Competition and Conformity:
An Inquiry into the Structure of the Japanese Newspapers

Nathaniel B. Thayer

Independent newspapers speak with an independent voice. But Japanese newspapers speak in unison. Why? Some critics answer that a cabal runs the newspapers. Since these newspapers are critical of the ruling conservative party and tolerant of the opposition parties, these critics further suggest the cabal is leftist. An American ambassador espoused this thesis at a Senate hearing a few years ago. Within the Japanese newspapers, he said, were more than two hundred communists.

The ambassador did not say where he got that figure. The Japanese police said they did not give it to him. The newsmen said they did not know how many communists had jobs on the newspapers but the ambassador's figure was far too high. Others said the ambassador had understated the figure by half. All agreed the CIA had bungled. No one got back to the original question: what reasons impel the newspapers to conform? That answer is now my purpose in these few pages.^[1]

[1] This article is partly the result of personal experience, partly the result of conversations with newsmen, and partly the result of documentary research. I was press attaché in the American embassy from 1962 to 1966. Three newsmen who have particularly helped me in the preparation of this article are Horikawa Atsuhiro, now an editorial writer but formerly a political reporter on the Yomiuri ; Yoshimura Katsumi, now a director for Fuji Television but formerly a deputy-managing editor of the Sankei ; and Matsuyama Yukio, who has served variously as a political reporter, overseas correspondent, and as deputy editor in the foreign news section of the Asahi . I have made reference to Shinbun no shuzai [Newspaper reporting], 2vols. (Tokyo: Nihon Shinbun Kyokai, 1968). I am grateful for the interest and support given me by both the Social Science Research Council and the East Asian Institute of Columbia University for research into the mass media of Japan. Neither the individuals nor the organizations bear any responsibility for the views I have expressed herein.

I start with a description of the Japanese newspapers. There are the noncommercial newspapers which are published by political parties, religious groups, unions, industrial organizations, and clubs. I know of no accurate count of them. Newspapers whose purpose is to make a profit have organized a federation—the Japan Newspaper Association. It has published a list identifying commercial newspapers.^[2] This list includes special audience newspapers: sports, foreign language, shipping, industrial, and entertainment. Most newspapers, however, are general interest papers and they divide into three groups: local, regional, and national. Finally, there are two wire services.

Since all newspapers contain articles on local, domestic, and international events, content is an inadequate criterion by which to separate the lesser from the mightier papers. Only a few papers, however, maintain reporters in most of the government agencies in Tokyo and correspondents overseas. No locals, only a few regionals, both wires, and all the nationals fall into this category.

The Principal Newspapers

In western Japan this is the Nishi Nippon . Its home office is in Fukuoka, and its market is chiefly on the island of Kyushu. In central Japan is the Chunichi^[*] Shinbun , with its home office in Nagoya. Its market is the ten prefectures between Tokyo and Osaka. Several years ago, the Chu-nichi purchased the Tokyo Shinbun , which it runs almost as a separate entity. Tokyo Shinbun has its home office in Tokyo. Its market is the three prefectures surrounding the capital. In northern Japan is the Hokkaido Shinbun . Its home office is in Sapporo. Its market is the island of Hokkaido. Collectively, these newspapers are known as "the bloc" newspapers. Since their markets do not overlap, the bloc papers have arrangements to share facilities and news. It is not uncommon to see articles by one newspapers's foreign correspondent appearing in another newspaper, though domestic stories are more rarely shared.

The major wire services are Jiji and Kyodo . Their responsibility is to supply news to the regional and local newspapers, though today other organizations as well purchase their services. Initially, these two wires agreed to divide reporting responsibilities: Jiji was to handle the economic and commercial news: Kyodo was to handle the social and political news. This agreement is no longer honored. Both services compete to cover every story.

The nationals make up the final category. These newspapers now have

[2] Asahi Nenkan , 1972, p. 239–241.

their home offices in Tokyo but distribute papers throughout the country. The largest national is the Asahi . It has 263 domestic bureaus and 22 overseas bureaus and almost ten thousand employees, of whom better than three thousand are editorial personnel. It publishes eleven morning editions and three evening editions. The morning editions run twenty-four pages and their circulation is six million; the evening editions run twelve pages and their circulation is three million. A network of sixty-two thousand newsboys delivers 99 percent of the newspapers to the home.^[3] Comparable in facilities but slightly lower in circulation are the Mainichi and the Yomiuri . These newspapers are known as the Big Three.

Another national is the Nihon Keizai . It started out as a financial newspaper much like the London Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal . In recent years, its interests have broadened and its circulation has grown. The fifth national is the Sankei . It started as a regional newspaper serving the prefectures around Osaka but has since moved its headquarters to Tokyo and now distributes almost nationwide. Its circulation has been slipping in the recent past.

In recent years, these nationals have expanded into new fields. All now publish weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual magazines. Most have English language publications and have television and radio stations. They also do outside printing and publish books. Some are in real estate, sound recording, and travel service. Although these ventures seem to be quite profitable, the newspapers remain the core of the empires.

[3] Promotional literature issued by the Asahi Shinbun .

The five nationals, the bloc newspapers, and the wire services constitute the mainstream of written journalism in Japan.^[4] Table 1 gives other pertinent data concerning them. This article examines the national dailies. They dominate the field and I am most familiar with them. Yet most of my remarks will apply equally well to the other members of the mainstream. The regionals do not have the circulation problems of the nationals, but they are quite similar in structure.

The Organization of a Japanese Newspaper

Similarity among the newspapers starts with their office buildings. Though they may have been built at different times and reflect different architectural fancies, their layout is the same. The first and second floors, near the main entrance, are given over to sales, advertising, and in some newspapers cultural activities. The news-gathering section is in the heart of the building on the third floor. Also there, and on the second floor, are the composing rooms where tapes are punched from manuscripts for high-speed typesetters. Plates are sent to presses located in the basement or on the first floor. The newspapers are bundled and taken to trucks which are next door. Editorial writers and the executive officers occupy the upper floors of the building. Table 2 lists the various divisions of a daily national newspaper.

The newspapers break down much like the office building. Each story has its accepted place. For example, important news lands on the front page. Radio and television news is on the back page. The second page has political news. Pages 22 and 23 carry accounts of accidents and incidents.

[4] I do not wish to denigrate local newspapers. They fulfill an important but different role in Japanese society. A good study of their problems and responsibilities is Tamura Norio, Nihon no rokaru shinbun [Japanese local newspapers] (Tokyo: Gendai janarizumu shuppan kai, 1968).

Sports gets a page in the middle of the paper if it has been raining; two pages if it is a Monday. All articles are complete on their pages (Table 3 gives the page breakdown of a national daily).

The two principal sources of revenue for the newspapers are advertising and subscriptions. Until 1963, subscriptions were the dominant source. Now advertising has assumed the lead. But the ratio is still close. In the Asahi case, advertising accounts for 54.9 percent of the revenues; subscriptions account for 45.1 percent.^[5] The ratios for the other newspapers are not much different. Both advertising rates and the subscriptions depend on the number of readers and constitute the ultimate measure of success. Readership has been carefully studied. Each newspaper has a slightly different audience: the Nihon Keizai has a slightly higher percentage of readers in the professions than the other papers; the Asahi 's largest block of readers is office workers; and the Sankei attracts the greatest percentage of manual workers.

Geographical differences also exist. The Yomiuri is weak in Nagoya, because it has not been in that market very long, but it is strong in downtown Tokyo, probably because of its baseball team there. The Asahi is strong in suburban Tokyo. The Sankei does well in Osaka. But the differences are less important than the similarities. All newspapers are trying to appeal to the same audience throughout the country.^[6]

[5] Asahi promotional literature.

[6] Research has also been directed at finding new markets. Is there a group in Japan thatdoes not read the newspapers? The answer so far is negative. Sales, however, have increased with the breakup of the extended family into nuclear families.

The home-delivery practice in Japan means that the newspapers do not have to resort to sensationalism, a tendency of newspapers that rely on street sales. Editors can establish news policies more studied than a flaming headline over a wild lead. Since subscriptions are by month, however, the newspapers do not have an entirely captive audience, although most readers are constant in their loyalties. Editors continuously review their policies, and their efforts are evaluated quarterly by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Successes get copied quickly. Failures get dropped abruptly. Editors innovate, but most cautiously. Nobody gets too far away from the others. A circulation increase is welcome, but a circulation decrease is to be avoided. Circulation figures will not change much if all papers look the same. Stasis reigns.

Some observers have suggested that the Japanese social penchant for unanimity is as much a cause for similarity among newspapers as the imperatives of a large circulation. They may have a point. But Japan is not the only country where the elements of a mass medium are peas in a pod. Americans rate individuality high on their social scale, yet American television network news programs differ only in their commentators, not their comment. Evening talk shows hew to a common format. A successful dramatic formula on one channel is soon emulated on the other channels.

Circulation is not the only reason why Japanese newspapers look alike. Structure is another. Table 4 presents a model of the news-gathering part of a newspaper. The names of the sections may differ. Recipes may be

Table 4 Model Layout of News-Gathering Structure

found in the women's section in one paper and in the household section in another, but all sections are present in all national newspapers. The basic structure was created about forty years ago and has not changed much since.

The political section is responsible for domestic and national politics. Its reporters cover the activities of the ministries, the embassies, the political parties, the Diet, the prime minister, and the cabinet. The economic section covers the banks, business, the stock market, industry, and the economic activities of the government. The foreign news section handles the reports from the overseas correspondents and translates the reports of foreign wire services or articles from foreign newspapers. These three bureaus are collectively known as the "hard group." In the Mainichi and the Asahi , the managing editor will often have been a reporter in one of these sections.

The sports section, the science section, and the photographic section need no explanation. The women's section covers activities that center on the home—women's lib has hit Japan but not the Japanese newspapers. The cultural section is responsible for education, theater, movies, and other forms of entertainment. On one paper, the cultural and women's section are one; on another, they are separate; and on a third, they are combined with the science section and occupy a part of the managing editor's office.

The social section is roughly equivalent to the city desk on an American newspaper. It covers the police, courts, accidents, incidents, and just about anything not assigned to another section. The social section has the largest group of reporters. The managing editor of the Yomiuri , which has the reputation of being the most easily read newspaper, usually has been a reporter in the social section. These sections comprise the "soft group."

National newspapers require special facilities. The regional section is in charge of receiving reports from the branch offices. The telegraphic section is responsible for transmitting reports written in Tokyo to the other publishing centers. Most nationals have four publishing centers; the Asahi , for example, has centers in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kita Kyushu. The internal communications section receives requests from the other publishing centers and writes stories with a Tokyo slant but of local interest for them.

The radio and television section prepares and transmits news to the radio and television stations belonging to the newspaper. The materials section fulfills the same responsibilities as the morgue on an American newspaper. The proofreaders on a Japanese newspaper differ from the proofreaders on an American newspaper in that they are sharp-eyed and accurate. Typographical errors are a rarity.

The content analysis section compares the stories that appear in its own newspaper with the articles in the competitive newspapers. Every morning, the section chiefs assemble to hear its verdict. Some men do not fit easily into any of the sections; they may have an unusual specialty

or a particular felicity of phrase. They are assigned to the writers' room.

The layout section takes stories from the other sections, evaluates their importance, decides space and placement, and writes the subheads and heads. Administration takes care of household matters. Overseeing this entire operation is the managing editor. He meets with the newspaper's directors, owners and advisers, and represents the newspaper to other newspapers and the outside world. He has three or four deputies, one of whom is always on duty.

A Reporter's Career

A reporter's career follows an established course. He enters the newspaper by examination after graduation, usually from one of the nation's better universities. He is first sent to a branch office in the countryside, where he will spend from three to five years learning his trade, developing his interests, and demonstrating his ability. If promising, he will be brought back to Tokyo and assigned to one of the sections. In all likelihood, he will remain in this section throughout his reporting career.

The first Tokyo assignment, then, is a key assignment. How is it made? Few descriptive statements can be made with certainty. If the young reporter was an outstanding athlete in his university, he will probably end up in the sports section. If he majored in science, particularly a natural science, he is likely to end up in the science section. But all other assignments are haphazard. Sometimes literature majors end up in the economic section and economic majors in the social section.

Formally, the head of the telegraphic section is supposed to satisfy the demand for personnel from each Tokyo section chief with the supply offered by the managers in the regional offices. But often the Tokyo section chief will avoid the telegraphic section open market and talk directly with one of the regional office managers, particularly if that chief and that manager have been reporters together. The young reporter will be consulted. He may have views, but generally he is happy to accept any assignment that means going to Tokyo. The young reporter is not given a veto even though the decision is fundamental to his future.

The region in which the young reporter serves initially may also influence the decision on which section he will be assigned to later. Many reporters who were first assigned to the branch offices in Nagano or Iwate end up in the political section. Since both those branch offices have only one daily edition and few crimes to report, the reporter does not have to get up early and chase the police all day. He can give his time to study and long, analytical articles. Reporters assigned to the Yokohama branch office, on the other hand, often end up on the social desk. Yokohama is served with both a morning and evening edition and, as a big city, has lots of incidents. Nowadays, new reporters are expected to serve in both a one-delivery and a two-delivery area.

Each section has its stereotype. The political reporter is supposed to be

like the politicians he covers. The economic reporter is supposed to be well dressed and gentlemanly. The social reporter is supposed to be rude, but with a highly developed sense of justice. The foreign news reporter is supposed to be scholarly.

Each section, however, is organized along the same lines. It is headed by an editor or section chief. Beneath him are four or five deputy editors, at least one of whom is always present. The deputy editors, who are called by the English word "desk," run the section. Beneath the desk are the reporters, some of whom serve within the newspaper office and some of whom serve outside, either in one of the clubs attached to a ministry or as "roving troops." Some ministry clubs have more than one reporter from a newspaper. In that instance one of the reporters will be chosen to serve as captain (kyappu ). The number of reporters varies from a handful (in the case of the science section) to over a hundred (in the case of the social section). Table 5 shows the breakdown and deployment of reporters in the Asahi political section.

The first assignment for a new reporter in the political section will probably be with the eight-man team covering the prime minister. The reporter will arrive at this official's residence early in the morning to watch for morning callers. He will follow the prime minister through the day until he, the prime minister, retires for the evening. After two years, the political editor will shuffle the reporters around. At this time, the reporter may get to cover one of the political parties, probably the ruling conservative party, since it has a four-man team. On the next shuffle, the reporter may get assigned to the Foreign Ministry or an opposition party. For the next twelve years or so, the reporter will gradually revolve through the various posts his section is supposed to cover. As he nears the end of this period, he will be serving as a captain on one of the larger teams or as desk.

Some teams are more desirable than others. The captain for the cabinet team is primus inter pares . He usually has the rank of desk. The second most desirable team covers the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the ruling party. Newsmen differ over which are the third- and fourth-ranking teams. Some rank covering the Foreign Ministry over covering the opposition parties; others reverse the order. They all rank assignment to the Diet team fifth and do not bother to rank the rest of the assignments.

The reporter faces change after he reaches age forty. If he is very fortunate, he will be promoted to section chief. This path may lead to a deputy editor's chair in the managing editor's office, and a possible chance at selection as the managing editor. If he is less fortunate, he may be assigned as a section chief to one of the other publishing centers. He may come back from that assignment to serve as a deputy managing editor and still have a chance at becoming the managing editor. If he has no luck, he will leave the desk and take up administrative duties in other parts of the newspaper. He might find himself handling labor problems with the

Table 5 Internal Structure of the Political Section of theAsahi Shimbun(Tokyo)

printers or trying to recruit newspaper distributors. He may end up in book publishing. He probably will not write again. He will stay with his administrative duties until he retires at age fifty-five.

It would take many pages to outline all the career possibilities for reporters, but one pattern is clear. Before age forty, he faces only light competition, at least within his section. After forty, he faces fierce competition for a limited number of important posts.

From Event to Article

Reporters are expected to be able to gather information, compose an acceptable sentence, and work well within a group. The third talent may

be the most important. The political section is small—about forty men. Each man knows every other man quite intimately. Each year, two or three men will move out at the top and an equal number will move in at the bottom. Faces change but only gradually. For many years the same men will live and work together. Competition would bring social friction, which has no place here.

Reporting techniques require cooperation. The observant reader will notice that the only signed articles are written by overseas correspondents. Domestic articles are not signed since they are usually the product of group reporting. Space in a Japanese newspaper is scarce; reporters are many. Several reporters, therefore, are supposed to work on each story. One reporter, sometimes the captain, is the writer. If the captain is not known for his felicity of phrase, or if the team has several stories to produce, the writer will be the captain's immediate subordinate. The other reporters are charged with supplying him with information.

Group reporting results in stories that an individual reporter would not be able to write by himself. The stories on the cabinet meetings are an example. Originally, the Japanese ministers followed the British pattern. Cabinet decisions were announced, but no record was kept of the debate. This policy, its originators believed, would discourage posturing and encourage free discussion among the cabinet officers. In England, this policy has worked. In Japan, it has not. The English press accords its politicians rights of privacy. The Japanese press regards its politicians as fair game at any hour on any day.

The night attack (yo-uchi ) is an accepted journalistic tactic. When a politician returns home after an important day, he will find reporters in his sitting room, drinking his whiskey, and eating his supper. He is expected to talk with them. Every few minutes a reporter will leave the sitting room and phone the writer, both to pass on the politician's remarks and to receive reports on other politicians' statements. A hydra-headed press conference is in progress. It ends when the writer is satisfied he has a full account of the cabinet discussions.^[7] Politicians recognize the efficacy of this style of news-gathering. Nowadays, each minister holds a press conference in his ministry after the conclusion of a cabinet meeting. Even so, his evenings are rarely his own.

Not all stories are the result of group reporting. A reporter may spend years developing a promising politician so that when the politician reaches a position of authority, the reporter may tap him. Another reporter may

[7] Most conservative politicians, certainly politicians of cabinet rank, carry on an active evening schedule. The hour of such a politician's return home varies. Reporters usually arrive early. Who takes care of the reporters until the politician arrives? Political households divide into two groups. In the first group the responsibility falls to the wife. The Sato, Ikeda, Fukuda, Miki, Ohira, and Shiina households fall in this category. In the second group, the wife never appears. The Ishibashi, Kishi, Tanaka, Ono, and Kono households fall in that category. Mrs. Nakasone has just moved from the latter to the former category.

spend long hours analyzing a political problem and come up with an insight no one else has realized. A third reporter may stumble over a scoop while wandering through the corridors of the Diet. Such stories are individually written. And if the story is outstanding, the managing editor will hand out a cash reward. But the reward will be given to the section, not the man. The section chief usually turns the money over to a Ginza madame, and the section drinks it up.

The passage of a story from reporter's manuscript to placement in the paper is also a group endeavor. The reporter turns his story over to the desk. The desk makes the first evaluation of its news value. If the story is too long, he will cut it. If the story is too short, he will flesh it out with other stories, or with analysis. One copy of the story goes to the radio and television section, another to the telegraphic section for transmission to the other publishing centers, and a third to layout.

Layout makes the next evaluation. Is the story important enough to go on the front page, and if so, where? Are pictures part of the story? How much space should be given to them? Finally, heads and subheads: how big, how long, how many? If a desk cannot live with the decisions of the layout editor, he may appeal to the deputy editor on duty in the managing editor's office. But appeals are rare.

Each of the other publishing centers of the newspaper has received a copy of the Tokyo story. Each layout section goes through the same process as the Tokyo layout section. Within each section liaison men keep the other publishing centers informed on what its layout section is doing, but each publishing center makes independent decisions. In effect, the paper is being put together in quadruplicate. Each publishing center's judgment is being tested against the others.

Other newspapers get into the act. During the day, editions close about every thirty minutes. As each edition is published and distributed, other newspapers acquire copies. One paper may have news that another paper lacks. If so, a reporter is dispatched to fill the gap. One paper may interpret the facts differently than another. If so, the reporter will be called upon to justify his observations. One paper may play a story big, and another paper may play a story small. Layout sections in both papers will probably make adjustments. Big cities get the last editions. Publishing centers are there, and time does not have to be allocated for transportation. By the time these city editions are published, all national dailies look much the same.

What about competition? It is present. The scoop is a hallowed institution, even though it may only last an hour, and monthly subscriptions preclude the papers from making any money off it. But competition is not limited to rivalries among newspapers. Competition also exists between the sections in the same newspaper. An example is an incident that occurred in the spring of 1966.

A general election was in the offing. Rumors began to percolate that a

sugar company had close financial ties to conservative politicians. The transportation minister was discovered to have ordered express trains to stop at local stations in his election district. His secretaries were found to be soliciting transportation businesses to join the minister's fan club at high initiation fees. The Defense Agency chief was found to be using generals, bands, and airplanes in his campaigning.

The economic reporters looked into the sugar company. They found nothing unprecedented and so did not write articles. The political reporters said the activities of the transportation minister and defense chief were harmless. They did not want to waste big newspaper bullets on such small game. The social reporters did not agree. They argued that any corruption, be it minor or long-standing, requires exposure. They investigated independently and wrote articles for their part of the papers. What the social reporters had started, the economic and political reporters were obliged to continue. Before long, the papers were filled with little else. Scandal became the major issue in the campaign.

The election tally suggests that voters agreed with the economic and political reporters. All the politicians involved in the scandals were returned to office, the transportation minister with the highest plurality he had ever obtained. But the important point for us is that the squabble was between the sections, not the reporters. Alliances were between newspapers and opponents were within the same newspaper.

The Press Club

An institution that has contributed to breaking down the loyalty of a newsman to his newspaper has been the press club. All nations have press clubs, but Japanese press clubs are unique.

Press clubs are attached to each government agency and other important offices. The largest is the Nagata Club. It has two hundred and seventy members from seventy news companies. It is responsible for covering the prime minister and his cabinet. The smallest press club might be made up of the ten newsmen covering the mayor of a small city. Although no one has yet counted all the clubs, estimates run to at least a thousand. They constitute the principal vehicle for bringing news to the newspaper.

No one is sure how the press clubs started. The story is that newsmen used to gather under a tree in the Marunouchi section of Tokyo to eat lunch and exchange stories. If no one is alive who can substantiate that story, neither is there anyone to deny it. Extant records show the presence of a newsmen's club in the Imperial Diet of 1890 and in some of the ministries of 1902. Today's clubs have grown in number and become much more elaborate. But the functions of the original club—pleasure

(lunch) and business (exchanging stories)—still seem to be in evidence.^[8]

The most important clubs are in the national ministries in Tokyo. I will describe the Kasumi Club, which is attached to the Foreign Ministry, but the description will fit most other clubs.

At the end of the corridor on the third floor, right over the main entrance to the Foreign Ministry, and just beneath the office of the Foreign Minister, are a set of double doors. Pasted to one of them is a sign restricting admission to members. Inside is a large L-shaped room. Desks fill the space under the windows. The Asahi men sit directly in front of the double doors. There are five of them and they have four desks. The Yomiuri men occupy a similar cluster of desks on the north exposure. Mainichi has the corner. Smaller newspapers have fewer men and occupy less space. Some local papers, whose men do not show up very often, are obliged to share a single desk but with individual drawers.

Around the corner, on the leg of the L are the common facilities: a couch, usually decorated with a sleeping newsman; a blackboard listing the time and the subject of the various briefings offered by officials that day; a television set, a mahjong set, a go board and stones, and a Japanese chess set. Telephones are on all desks and a few other places besides. A young man is charged with keeping the room neat, but he is not too efficient. The furniture is shabby. Dust and papers cover everything.

The clubs limit their membership. Generally, reporters whose newspapers belong to the Japan Newspaper Association are admitted. Reporters who work for party, religious, company, union, and foreign media are excluded. The foreign media have been protesting their exclusion for years. Recently the Nagata Club relaxed restrictions. Foreign newsmen may now attend prime minister's public press conferences and ask questions through the club spokesman after the club members' questions are exhausted. Other clubs have not dropped their barriers. Table 6 shows the composition of the Kasumi Club.

Each club has formal written rules.^[9] Violations of these rules can lead to discipline, which may involve expulsion from the club. The bureaucrats will usually honor a club decision, and a newspaper can find itself without access to information from a ministry if it or its reporters do not follow the club regulations.

Fights have occurred between the clubs and the newspapers over who speaks for the reporters. The issue usually involves the handling of news where the club has reached an agreement with which a newspaper has refused to comply.^[10] These incidents have occurred often enough to have

[8] A brief history of the Japanese press clubs has been written by Fujii Tsuguo in Shinbun no shuzai , II, 266–290.

[9] Nagata Club rules can be found in Shinbun no shuzai , I, 118–120.

[10] Handling of the news means management of the news. Management may sound offensive, but some regulation is necessary. For example, if a ministry issues a long study, the reporters must agree when articles based on the study are to be published. If there is noagreement, the reporters must write for the next edition. Justice is done neither to the reporters nor to the document.

This problem of news management has received a great deal of attention within the newspapers and within the Japanese Newspaper Association. The conclusion seems to be that agreements made among the newsmen are acceptable, but agreements made between newsmen and officials are not. The assumption underlying this conclusion is that newsmen are interested in publishing information, whereas officials are interested in suppressing information.

As a former official and news manager, I should like to suggest that officials are not interested solely in news suppression. I hope this paper gives some intimation that reporters are not concerned solely with the publishing of information.

the Japan Newspaper Association attempt to resolve the differences between the club and the newspaper. It has suggested, and the parties have adopted, the rule that no club can make an agreement without the concurrence of all the newspapers. In principle, this rule sounds good. In practice, it is unwieldy.

In the Foreign Ministry, for example, the administrative vice-minister, the highest-ranking professional diplomat, talks every evening for an hour with the Kasumi Club members. His guidance is necessary if the reporters are to understand the intentions of the Japanese government. The vice-minister should speak bluntly. Yet bluntness is not a diplomatic virtue. If the vice-minister wants to spend the following day doing something other than defending his position to other nations' ambassadors, he will request the reporters to attribute his views to some generalized authority rather than to him directly. On some occasions, he may speak completely off-the-record. In theory, each of these requests should be referred to the newspapers for decision. In practice, the newsmen do not bother.

The occasional spats with the newspapers heightens the solidarity of the club. To my knowledge, only one major club—the Metropolitan Police Club—has partitioned off the desks of the various newspapers, and that was the officials' not the reporters' idea. In the other clubs, the desks are together; there are no walls except the exterior walls. The clubs are cooperative bodies.

They have to be. Reporters almost live in the clubs. They arrive in mid-morning and remain until early evening. Some reporters go directly from their home to the club and back. They show up in the newspaper offices only on payday.

Reporters are supposed to be available at all times, although if a reporter wanders away for the afternoon, other reporters will cover for him. If his desk calls, they will say he is off for an interview and, if news is announced, they will inform him of it when he returns.

What do the reporters do all day? Japan has wire services that report all the news, but only the local papers rely on them. Mainstream papers expect their reporters to call in each item themselves. During the day, reporters have to be on hand to update stories as successive editions close. They listen to the lectures held for them by officials, and they wander around the building. But most of the time, they talk among themselves. Hours are spent trying to decide what is important and what is not, analyzing interest, and puzzling out motive. It is not unusual that these discussions have a conclusion or that the conclusion shows up in all the newspapers. The clubs, then, often reach news judgments collectively. The system encourages the practice. The reporters have long ago learned that if all stories carry the same interpretation the desk will not question them. Phone calls come only when one story differs from another.

The clubs were started by the newsmen as a way of compelling attention from the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats may have initially opposed the clubs, but they soon learned that the clubs were in their interest as well. It is easier to handle a club's single request than to handle all the reporters' requests individually. Since the club is always leveling demands, it is easy for the officials to determine what the reporters are thinking and how they

will be reporting. Since a reporter never wants to take the responsibility of failing to report what the government thinks important, the club proves to be a valuable vehicle for the ministry's public relations efforts. A bureaucrat soon learns that if he hands out sufficient news, the reporters will search no further. The skillful bureaucrat, then, through the judicious handling of briefings, lectures, and comment, can greatly influence what the reporter will write.

Clubs also exist among Japanese overseas correspondents. These clubs are slightly different. No one sits in a special room all day waiting for news to be given him. But in some respects, ties in the overseas press clubs are stronger than in the domestic clubs. Language barriers, inability to move freely through a foreign capital, lack of deep understanding of the foreign country, all encourage the reporters to make news-gathering a collective effort. The foreign news desk compares his correspondent's story with that of his competitor. So long as both stories look the same, the desk is satisfied that he is reading the truth.

Views on Conformity

I have described the system enough now so that the reader is aware that all parts of the system urge conformity. What about the reporters? Are they willing to withstand these pressures? Or do they go along with them?

The Japan Recruit Center surveyed college graduates to discover which company they wished to join. The Asahi rated eighth on the list; most other national newspapers were not far behind. This popularity has meant that the papers can choose from among the top graduates of the land for their reporters. These circumstances are considerably different than before the war when journalism was not quite a respectable profession and the reporters were not always top drawer. But the old reporters regarded journalism as a calling; the new reporters seem to regard journalism as a job.

Support for this view comes from Ozaki Morimitsu, chairman of the literature department of Tokyo University, who has written a book describing the employment patterns of graduates from his department. He divides the years after the war into three periods. The first is from the end of the war until 1956 when almost all graduates became schoolteachers. The second period is from 1956 to 1960 when graduates mostly entered publishing, broadcasting, and newspapers. The third period runs to the present. While most of the graduates continue to join mass media, significant numbers were also beginning to enter manufacturing concerns, trading firms, and government agencies. These data suggest that working for a newspaper has become just another job,^[11] though a damned good one.

[11] Morimitsu Ozaki, Shushoku^[*] [Employment] (Tokyo: Chuko^[*] Shinso, 1969). See also Shinbun no shuzai , I, 9–10.

Finally, is it disadvantageous that all the newspapers look and sound the same? A Japanese would not pose that question. His society regards the unanimous decision as the correct decision. If all the newspapers have come around to saying the same thing, then what they are saying is correct.

Only an American would ask that question. His society believes that the truth is elusive, that the best way to apprehend it is to surround it with diverse views. It is easy, then, to dismiss the question by saying that the American will see disadvantages, the Japanese will not.

Yet even an American can see some advantage in having the newspapers speak with a single voice. If the role of the newspapers is to serve as a transmission belt of government ideas to the people, then the Japanese newspapers are most efficient. The five o'clock musings of the vice-minister of foreign affairs are laid on twenty-five million breakfast tables the next morning. When I worked in public affairs in the State Department, we used to regard six months as a fair interval for informing the American public of a change in policy.

If the role of the press is to oppose the government, then a single-voiced press is good. If the government has the power to speak with one tongue, so should the newspapers.

But there are dangers. A Japanese news story is as much a product of the internal pressures in the newspaper world as it is of external event. There is a delicate balance here, and if that balance is upset, the reader's interest is not served.

Not much danger is done in the domestic sphere. The Japanese reader innately knows his society and possesses common sense. He may even have news sources independent of the newspaper. He was not overwhelmed when all the newspapers urged that the rascals be thrown out of office in 1966.

But the Japanese reader does not have an innate understanding of foreign countries. Common sense in one country is not common sense in another. The Japanese reader does not have independent sources of news. I find Japanese reporting of international affairs factitious and thus dangerous, particularly in a world of growing interdependence in which the businessman, the scholar, and the professional are as important to international goodwill as the diplomat. The diplomats have their own sources of information. The others do not. Japan does not have a good record of either understanding or projecting other nations' behavior. Perhaps the reason lies with the newspapers.

The most frightening aspect of Japanese journalism is, for me, its conformity. Nowhere has this conformity been more apparent than in the newspapers' dealings with the People's Republic of China.^[12] In order to

[12] A former reporter, now critic, Miyoshi Osamu, first described relations between the Japanese newspapers and the People's Republic of China in Keizai Orai^[*] , April 1972. Foreigncorrespondent Sam Jameson further elaborated this description in the Los Angeles Times , April 14, 1972. Professor Eto^[*] Shinkichi has analyzed both content and bias of the China stories published by the Japanese newspapers in Bungei Shunju^[*] , April 1972.

dispatch news correspondents to the mainland, the Japanese newspapers have been willing to accept three political principles imposed by the Chinese government. These principles were formalized in an agreement in 1968 but had been tacitly accepted as early as 1964. The Japanese newsmen abjure: (1) pursuing a hostile policy towards China; (2) participating in any plot to create "two Chinas"; and (3) obstructing the restoration of normal relations between Japan and China.

The Chinese authorities have interpreted these principles unusually and applied their interpretations harshly. They expelled the Mainichi, Sankei , and Nishi-Nippon correspondents because their newspapers had carried "anti-Chinese cartoons and reports." They expelled the Yomiuri correspondent because that newspaper had underwritten the exhibition of Tibetan treasures in Tokyo. They arrested the Nihon Keizai correspondent, charging that "he stole a great deal of Chinese political, economic, and military information and handed it to American and Japanese reactionaries." The correspondent was incarcerated for a year and a half.

The correspondent for NHK, the government radio and television network, had his reentry permit refused twice: the first time because NHK carried a program about Taiwan, and the second because NHK maintained membership in the Asian Broadcasters' Union, of which Taiwan was a member country. The Asahi 's correspondent had his permit held up because his newspaper reported on the NHK Taiwan program. The Kyodo correspondent was expelled from China because his wire agency had sponsored a meeting of the Organization of Asian News Agencies, which also included Taiwan.

No Japanese newspaper protested these Chinese acts. To the contrary, more than one editor sent a letter to the Chinese authorities apologizing for his newspaper's behavior. (Some letters were demanded by the Chinese; other letters were unsolicited.) The Japanese public was not informed of what was going on.

To the credit of the Japanese press, the editors spent long hours debating whether they were responding correctly. Often the question was raised whether the freedom of the press was in jeopardy. At one stage in the proceedings, the editors were on the verge of protesting the Chinese actions and stating publicly that they had done so. One newspaper was obdurately opposed. Its concern with keeping its correspondent in Peking was overriding. It threatened to walk out if such a protest were sent. A wire agency also felt much the same way. Rather than split the group, the editors went along with the Chinese demands.

The Japanese have a press code. Its first article reads in part: "The press have complete freedom of information and comment. . . . This freedom

must be protected by all means as a fundamental human right." All Japanese reporters and editors whom I have ever met subscribe wholeheartedly to this provision. They are utterly serious when they quote it to you. But if the Chinese case is any criterion, there is something more fundamental than the freedom to inform and comment. That is the urge to conform.

George Orwell has written about conformity. He has found it a greater threat to freedom of speech than outright government censorship. I quote from his introduction to Animal Farm , an introduction which, ironically, was suppressed:

At any given moment, there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that, or the other, but it is "not done" to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was not done to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Any one who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.^[13]

George Orwell was writing about England during the war years, but I believe that his words have pertinence in Japan today.

[13] George Orwell, "The Freedom of the Press," New York Times Magazine , October 8, 1972, p. 8.