'Weird Japan' is the only news to ...

[Taro Toporific]

Confessions of a foreign correspondent
- - - Weird Japan fills gap left by foreign hacks
The Japan Times: Sept. 23, 2003
These are not happy times for people who make a living writing about Japan. With the country apparently having become, as one magazine put it, the "Switzerland of Asia," i.e., rich but boring, foreign newspapers are shuttering their Tokyo bureaus as fast as they can ...
...Given the nature of Japanese politics and society, where developments often seem to move at the pace and clarity of a drunken salaryman, it's hard not to sympathize with the people who make the decision to pull out. If I was a busy foreign editor forced to choose between a story about yet another thrilling factional fight in the liver-spotted old guard of the Liberal Democratic Party, or the latest shenanigans in the court of Kim Jong Il, no prizes for guessing what would be on tomorrow's pages....
...most prominent pieces are about cults (Panawave, Aum Shinryikyo), gangsters (three interviews), and, er, suicides. I've managed to avoid geishas but that's more than been made up for with articles about kamikaze pilots, train gropers, Sumo wrestlers and ultra-rightists. Okay, there's stuff in there too about teachers...

[cstaylor]

Maybe the papers should hire Japanese-speaking, Japanese-looking reporters to write the articles.

In addition, McNeill could have spent his article on Kozuimi mentioning the following: "Even though Koziumi won the election, he is still in Mori's pocket, as he is one of the members of 'Mori-ha'". What I mostly read from foreign correspondants are the surface facts and figures, but not much of the more interesting bits. The fact that Koziumi is popular, but Mori was not, is irrelevant when some of the big decisions are made with Mori's input. Makiko Tanaka made similar statements before she was ousted; it's believed that Koziumi pulled the plug after months of Mori's insistence that she should go.