| NOTA |
(★)(When a researcher embarks on field research, perhaps no question looms larger than the theoretical significance of the project at hand. So it was when I began to study Japan´s ubiquitous and institutionally distinctive press clubs [kisha kurabu]. Are these institutional anomalies of interest only because they are precisely that, anomalies, or do they play a larger role in the framing and presentation of important political and social issues and the way such issues are understood by society and elites in Japan? In short, are Japan´s ´kisha´ clubs merely functional equivalents of newsgathering and news-dissemination routines found in other advanced industrial democracies, or do they have a substantively different impact on the way ´reality´ si socially constructed in Japan and the functioning of Japanese democracy? Keeping these questions in the back of my mind, I felt that, as one of the first systematic attempts to analyze Japanese press institutions and the linkages among press, state, and society in Japan, the project was intrinsically an important one. I was pleased, nonetheless, when I was invited by Asahi shimbun, perhaps Japan´s most prestigious newspaper, to observe the press clubs in the Liberal Democratic party [LDP] headquarters, the Diet, and the prime minister´s office. My hope was to be able to gain a better understanding of the role the press clubs play in the flow of information from elites to society by observing them firsthand. I did not expect the experience to be the revelation it soon proved to be. The practice of press group self-censorship is one of the most noteworthy aspects of the Japanese press club system. Codified and institutionalized, the practice is made possible by the cartel-like conditions that form the basis of the club system itself. Confronted firsthand by the implications of these practices, it becomes increasingly difficult to view Japan´s press clubs as functional equivalents of the general journalistic practices found in other countries to withhold certain information to protect sources. Together, these various materials form the basis for the empirical portions of this book. The chapters themselves are organized as follows. The first chapter provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical arguments of the book. Chapter 2 reviews the historical development of the Japanese press, beginning with the early Meiji period, when Western press institutions were first imported into Japan, and continuing through to press clubs renascence during the first decade after World War II. Chapter 3 and 4 develop theoretically and empirically the idea of ´information cartels,´ a major leimotif of the book.The main focus in these two chapters is a detailed analysis of Japan´s press clubs. Chapter 5 extends the discussion of information cartels by considering them in light of Japan´s larger media industry. Chapter 6 brings the discussion full circle by setting Japan´s distinctive press-state-society relations in a broader institutional and comparative context.) |
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