Brain Food Poisoning 
Takesato Watanabe

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Many outsiders wonder why Japanese citizens, some of the best-read people of the world, still seem to be insular and out-of-step with international affairs apart from the realm of economics.
One answer may be found in what exactly it is we Japanese are reading.
Two of JapanUs major publishers -- Shinchosha and Bungei Shunju -- have a long history of unethical journalistic conduct, which has been an important factor shaping how Japanese citizens view their world.
Bungei Shunju,in particular, played an aggressive, leading role to fan the flames of Japanese nationalism during World War II by filing misleading, rosy war dispatches from the front lines.
Newspapers and magazines produced by these two publishing companies in recent years have denied the fact that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz;
systematically downplayed the brutal Rape of Nanking at the hands of the Japanese military during World War II; falsely accused an innocent man of the 1994 Matsumoto Sarin gas attacks;
abused the victims of industrial pollution in their coverage of the Minamata disease;
callously labeled plaintiffs in HIV suits as Rsuit profiteersS;
insulted women who were enslaved as prostitutes by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Pacific War by describing their status as RemployeesS;
heaped racy slanders on Okinawa Governor Ota, who has opposed the governmentUs stance on American military bases on the islands;
and launched a series of frenzied attacks on Daisaku Ikeda, the leader of the largest religious minority in Japan.

I am sure that the editors of these magazines understand only too well the ethics of healthy journalism, but have decided to dispense with these and instead focus on sensationalism and a cockeyed view of the world in order to boost sales.
What us impermissible, however, is that the targets of these reports are always the minority, represented by the victims of social wrongs such as Minamata disease or military sex slavery.
The magazines are therefore flattering and currying favor with the majority in society at the expense of the less privileged, which is, in a nutshell, behavior that is unfortunately endemic to Japanese society.

And these magazines have no small impact. Their combined weekly and monthly publications have a circulation of more than 3 million. Conspicuous advertisements on metropolitan commuter trains blare the headlines of these magazines on millions more who havenUt even bothered to read the articles.
These publications are available in highly public places such as hospitals, banks and airplane, since they are classified as serious sorts of magazines because they carry few nude photographs.
Japan, to many outsiders, remains an baffling place, and this is partly because her citizens are so poorly informed. A recent survey demonstrated that 87% of the Japanese public believes what they read in newspapers.
But many newspaper reports, and particularly the Shinchosha and Bungei Shunju publications, are biased; fact-checking is not a priority; bylines are a rarity; and quotes are most often unattributed.

What is needed is a more sophisticated readership: the Japanese need to develop the ability to interpret the information the media provide rather than blindly believing it. The reporting contained in Shinchosha and Bungei Shunju magazines is like a poison which has deeply permeated the minds of large numbers of people.
However, unlike a physical poison which can be easily identified and therefore cured, like food poisoning, the poison fomented by these magazines works on the brain insidiously and cumulatively.

The media in Japan did not come into being on the foundation of a thorough discussion and understanding of such matters as human rights, freedom of the press, or freedom of speech. The spirit of criticism has never had the chance to develop and thrive in Japanese society. This, I believe, is the tragedy of modern Japan, and a condition which may only be corrected by speaking out.

Takesato Watanabe is a professor of journalism at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

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