[...] For a family that prefers to keep a low profile and adopt a kind of bland civil servant image, these are trying times for the Imperial Household. Swathes of the world's dwindling forests have been felled to fuel media speculation on the health of Princess Masako, her relationship with her husband Prince Naruhito and their struggles to produce a male heir to the world's oldest hereditary institution. Much of the blame for this unwanted attention lies with Naruhito himself, who sparked the latest media feeding frenzy with a barbed press conference in May.[1]
[...]
But which media are responsible for these stories? Not the big news gathering organizations in Japan which despite (or as many prefer to argue, because of) their exclusive membership in the IHA press club seldom report major scoops. Famously, it was the Washington Post that first told the world about Princess Masako's engagement to Naruhito in 1993, after the local newspapers had sat on the story for months. It was the London Independent that suggested in 2001 that Princess Aiko was the product of in-vitro fertilization, although it was widely rumored in Japan. And it was The Times that carried most of the above detail about Masako's current condition in a May 21st piece called "The Depression of a Princess."
It's all part of a long tradition of royal reporting in Japan by Big Media: kid gloves lobbing the softest of softballs to an institution that still seems suspended somewhere between heaven and earth in the journalistic pantheon. [...]
As Richard Lloyd Parry, author of the May 21st article says: "Japanese journalists knew all about Masako's illness and it didn't surprise any of them when we spoke to them. So why didn't they run the story? In my view it's because of the strange institutional taboos that still surround the Imperial Family, which are very murky and not rational and which have a lot to do with Japan's war and postwar history. This period has not been properly dispelled or digested. There is still unfinished business."
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These journalists have exclusive access to briefings by agency officials and Imperial family members, and usually prepare their questions collectively before submitting them for vetting, shunning most sensitive issues. Their dismal performance over the years has earned the establishment press in Japan a reputation for at best timidity, at worst incompetence: "The Japanese media industry in general is hopelessly bad at what it does, but the IHA press club shows the worst aspects of the Japanese media," says Asano Kenichi, professor of journalism at Doshisha University and an ex-Kyodo News reporter. "The journalists there are not doing their job of informing the Japanese public about what goes on."[2]
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Sometimes the insiders do this for drinking money, sometimes out of friendship with tabloid and other journalists and sometimes out of civic duty in a taboo-ridden system that many also find frustrating. The current Imperial correspondent for a major Japanese newspaper said: "I probably put in writing less than one-tenth of one-percent of what I see and hear. For a writer, that's a kind of torture. It's a real struggle to slow yourself down and just learn to watch." His colleague, who writes for a news agency goes further: "Not everybody agrees with me but personally I believe reporters should leak information when it is important and they cannot get it published, although I don't think they should do it for money or tell lies. It's a public service because there are many publications that don't have access."
So how do these much-maligned correspondents feel about their jobs and the recent reporting of the Masako issue? I interviewed two current and one former IHA press-club member for this article. Two work for major newspapers and one for a news agency.[4] Although they denied there was any taboo on reporting the Imperial Family, all refused to allow me to use their names, or even the organizations they work for. One spoke in such a secretive whisper my tape-recorder barely picked him up. We could have been doing a story on the Yakuza rather than on one of the most boring posts in Japanese journalism. Nevertheless, all three correspondents gave considered, thoughtful and sometimes surprising replies to most questions. From here on the interviewees will be referred to as Correspondents A, B & C.
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My three interviewees, like all Imperial correspondents, have an opportunity to meet the emperor face to face at least once a year in the Tochigi Prefecture Imperial retreat for an informal chat. Would they question him this year (in September) about the Masako affair? All gave an unqualified no. Correspondent A said this was part personal (he didn't believe that Masako disliked the Emperor), part cultural (it's not 'Japanese' to make the other person deliberately feel uncomfortable in such a setting) and part political (there was nothing to be 'gained' by asking such questions, and probably a lot to be lost, implying he would be thrown out of the press club). Correspondents A & B said that Princess Masako's illness, the state of her marriage and the test-tube baby story are "personal issues." Correspondent B cited the need to be "120 percent accurate on Imperial stories." When questioned why, he said: "If I make a mistake on a business or crime story I have to make a formal apology. If I make a mistake on a story about the emperor, the head of the newspaper has to apologize." [...]
Another photo at pref.fukuoka.lg.jp
) Given Akiko's activities for Shinyusha, I think the extended families are doing something during this pandemic.
