The information age bewilders wealthy Tokyo

By Edward Neilan
Special to World Tribune.com

TOKYO--So here is greater Tokyo, the world's largest city by population and with the third-best stock market by capitalization.

But the Japanese capital is still clawing its way toward top drawer status as a world news and information center.

Some of the reasons for the situation are clear:

--Longtime Western news dominance is being perpetuated by the emergence of agencies like Bloomberg, a reinvigorated Reuters and a remuscled Agence France Presse English report that takes no prisoners. Associated Press and Dow Jones are still very much in the game. The Japanese Kyodo News Agency, Jiji Press and Nikkei Financial cannot hold a candle to any of these services.

--Likewise, the habit of the world for consuming news, databases and internet diversity is still based on the English language. A few years ago, even Japanese experts admitted that their society was the "black hole of information." Things are improving but not much.

--The "East-West news flow" problem, hyped by the "Western dominance" and "English-language" syndromes, means there are more Washington, New York , United Nations and London datelines than Tokyo, Beijing and Singapore in the world's media.

Interestingly, Tokyo's reputation as Asia's news capital--with all of its shortcomings in that uneasy role--has been enhanced since the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July of 1997.

Were it not for its own story of economic backsliding and judicial interpretation clashes with Beijing, the Hong Kong scarcely would be seen.

Bangkok, Singapore and particularly Tokyo now are more appropriate bases for pundits delivering an Asian perspective on the world.

Consider, for example, Firdous Khergamvala, astute Tokyo correspondent of The Hindu, 450,000-circulation English-language daily published in Madras, India. His main analytical effort last week was on U.S.-China relations and how Premier Zhu Rongji might be received on his upcoming visit to Washington.

Then there is the problem of the ministry "kisha clubs", which filter the news and pre-select what readers should see.

The existence of two 10-million circulation newspapers here(Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun)--a situation deemed "wonderful" by media moguls and "grotesque" by champions of intellectual diversity--complicates the problem.

Tokyo has more foreign correspondents than any city in Asia---832, including 334 Americans from 66 organizations at latest count in 1998. Britain is second at 52 correspondents and South Korea third at 52.

The Japanese press, in my opinion, falls short of the Western model in terms of freedom and openness, but comes out ahead of the "Asian values" crowd. This group is epitomized by Singapore's Straits Times, characterized by The Times of London's Bernard Levin as "probably the most unindependent newspaper in the world outside Rumania."

For all of its shortcomings in Western critical eyes and as measured by international sales, the Japanese press has some strong points.

One is foreign coverage. The Asahi and Yomiuri have as many of their own correspondents abroad as do each of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. While the American reporters do more analyses, the Japanese have more straight-ahead reports of events and political swerves.

This was evident in a research paper I just completed on foreign press coverage of Hong Kong since the June 1997 handover. Western press coverage dropped off markedly--The Times of London even withdrew its correspondent, but that's another story--while the Japanese press kept up intensive coverage of events.

Japanese coverage of China, by and large, is better than that of Western newspapers except at attempts at analysis. A glaring example was the sudden switch last year of conservative Sankei Shimbun from being the only Japanese newspaper with a bureau in Taipei but not Beijing, to opening a Beijing bureau while all the other Japanese dailies set up shop in Taipei. They had been absent from Taipei since China demanded it with the normalization of relations in the 1970s.

In a stark display of non-transparency, precise details of why and how the switch came about were never revealed. Just as earlier, details of Rupert Murdoch's failed bid to take over a chunk of Asahi Television have never been made public.

Years after the heyday of the thought police," Japan still a problems with people trying to regulate the news and what is seen on television.

Japanese Posts and Telecommunications Minister Seiko Noda said she believes the government should "make maximum efforts to avoid intervening in freedom of speech."

Speaking during a luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan March 8, Noda--who is 38 and the only female in the cabinet of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi--said she maintains the belief "not only as a minister, but as a human being."

Pornography, the internet and tasteless television shows have become part of the issue. "Once the government starts intervening, even just a little bit, it may grow into a big problem by the time people realize," she said.

Edward Neilan (eneilan@crisscross.com) is a veteran journalist, based in Tokyo, who covers East Asia and writes weekly for World Tribune.com.