History
The Japan Press Club dates back to 1890 when a reporter for the Jiji Shinpou took the initiative to formulate a Parliamentary Access Press Team, after the press was forbidden access to the inaugural session of the Imperial Diet.
Membership to the club was drastically cut back to one-third in 1941, following the launch of the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (NSK). The NSK, also known as the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (JNPEA), established strict Kisha Club Guidelines on Oct. 26, 1949. According to the NSK, the Allied forces, pushing for democratization in post-war Japan, inflicted political pressure on the guidelines to limit the press clubs to fraternal organizations that excluded all press-related activity.
This policy was officially revised in 1997, when the NSK called on journalists to regard the press club as a reporting base, and to no longer operate under the façade of a social entity.
According to the current NSK Kisha Club Guidelines:
The kisha club is a “voluntary institution for news-gathering and news-reporting activities” made up of journalists who regularly collect news from public institutions and other sources.
Japan’s media industry has a history of applying pressure to public institutions reluctant to disclose information by banding together in the form of the kisha club. The kisha club is an institution and system fostered by Japan’s media industry for over a century in pursuit of freedom of speech and freedom of press. The fundamental purpose of the kisha club system, which has been so closely involved with the general public’s “right to know,” remains unchanged today.
Though the last official count, a 1996 survey by The Asahi Shimbun, found 781 press clubs, there are said to be as many as 1,000 clubs throughout Japan today. These press clubs are established in almost every major organization, including ministries, political party headquarters, local parliament, police headquarters and chambers of commerce, as well as consumer, entertainment and sports organizations. A handful of private and semi-private corporations also host their own press clubs, including the Japan Railways (JR), Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), and Nippon Housou Kyoukai (NHK).
Press club membership averages anywhere from 15 to 150 members per club, with the exception of the Diet Press Club’s thousands, and the Prime Minister’s 500-plus members. Each club is run by a sokai (general committee) that votes on new members and issues as they arise. Non-members cannot attend press conferences unless they have been endorsed by a member or granted “observer status” for a particular conference.
Critiques of the Press Club System
The press clubs are commonly criticized for their exclusivity by those outside - and inside - the clubs.
A vast majority of Japan Press Club members are journalists belonging to NSK member media organizations. Though the NSK urged members against restricting club access solely to association members in 2003, such recommendations have not done much to shift the press club landscape. For example, the Prime Minister’s Press Club (Kantei Club) limits questions during media briefings to those that have been pre-approved.
Persistent efforts to break down these barriers by journalists like Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) President Hans van der Lugt and Bloomberg Business News writer David Butts slowly gained them access to the Kantei Club and some of the more high-profile, previously off-limits press clubs. Butts, in one instance, walked in uninvited to a Tokyo Stock Exchange Press Club session, only to be escorted out. He was subsequently granted club access after his protest garnered bad press for the stock exchange.
Van der Lugt has been outspoken in his fight against the system, talking to the media, repeatedly requesting the right to attend press conferences, and organizing a symposium to discuss the problem with press clubs. In the July 2004 FCCJ update, van der Lugt explained the lengthy process through which foreign newspaper reporters may obtain membership to the Kantei Club, via registration to the Kantei and repeated attendance at the Kantei Club.
Still, foreign correspondents have yet to be welcomed at the majority of Japan’s press clubs, which has not gone unnoticed by the international community. The Regulatory Reform Dialogue, a “systematic, but, non-confrontational way [for the European Union] to address problem issues for [the] business community in doing business in Japan” had been continuing for nearly a decade when it addressed a need for kisha club reform.
In their October 2002 "Priority Proposals for Regulatory Reform in Japan,” the European Commission (EC) called the Japanese press clubs serious barriers to the free trade of information, threatening to bring the issue up with the World Trade Organization (WTO). A second demand from the EC the following year, to which the NSK responded with a rebuttal statement, was met with further opposition. The Delegation of the European Commission in Japan spokesman Etienne Reuter shot back in a December 2003 news conference, stating, "We reject the statement that our proposals are based on misunderstanding, cultural biases and misconception of facts." The NSK eventually broke down in February 2004, agreeing to make it easier for foreign journalists to obtain government information.
Similarly, international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders requested a press club reform in Japan in time for the Japan/Korea World Cup of 2002. Robert Ménard, Secretary-General of the organization, appealed to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that "with thousands of foreign journalists in Japan to cover the World Cup, it is outrageous that correspondents of the foreign press should be excluded from most of these clubs, around which the whole media system has been structured for nearly 50 years," as quoted in the Reporters Without Borders Web site. In a follow up, its 2004 annual report stated, "Despite criticism from foreign correspondents, freelance journalists and press freedom organizations, the [Japanese] government and media showed no sign of changing any aspect of this archaic system."
Meanwhile, foreign correspondents like Mark Magnier of the Los Angeles Times and Howard French of The New York Times may not agree with the press club system, but also do not feel the need to rely on them for information, cites Bryan Shih in a report for Japan Media Review. According to French, "Most good journalism doesn't get done in kisha clubs. They're inimical to everything that good journalism is," Shih quoted. Journalist Jonathan Watts echoed such sentiments in the Guardian, stating that foreign journalists are not overly focused on the restricted access to “dull government press releases. But on several important occasions," he said, "the rigidity of the system has blocked rather than facilitated the flow of information.”
Press clubs have traditionally closed their doors not only to foreign journalists, but also to Japanese freelance reporters, magazine and trade publication journalists. The result is what Laurie Freeman dubbed the “information cartel,” comprised of five national newspapers (Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Sankei and Nikkei), four regional papers (Hokkaido, Chunichi, Nishin Nihon and Tokyo), two news agencies (Jiji and Kyodo), and six broadcast companies (NHK, TBS, NTV, TV Asahi, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo). These 17 media outlets dictate the management of the clubs, even going as far as to engage in self-censorship. When the “rules,” whether written or tacit, are broken, the club leaders discuss and instate punishments on the offending members, explained Freeman, who saw firsthand the inner workings of a press club.
Defenders of the press club, namely the NSK, purport that the system ensures access to valuable information and accurate reporting, and stand by their belief that the news media should use the club as a means of pressuring institutions to disclose information, as stated in the guidelines. Yet despite these claims that the press club enables media access to valuable information, it is the close relationships that journalists build with politicians and high-ranking officials that often keep them from reporting sensitive or embarrassing revelations as not to damage their relationships – and hence risk losing their news source.
Author of “The Reason Newspapers are Not Interesting” Tatsuya Iwase notes “there is no more convenient a system for bureaucrats and government than the press club,” because the club members adhere to the “rules” set by the government.
As early as 1993, 65 percent of journalists admitted that press clubs are more useful for manipulating the news flow rather than acting as a watchdog, as 15 percent of respondents said, in a member survey by the NSK, according to The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct (JIMPOREN).
Yu Terasawa is a freelance journalist who, after being denied access to some legal documents, brought the issue of the club system to trial in a case that has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. The “cozy collaboration between journalists and press clubs promotes lazy journalism, protects vested interests and obstructs the work of freelancers like him,” said writer Tony McNicol in his Q&A with Teresawa in 2002. Ironically, “I think it is definitely easier for foreign correspondents from Europe and America to gather news in Japan than it is for we Japanese freelancers,” he told McNicol.
His goal is not to gain membership to a press club, however. “I've never thought I should join a kisha club and simply be passed sheets of paper from this police force, government office or news wire ... then just collate it a little, summarize it and write my story to finish,” he said. Rather, his December 2002 court case was about discrimination against non-press club members and a violation of their constitutional rights.
Known as yuchaku, the close-knit relationship that results from exclusive access puts the press club in a closer position to the source, and away from its reader. Thus, the end result is press clubs frequently referred to as public relations forums for their sources. Toshiaki Hayashi, who attempted to unite fellow freelance journalists by launching a Japan Free Journalist Association in August 2000, called the press clubs “Official Gazettes.”
This is why the anti-kisha club stance taken by politicians like Ken Takeuchi and Yasuo Tanaka are radical and notable. In efforts to breakaway from the age-old system in May 2001, Nagano Gov. Yasuo Tanaka announced his “datsu-kisha club system sengen” (a declaration to eradicate press clubs), in which he ousted three of the prefecture’s press clubs and opened a single press center in its place. He opposed the idea that the clubs were publicly funded but closed off to all but privileged members of the news media. Prior to that, in April 1996, then-governor of Kanagawa, Ken Takeuchi closed down the prefecture’s Kamakura Press Club, allowing any media that registered with the city to use the new Press Media Center.
Tanaka, however, made Nagano’s center accessible to all citizens, getting rid of what he called “exclusionary vested-interest groups.”
“It is the individual journalist who must stand at the center of all kinds of reporting activities. This is the foundation of a society with a responsible approach to information and the press,” Tanaka stated. In a Q&A session following his declaration, dubious members of the conventional press - that were accustomed to access privileges - asked questions like whether they could get a guarantee that the governor would keep his word and hold press conferences upon request, and what he meant when he stated that press clubs were “a meltdown of the media.”
Perhaps the best summary of the conventional Japanese view of the press club is found in a 1999 article by Murray Sayle in the Japan Policy Research Institute (JPRI), in which he quoted journalist-cum-politician Nobuaki Hanoka:
The club system, Hanaoka said, was a notable triumph for Japanese journalists, the result of a hundred years of struggle against the secrecy of successive Japanese governments. ‘We have more than a 1,000 press clubs in Japan now,’ he said, ‘all frontline strongholds in the battle for news reporting. And what's more, they cost us journalists nothing!’ (They do indeed get a free room, desks, tea and telephones from their news source hosts.)
Recent Events
As the Iraq war broke out, Japanese media covered the Special Defense Forces working in Samawah. The FCCJ reported in a Jan. 26, 2004 article
that reporters from major Japanese media organizations sought out kisha club privileges in Iraq, while complaining that the government spokesmen insisted on confidentiality for the sake of the safety of SDF soldiers.
In March 2005, online media organization Livedoor became the first Net-based organization to request membership to a press club. Kyodo News, referring to the company as a “non-media entity,” reported that the club will soon discuss Livedoor’s possible membership to the Meteorological Agency, to which 43 media organizations and 144 reporters belong.