You make this incident sound almost like that cheesy old movie "Rocky".

Seriously though, a couple of regions in Japan have disbanded government run kisha clubs (Nagano and Kamakura). And the Foreign ministry apparently has taken interest in the recent disbanding, by Tony Blair, of the Westminister Lobby, the British equivalent of the kisha club. So I wonder whether it may be only a matter of time before the press clubs are a thing of the past. No doubt about it, Japan is under reform.

Quite an interesting item. Thanks for the pointer.

Rocky is the quintessential American sports movie... except he loses at the end.

I hope the press clubs get dismantled in Japan, although they seem way more inrooted with the political society. The clubs act as a security barrier for the authorities. I don't see them so keen on fully dismantling them.

The greatest thing about them as a pro-hegemony tool is that they require almost no intraclub guidance from the authorities themselves. If one writer uses outside information not vetted by the club, the other members get mad about been scooped and ban/punish that writer. Self-censorship is always more a more powerful thing than oppressive censorship than above.

If one writer uses outside information not vetted by the club, the other members get mad about been scooped and ban/punish that writer.

This sounds more like the consensus behaviour of a collective to me than that of an oppressed class.

Self-censorship is always more a more powerful thing than oppressive censorship than above.

Another word for self-censorship is discretion.

Not trying to give any undue credit to the Japanese press, but I think you'll agree that what you've described is related to cultural differences rather than a consequence of an oppressive, corrupt government.

He'll wriggle and he'll squirm and he'll squeal and he'll evade and he'll launch new attacks before he agrees to that seemingly innocuous view, Sparkling!

I think you'll agree that what you've described is related to cultural differences rather than a consequence of an oppressive, corrupt government.

"Cultural reasons" are extremely weak in the face of the fact that there are real structural benefits for both the authorities and the press club members themselves in perserving the system. If there is anything cultural involved, it's that the ideas of free information and press freedom are not particularly Confucian.

Honestly, I can't convince anyone if they're going to really fall for the superficial reason of "Japanese like it that way" answer when all the journalists and readers shut out of the system have been rallying against it for years. Again, I plug Laurie Anne Freeman's Closing the Shop for a very informative step-by-step look at the kisha club history and rule-structure. They were essentially formed in the Meiji era as a way to the government to control information at the newspapers. The structure did not change much in the post-War period. Whether or not the clubs themselves were formed by "cultural consensus," the authorities know full well that the members will never scoop outside information and abuse this to their own gain.

He'll wriggle and he'll squirm and he'll squeal and he'll evade and he'll launch new attacks before he agrees to that seemingly innocuous view, Sparkling!

The all-seeing, all-knowing "cultural" explanation is great to throw out when you basically have no idea what you're talking about, Momus. You pin me as some kind of lunatic for actually knowing the real story behind things. If you're going to stay in your fantasy world, send a postcard, not a comment.

Marxy,

The situation with the kisha clubs is an interesting one, thanks again for bringing it up.
I didn't provide links in my earlier post about a similar institution in the UK, the Westminister lobby, which was founded one year before the Japanese kisha clubs. Prime Minister Blair 'scrapped' the lobby system (British equivalent of kisha)earlier this year. There seems to be some controversy about his actions.

Nicholas Jones keynote speech at the FCCJ Symposium on Kisha clubs is well worth a listen.
It's linked here.

From my cursory readings on the topic, it looks like the Japanese system is under reform, or at least there is active discussion of the topic. The way things are going in Japan these days, I have little doubt that the kisha system will be reformed, though I would predict that consensus group-based approach will still play a role in whatever structure is adopted. Like it or not, consensus-based decision making is something that most Japanese value.

I think intraorganizational consensus decision making is fine, but it's when competing organizations agree on one standard version of the news that it reaches into collusion. If you think collusion and oligopoly are cultural so be it, but they are not good for consumers no matter what the situation. I am going to go on a limb and say "collusion and ogliopoly are bad." Call me crazy.

I don't know much about Westminister Lobby, but I don't get the sense that it stopped leaked as much as kisha clubs do. That world rank of press freedom has the UK way ahead of Japan. Tanaka Yasuo got rid of the Nagano press clubs, but only because he's a maverick, anti-LDP guy. I don't see the LDP getting rid of the clubs themselves.

BTW here's an informative, well written review of the Freeman book you recommend by Japan Times Staff writer Eric Johnson.

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?eo20000323a2.htm

(do people prefer links appearing as html or as straight text like this?) These pop up windows on Marxy's blogs are not so good for opening up new pages. Any comments/ideas?

Sparkligbeatnic: Thanks for the link to the article. That's a good summary of the book. I would recommend it as it does not sensationalize the topic like Ivan Hall's book does.