Not the Right to Know But to Know What's Right

Japanese students rioted by the tens of thousands in 1960 over the renewal of the U.S. mutual security treaty, and the nation's press egged them on with inflammatory stories and editorials. Last October the students once again took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's trip to Viet Nam. But if history repeated itself, the press did not. It reported the rioting with obvious distress and admonished the students to restrain themselves. Said Asahi, Japan's biggest daily: "The students have forgotten that a social movement will not get on the right track unless it is accepted by public opinion. This has resulted in excessive actions and in their becoming more and more isolated."

The change in tone was not the result of a change of editorial opinion. Japanese newsmen and editors share the students' aversion to the Viet Nam war and to Japanese rearmament.*But since World War II, Japan's press has been scrupulously attentive to public opinion--and that opinion now is dead-set against continuing violence in the streets. As Japan has revived and boomed in the postwar years, the press has conceived its role to be one of establishing a consensus, of strengthening the bonds of society. If the motivation of the Western press is the right to know, the basis of the Japanese press is to know what's right. "The 1960 rioting was a great lesson," Asahi Managing Editor Kikuo Tashiro told TIME'S Tokyo Bureau Chief Jerrold L. Schecter last week. "At that time, most of the people were moved by emotion and sentiment rather than any basic understanding of the issues. Since then, they have become much more mature politically, and the press has reflected this."

Keeping Up with TV. In becoming more mature, Japan's press has not lost any momentum. On the contrary, it is in sounder shape than ever before. Though there are some 25 million television sets in Japan--more than in any other country except the U.S.--newspaper circulation has been growing, and no major newspapers have folded in the past decade. Five Tokyo-based national newspapers blanket the country: Asahi (circ. 5.1 million), Yomiuri (4.6 million), Mainichi (4,000,000), Sankei (1.9 million) and Nihon Keizai (930,000). Putting out 42 daily editions, Asahi has 2,000 editorial staffers, 295 domestic bureaus and 24 correspondents overseas. Journalism is a profession with prestige in Japan, and papers are swamped with job applicants. This year Asahi picked the cream of 30 from a crop of 1,500 job seekers.

Individual initiative is played down in the Japanese press; the emphasis is on group effort. Perhaps the most technologically advanced press corps in the world, Japanese newsmen smoothly synchronize airplanes, helicopters and walkie-talkies to get the news out fast. Recently, they have started using news cars equipped with darkrooms and radio transmission units that can flash pictures from the scene of a story to the home office. With its sense of group responsibility, the Japanese press displays a humility lacking in other nations' newsmen. When U.S. Ambassador Edwin Reischauer scolded the press for biased coverage of Viet Nam, they did not take umbrage at this interference.

Rather, they accepted the reprimand as a "cause for self-reflection."

Night Ambush. Press solidarity is reinforced by a system of press clubs.

Separate clubs are formed around the Prime Minister, each Cabinet member, the Diet, the political parties, the police department. Only club members may at tend press conferences and briefings.

Foreign correspondents are excluded al together -- much to their exasperation.

The clubs have special rituals, such as the "night ambush." Around 11 p.m., the members descend on their source at his home or office, extract from him the latest news and rush it off for the final editions. Anyone who breaks club rules is disciplined. When a reporter once got an exclusive interview with Sato without his club's permission, he was banned from briefings with the Prime Minister for a week.

The papers are not content with merely covering the news. They sponsor a host of outside activities, from art shows to concerts to baseball games. Nearly every paper employs staffers for special projects; Yomiuri has 150, double the number of its foreign news staff. Yomiuri owns a symphony orchestra and professional baseball team, the Tokyo Giants, as well as a kind of Disneyland East, called Yomiuriland.

The side activities began with Yomiuri, in fact, after the paper's president, Matsutaro Shoriki, decided to bring Babe Ruth and other baseball stars to Japan for a tour in 1934. The tour was a hit and raised the paper's circulation by 50,000, though Shoriki was stabbed by an ultranationalist who took offense when the Americans played ball on the grounds of a Shinto shrine. Last October Shoriki, now 83, staged an exhibit of Tibetan art treasures and invited the Dalai Lama to attend. When he arrived, Red China got so angry at this "sinister activity" that it canceled the accreditation of the Yomiuri correspondent in Peking.

In the interests of group journalism, Japanese publishers have tried to suppress individuality. In 1965, for example, Minoru Omori was eased out of his job as foreign editor of Mainichi because he had become too prominent. But individualism keeps cropping up. Lately, a few papers have been increasing the use of bylines and striving for a more personal writing style. They have also grown more willing to court controversy. "We are trying to create an atmosphere in which people can speak about formerly taboo subjects," says Yomiuri Editor in Chief Yosoji Kobayashi. Not that the press is ever likely to depart from its role as a mainstay of the social structure. As a Tokyo city editor puts it, "We must be Japanese first, and then newspapermen."

*Japan's constitution, drawn up by General Douglas MacArthur, forbids rearmament for any purpose except "self-defense."

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