This article was originally published in Volume 3, Issue 2 of the Harvard Asia Pacific Review in 1999. It is republished with the permisison of the review and the author. Journalism in Japan currently faces a rapidly changing future. Though some change is internally driven, most is external. Because of journalism's close and institutionalized links to other rapidly changing political institutions, more and more observers are questioning whether practices and organizational forms developed in a different era can, or should, be perpetuated. Japan's media in the post-World War II world have evolved in ways different from those in North American and European countries. Newspapers utilize a format of factual presentation to deliver more information about government and politics per page than in any other democratic country. Thus whether the field should pursue continued divergence from or gradual convergence with other industrialized societies and what could be gained or lost by such changes are issues that deserve thoughtful consideration.
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"The press in Japan is rarely an agenda setter in the sense of independently raising and pursuing issues; it is much more an 'agenda fitter.'" |
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To understand the alternatives facing the Japanese press today, we must first understand the institutions of journalism as they developed through the postwar period. Today the country has over 150 newspapers, with average daily circulation reaching 575 papers for every 1,000 persons -- the highest per capita newspaper distribution rate in the world. Japan's newspapers range from local to national papers. The national papers account for slightly more than half of all newspaper circulation and are thus the most influential. These national newspapers include the so-called "Big Three," the Yomiuri (morning circulation, about 10 million per day), the Asahi (over 8 million), and the Mainichi (over 4 million). In addition to these morning editions, each major newspaper publishes an afternoon edition with completely different content. The circulation of these afternoon papers is about half that of the morning editions. High debt and reliance on both sales and advertising for revenue make attracting new subscribers critical. Since all national newspapers behave in the same manner, the result is fierce competition in the commercial marketplace. Yet Japanese newspapers manage to maintain stringent standards of quality despite fierce competition and the need to cater to a mass audience. Japan's press has other unique features, such as a fixed layout, so that politics consistently comprises 5 percent to 10 percent of newspaper content. Japanese newspapers have always considered political news important "hard news," and therefore located it on the front pages. Surveys show that over a third of citizens always read political news, showing more interest in articles concerned with society and local news. Unexpected homogeneity Conventional wisdom is that journalists have a liberal bias, but the "Big Three" newspapers vary widely across the political spectrum in their emphases, with the Asahi being the most left, the Yomiuri most right and the Mainichi in between. These are at least partial myths. Reporters in Japan, like journalists in most democracies, are relatively pragmatic, cynical, more populist than ideological and skeptical of those in power. It just so happens that those in power in Japan for most of the postwar era have tended to be the conservatives, so naturally the media is perceived as having a bias against them. This is not to say that some journalists aren't personally liberals, but the collective editorial and organizational process rarely allows real ideologues to advance in journalism or have their views published.
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"Rules dictate when information obtained from a source may be considered a scoop, when it must be shared with other club members, and how and when it can be made public." |
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Equally exaggerated is the idea that the newspapers present great political variety. Their editorials undoubtedly reflect popular wisdom, but the differences that exist on the news pages are subtle. Between newspapers, there are slight variations in the selection and placement of the articles on page one, the choice of language, the treatment of a particular country in the foreign news (as in the Asahi's notorious policy of noncritical reporting of the People's Republic of China in the 1970s), and the emphasis on one aspect of an issue over another. Otherwise, their news pages actually betray the opposite problem of political diversity: remarkable conformity.The "Big Three" actually all present the news in the same factual and neutral manner. Unlike American newspapers, which usually cite sources representing two sides to an issue, few opinions, save perhaps a statement or two by government officials, are included in Japanese news stories. A recent example is the Asahi's coverage of electoral and administrative reform in the 1990s. Priscilla Lambert and I did a preliminary study of how this supposedly left-of-center newspaper covered these issues, and we found that the Asahi, despite its leftist reputation and clear editorial support for reform, did not cover the reform issue as one might expect. Most of the coverage focused on straightforward reporting of the activities of the politicians and officials who set the agenda for reform. Where the Asahi did take a stance was in occasionally goading politicians to get back on track to the original ideas of reform when they seemed to be straying, and in covering electoral reform much more than administrative and campaign finance reform, despite the importance of these latter issues.
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