Journalism about Japan: Infotainment without the info

If your knowledge of Japan is derived from what you read in the newspapers, everything you know is wrong.

It has become obvious by now to careful observers that much of modern journalism is written by incompetents, goldbricks too lazy to look at facts staring them in the face, or biased hacks too smug to take the trouble to conceal their prejudices.

It has become just as obvious that modern journalism has drawn a bulls-eye on the side of Japan (much as it has done for the United States and Israel) to use as target practice for the semi-fictional world of breakfast table entertainment it offers its readers under the guise of news.

Nowadays the default position for many journalists is that Japan is automatically to blame, even for things it hasn’t done. Meanwhile, countries such as China, France, and (to a certain extent) Russia get a pass for actual misbehavior. (I’m tempted to add South Korea to the list of exempted countries, but I suspect Seoul gets overlooked by journalists because of its negligible influence in world affairs.)

A case in point is this article by Bloomberg’s William Pesek. It’s headlined, “Japan’s Sex Slave Controversy Has Economic Costs”, which is reminiscent of the stories one glances at while passing through a supermarket express checkout line. Bloomberg clearly labels it an opinion piece, which is reassuring. They can’t call it reporting, because nothing in the piece is based on fact. For an op-ed to have any worth, the opinions expressed have to be based on reality. But whatever points Pesek is trying to make seem to be based on passing clouds of whimsy that happened to float by just before his deadline.

What we’re getting instead of reporting or opinion is infotainment without the info.

To wit:

Abe isn’t focused on the economic outlook even as China grabs more and more of the spotlight. Instead, he’s quibbling with long-accepted historical facts, such as Japan’s culpability in setting up wartime brothels.

And…

It’s a curious issue for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to home in on…

And…

The prime minister’s focus on the sex-slave issue speaks volumes about his dwindling power to accelerate the economic revival.

This alone shows us that Pesek hasn’t been paying the slightest attention, but why let that stop him from playing pundit? Far from focusing on the comfort women issue, Prime Minister Abe seldom talks about it. Indeed, he never brings it up. The New York Times created the controversy when they doctored the translation of an answer he gave to a question from an opposition party member in the Diet. Abe was forced to discuss it.

And the question had nothing to do with Japan’s culpability in setting up wartime brothels.

What Pesek has done is to criticize a fictitious situation he himself created, allowing him to present bread and circuses as serious economic and political commentary.

…he still refused to bow to international pressure to acknowledge that Japan forced as many as 200,000 women into sexual slavery. Bottom line, Abe’s so-called apology isn’t likely to defuse things in Asia.

Why should he bow to international pressure to acknowledge anything about an issue that was formally and legally resolved decades ago? (And note again how a journalist uses the extreme upper end of one estimate by the most critical historian.) Bottom line: Abe could shave his head, sharpen the base of a candelabra, stick it into his skull, light all the candles, and chant sutras for the rest of his term, and it still wouldn’t “defuse things” in Asia. The Chinese and the South Koreans would just find some other excuse issue to use as a political weapon.

The crux of the debate is the word “coercion.” Abe is attempting, awkwardly, to argue it means something different to Japan in 2007 than it did in 1993 or 1945.

Abe’s not attempting to argue anything. He’s just saying it wasn’t a policy of the Japanese armed forces to barge into people’s homes, seize women at gunpoint, and turn them into sex slaves. While that may have happened on an individual level, no one has been able to show that it was Imperial Japanese policy.

Incidentally, this was close to the de facto policy of the Soviet army as it rolled through Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, particularly in Germany. Shall we all hold our breaths waiting for Mr. Putin’s apology?

In 2006, Japan had its first gain in nationwide property prices in 16 years. Last week, that announcement was the icing on the cake for an economy that until recently has had little to celebrate. Stocks also posted the biggest weekly advance in more than a year. And yet something is crashing Japan’s party: the past. Absorbing much of the focus that would otherwise be on improvements in Asia’s biggest economy is the brouhaha over its role in forcing women into sexual slavery during World War II.

I’d be willing to bet that the people with a professional interest in Japan are well aware of its economic performance and have better things to do than follow an artificially brewed brouhaha.

Pesek insists that Abe should have his plate full with more pressing economic matters instead of focusing on the comfort women:

…to keep things moving Abe needs to reduce a massive public debt, increase productivity, boost entrepreneurship, attract more foreign capital, shore up the pension system, raise the national birthrate and better utilize the female workforce.

Does he have to clean the Augean stables too? And I’d love to know a prime minister’s techniques for raising the national birthrate. Is it by literally becoming the father of his country? (If he gets tuckered out up in Kanto, I’ll volunteer to help him out here in Kyushu.)

This is an odd position for an economic columnist to take. Raising the national birthrate and better utilizing the female workforce are mutually contradictory. The more women become involved in the workforce, the less likely they are to be interested in having more children. This is not only a Japanese issue–the same thing is happening throughout Western Europe.

It’s also puzzling why Pesek thinks a prime minister is responsible for all or any of these activities in a country with a market economy. Japan isn’t a top-down socialist state, nor is it a dictatorship. Isn’t increasing national productivity the responsibility of the private sector?

While Koizumi put Japan on a path toward change, he did so amid zero interest rates. Abe is contending with a Bank of Japan set on raising its overnight lending rate well beyond today’s 0.50 percent.

Meanwhile, here are the overnight lending rates other major central banks have to contend with now: US, 5.25%; Europe, 3.75%; England, 5.25%, Australia, 6.25%; Canada, 4.25%; New Zealand, 7.50%.

And Abe’s the one that has to worry?

Japan, China and Korea should be joining forces to sustain rapid growth with free-trade zones, regional bond markets, linked stock markets and standardized accounting. They should be working to cool tensions with a nuclear-armed North Korea.

If China and South Korea were interested in doing any of these things, they would have gotten done a long time ago. They are manifestly not interested in doing any of them, at least not voluntarily, and not now.

And wouldn’t it be hugely entertaining to read Pesek attempt to explain how any country could standardize its accounting procedures with those of the People’s Republic of China?

Only after his disapproval rating trumped his support rate did Abe revisit Japan’s World War II exploits. A proposed U.S. Congressional resolution demanding that Japan apologize offered an opportunity to do just that.

This would be correct if you stood on your head and looked over your shoulder in a mirror. This facile explanation has become a pat explanation among journalists who don’t share Abe’s political philosophy and who weren’t paying attention to begin with.

By digging up the past, Abe is really signaling that his leadership is in trouble.
Whenever Koizumi’s poll numbers fell, he played the nationalism card, shifting attention to his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which includes memorials to convicted war criminals. Abe now seems to be reading from Koizumi’s nationalist playbook.

This is ignorance with compound interest. We’ve already seen that the first sentence is just pretend punditry. Pesek elaborates that with the strange notion that Koizumi’s poll numbers just happened to drop every year in mid-August just before the former prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni.

Pesek also seems to be unaware that Abe staunchly defended Koizumi in his book published before he became prime minister, on the basis of principle. Both of them are nationalists in the benign sense of the term. It’s not a cynical ploy to boost poll ratings; it’s who they are. But we can’t take Pesek to task for his lack of understanding. No other Western journalist has bothered to find out what Abe said in his book either.

Abe is anxious to restore his nation’s power globally. Quibbling over the past won’t get Japan there. If Abe can heal old wounds in Asia and upgrade the economy, the clout Japan desires will follow.

Sixty years of exemplary international behavior has not changed the basic approach of China or the two Koreas of using whatever means possible to prevent Japan from gaining any serious clout. Both scuttled Japan’s bid to become a member of the UN Security Council last year before Abe even took office. And Japan already has the world’s second largest economy. An economic upgrade shouldn’t be a requirement for gaining something it should already have by rights of its dominant economic status.

Everything in this post substantiates what I said back in the first sentence: If your knowledge of Japan is derived from what you read in the newspapers, everything you know is wrong.