Kobe in central Japan. In October 2004, a large earthquake killed 51 people in the northern Japan prefecture of Niigata.

While virtually no part of Japan is safe from the risk of a major quake, particular attention is focused on the prospect of a major earthquake either in Tokyo, or in the Tokai area west of the capital. A recent government study simulated the consequences of a 7.3 magnitude quake under the north part of Tokyo Bay, a disaster smaller than the 1923 Tokyo earthquake that killed more than 100,000 people, but similar in size to the Kobe earthquake. The study estimated 11,000 deaths and economic damage reaching $955 billion (112 trillion yen) — 850,000 houses were destroyed outright and as many as 7 million people were forced to abandon their homes.

As researchers struggle to produce reliable results from long- and medium-term earthquake prediction systems, recent attention has concentrated on short-term warning systems such as the JMA’s. By using its own network of 200 sensor stations and several hundred set up by other research bodies, the agency can calculate the epicenter of a large quake in as little as two seconds. Although the idea of earthquake warning systems is not particularly new–there are systems in use in California and in Mexico–the system now being developed in Japan promises to be a nationwide network and make use of a range of Internet and mobile communications technology.

Since 2004, the JMA has been transmitting information about imminent earthquakes to select companies, schools and public bodies in a number of trials. A crucial factor is the distance between the epicenter of the earthquake and the area that receives the warning, said Tsukada. “In a really big earthquake, the system may not be useful for people directly above the epicenter, but it may help people further away.”

That principle was clearly demonstrated by two major earthquakes that occurred after the JMA started testing their system. In October 2004, the Niigata area of central Japan was hit by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake. Although the JMA’s system pinpointed the earthquake within seconds, the worst-hit areas were directly above the epicenter, and there was no time to issue a warning. Then, in August of last year, an earthquake hit the northern Japanese prefecture of Miyagi. This time, because the epicenter was 60 miles away in the ocean, the system was able to provide a 16-second warning before tremors reached the heavily populated city of Sendai. The earthquake measured an upper-5 on the Japanese scale of earthquake intensity in Sendai, enough to topple furniture and cause moderate damage to buildings.

“People’s attitudes changed completely after the Miyagi earthquake,” said Tsukada. “They realized that we can really use this technology.” In Tokyo at the time, Tsukada received an automatic cell phone text-message from the system when the earthquake was detected, and then felt the weakened tremors a minute later.

Yukio Fujinawa is the managing director of Real-Time Earthquake Information Consortium (REIC), an NGO that is looking at how information from the JMA’s warning system can be put to practical use. “There are two basic uses for the information,” he said, “one is to stop machines, etc., the other is to warn people.”

Setting up automatic systems to stop assembly lines, halt elevators or alert doctors about to start medical operations, is relatively simple, he said. Reaching a consensus on the second use, how or whether to alert the general public is more difficult. One problem is false alarms; out of 400 alerts since the testing began two years ago, approximately 30 have been mistakes. Another is the possibility of panic. REIC’s Fujinawa suggests a solution could be to introduce the technology gradually. He proposes installing systems in schools and teaching children how to respond to the warnings from a young age. REIC estimates the cost at around $17,000 (2 million yen) for each of Japan’s 55,000 elementary and middle schools.

Warnings might also be issued through the media, much the same way that earthquake reports are broadcast at present. Every year, an automated system passes reports of 200 to 300 earthquakes to the Japanese media, and they are normally broadcast within 2 minutes of the earthquake occurring. Alternatively, Japan’s extensive network of public announcement speaker systems could be put to use. According to REIC, two-thirds of local governments already have suitable systems in place.

One company, the Tokyo start-up 3Soft Ltd., is now developing the world’s first portable home earthquake warning system. They have named it “Digital Catfish,” after the catfish’s legendary tendency to show strange behavior immediately before earthquakes. The PDA-sized receiver picks up wireless earthquake warning transmissions and relays them to smaller speakers placed around a home, or to other safety devices such as those in the JEITA show-house. 3Soft officials hope to price a home-use system at less than $850 (100,000 yen), although they say it is unlikely that the government will allow individual households to buy the product in the near future.

“It’s still not clear whether or not the average household will be able to use our device,” said CEO Hiroyuki Iue, adding that their first customers will probably be businesses or public organizations. Beginning in June, organizations will start applying to the JMA for permission to use the earthquake warning data. 3Soft hopes to start selling the device later this year.

Researchers are also looking at how mobile technology could be used to transmit earthquake warnings. Cell phones already play an important role in the immediate aftermath of earthquakes — though not without problems. “When an earthquake happens cell phones become difficult to use,” said Akira Matsuki, a senior manager at Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo. “In previous large earthquakes the usage has exceeded capacity by several times to tens of times.” Setting up cell phone capacity to cope with the spikes in usage following a major earthquake or other disaster is prohibitively expensive. Instead, Japan’s major carriers have set up mobile-Internet bulletin board systems to let users leave messages that can be accessed by concerned friends and relatives.

“No matter where you are, if you have a mobile [phone], even though there may be restrictions on voice calls, you still have access to the Internet,” said Matthew Nicholson, Media Relations manager at Vodafone K.K. The systems also link to each other so that messages can be picked up across different carriers. Vodafone’s system has been put into action four times since it was initiated in April last year. Following the Miyagi earthquake in August, 23,000 people checked messages on the site.

A long-term, and somewhat more difficult challenge, is to enable cell phones to relay JMA earthquake warning messages. According to NTT DoCoMo’s Matsuki, developing such a system could both help convey warnings of a coming quake and help cope with the flood of messages afterwards. “We are examining using existing mobile phone technology to send large numbers of messages to users simultaneously,” said Matsuki.

Although he said he couldn’t divulge details of the research, Matsuki noted that a system is unlikely to use present e-mail messages, which take too long to open and read. He also pointed to the need for a standardized system across carriers, and careful consideration of the consequences of the technology. For instance, what would happen if drivers on a freeway decided to stop suddenly when they received an earthquake warning?

The government’s study group on the emergency warning system is due to produce its final report some time between September and December this year. The report is expected to include a road map for implementing earthquake-warning technology. But until consensus is reached on how exactly to use the information, however, it looks like the warning service will only be available to select groups chosen by the authorities. Debate among study group members continues. According to participants, some have raised the question of whether it is fair only to provide warnings of impending catastrophes to those who pay, others have questioned the responsibility of issuing warnings that might be false alarms or could potentially cause mass panic.

“The technology is ready,” said the JMA’s Tsukada. “The argument now is about how to give the information to the public.”

Last July, Professor Ueno was chosen by a citizens’ group in the Greater Tokyo district of Kokubunji as the first speaker in a series of lectures on human rights; the events were to be sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
But according to the group, Tokyo officials objected to the choice of Ueno because she might use the phrase “gender-free” – a poorly defined term originally intended to mean free from sexual bias. The citizen’s group refused to find another speaker and instead cancelled the series of events.

Ueno lambasted what she termed a repression of free speech: “I have strong objections to any official agencies banning the use of any words in public, unless they are discriminatory expressions or hate speech.” She also claimed that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s (TMG) move was part of a pattern of similar actions. “I am afraid it may be part of an ongoing backlash by neo-nationalists.”

“Gender-free” is an imported English phrase that has been used in Japan since the mid-1990s. Some progressive teachers and local education authorities have used the phrase to promote liberal sex education, and the mixed listing of boys and girls on school roll calls. The latter is contentious in Japan where traditionally boys’ names are read out first.

Originally a near synonym to gender equality, it has become highly controversial. Ueno accused conservatives of deliberately hijacking the phrase and distorting its meaning. She noted that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has a special body set up to oppose gender-free education. The “Extreme Sex-Education Gender-Free Education Survey Project Team” was set up in March last year and is chaired by Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary. The grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a class A war criminal and later prime minister, Abe is widely predicted by political commentators to be the next premier.

The project team’s Web page criticizes “out of control education” that “denies differences between the sexes.” It cites examples of older elementary school pupils forced to stay overnight in the same room, and includes photos of anatomically correct dolls the site says were used in Tokyo schools “to teach sex acts.” A fax number is given at the bottom of the page with request: “Everyone, please send us examples of inappropriate education taking place near you.” The project team says it has produced a 100-page report put together from 3,500 messages it has received.

In Tokyo, the phrase “gender-free” has been officially banned by the Metropolitan Board of Education since August 2004 and cannot be used by instructors in schools. “The phrase gender-free is not properly defined, so it is likely to cause confusion,” explained the board’s Shinichi Egami. He added that the board could not support Ueno as a speaker for the Kokubunji lectures in case she used the phrase. “We can’t support a lecture that conflicts with the policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.”

The term gender-free is also criticized in the Office of Gender Equality’s recent revision to the “Basic Plan for Gender Equality.” The document includes examples of “extreme” education similar to those on the LDP’s Web site. Professor Ueno suggests there is a clash between progressives and conservatives in the party, pointing out that the current Minister for Gender Equality, Kuniko Inoguchi, is known as a progressive advocate of gender equality, while her deputy, Eriko Yamatani, is a much more conservative politician.

Sophia University Professor Inoguchi herself hinted at conflict within the LDP when she spoke at a briefing for foreign journalists this January. She first praised reform of Japan’s economic structure, then went on: “Now it is time for social structure. This is more complicated, more delicate; I have to listen to many traditional voices. And if you go too far, you lose everything.”

One of the loudest traditional voices is Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, ex-novelist and a right-wing firebrand. He is known abroad also for his 1989 book “The Japan that Can Say No,” co-written with then Sony Chairman Akio Morita. In a 2001 interview with women’s magazine Shukan Josei he described “old women” as “the worst evil and malignant being that civilization has produced,” adding that “it is said that old women who live after their reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin.”

On Jan. 27, six women’s groups presented a petition with more than 1,800 signatures to both Ishihara and the Metropolitan Bureau of Education protesting the cancellation of Ueno’s speech. But speaking at his regular press briefing, the governor denied that Ueno was censored. “The city government has no recollection of making such a rule,” he said. He also criticized the phrase gender-free. “The phrase itself is sloppy and vague. We are Japanese, so we don’t use English.”

Ueno, however, is adamant that the Tokyo government’s actions amounted to censorship. “If it were any private organization, it is perfectly all right to have any particular criteria to choose a speaker,” she said. “But the TMG is a public body supported by tax payers . . . [this] is a political intervention by power, which is to be called censorship.”

Lawrence Repeta, a professor at Omiya Law School, compared Ueno’s case to more than 200 teachers in Japan who have been disciplined for refusing to stand for the flag and sing Japan’s national anthem during graduation ceremonies. “The government is forcing them to stand even though it conflicts with [the teachers’] personal beliefs and causes them personal anguish,” said Repeta. “This is worse than censorship. It is a form of behavior control.”

Authorities have also targeted NGO activists. In February 2004, three anti-war activists were arrested and imprisoned for 75 days after distributing pamphlets at a residential complex for Self-Defense Force personnel in the Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa. Amnesty International took up their case, calling them “prisoners of conscience.” Eventually the charges against them were rejected by the Tokyo High Court.

The fringes of the Japanese press are feeling the heat too. In July last year, the editor of a small Kobe scandal magazine, Kami no Bakudan (Paper Bomb), was arrested. After being charged with defamation against Aruze Corp., a manufacturer of Pachinko gambling machines, editor Toshiyasu Matsuoka was held in custody for 6 months and released on bail Jan. 20.

These apparent attacks on free speech coincide with a rightward shift in the Japanese political climate. Koizumi’s controversial visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors 14 class A war criminals along with Japan’s other war dead, have angered Japan’s neighbors. Tokyo Gov. Ishihara and Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe have also been to pay their respects at the shrine, and Foreign Minister Taro Aso recently called for the Japanese emperor to visit. Relations with Korea and China have been further strained by the publication of revisionist history textbooks that gloss over Japan’s wartime actions in Asia.
Yet even a political shift shouldn’t change constitutional rights, stressed Repeta. “Maybe you have political leaders who are very nationalistic, and they are popular, they are elected . . . but that doesn’t change the constitution,” he said. “The constitution guarantees freedom of expression, and it guarantees the freedom to hold personal beliefs to all people.”

The gender-free censorship controversy comes at a time when gender issues are already in the spotlight. In the government’s revision to the 2000 Basic Plan for Gender Equality, work-place equality was a prominent topic — the lack of which is being blamed for Japan’s extremely low birthrate and shrinking population. If the baby bust continues, the UN has predicted there could 20 million fewer people in Japan by 2050.

Japanese women are being forced to choose between starting a family and pursuing their careers — and many plump for the latter. Although Japan has a law saying that firms are obliged to give one year of maternity leave, according to the Gender Equality Bureau, 70 percent of women are effectively forced to resign from work when they get pregnant. Barely 1 in 5 women take maternity leave, and despite being legally entitled to paternity leave, virtually no men (0.56 percent) take time off.

Many women report being told to quit or being bullied into leaving when they become pregnant. One young mother, Miyako (who asked that we not her last name), took maternity leave from her job at a trading company shortly before her son was born, but she doesn’t know yet if she will go back to work or not. “My boss told me, ‘Your position might not still be available when you come back.’” Despite that, she says that her company is relatively considerate to female employees. She said she has heard of expectant mothers made ill by the stress at other companies.

The controversy over the term “gender-free” seems to have become a distraction from the real issues of discrimination Japanese women face. If so, perhaps some of the controversy could be avoided by a change in terminology. Professor Ueno herself has said that despite Tokyo officials’ fears, she doesn’t generally use the term gender-free because it is not in currency outside Japan. “I have an alternative suggestion,” said Ueno, “to substitute the words ‘gender free’ with ‘gender equality’. What’s wrong with that?”

On Jan. 16 Tokyo public prosecutors raided Livedoor’s headquarters in the high-rise Roppongi Hills development. The ensuing blanket media coverage detailed alleged misdeeds, including stock market manipulation and falsifying accounts to conceal losses. The Tokyo bourse reacted quickly; the unexpected raid causing a massive sell-off of Livedoor stock, swamping the exchange’s computer system, and forcing the bourse to close 20 minutes early on Jan. 18. Five days later Horie and three top Livedoor executives were arrested and taken into custody.

Livedoor was founded in 1997 by Tokyo University dropout Horie with start-up capital of just $50,000 (6 million yen). The Yahoo-style portal site grew through a series of takeovers into a group of 44 separate companies and five related companies employing 2,500 people. Horie’s audacious but failed attempts to buy one of Japan’s baseball teams and later to takeover the Fujisankei media conglomerate made him probably Japan’s best known businessman. Horie even stood (unsuccessfully) as an independent candidate in the general election last September.

But while Horie has attracted the admiration of many for his self-confidence and success, he has also attracted the enmity of Japan’s old guard. His detractors accuse him of arrogance and greed. One of Horie’s bestselling business books is titled “Who Earns Wins.” He boasted of his ambition to set up a space tourism business and even hinted that he might one day see himself as prime minister. Horie reportedly chose his 38th floor Roppongi Hills headquarters because it was the only place in Tokyo that he could look down on Tokyo Tower.

Yet, is it too soon to write Horie off? The media seem to presume Horie’s guilt, even before a trial that, judging by other high profile cases in Japan, could well last years. Horie has not yet been officially charged, and much of the coverage has relied on anonymous quotes from the Tokyo prosecutors’ office. The media that once lionized Horie are now dragging him down with equal enthusiasm. Aera magazine devoted 11 pages to the scandal – including an interview with Horie’s father. Another weekly tabloid, Friday magazine, ran the headline: “Tokyo prosecutors’ office reveals: ‘Horie [planned] to evade taxes by going into space.’”

What does the future hold in store for Horie? Some already foretell eventual rehabilitation. “It may be difficult to rebuild Livedoor, but Horie may emerge as a wounded hero,” suggested Nihon Keizai Shimbun columnist Yasuhiro Tase, speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan last month. After their avid coverage of Horie’s downfall, “the mass media will welcome him back with open arms,” predicted TV Asahi political commentator Soichiro Tahara.

Japan Media Review spoke to Internet entrepreneur and Japan Inc. magazine publisher Terrie Lloyd about Horie’s rise and fall. Both an Australian and New Zealand national, Lloyd arrived in Japan 22 years ago. Like Takafumi Horie, he has been involved with online business since well before the Japanese Internet took off at the end of the 1990s.

This is an edited transcript of interviews conducted by telephone and e-mail.

Japan Media Review: When did you first come across Horie?

Terrie Lloyd: It would have been in the mid-1990s. It was just a little two-bit company and he was kind of a weird guy. [The] Internet was still just getting started back then. It is true that the Internet didn’t really take off in Japan until about 1998 or 1999, and that was because of broadband.

I had just started an Internet business. We were in a similar space. As I recall, he started off by doing server hosting and then very quickly got involved in [mergers and acquisitions] and consulting. His rise to fame has been very recent – in the last three years.

JMR: What was he like back then?

TL: He has always had a disdain for authority. He struck me back then as somebody who was a bit airheaded actually, in other words very ambitious and full of all the things he could do, and unaware of some of the restrictions that were around. Of course, that’s exactly what he turned out to be. He was always very smart though.

JMR: Is it true that he bought Livedoor to get the name?

TL: That’s true. That’s what he said when I interviewed him [for Japan Inc.], that business was losing lots of money. But there was another reason, obviously, and that would be 150,000 freeloading subscribers that he could convert to some of his other services.

JMR: Did you have any inkling he would become so big?

TL: No, it wasn’t obvious at all. Not considering his business model, no core to the business. Fundamentally, the business turned out to be smoke and mirrors.

It was his downfall because when there is no core to your business you are only as good as your last deal in terms of profit flow. So you have to do more and more deals — which means you tend to cut corners. If you cut corners, you break the law.

However, I will say that what he does is not particularly different to what I have seen other people do. I think most successful businessmen in this country have probably cut corners somewhere along the way, and if you look hard enough you will find what it was. The authorities know this, so if someone transgresses too much, well they have always got something to find out and have over you.

JMR: So he cut too many corners?

TL: It was sticking his finger up at people that he should have had a little more respect and time for. It is hard to say who is orchestrating this witch-hunt, but it is a witch-hunt because what he has done is not particularly bad. There has to be some political influence behind it, in my opinion.

JMR: Some people have spoken of a conspiracy?

TL: I don’t know if you can call it a conspiracy. I would say that someone has been doing some dedicated digging at least since the Fuji TV affair to find dirt on Horie, and it was only a matter of time before they found it. It’s pretty obvious because they had to dig all the way back to 2003 to find the ValueClick deal in order to get him arrested.

Once the prosecutor’s department knows there’s a problem, they have to go after the person. But, obviously, someone blew the whistle.

JMR: Do you think he will be convicted?

TL: Personally, I think the charges are really trumped up, like the Yomiuri Shimbun saying he bought the company for more than five times the proper value. There are plenty of instances of companies being bought for more than the book value. That activity in itself is not illegal, unless you knew that you were unofficially pumping up the values.

But you have to wonder where exactly the line can be drawn between gray and illegal, because in this country it is not clear at all.

JMR: Were you surprised at the speed of Horie’s downfall? Is Livedoor really a castle built on the sand as some people are saying?

TL: He hasn’t had his downfall necessarily yet. He’s only under interrogation. So he will get out. I assume he is the major shareholder in his company. If that is the case, he can replace the board and the management at any time.

JMR: Is this the Japanese Enron?

TL: No, it’s not comparable at all. The scope is completely different, we are not talking about anywhere near the same amount of money. And there was never the performance that [Enron CEO Kenneth] Lay and the others allegedly did in the [United] States saying everything was dandy, when in fact it wasn’t. Now, it is true that they say Horie covered up the core company’s losses by transferring profits from other companies, but nevertheless as a group the company was profitable. Although that’s not kosher, it’s not outright lying as we saw at Enron.

JMR: Why do you think the media turned against Horie so abruptly?

TL: That’s just the Japanese media; they are always looking for the next hot story. There are no alliances or allegiances, they couldn’t care less. Some lean left, some lean right, so they tend to protect their own. But Horie was a mean little upstart capitalist; he didn’t really fall into any one media’s bailiwick, so of course none of them are going to protect him.

It’s his own fault, he decided that the way he was going to increase his stock was by [promoting] himself in front of the nation, which, needless to say, gave him a lot of exposure. Now he’s got that same exposure working against him.

JMR: When Horie tried to buy the Fujisankei Group he said that he wanted to bring the Japanese media up to date. Do you think his arrest is going to delay the media’s integration with the Internet?

TL: He changed it to a certain extent. He allowed independent media to be more important. He made a great business out of blogging. Has he changed the conservative incumbent media? No. They are being changed by market forces, not by Horie; the defection to computers; the explosion of 3G cell-phones; the prevalence of free papers. There are many, many different attacks taking place on the traditional media.

JMR: What do you think is going to happen to Horie now?

TL: Two weeks ago, I thought that he would get off the hook. Now I think that he will get hit with some charges, but I don’t think the trial will go as smoothly or as clearly as people expect. I think he will be quite uncooperative. And then, who knows, maybe they will throw the book at him because he was a nasty boy, not because he actually broke any laws.

Or, alternatively, they may back down and give him a suspended sentence – get the trial over quickly so that they don’t have to listen to him rant on day after day. It is hard to say whether he is going to do a Saddam [Hussein], or whether he is just going to go quietly.

JMR: Might the media help rehabilitate Horie one day?

TL: The have vilified him beyond all belief. They did the same thing with Yoshiaki Tsutsumi [ex-chief of the Seibu Railways group] who, in my opinion, did worse things than Horie did – and he got a suspended sentence. He committed fraud by using a holding company to manipulate the shares of Seibu railways.

At least it appears Horie wasn’t knowingly padding his own pocket – he was just building his own company. With Tsutsumi it was sneaky thievery over a long period of time. Mind you, [Tsutsumi] did the right thing; as soon they arrested him he apologized, he said it was all his fault. And the result was that he was chastised and let go.

JMR: If convicted, is there a chance he might come out of prison a quieter, humbler Horie?

TL: If he is smart he will. But you have got to wonder about his personality sometimes.

Japan has a number of its own citizen journalism projects, notably a “public journalism” site, which is part of Internet entrepreneur Horie Takafumi’s Livedoor News Web site. But despite Horie once vowing to “kill Japanese newspapers and TV,” citizen journalism seems to have barely landed a blow as yet. Site traffic is modest, and professional journalists have seemed critical and wary of the new competition. By way of contrast, in neighboring South Korea, citizen journalism Web site OhmyNews has more than 40,000 citizen and full-time reporters and once logged 25 million page views in a single day.

Japan Media Review spoke to Dan Gillmor about citizen journalism in the United States, South Korea and Japan. As well as considering why citizen journalists have had so little success thus far challenging Japan’s “old” media, Gillmor spoke about how citizen journalism has the potential to change media everywhere.

This is an edited transcript of interviews conducted by telephone and e-mail.

Japan Media Review: You have just set up the Center for Citizen Media. What is the project’s aim and would you describe it as “civic journalism”?

Dan Gillmor: Civic journalism was really about news organizations setting public agendas and being more directly involved with community affairs. The public civic journalism that people talked about was exclusively about big organizations or the local equivalent of mass media doing the agenda setting. The thing that I am focused on is bottom up as opposed to top down. I am involved with the citizen media idea – the democratization of the tools and the distribution – the idea that anyone can do it. I’m very anxious that the existing media organizations participate in this themselves and encourage people in their audiences to participate.

JMR: How does that compare to a project like OhmyNews in South Korea that started off in opposition to the mainstream media?

DG: It was exclusively independent of the main media when they set it up. Their whole goal was to be an alternative, and it was under conditions that are not at all like the conditions in the U.S. You had three newspapers that had a substantial majority among them of all the circulation in Seoul and much of the country. That’s a monolithic media quite unlike anything in the U.S. And those three were very much tied to the power structure in a very fundamental way. While the media in the U.S. tend to be kind of corporate, they are not in general locked into the power structure.

JMR: Do you have any idea why Japan hasn’t come up with any citizen journalism project on the scale of OhmyNews?

DG: I don’t think I am an expert enough on Japan, but Japan has had a very different history with the Internet until the last several years. Internet access was very, very expensive. At the same time the Japanese were one of the two or three world leaders in mobile communications, so a lot of what people have done there that is advanced has been in the mobile area. 2 Channel [a popular Internet discussion board], which is probably the most interesting early experiment, was pretty radical for Japan.

JMR: 2 Channel is hugely popular – reportedly the world’s largest Internet discussion board – but it has been heavily criticized by the Japanese media.

DG: I can understand why. A lot of anonymous chatter is not the same as citizen journalism. At a very basic level, if one doesn’t stand behind one’s own words it is possible that it is journalism, but it is likely that it is not.

JMR: How do you progress from an anonymous and chaotic bulletin board like 2 Channel to a citizen journalism movement?

DG: There is a lot of interesting information on that site and a lot of data, but it is not something I would call journalism. You can learn a lot [on 2 Channel] – from what I understand from people who have told me about it. The problem is that if you are wise you start off with the bias that it is likely to be false, and that maybe there is some truth in there, but who knows? At least that’s my bias when I see anonymous [postings].

JMR: Isn’t that also a problem in citizen journalism?

DG: We are going to have to change what we think of as media literacy, among other things. You have to change attitudes on two sides. One is persuading people who are doing citizen journalism, that if they really want to do journalism that it involves more than just writing down their views. It also means more responsibility on the part of the audience to not assume that everything written is going to be true.

JMR: What are your impressions of the civil journalism movement in Japan?

DG: I would say that there is clearly some interest in this in Japan. They published my book [“We the Media. Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People”] and to my astonishment put me on the cover of Aera [a Japanese weekly magazine]. [Takafumi] Horie endorsed my book, which was really amazing. He has clearly been pushing the envelope on this.

JMR: There are several citizen journalism projects in Japan, but the media seem to be somewhat standoffish.

DG: Ask them what would happen if they did [support citizen journalism]. Would the [press] club throw them out? In a place where access is so dependent on being a member of this club it is easy to see why major media are taking it slowly.

JMR: Are the Japanese media scared of losing their monopoly?

DG: Well, they are scared of it here too. But the bigger issue in America is not the competition journalistically. I think that’s a side issue. The changes here are coming about almost entirely because the business model is unraveling and everyone is scared. News companies, the bosses, are thinking, ‘Oh my God, we are losing all our advertising,’ and the journalists are starting to realize that their jobs are in real jeopardy. People are experimenting, it’s not like anyone has found an answer.

Classified ads in particular are disappearing onto the Web and newspapers are losing their single most profitable revenue. That’s tending to focus their attention: local newspapers in particular, but [also] advertising in general.

JMR: The Japanese media is much more centralized than the U.S. media with few local newspapers reliant on classified ads. Could that help explain why citizen journalism hasn’t taken off here?

DG: So it will take longer for the business questions to become obvious. They will eventually. It’s a big upheaval.

JMR: Why is the involvement of professional journalists in citizen journalism important?

DG: They need to do more listening and conversing and a little less lecturing. That’s because I think news is fundamentally a conversation and not a lecture; and when journalists realize that they do better journalism.

It would certainly help a lot, give it more obvious legitimacy. The failure to participate won’t stop this, but the participation will certainly accelerate it and maybe will help save the media from otherwise major potential catastrophe.

JMR: And that goes for Japan too?

DG: I assume it’s true [for Japan too]. I am confident that this is true everywhere, that journalists will do better journalism if they think of the process more as a conversation than as a lecture. Period. Having said that, these things will develop in different ways in different places.

JMR: What is the connection between citizen journalism and democracy? How about in a country like Japan where the same party has been in power almost uninterruptedly for over half a century?

DG: I think it’s a fairly simple connection. The more engaged someone becomes with current events, the more likely one is to be a well-informed person. And being well informed is the key to being a good citizen.

JMR: Many people have criticized journalistic standards in citizen journalism. How do you respond to people like [South African academic] Vincent Maher who say that “citizen journalism is dead”?

DG: I thought in the end that he and I agreed on more than we disagreed on. What’s going on now is a snapshot in time and it is going to change. I think that if we can do this right, it is just going to get better. [That’s] in terms of journalism. I don’t have any predictions in terms of the journalism business, that’s a much tougher question.

It’s fair to say that a lot of what people have tried to do has failed, but that doesn’t mean that the idea is a bad one, or that the trend is going to stop. Anything that is radically evolutionary is not going to proceed either on a straight path or on an exponential curve. It’s going to have ups and downs on the way. But I think that the overall trajectory is positive.

JMR: What will be the next step for citizen journalism?

DG: I think the next steps will be more acceptance by the major media, a thousand different experiments, a lot of learning and adaptation. When I said evolutionary I really meant that. It’s a process of many different things being tried, many if not most of them failing, and sticking with the ones that work. The newspaper and the broadcasting media and magazines did not become what they are overnight. It was decades and centuries of refinement and trying different things and staying with what works and discarding what didn’t. It would be silly to attach too much meaning to a snapshot.

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Among the ongoing discussion threads is one headed “Why can’t I die?” “When I think about it, I could die at any time, but why don’t I die? I can go so far, but why can’t I take the last step?” Another is titled: “Please teach me about suicide.” The poster writes that he or she is a university student studying suicide. Elsewhere on the list of threads: “Everyone in my class hates me,” writes a young poster. “They talk about me behind my back and ignore me . . . after all, perhaps I should kill myself like they say I should.” One reply further down the thread reads: “It’s the fault of the bullying, not yours. Don’t think about suicide.”

The suicide rate in Japan has long been one of the highest in the world. In 2004, 32,325 people committed suicide — about 20 times the number of people murdered. And in the last few years, there has been a frightening increase in the number of group suicides arranged over the Internet through chat rooms dedicated to discussing suicide.

This April, Kyodo newswire reported a grimly typical case of suspected Internet suicide in which two men and a woman who were found dead in a car in Chichibu, a town in the Tokyo commuter belt. The windows of the car had been sealed from the inside with adhesive tape and three charcoal stoves were found in the car — the victims had died from carbon monoxide poisoning. There have been a series of similar cases. Japan’s National Police Agency reported 75 deaths in suspected Internet-arranged suicides from January to August this year compared with 55 deaths during the whole of 2004.

Dr. Tadashi Takeshima of the National Institute of Mental Health, who helped compile an institute report on Internet-arranged suicide, believes that the Web sites are dangerous because they enable suicide pacts between individuals who might never commit suicide on their own. Once caught up in a group pact, they find they cannot turn back. He says that often the members of the suicide pacts are in their teens or 20s and strangers except for contact through the sites. In other group suicides the victims are normally lovers, friends or at least known to each other, but in these cases police only find a connection when they check the victims’ computers or mobile phones.

Dr. Takeshima’s study group looked at a number of sites to decide whether action against them was needed, but despite their concerns, they stopped short of recommending that sites be shut down. “It’s very difficult to conclude that any one site is harmful,” he said.

Apart from the cathartic benefit for some users in discussing their depression, there are also people who log onto the sites to try and help those considering suicide. Yukiko Nishihara, founder of the Tokyo Branch of Befrienders Worldwide, a suicide prevention organization, says that some of their 60 volunteers monitor the chat rooms, chat with users and post the numbers of the NGO’s suicide helplines.

In mid-2004, Internet providers, police, academics and NGOs began meeting to discuss what action to take about suicide chat rooms and how to prevent suicide pacts. Four groups covering 80 to 90 percent of providers issued guidelines in October 2005 specifying how police and Internet companies will cooperate.

Hiroyuki Kuwako of the Japan Telecom Services Association, one of the groups, says that before the guidelines were set, it was difficult for providers to pass on personal information about suicide chat room users. If a crime is being committed, providers are obliged to hand over information. But even faced with an imminent suicide attempt they feared breaking the law if they passed on names and addresses. “Because suicide isn’t a crime, it’s down to the providers’ judgment whether or not to give out the personal information,” says Kuwako. Even in urgent cases sometimes the providers had to consult with lawyers before notifying the police.

The new guidelines mean that providers can pass on information without fear of violating rules on freedom of expression and privacy, says Yoshikuni Masuyama, deputy director of the National Police Agency Cyber-Crime Division. “I think the guidelines are most useful for the providers,” he says. “Before, because the providers didn’t give out the information, it was said that people were dying needlessly.”

The guidelines use an existing law that lets police request personal information if someone’s life is in danger (for example finding out the address of someone involved in a car accident through their mobile phone company). According to new rules, if the police believe that a Web site user’s life is in danger they will submit a form to the person’s provider. The Internet provider will look at the form and decide whether or not to cooperate with the request.

Kuwako stressed, however, that “providers don’t check the messages. If we did that, it would be a kind of censorship.” Tipping off the police is instead left to chat room users. If anyone believes that a poster is seriously intending to kill themselves they can notify the police who may contact the provider. The system could also used in other situations, say if someone receives an e-mail from an Internet friend, which leads them to believe that person may be about to kill themselves. According to Kuwako, the guidelines were put into action at least twice in the first month.

As well as the guidelines, a suicide-prevention Web site has also been set up by the National Institute of Mental Health. The Web site is called “ikiru” (to live).

Dr. Takeshima says that they began by looking at material on suicide on the Internet. “As we thought, there was a lot of harmful information,” he says. Some sites give detailed instructions about how to commit suicide. “We thought we should use the Internet to try and prevent suicide too,” he said. The NIMH site publishes suicide research, coordinates suicide prevention efforts and gets around 250 hits per day. Although the site monitors do not correspond directly with depressed individuals, some enquiries are directed to telephone help lines and mental health centers.

Another outcome of the study was that media organizations were asked not to publish detailed information about actual sites and methods of suicide – although their advice generally has not been followed so far, said Takeshima. He does not want to give his opinion on whether the media have made the problem worse by publicizing it, though he notes that few cases have been reported in the media recently. “Has the number of Internet suicide cases reduced, or are they continuing but have lost their freshness for the media?” he asked.

In fact, according to the National Police Agency, the number of cases of Internet-arranged suicide has decreased since the guidelines were introduced in October. Takeshima speculates that that may be because Web site users know that their personal information may be passed to the police if they attempt to carry out a suicide pact.

But despite the intense media attention that Internet-arranged suicides have received, the number of such cases is still tiny compared to the number of overall suicides in Japan. In 2004, 6.1 percent fewer people committed suicide than in the previous year but that was still an increase of 50 percent since 1994.The sharpest jump occurred at the end of the 1990s, near the peak of Japan’s recent economic down-turn. Seventy-two percent of people who commit suicide in Japan are men, most of who are in their 50s or 60s – the group hit hardest by the recession.

“The government needs to recognize that suicide is not a personal problem, it is a social problem,” said Yukiko Nishihara of suicide helpline Befrienders Worldwide. “They are good at setting up academic studies of suicide, but [the government] need[s] to cooperate with NGOs.”

And while every effort should be made to prevent Internet-arranged suicide pacts, people should remember that the technology is just a tool, Takeshima said. “In Tokyo, there are a lot of tall buildings, so that is a means of suicide [there]. In the countryside, people use agricultural chemicals . . . The simple reason [why young people arrange group suicide through the Internet] is that young people use the Internet.”