SNA (Tokyo) — With little fanfare, the editors of the Japan Times published an announcement today regarding its now infamous “Editor’s Note” of November 2018, with the evident purpose of drawing a line under the affair and to recover their reputation for “fair, accurate and transparent journalism.” Unfortunately, it seems that the newspaper’s internal investigation bypassed all of the most serious and credible allegations, including the arguments that Shingetsu News Agency, Reuters, and others have leveled against them.

The announcement (which is republished in full below for our readers’ reference), makes clear that the in-house investigation focused narrowly on the question of whether or not their new approach to the terms “comfort women” and “wartime labor” were appropriate. In the end, they gave themselves a mixed report card. While they doubled down on the Foreign Ministry-pushed term “wartime labor” over the decades-old term “forced labor,” they conceded that “the revised description was flawed” as regarded the term “comfort women.” Their latest approach, which is hardly less unwieldy than that they announced in November 2018, is “women who were forced or coerced into Japan’s wartime brothel system under various circumstances, including abduction, deception and poverty” or “women who suffered under Japan’s military brothel system before and during World War II.” Of course, the offending term “comfort women” derives from the Japanese word ianfu, which itself was a soft, euphemistic term for a horrific set of Imperial Japanese practices.

The central set of allegations against the Japan Times are dispensed with briefly and without engagement: “The note triggered criticism and confusion regarding The Japan Times’ editorial policy, as well as spawning false speculation that the paper made the changes due to political pressure. The Japan Times has categorically denied this.”

Overlooking the oddly passive expression that “Japan Times has categorically denied this,” it is the political context of the Japan Times editors’ behavior that is being questioned, not the exact phrasing of a couple of historical terms. It’s also a key problem that they make no effort to define “political pressure,” which can mean a lot of different things.

First of all, their internal investigation seems to have avoided the fundamental questions: Why was the November 2018 “Editor’s Note” published in the first place? Who or what was it meant to be a response to? What problem was it meant to address? Which company officers pushed this initiative forward? What responsibility did they take for publishing a note that so manifestly damaged Japan Times‘ reputation as an objective news organization? The latest announcement, though it is now a year and a half later, is silent on these key matters.

Most importantly, though, is the question of political pressure, which the newspaper “categorically denied” had been wielded upon them.

We presume that this categorical denial is based upon a simple straw man argument, which most serious observers have not made, that someone in the Kantei or the Foreign Ministry put in a telephone call to the Japan Times editors and told them to issue the November 2018 “Editor’s Note.” If that’s what they are denying, then their denial is probably grounded in fact. It’s unlikely that such a thing ever occurred.

But power over the news media in our late capitalist era is rarely exercised in so blunt and indelicate a fashion. Pressure is more often wielded in a more subtle, roundabout manner involving career rewards and sanctions, financial incentives, and corporate Trojan Horse takeovers from within.

The new owners, News2u Holdings, is a PR company, and it inappropriately brought a PR company’s DNA into the newsroom culture. While that probably benefitted the Japan Times in terms of technological advancement (a major weakness of the previous Ogasawara Era), it undermined the critical instincts of good journalism. PR is the flip side of journalism. While it involves a very similar skill set, PR ultimately aims to serve power and capital, while true journalism performs a watchdog role on behalf of democracy, constantly prodding and questioning political and business leaders.

It was the January 2019 Reuters article by Mari Saito and Ami Miyazaki that produced the most devastating and direct evidence against the Japan Times senior editors. True journalists inside the Japan Times made a secret recording of a December 3, 2018, staff meeting and then leaked its contents to Reuters. According to the Reuters account, based on this tape and interviews with almost a dozen company employees:

“I want to get rid of criticism that Japan Times is anti-Japanese,” [Executive Editor Hiroyasu Mizuno] said, according to a transcript and audio recording. Being seen as “anti-Japanese” would hurt advertising revenue from Japanese companies and institutions, he told staff. A senior manager in charge of sponsored content then said the paper had already increased government ad sales and scored an exclusive interview with Abe after dropping a column by Jeff Kingston, director of Asia studies at Temple University Japan, who had been writing weekly on what he saw as the Abe administration’s historical revisionism.

This short passage contains all the essential elements of the “political pressure” that the more serious critics of the Japan Times have actually alleged. Namely, Japan Times is accused of being captured by editors who are inappropriately responding to bad faith rightwing critiques, even nonsense such as that ordinary news media criticism defending democratic society is “anti-Japanese.” Japan Times is accused of getting rid of (or marginalizing) its stronger progressive voices and packing its opinion pages with pro-government, conservative stooges. And the Japan Times is being accused of downplaying criticism of Japan’s rightwing government to increase its government ad revenue and to score interviews with senior officials who will only give them time if they play ball in terms of editorial content.

That’s the manner of political pressures that the Japan Times have clearly fallen prey to.

Since today’s announcement makes no effort to address any of these more credible allegations (the evidence for which comes directly from their own mouths in that December 2018 staff meeting), it should be regarded as yet another failed attempt at PR rather than a genuine reckoning with their record.

And we shouldn’t expect anything different, since those who are most guilty are still in power at the newspaper, and they are unlikely to become very harsh judges of themselves.

To our readers: Internal review of ‘comfort women’ and ‘wartime labor’ descriptions

March 20, 2020

In November 2018, The Japan Times published an Editor’s Note announcing the paper’s decision to change its description of “comfort women” and “forced labor.”

However, the revised descriptions involving Japan’s contentious wartime issues were inadequate. The note triggered criticism and confusion regarding The Japan Times’ editorial policy, as well as spawning false speculation that the paper made the changes due to political pressure. The Japan Times has categorically denied this.

In response, The Japan Times promised to conduct a thorough review of the description and announce its conclusions.

As we conducted our internal review involving senior editorial managers and staff, we adhered to the following four principles to guide discussions:

–To regard the issues as a violation of human rights;
–To examine these issues objectively from various perspectives by reviewing a variety of reference materials and historical records;
–Be open to the idea of revising our current description if it could be improved upon; and
–To be concise and accurate

After rigorous internal discussion, The Japan Times editorial leadership unanimously agreed to further revise the paper’s description of “comfort women,” but maintain our description of “wartime labor.” This was presented to and reviewed by all editorial staff. It is as follows:

‘Comfort women’

Previously, The Japan Times described “comfort women” simply as “women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.”

However, this could mislead some to think that all comfort women were taken by the Japanese military and forced to provide sex. This is not accurate. The experiences of comfort women in different regions before and during World War II varied greatly.

In an attempt to better reflect this fact, The Japan Times in November 2018 revised its description of comfort women as “women who worked in wartime brothels — including those who did so against their will — to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.”

In hindsight, the revised description was flawed.

First, it suggests we intended to downplay the suffering of these women. Second, it also suggests that the majority willingly became comfort women. Both were not what we intended.

To address this shortcoming, our baseline description of the comfort women henceforth will be changed to “women who were forced or coerced into Japan’s wartime brothel system under various circumstances, including abduction, deception and poverty.” A shorter description will be “women who suffered under Japan’s military brothel system before and during World War II.”

‘Wartime labor’

Previously, The Japan Times described all workers from the Korean Peninsula mobilized for wartime labor collectively as “forced laborers.” However, this was misleading because the recruitment method and working conditions varied greatly.

Three types of Korean workers were mobilized for wartime labor:

–Those hired by Japanese companies under the boshū (recruitment) system
–Workers recruited — in some cases forcefully — from Korea under the kan-assen (government-coordinated) system
–Those forced to work under the chōyō (conscription) system who faced imprisonment of up to one year or a fine if they refused to comply.

All three types of workers were compensated, but remuneration varied and some were not paid. Those recruited under the boshū and kan-assen systems were later forced to provide labor under the chōyō system.

To better reflect this fact, The Japan Times in November 2018 revised its general description of all three types of workers to “wartime labor” or “wartime laborers.”

After further review, we have decided to maintain this description, although The Japan Times recognizes the need to quote historical compensation claims and court rulings verbatim.

The Japan Times continues to be committed to fair, accurate and transparent journalism.

The Japan Times Executive Editorial Committee

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