ABSTRACT
For a nation with a reputation for being buttoned up and homogenous, Japan has a strikingly colorful and diverse media. The world’s third-largest economy boasts a massselling communist and religious daily newspaper and a readership in the hundreds of thousands for both scandalous tabloid weeklies and highbrow monthly magazines.1 It is home to one of the planet’s most powerful public service broadcasters, the ad-free, quasi-governmental Nippon Ho-so-Kyo-kai (NHK), which also produces a 24-hour English channel; and the world’s most widely read newspapers, led by the Yomiuri Shimbun, which has a total combined (morning and evening) print circulation of about 10 million-over 14 times that of the venerable New York Times. It publishes millions of manga comics every week, some dealing with high-browed topics such as economic models, history and even Marxism (McNeill 2008). It has one of the world’s liveliest and most eclectic Internet and blogging cultures. Japan is rightly proud of its sophisticated system of media distribution, with almost
100% diffusion of terrestrial TV, one of the world’s highest (80%) diffusion rates of the Internet, and (since 2012) full nationwide digital broadcasts. Over 90% of newspapers are delivered to homes and most families receive at least one of the main dailies. Unlike many Asian countries, all forms of freedom of expression are legally guaranteed in Japan, thanks to its 1946 Constitution, written under the US Occupation and reflecting the high ideals of its liberal-minded creators. Article 21 specifically notes: “No censorship shall be maintained.” Not surprisingly, visitors to Japan encounter a relatively uninhibited range of information freely available on the airwaves, in bookstores and news kiosks, and in cyberspace. Yet, that diversity and openness is deceptive. The news media in Japan is highly
conservative and shackled by institutional constraints: an unusual and widely criticized system of information distribution that encourages journalists to collude with official sources, discourages independent lines of enquiry and institutionalizes self-censorship. Mainstream reporters shun critical stories about Japan’s imperial family, war crimes, the death penalty, religion and other issues, striving to achieve a bland consensus that only rarely troubles the nation’s political and economic elite. Critics say powerful talent agencies have turned television programming into inoffensive primetime mush, and an enormous advertising industry has narcotized the nation’s critical faculties. Like most advanced nations, Japan’s media is highly concentrated and is dominated by just six major companies that are very susceptible to political and economic pressure. If the media’s ideal role is to be the nervous system of democracy, keeping it alert and helping citizens to make informed political decisions, Japan can hardly claim to be always served well.
