LETTER FROM TOKYO

The scoops in Japan's weekly tabloids claim victims almost every week. The latest was Karolina Shiino. On January 31, this young woman of Ukrainian origin had to relinquish her Miss Japan title after Shukan Bunshun revealed her affair with a married man.

Sometimes, these scoops can have more traumatic consequences. In May 2023, following an article in Josei Seven (a weekly magazine aimed at a female readership) alleging sexual harassment, Ennosuke Ichikawa, a famous actor in kabuki – traditional Japanese theater – and descendant of a great line of actors, led his parents in a joint suicide pact that only he survived, having ingested an insufficient dose of barbiturates.

Since the scandal of sexual abuse committed by Johnny Kitagawa (1931-2019), founder of the powerful boy band agency Johnny & Associates, a J-pop institution, revelations of such practices in the entertainment world have been increasing. It took a long time. As early as 2001, Shukan Bunshun published an article on Kitagawa's dubious behavior – earning it a libel suit – but no other media followed up. It wasn't until a BBC report in March 2023, four years after Kitagawa's death, that the scandal broke.

Politicians, some of them ministers, are another prime target for tabloid weeklies. Pilloried for their various misdeeds, they are often forced to resign. Occasionally, if the story gets out of hand, the big national dailies with their staggering circulations – millions of copies – end up departing from their wait-and-see policy.

Compared to their Western counterparts, Japanese newspapers seem timid. This restraint is a sign of seriousness. Descriptive and factual, these media outlets may have an editorial line, but their approach is very measured. "What their readers expect is reliable information," said sociologist César Castellvi, author of an extensive 2021 study (Le Dernier Empire de la Presse, une Sociologie du Journalisme du Japon, "The Last Press Empire, a Sociology of Journalism in Japan") on the Yomiuri Shimbun, the country's leading daily in terms of circulation (8 million copies).

Frustrated by this reserve, many readers turn to the weeklies, which practice a form of investigative journalism. "One could almost speak of an implicit division in the production of political information between the institutional media and the magazine press," Castellvi told Le Monde. "The weakening of the more liberal dailies, Asahi and Mainichi, means they can no longer play their counterweight role, strengthening the position of the weeklies," he added.

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