Excerpted with English editing from Hogaku Seminar April 1997

Characteristcs of Japanese media

The business of Japanese media especially weekly magazines is characterized by frequent infringement of privacy rights with libelous articles. One example is the Matsumoto sarin incident:

Yoshiyuki Kouno, the first resident to inform the police about the attack, was accused, tried and convicted by the press of carrying out the assault. A flurry of articles were published. Prematurely reporting the incident as if it had been caused by Mr. Kouno.

Another example is found in a recent libel suit against one of the largest publishers Shinchosha:
On July 21, 1994, the chief Priest of Shinmyo Temple in Hokkaido was fatally injured when his car driffted into the opposing lane of traffic In its September 1994 issue, the weekly Shukan Shincho claimed that the Priest was murdered by the Soka Gakkai, citing that the driver of the truck which collided with the priest's car was a member of the Buddhist organization.
The investigating police and insurance company found that the priest caused the head-on collision. It was ruled that Mr. Shiroyama, the Soka Gakkai member was an innocent victim in the accident.
In response to the publication of the outrageous falsehoods Mr Shiroyama filed a libel suit against Shinchosha, the publisher of Shukan Shincho, claiming his rights of privacy as well as freedom of religion were violated. On December 20, 1996, Sapporo District Court orderd the publisher to pay Mr. Shiroyama 1.1 million yen for damages caused by the Shukan Shincho article.

Another force shaping the Japanese media industry is that it does not function as the watchdog over govemment authorities. On the contrary, they often conduct propaganda for the powerholders. Further, they tend to refrain from reflecting on their own articles and from criticizing other publishers in the industy. If we take the above two cases for example:
In Mr. Kouno's case, the Japanese media had leamed that the national Self Defense Force had produced and possessed sarin gas, and that a US specialist warned that the killer gas incident had been a precursory crime initiated by terrorists. Thus they knew the killer gas could not be possibly produced by a single individual. Still, they continued to point fingers at Mr. Kouno, counting on leaked information from police officers who attempted to arrest him -- until the occurrence of next major killer gas affack on the Tokyo metropolitan subways on March 20, 1995, allegedly committed by the Aum Shinrikyo group, which killed twelve people and injured over five thousand -- and which the embarrassed Japanese government failed to prevent.

In Mr. Shiroyama's case. Liberal Democratic Party Diet member, Jiro Kawasaki, referred to the Shukan Shincho magazine article in a nationally televised Diet debate, causing enonnous damage to the reputation of Mr. Shiroyama, the driver of the tuck.

In either case, virtually no media criticized the government authorities or their own industy for their acts of infringement of the individuals' privacy rights.

What needs to be done

The legal protection of privacy righis is too weak in Japan. The amount of damages the courts order the Publishers to pay in libel suits is too small -- usually less than one million yen -- to function as a deterrence against infringement of individuals' rights. The publisher can easily justify the amount if the libelous article helps boost sales. On the other hand, the amount awarded would hardly cover the legal cost of the media victim. The time-consuming court process often makes it unfeasible for ordinary citizens to continue to fight against the financially gigantic Publishers. The Japanese legal system must be reviewed.
The Japanese media lacks fundamental journalistic ethics such as justice and faimess. They do not feel responsible for what they are reporting. A media accountability system is needed. Reporiers and editors should be accountable for investigation as well as selection of inionnation for release.