Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

It took almost a month before I turned on the television for the first time after giving birth to my son in early October. Those postpartum weeks were tense, like a boot camp with an endless rotation of nursing, changing diapers, trying and failing to put him to bed, munching into whatever I could to fulfill my hunger while struggling to get some sleep when/if I could. Sleepless and exhausted, I could hardly think about anything else. I even gave up checking my e-mails, Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone because it was too tiring to keep up with the amount of information that kept feeding in. The main use of my iPhone now was to take pictures of this little baby. And if I had any energy left I would be searching the web for information on how to put your baby to bed without waking him, or whether I needed to worry about the rash on his cheek. Around the fourth week, though, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been disconnected from the outside world for so long. That was when I hit the remote control. Television was easy, as all I had to do was sit there and watch. From then on the television became my nursing time companion.

A close friend told me that nursing was a good time to watch DVDs, but I stuck to the terrestrial channels. Although I nursed several times throughout the day I only turned the TV on during the daytime when I was alone with my son. So my choices included programs like the so-called “waidosho” provided by private broadcasters, which are two to three hour-long programs where show hosts and guests comment on light news items from social issues to entertainment. My other options were reruns of popular TV dramas but I didn’t have time for an hour-long drama every day. And live coverage of the Diet committee sessions by NHK was too tedious to watch. So I would often end up landing on one of the channels running a waidosho that caught my attention, from the illicit relationships of politicians and celebrities to cooking tips. And because the day’s straight news that was provided during these shows often seemed to be the same throughout the day, I felt I wasn’t missing out.

As more weeks passed, the boot camp gradually became less tense, or perhaps I was getting used to meeting my son’s needs. And nursing time became shorter as my son learned to drink more and faster as many babies do. Slowly I recovered mental and physical strength and returned to checking social media and also visiting websites beyond parenting advice on my iPhone. I also resumed reading newspapers, mostly by using apps. Meanwhile I was watching less television. As I gained access to more information via different media, I realized how little I was getting out of daytime TV shows. And even if I watched the evening and late night news programs, I was sure that there was still a limit to the amount of information I would be getting. It was definitely naive to think that I was informed of the world just by watching TV.

Surveys show that more people rely on the Internet, especially social media, for news than they do on newspapers, but television still remains the significant source of information. But simply watching television passively can mislead our views toward society and may, in fact, isolate those who only watch television. It’s ironic, as I had thought it had saved me from isolation during those extraordinary weeks in my life. Sometimes it takes a postpartum experience to realize what we thought we already knew.

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

In the summer that marked the 70th year since the end of World War II, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government and the ruling parties bulldozed through the Diet a series of legislations that could let the Self Defense Forces fight abroad for the first time in the country’s post war history. The security bills that could allow Japan to join in collective self-defense with its allies were based on a resolution by the Abe Cabinet in 2014 reinterpreting the Constitution. But a great number of academics and legal professionals including former Supreme Court justices have claimed the bills are unconstitutional. And thousands of ordinary citizens, from college students to women with children who are against changing the interpretation of the country’s pacifist Constitution, have raised their voices with anti-government protests being held in front of the Diet as well as many other parts of the country as the lawmakers deliberated on the controversial bills.

Holding and participating in protests are fundamental constitutional rights in a democracy, but rallies attracting citizens by the thousands had been scarce for a long time in this society where people tend to shy away from discussing politics publicly. This changed after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 as thousands of citizens, of their own will, took to the streets to protest against reactivating nuclear power plants, with the most prominent actions observed weekly in front of the Prime Minister’s Office. Such a change in attitude is itself worthy of news, but protestors at the time criticized the mass media for not covering the demonstrations. While this wasn’t true, it may be fair to say that it took some time before Japanese media outlets faced the anti-nuclear demonstrations seriously and increased their coverage.

This time around, the anti-security bills movement became the center of attention by the press, especially because of the leadership voluntarily taken by college students. But the treatment of the events was clearly divided between the conservative and liberal media. The most prominent difference was observed in the coverage of the August 30 protest, which was the largest among the string of rallies against the controversial pieces of legislation. More than 300 rallies took place across the country that day, with the largest gathering in front of the Diet building attracting 120,000 people, according to organizers. Police announced that the turnout was about 32,000. The actual number aside, liberal media including Tokyo Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun and many local newspapers featured the demonstrations on their front page and even used several more to introduce the voices of the participants. Meanwhile, conservatives who are supportive of Abe’s policies such as Sankei Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun and business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun treated the demonstration as just another news item on their society news page. On August 31, I spotted several posts on social media with pictures of the front pages of major newspapers going viral. One glance at the pictures was enough to know who took the demonstration seriously and who didn’t.

Similar differences were also observed among TV networks. According to an article compiled by the Mainichi, while national broadcaster NHK and five commercial networks did cover the demonstrations, left-leaning TV Asahi and TBS were the top two stations that had the most coverage, followed by NHK, Nihon News Network, Fuji Television and TV Tokyo. Abe, who said he will make more of an effort to explain to the public about his security policy, has in fact been very selective about which TV stations to appear on, and so far has been avoiding TV Asahi and TBS who are critical of his policies.

Considering that the Japanese press was once criticized as being too identical from each other in tone, the polarization observed here isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The demonstrations, in which social media played a major role, also showed that the mass media needs to play the role of a good analyzer of ongoing events in order to survive in this age of the Internet. For any media organizations, the most important thing is to have reporters on the ground to witness the events and talk to participants, but when the demonstrators and observers are constantly communicating online, it’s increasingly challenging to grasp the entire picture. To do so, the press will have to have a good bird’s eye view and provide good analysis, and it makes sense for them to have their own take on the issue. Meanwhile, the public will be watching for who’s holding a critical eye towards the authorities and catering to their right to know.

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

Nikkei Inc.’s buyout of the Financial Times Group from its parent company Pearson PLC surprised many in the news media when the report ran in late July that the Japanese business media group agreed to pay a whopping $1.3 billion, or around 160 billion, to purchase the British establishment. The price is said to be 35 times that of the operating profit of the FT and far exceeds the $250 million paid in 2013 by Amazon Inc. founder Jeff Bezos to purchase the Washington Post. And it is definitely one of the largest acquisitions by a Japanese media company. By acquiring the FT Group, known best for its salmon-colored prestigious international broadsheet, Nikkei said it wants to advance its global and digital growth strategy.

Indeed, the FT is regarded among journalism circles as the quality paper that was one of the first to successfully monetize its digital content by launching the pay-wall, setting a model for other media outlets. Currently, digital subscribers of the FT exceed 500,000, or around 70 percent of the total paying audience of the 730,000 readership of both print and digital combined. Nikkei was also among the first in Japan to start the pay-wall system and has 430,000 digital subscribers, in addition to around 3 million broadsheet readers. At a time when the number of newspaper subscribers are declining while news content is increasingly consumed via online devices, Nikkei’s vision to strengthen its global presence and enhance its digital strategy are keys for any news organization to survive in the changing environment. Nikkei hasn’t outlined any details yet, but it will be interesting to see how this buyout will develop and impact the industry.

Observing how the Japanese and British press carried this news, there were clear differences in the tone of the stories. Reports by the Japanese media, including Nikkei’s own daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, were generally straightforward about the major buyout. The fact that the FT was on sale was hardly known in Japan in the first place, so people were honestly surprised to learn that Nikkei was involved in the bid and had the astonishing financial capability. Meanwhile, the British media’s reports were much more detailed and dramatic. As the FT said so itself, the buyout was “a matter of public interest in the UK.” Until the very last minute, it was believed that the German media group Alex Springer would be the most likely new owner of the FT and no one expected an unfamiliar Japanese media group to win over the bid. In addition to reporting what happened behind the scenes, several papers raised concerns on what would become of the editorial independence of the 127-year-old British liberal establishment, pointing out the difference of journalistic culture between Nikkei and the FT. While depicting the Nikkei newspaper as a respected daily among the Japanese business circle, the British media criticized that even though Nikkei may carry scoops, the paper isn’t aggressive about chasing corporate scandals.

A prominent example cited was the fact that the FT was the first newspaper to break the news on the 2011 Olympus Corp. cover-up scandal, but the Nikkei only ran the story when the news became too big to ignore. Michael Woodford, former Olympus CEO who was the whistleblower, wrote to the FT to raise his concerns, noting that Nikkei’s reports on the case was “belated and inadequate” and it “acted like the public relations office of Olympus.” The Guardian, in its editorial, wrote: “Mainstream Japanese journalism is not corrupt, but it is respectful, like the culture around it. Anglo-Saxon journalistic traditions are not, at their best, respectful of anything.” Snobbish as it may sound, the British media is making a valid point. I wonder what Nikkei reporters thought of such criticism.

Nikkei chairman and group CEO Tsuneo Kita said that the independence of editorial policies will be maintained and that they have no intention of changing the FT’s reporting approach. FT executives have also said that the issue of editorial independence was a central consideration of the acquisition. Hopefully, Nikkei will keep its word, and I actually look forward to them becoming more vigorous in chasing after businesses if they are serious about catering to the global audience.

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*This issue should have been appeared in the 4th issue, but was appeared in the 5th issue because of an editing error. We sincerely apologize for this oversight.

The editorial office of 5

*本記事は雑誌『５』第４号に掲載されるべきところ、編集ミスにより第５号への掲載となりました。著者と読者のみなさまにお詫び申し上げます。

『５』編集室

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

We take it for granted that freedom of speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed by the Constitution. In recent months, however, there have been signs of our constitutional rights being at risk, and since the hostage crisis in late January, this negative trend seems to be escalating. We want to think that the mass media would be on the frontline in defending our right to know, but some journalists and artists recently raised their voices against major news outlets for self-censorship and refraining from criticizing the government in times of crisis.

A somewhat clear sign of the government’s influence against major news organizations was already observed a year ago when the Shinzo Abe Cabinet appointed Katsuo Momii as chairman of NHK. Since his appointment, Momii has made remarks which indicated that he would not let the public broadcaster air programs featuring controversial issues before knowing what the government’s stance towards them are, which raised questions about NHK’s independence. Momii’s stance is apparently even affecting the broadcaster’s entertainment shows, according to popular comedian duo Bakusho Mondai who said in January that NHK had stopped them from criticizing politicians as part of their jokes.

And then there was that time prior to the general election in December when ruling Liberal Democratic Party Diet members wrote to TV stations seeking “fair coverage” of the election campaign. The written request asked broadcasters to be extra careful in their choice of topics for debate and guest commentators. This was taken as a sign that being too critical of the government would make it difficult to access influential political sources from then on. In fact, this apparently influenced TV Asahi’s popular midnight debate show Asa Made Nama Terebi. Chiki Ogiue, a young liberal critic, tweeted a day before the scheduled show that his invitation as a guest commentator was suddenly cancelled because the program changed course and was only putting politicians on the panel.

And during the recent hostage crisis, as the country closely watched what would become of the lives of the two captives — self-proclaimed private military consultant Haruna Yukawa and journalist Kenji Goto — the Foreign Ministry raised the level of alert in the Turkish and Syrian borders to an “evacuation order” and urged Japanese journalists to leave immediately to avoid becoming targets of kidnappings themselves. But when Asahi Shimbun reporters entered Syria after the warning, conservative competitors the Sankei Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun reported critically about the liberal daily’s move to enter the zone despite government warnings. This attack against Asahi, I assume, partly has to do with Sankei and Yomiuri’s ongoing anti-Asahi campaign, but it also looked like a statement that they were going along with the government.

Meanwhile, former trade ministry bureaucrat Shigeaki Koga who was a guest commentator for TV Asahi’s evening news show Hodo Station, said he had received harsh criticism after he attacked the Prime Minister on the program, claiming that he mishandled the hostage crisis. Apparently, this invited negative calls and e-mails from angry viewers and triggered the broadcaster to stop asking Koga to appear on the program. Koga has said that the attacks against him became so alarming that police came to him to let him know that they will raise the security level of his neighborhood.

Observing the situation, documentary filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda, freelance journalist Hajime Imai and Koga voluntarily launched a campaign on February 9 to reaffirm the importance of free speech, especially in times of crisis. The petition, titled “Don’t Let ISIS Crisis Hobble Free Expression in Japan,” states that the signatories express their strong concern over the perceived societal pressure for broadcasters, news organizations and even Diet members to practice “self-restraint” and avoid any criticism of how the government has handled the hostage crisis. It also voiced concern over people who claim that in these times of crisis it is important for the nation to come together and support the government, because that was the same logic used during the time leading up to Japan’s entry to the war, when people were prohibited from any kind of government criticism. “The problem is that those who attack people critical of the government are unaware that they are creating such a support system for the government,” the statement reads.

As the campaign began, more than 1,200 writers, artists and journalists immediately became signatories of the statement, including musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and playwright Oriza Hirata. It’s a relief to know that there are still many individuals who are observing the situation with a sense of crisis, but aside from several individual journalists, only Asahi, Mainichi Shimbun and Tokyo Shimbun, which are regarded as liberal dailies, reported on this campaign. The hostage crisis has cast light on many issues, and it has also shown the precarious state of our right to know.

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

Reflecting on the events in Japan’s media in 2014, the most significant was undoubtedly the Asahi Shimbun’s retraction of past erroneous reports on the Yoshida Testimony as well as on the so-called comfort women issue. Facing a backlash from conservative forces, in August the liberal newspaper retracted some of its articles from the 1990s on the contentious history of women who worked in wartime brothels for Japanese soldiers. But the most recent apology related to this controversy came from none other than the Yomiuri Shimbun, the leader of the anti-Asahi campaign. But its apology received more attention from the foreign press than its domestic counterparts.

In late November, the Yomiuri, which has the largest circulation in Japan, stated that the paper’s English version, the Daily Yomiuri, had used “‘sex slaves’ and other ‘inappropriate expressions’” in a total of 97 articles on the comfort women issue that ran through 1992 to 2013. The Yomiuri also apologized that some articles in its English version, now called the Japan News, “defined comfort women to have been ‘forced into prostitution by the military’ as if coercion by the Japanese government or the army was an objective fact.” The Yomiuri made it clear that such expressions never appeared in the original Japanese articles. This happened in the English version, the paper explained, because the term “comfort women” was difficult to understand for non-Japanese readers without any knowledge of the subject, and the misleading wordings were applied based on “inaccurate perception and using foreign news agencies’ reports as reference.” A list of headlines of the articles in question was attached, and the Yomiuri said each article was now accompanied by a note stating that they contain inappropriate expressions.

The apology by the newspaper, which appeared in both language editions, received relatively little attention by other Japanese newspapers. They simply provided the facts and quoted a Yomiuri spokesman who said this will never happen again. But the foreign media, who often refer to the comfort women as a Japanese euphemism for sex slaves, observed this as an issue of much greater gravity. They claimed that the move by the broadsheet was a challenge against the views held by many historians and the South Korean and Chinese governments, where many of the women came from. For example, the New York Times said that this was part of the Yomiuri’s “campaigns to correct what it sees as unduly negative portrayals of Japan’s wartime behavior.” Such observations were echoed by others including the Economist which wrote that for the Yomiuri, “the apology is a way of protecting the newspaper from counter-attack, while thumbing its nose at its ideological opponents.”

Amid the general decline in readership of newspapers, the Yomiuri is the only Japanese paper that can still afford to print its English version daily. I worked for its competitor the Japan Times, an independent paper with no Japanese edition. Thus I have no idea how it works between Japanese and English versions of a paper, but I do know how important and challenging it is to choose the right words to translate Japanese terms into English that accurately convey the original meaning. The nature of the apology was definitely in line with the Yomiuri’s long-held stance towards the issue, but the fact that they overlooked the inconsistency over the terminology of something so important for them for two decades was quite astonishing. This is actually embarrassing for the Yomiuri as it revealed the paper’s ignorant attitude towards English publishing and its international audience. And with the Yomiuri’s in-house investigation taking place after the Asahi’s apology, this indeed also indicates that the conservatives are geared towards strengthening their attacks.

Among the foreign press, the British public broadcaster BBC said the Yomiuri’s revision was “definitely another victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his right-wing nationalist supporters” who have long sought to revise the country’s view of World War II history. It pointed to the fact that earlier this year, public broadcaster NHK, whose leaders include those appointed by the Abe administration, had issued new guidelines for its English language news channel to terminate the use of “sex slaves” when referring to the comfort women. Could this even escalate with Abe’s victory in the latest general election?

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

When the Asahi Shimbun revealed in May that it had obtained transcripts of confidential interviews that the government had conducted with the former Fukushima Daiichi power plant chief Masao Yoshida, it was eye-catching not just because of the nature of the scoop, but because it was probably the first time that a domestic newspaper gave a short preview online about what it was running on their front page the next day. It also encouraged readers to visit their website for a special presentation.

And on the following day, Asahi reported that amid the March 2011 meltdown crisis, some 650 plant workers at the stricken power plant had defied Yoshida’s orders and fled without his permission to the unharmed Fukushima Daini plant, about 10 kilometers away. The daily allocated several pages to introduce and analyze Yoshida’s account. But its online presentation titled “Yoshida Testimony” was even more phenomenal, as it effectively used text, audio and photographs to detail what happened during the early stages of the crisis, based on Yoshida’s testimony.

It was a cutting-edge example of digital-age storytelling. Obviously, a good amount of planning and preparation was done, an indication that Asahi was confident that it was the only one who had this scoop and its staff had enough time to think hard about how to make the best of what they had. It looked as if Asahi had set a precedent of multimedia presentation.

I was recalling this new form of online journalism in September while listening to researchers from the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism discuss their findings from a cross-national online survey of digital news consumption. They warned Japanese newspapers, who still have higher circulation than their foreign counterparts, to move faster towards digital reporting and develop a strong online presence before it’s too late because there is no doubt that more people are consuming news on their computers and smart phones. I thought the “Yoshida Testimony” package was an example such an effort being made, and competitors must have felt the need to follow suit.

Ironically, though, as this discussion took place at Waseda University, Asahi Shimbun president Tadakazu Kimura held a press conference elsewhere in Tokyo and apologized for the newspaper making serious errors in their coverage of Yoshida’s testimony and retracted the report. The paper said the accurate version of the story was that Yoshida’s orders were not delivered properly and workers at the plant didn’t violate his orders and leave. Asahi admitted that they failed to confirm the facts with any plant worker.

Asahi’s initial scoop was already under attack after rival newspapers managed to obtain the same secret transcripts in August and reported that Yoshida, who died in 2013, testified he felt he was misunderstood rather than disobeyed, which contradicts Asahi’s version of the story. The different reports triggered by Asahi’s scoop eventually led the government to disclose the confidential interviews, which happened on the same day as Kimura’s press conference.

The Yoshida Testimony presentation is still accessible on Asahi’s website, but now it has an apology posted on the beginning of every related page.

The lesson seems clear. No matter how significant the scoop or how well you package your news in print or online, the value of such efforts plunges if you aren’t doing your reporting carefully and accurately. This will no doubt result in readers’ distrust of news organizations. This may sound like the basic principles of journalism, but we’re seeing too many of the basics being forgotten these days.

The error in the Yoshida testimony report is just one of several errors on contentious issues that Asahi has apologized for, including the delay in retracting its past erroneous reports on the comfort women issue. Attacks against the left-leaning daily had actually started in August after the paper reviewed and retracted reports on the comfort women issue from the 1980s and 1990s. And it also expressed regret for initially declining to run a column by popular journalist Akira Ikegami in which he criticized Asahi for its errors.

Asahi definitely has every reason to be criticized, and it needs to pay the price while reflecting on its mistakes. But the increasingly harsh attacks against the daily from politicians and right-wingers are becoming a threat not just towards the troubled newspaper but also against freedom of expression, and we need to be on alert.

*The Yoshida Testimony http://www.asahi.com/special/yoshida_report/en/

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

The sexist heckling made by Tokyo Metropolitan assembly members against one of their female counterparts in June reflects the deep-rooted sexism held among some Japanese male politicians. And it also revealed Japanese media to be unresponsive to such discriminatory jeers even though they weren’t, sadly, necessarily anything new.

What seems to have helped attract public attention and anger towards the sexist heckling this time is social network services that instantly spread the news, and foreign media reports which reacted much more seriously to the incident than Japanese mainstream media.

It happened on June 18 when Tokyo metropolitan assemblywoman Ayaka Shiomura of Your Party was addressing the assembly about the need for further measures to support child raising as well as to boost fertility. As the 35-year-old spoke, several assemblymen interrupted her with jeers of “Why don’t you get married?” and “Why don’t you give birth first?” Shiomura, who is single, returned to her seat in tears.

Later in the day, Shiomura tweeted about what had happened at the metro assembly. In just a day, it was retweeted over 20,000 times, and the news kept spreading as countless others tweeted their criticism of such sexist remarks, which apparently came from members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

A couple of major domestic newspapers indeed reported on the incident, but the contents of the story were simple facts about what happened, and it was treated as a small piece of local news. The news gradually gained significance as stronger calls came for the ones responsible for the heckling to be found and held accountable.

In contrast, foreign news outlets from the onset reported the news as an example of intractable sexism in Japan. The stories outlined how the heckling had come from the capital assembly’s ruling party members amid a push by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his “Womenomics” growth plan, which aims to mobilize more women to join the workforce in order to revitalize the economy. Some reports also touched on the overall gender inequality in Japan, citing statistics on the small number of women in management positions and how men command greater salaries than women.

Eventually the news took center stage as Akihiro Suzuki, a 51-year-old Tokyo Metropolitan assemblyman who for several days denied his involvement, admitted to making one of the sexist heckles and apologized to Shiomura in front of the press. He quit the LDP shortly afterwards.

This incident prompted the media to continue digging into the problem. In early July, it was reported that Sayuri Uenishi, 31, a Diet member of Nippon Ishin no Kai, had been attacked with a sexist slur by LDP lawmaker Hideo Onishi in April, two months before Shiomura’s case. During a Lower House committee session as Uenishi was addressing the committee, 67-year-old Onishi said: “Hey, you should get married and have kids as fast as possible!” Following this revelation, on July 9 Kyodo News reported that at least 12 out of the 78 female Diet members admitted to having been victims of sexist slurs in the past.

If sexist heckling is pretty much a fact of life in the political arena, why hasn’t it been reported in the past? I can’t help thinking that this is an indication that political reporters in the Japanese media, whose industry is male-dominated, are still pretty insensitive to sexism.

In fact, after this incident an Asahi Shimbun reporter responsible for a series of articles focusing on gender issues noted on July 9 that she was bothered at having given up on raising the issue of sexism due to her being in the minority among political reporters. My guess is that’s pretty much the case in other media outlets, but I sincerely hope that this will change.

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

I was recently cleaning my room and came across a copy of the magazine Big Comic Spirits, which I bought back in late May amid the controversy over its popular series Oishinbo, a long-running manga about cooking that came under fire because of the way it described the possible impact of radioactive materials on people’s health. I’m not in the habit of buying manga magazines but had to get this one as its publisher Shogakukan Inc. unprecedentedly ran a series of opinions and reactions by experts to the manga in question after it received wide media coverage.

Harsh criticism against the 31-year-old comic series began in late April after the weekly magazine ran an Oishinbo installment called “The Truth About Fukushima Edition.” In it, the main character, a news reporter, experienced fatigue and a nosebleed after a guided tour of the ruined power plant. Katsutaka Idogawa, a real-life former mayor of Futaba town, which hosts the plant, tells the reporter that the nosebleed was likely caused by radioactive materials, and that he believes people shouldn’t live in Fukushima. A couple of others also raised similar voices in the story.

Once the nosebleed episode was released, critics attacked Oishinbo publisher Shogakukan, arguing that no health problems have been linked to the radioactive fallout and that the depiction in question would only fuel the prejudice against the people of Fukushima and its food produce, which undergoes safety checks. Meanwhile, Oishinbo’s author Tetsu Kariya wrote on his blog that his work was based on two years of reporting in Fukushima and that he only wrote the truth.

Media reports fueled the controversy by closely following the developments, which at one point drew critical comments against the manga by the Prime Minister, Chief Cabinet Secretary and local governments. This reaffirmed my belief that manga has a strong influence on our society, but I felt uneasy as it looked as though authorities were ganging up on people voicing concern about radiation. Meanwhile, Kariya said he would only respond to interviews after things calmed down. In the end, Shogakukan, along with the final episode of the Fukushima edition, ran the opinions of radiology experts, doctors and local municipalities.

I revisited this copy of Big Comic Spirits, whose special 10-pages full of text read nothing like a comic magazine. What’s evident though is that even if Oishinbo’s nosebleed depiction lacked scientific accuracy, so much is still unknown about radiation and opinions are divided even among pundits.

In his comments, Big Comic Spirits editor-in-chief Hiroshi Murayama noted that Kariya in fact has repeatedly criticized how consumers were refusing to buy Fukushima produce. In fact, Oishinbo has featured characters from the disaster-affected areas in several of its past episodes. Not being a regular reader I have no clue as to how they were depicted, but as non-fiction writer Osamu Aoki commented in the magazine’s special edition, the backlash against Oishinbo may be considered unfair if this background is taken into account.

During the weeks that Oishinbo made the headlines, some locals ironically commented that the upside of this dispute was that it brought Fukushima back into the media spotlight. If that’s the case then, even with its claimed faults, shouldn’t Oishinbo be given some credit for continuing to cast light on the status quo in the disaster-affected areas?

Just like many other news stories, this controversy has now become something of the past. But anxiety against radiation will remain a major issue for many Fukushima residents, and the media should be making the effort to follow it up.

Setsuko Kamiya 神谷説子

The ongoing STAP cell controversy revealed many alarming issues surrounding the Japanese academic community. After a couple of months since the fabrication and falsification in the research papers in question that ran in Nature came to light, constructive discussions on the need for enhancing professional ethics and prevention of scientific frauds are finally taking place. Recalling the media circus over the so-called “STAPgate”, though, it’s probably the Apr. 9 press conference of state-backed Riken researcher Haruko Obokata that will be remembered as the highlight of this scandal. The media event at an Osaka hotel attracted hundreds of reporters and camera crews as if a renowned actress was there to announce the end of her career. Part of the 150-minute event was televised, and the 30-year-old made the front page of newspapers and tabloids the following day.

Indeed, the now-disputed finding by Obokata’s team of researchers was initially regarded as a groundbreaking discovery that may have potential to push the progress of reproductive medicine. As allegations of grave misconduct surfaced, the media had every reason to be enthusiastic and follow up on the developments. But considering the modest treatment that science-related news generally receives, the media frenzy over STAPgate clearly have gone too far.

Had this been the case if Obokata was a young male researcher? I doubt it. Obokata is no actress but she’s got the charm, and Riken also knew how to present her to receive a good amount of coverage. And the media didn’t think twice and jumped on it. Things just kept escalating as misconducts were spotted.

In late January, as Obokata and her team of experts announced their stunning findings of stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells, the media depicted her as the rising star among “rikejo” or female scientists. TV networks carried footages of Obokata in her white “kappogi” traditional apron instead of a laboratory gown. The pink and yellow walls of her lab with Moomin characters painted on them helped highlight the girlish side of the scientist, and also made Riken seem like a cool place to work. Oh, she had a pet turtle there, too.

But as revelations on alleged fabrication of data came to light in February, gossip magazines began attacks on Obokata’s personality and lavishing looks as well as her reputation among friends and co-workers. Then came the press conference, where, in addition to Obokata’s apologies and claims that she would stand by her findings, some reported on the changes seen in her clothing and accessories. A sports newspaper even touched on the size of her breasts. A psychotherapist said on TV that Obokata made fewer gestures than January, an indicator that she was emotionally less conspicuous.

This isn’t to say that reportings on the real issues weren’t in place. But with too much gossip on Obokata – nowdays called “Obo-chan” by some – many will associate STAP cell controversy with her perfectly coiffed hair, tearful apology and the innocent claim that STAP cells do exist, rather than her lack of skills and ethics and the damage it has caused.

But then again, the excessive media coverage may have encouraged whistleblowers to step for ward. The situation involving Riken has taken several turns, including the resignation of Shunsuke Ishii, who headed the in-house investigation committee that accused Obokata of intentional manipulation of data, after allegations surfaced that his own paper contained cut and pastes of images. Feeling a sense of crisis, Riken President and Nobel laureate Ryoji Noyori has ordered some 3,000 papers authored by Riken senior researchers to be checked for any wrongdoings.