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Some time ago, I read a memoir by the journalist (and wife of a Canadian ambassador to Japan) Catherine Bergman. (Link at sig.) The following passage recounts her experiences with the Japanese press corps in the 1990s; witness the plight of the poor Japanese reporter, whose strange, exotic, inscrutable and conformist culture leaves him at such a terrible disadvantage compared to his his virile, rugged, independent-minded American counterpart!
[ . . . ] However, of all the sources of misunderstandings between Japanese and Western journalists, the worst, by far, is the existence of press clubs. Kisha clubs are the bete noire of all foreign correspondents, and one of the worst, yet most permanent, features of Japanese journalism..
Each government ministry has its own kisba club. This small group of reporters, each representing his own agency, newspaper, or television station, share the same newsroom in the ministry building, and live off the manna handed down by the said ministry. No effort is spared to facilitate their work: they each have their booth and desk, their computer and telephone line — provided by the ministry. There is even a small dormitory with bunk beds adjoining the newsroom, for those evenings when you might have to miss the final subway because of some breaking news.
The ministry information office is often located on the same floor; as soon as press releases are published, they' re placed in each reporter's pigeonhole. Once or twice a day, at a fixed time, kisha club members are entitled to a briefing session on the record, before the cameras. Sometimes, the minister himself will attend. This cushy life has its price: the minister has a say in who can belong to his kisha club. One question too many, one aggressive tone in the interview, and you are shown the door. You are sent back to headquarters to face sneers from colleagues, scowls from bosses, a career that starts again from scratch.
It rarely happens. Kisha club members watch one another constantly. Even though they are competitors in principle, in practice they all share a vested interest in belonging to a smoothly operating club. Each one of them feels personally responsible for the decorum during the minister's press conferences. They also ensure that these press conferences remain exclusive hunting grounds.
I happened to be in the newsroom of the daily Asahi Shimbun one morning when a young reporter full of enthusiasm and ambition pranced back from a press conference given by the minister of transport. When I inquired as to which questions he had asked the minister, he looked at me, stunned.
"Me? Ask a question of the minister? Never!"
"How come?"
"Our newspaper has a reporter assigned on a permanent basis to the Department of Transport kisha club. I would make a mortal enemy out of him if I dared ask a question of his minister!"
Only members of the kisha club are allowed to ask questions of the minister. This automatically excludes foreign correspondents,because being a kisha club member is a full-time activity: over and above their work, reporters take turns to man the station, they organize drinking parties and attend receptions to keep relationships well oiled within the department. Its unthinkable for a foreign correspondent who is usually alone to cover the whole country to belong to a kisha club and most difficult, therefore, to ever ask a question of a minister.
A Japanese political reporter was telling me one day about the term he had just spent with the kisha club at the Tokyo Police Headquarters, as part of an exchange program. This experience took place shortly after the sarin gas attack in the subway by the Aum Shinrikyo sect. That was a complex matter, the incident had been traumatic for Japanese society as a whole, and the public was following with intense interest the actions of the police and the judiciary. As a result, the chief of police was on the news virtually every night. In Japan, as elsewhere, police officers are rarely keen to confide to reporters, and official statements were few and far between. Yet news seeped through somehow, Japanese-style.
"Every evening after the end of the working day, I would go the chief of police's private residence," this reporter recounted. "I would ring the doorbell to say hello and wish him a good evening. Then I would start pacing slowly around his house. The other members of his kisha club were there too. We were circling slowly, sometimes for hours on end. Each one of us was hoping for a chance to get an exclusive interview. From time to time, the door would open, the chief of police would invite one of us to come in for a beer. At one point, late in the evening, he would open the door one last time and announce in a loud voice, to no one in particular, 'I am going to bed.' That was the signal. It was time to go home, and we would all head for the subway station, hoping to get luckier the next day "
This practice has a name. It is called yoo-mawaru. Every reporter who has ever covered national politics has lived through it. Reporters assigned to the prime ministers residence do yoo-mawaru every day.
Nothing could better illustrate the state of dependence of kisha club reporters. How could anyone ever come up with a scoop in that context? When everyone has access to the same information from the same source at the same time, works all day long in the same common room, where no telephone conversation is private, how could anyone ever hope to publish an exclusive story?
