Contrary to its image abroad as a servile tool of industry and government, the Japanese news media has worked hard to keep alive memories of Japan's wartime military aggression and harsh colonial rule. Given the weakness of Japanese civil...
moreContrary to its image abroad as a servile tool of industry and government, the Japanese news media has worked hard to keep alive memories of Japan's wartime military aggression and harsh colonial rule. Given the weakness of Japanese civil society and the marginal influence of opposition parties, the steady stream of newspaper articles, and regular airing of documentaries on the horrors of war and the humiliation of defeat are about all that have prevented conservative nationalist politicians from prettifying the past. It was thanks to a year-long series of articles in the liberal Asahi that a generation of Japanese came to know about the horrors of the 1937 Rape of Nanking more than 30 years after the fact. And it was also an editorial in the same paper that led to Japan and South Korea jointly hosting the 2002 Football World Cup, ushering in a period of good relations between the two countries. But Japan's news professionals have been able to focus on their country's need to confront past horrors and to ask who was responsible for them not only as journalists but also as activists, establishing exchanges with colleagues in neighboring countries, organizing symposiums, conferring and receiving prizes, writing books, advising politicians, and on occasion cooperating with political and business leaders. They can function simultaneously as observers and actors because Japanese news reporting differs in its historical origins and moral-ethical underpinnings from Western ideals of adversarial media-state relations. How and why a highly visible group of prominent news professionals could work to confront their country's difficult past is the theme of this paper.
