Director Park talks to SBS (Photo credit: vanessa Danielson)

Markus Bell, The Australian National University.

March 22^nd marked the final evening of the film event Voices in Exile: Panoptic Perspectives. This event, three months in the making, was the brain-child of Professor Kyungmook Kim of Chukyo university, Japan. Organized by Professor Kim, postgraduate students from the Australian National University and Sydney University, the purpose of the event was to offer the public new ways of understanding a complex and oft-misunderstood subject – North Korea.

Over three nights, in ANU and Sydney venues, audiences were treated to four different films –A Schoolgirl’s Diary, Yodok Stories, The Journal of Musan and Under a Different Sky. The highlight of each evening was undoubtedly the chance for discussion with experts in the field of North Korean studies and Mr. Jungbum Park, the director of the award-winning film The Journal of Musan. In an interview with ANU PhD candidate, Markus Bell, Mr. Park explained:

In The Journal of Musan I tried to depict the hardships faced by many North Koreans in South Korea. The feeling of being a frog trapped at the bottom of a well and the inevitable isolation that many of these individuals suffer from.

Honestly, when I was making this film I was on a very tight budget and focused on creating something that would make an impact on a domestic [Korean] audience. It is a film that depicts poverty and loneliness, but it also is a film of hope, showing that for these people [from North Korea] anything is possible.

In terms of North Koreans living in South Korea, their backgrounds are so different and they are also very different from South Koreans. For a new arrival in South Korea, a period of up to ten years is required for adaptation, during which time education and the acquisition of practical skills is required to ensure effective resettlement in their new home.

Ultimately, this film is about people who are on the margins, who are suffering. North Koreans are not unique in these experiences; handicapped people, minorities and the laboring classes are also people who share in a story of struggle. I hope this movie is understood by the audience as a humanistic film, depicting the confrontation between weak and strong.

Audiences that totaled over 230 people over the three nights were highly receptive to the films screened and Mr. Park’s message of hope, donating over $1600 to the development of the North Korean Transmigration Supporting Association. This NPO, created by Professor Kim and members of the Korean community in Sydney, aims to bring several North Korean migrants living in Seoul, to Sydney to give them the chance to study English. With the first such student already arrived, it seems the grassroots movement for supporting North Koreans is alive and well in Australia. 

Voices in Exile: Panoptic Perspectives, would not have been possible without support from the ANU Korea Institute, The Toyota Foundation, UTS:CCS and the North Korean Transmigration Supporting Association. With any luck, this will be just the first of many such successful collaborations.

 

The Togawa family in their temporary home near Kawamata, Japan. From left: Rina, Kenichi, Kae, Yuka and Shoichiro. Geoff Brumfiel/NPR

March 11, 2011, is a day that Kenichi Togawa will never forget. He was taking a break from his job at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant when the ground started to shake. “The earthquake was very big, and also very long,” he says. It scattered desks like Lego bricks and brought down ceiling paneling.

After making sure co-workers were accounted for, Kenichi, like other nonessential workers at the plant, headed for home to check on his family. The Togawas lived in the seaside village of Namie, about six miles from the reactors. Kenichi left work by car, but he soon abandoned it. A tsunami sparked by the earthquake had wiped out roads near the coast, and those that remained were clogged with people hurrying home. He walked for miles, all the while unsure whether his wife and three children were OK.

He felt “a huge relief,” he says, when he arrived home to find his family safe. But the Togawas’ troubles were just beginning. After a fitful night, sleeping together in their living room, they were awakened in the early morning by a siren, warning them to evacuate. When Kenichi went out to recover his abandoned car, he was greeted by soldiers in gas masks. The family threw what they could into the car and fled.

Hours later, the Unit One reactor at the nuclear plant exploded, spreading radioactivity across Fukushima. The Togawas will likely never be able to live in their old home again.

 

 

Kae Togawa, 9, must wear a radiation badge whenever she leaves the house. Geoff Brumfiel/NPR

At first they lived in a gymnasium in Kawamata town, about 30 miles away. For months, they slept in an open room with many other families and shared shower facilities and eating areas. People cut in line to get food, and others got angry when the kids played too loudly. “We were just like dogs and cats without chains,” says Yuka, Kenichi’s wife.

That was tough, but their current situation isn’t much better. All five family members live in a tiny, temporary house that’s roughly 300 square feet. Sixteen-year-old Rina says she often has arguments with her younger siblings, especially when they’re settling down to sleep at night. “[The room’s] just so small, we hit each other by mistake,” she says.

Yuka is grateful to have a roof over her family’s head, but she doesn’t think of it as a home. “This is temporary,” she says. “We leave our house in the morning and we come home and it’s temporary. It’s like floating in the air.” She worries about her children. For now they are healthy, but she fears they may become sick from radiation exposure.

 

A monitor in Fukushima City shows elevated radiation levels nearly two years after the accident. Geoff Brumfiel/NPR

 

Kenichi is also having a tough time. He is more isolated now than he was before the accident. He spends hours each day playing video games. He has put on weight and drinks more than he used to. Other evacuees are doing worse. Many don’t have jobs, and some have taken up drinking and gambling, according to Hiromi Yamamoto, an English teacher from Namie who fled to nearby Iwake City.

Public health officials believe that the stress and isolation the nuclear accident has caused may be more dangerous than the radiation itself. Big disasters are very difficult to recover from, says Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School who has studied the emotional fallout from Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of years, mental health problems can get worse and worse. “If it’s something that goes on for a long, long time as Katrina did, that’s where you get into trouble,” he says. “The Japanese situation looks like it might be a similar sort of thing.”

Fortunately, life seems to slowly be getting easier for the Togawas. Kenichi has a new job, and the kids like their school. Yuka is working part time as a nurse. But what comes next for the family is far from clear. “When I think about just today, I can stay happy,” Kenichi says. “But when I think about the day after tomorrow and my future, I feel like I’m in a pitch-black box.”

Police arrest a Papuan pro-separatist demonstrator in Jayapura on March 22, 2010.

© AFP PHOTO / BANJIR AMBARITA

The integration of mainstream and social media creates a more responsive news cycle

Ross Tapsell

Media convergence makes it easy for Indonesian Facebook users to comment on and share mainstream media articles, Adhi Kusumo

Social media is perceived as playing a crucial role in political activism in Indonesia, mostly because of the growing number of Facebook and Twitter users in the country. The latest figures suggest that there are 43 million Facebook users in Indonesia, the second-largest number in any country in the world. The role of social media in distributing information means that devices such as the Blackberry are crucial for political activists, like those who used Facebook to publicise the ‘cicak versus buaya’  storm and the Prita Mulyasari case.  But a key reason why these particular issues became media ‘mega-spectacles’ was because they were taken up by mainstream media.

Mainstream media still plays an important role in distributing activists’ messages to the public, despite the increase in social media usage. On most occasions, activists like to see wide-ranging media coverage of their causes not only because mainstream media reports reach a wider audience, but also because of the authority that they afford certain issues. Mainstream media reports can give the concerns pursued by activists greater legitimacy, particularly if they make news headlines and become the daily news ‘event’.

In Indonesia today, the largely separate realms of social media and mainstream media are fast becoming connected into one large news cycle as a result of two forms of media convergence: the convergence of traditional media and new social media platforms, and the convergence of monopolised media and smaller forms of alternative, grassroots or citizen-directed media. This pattern means social media is now an important part of how ‘events’ become news. It also gives activists greater ability to get their issue into the news cycle via easily accessible social media platforms. But there is also the risk that news distribution through social media will soon be engulfed by the powerful forces who own and control the mainstream media.

Cartelisation and convergence

The mainstream media in Indonesia is owned by a small group of prominent businessmen and politicians. It has been described as a ‘cartel’. Today, twelve media groups control all of the national commercial television shares. These groups also own five of the six newspapers with the highest circulation and all of the four most popular online news media. Increasing cartelisation continued into late 2011 when Indonesia’s biggest online news media site, Detik.com, was purchased for $AU66 million by Chairul Tanjung, the owner of television stations Trans7 and TransTV. These companies also have business interests outside of the media. For example, Globe Media is owned by James Riady, owner and Deputy Chairman of Lippo Group, which is the largest property owner and developer in Indonesia and has business interests in banking, publishing and retail.

A key challenge faced by Indonesia’s media moguls is the uncertainty surrounding the future of media, particularly print media. According to media executive, John Riady (son of businessman James Riady), ‘There is decreasing circulation of newspapers in Indonesia. The future of newspapers is as bleak as it is in the US or Australia. Indonesia is just slow to react, and soon it will be all online and very different. But there will always be a market for news, but in what platform we will see in the future.’ A recent Roy Morgan poll shows that television is the most popular medium for Indonesian audiences with 99 per cent having watched ‘any television station in the past 7 days’ compared with 26 per cent of respondents reading ‘any newspaper in the last 7 days’. But Roy Morgan’s Debnath Guharoy wrote recently in The Jakarta Post that it is the internet is ‘where the action is. Where the innovation is focused. In the not too distant future the reality of convergence will make all moving pictures and sound, whether TV or internet sources, one and the same thing.’

Indonesia has already moved to an era where major media companies no longer specialise solely in print, radio or television. Indonesian media executives like Riady understand that their survival is dependent on their ability to combine traditional news content with content from new media platforms and sites, including social media commentaries and amateur videos captured from mobile phones. While they previously thought Facebook and Twitter were purely for ‘social’ purposes, they now consider these tools to be essential in the dissemination of news and commentaries.

The arrival of new platforms such as the iPad and the iPhone has forced media companies to diversify. Globe Media, for example, was transformed in late 2011 into Berita Satu Media Holdings to ‘better reflect the wide range of news brands it owns across multiple languages, multiple platforms and multiple news cycles’. The company’s media convergence includes broadcast, print, digital, online, social and mobile media, events and an online news portal with live streaming, mobile phone applications and a high-definition television channel that it plans to launch nationwide in late 2012.

Another company, Media Indonesia Group, which along with MetroTV is owned by Surya Paloh, who established his own political party (the National Democrats) after he lost the Golkar Chairmanship to media mogul rival Aburizal Bakrie in 2009. Media Indonesia Group has been particularly innovative in the area of convergent media. Its daily news and monthly magazines are available through iPads and can be purchased through iTunes. News is distributed not only in print, but through photo slideshows, video, audio or even interactive graphics. The newspaper, Media Indonesia, has an e-newspaper and website where readers can share the paper’s news stories through various social media and other links. Media Indonesia Chief Editor Saur Hutabarat explained in 2010 that the company is advocating for more open debate in Indonesian society, fuelled by social media: ‘We are creating public debate. People can give their view on all topics and we give space for that view so they can freely express their thinking. The better way to solve our hidden problems is to try to discuss them in an open and transparent way.’

Increasing public debate

As Hutabarat’s comments suggest, media convergence is more than simply a technological shift. New media platforms are helping push journalism in new directions and have the potential to open the space for public debate on social and political issues. On online news sites, readers can comment directly underneath articles. In the online edition of some newspapers, readers can comment via their Facebook profile. In the past, readers usually commented using an online alias name, for example ‘brandy283’. Now, Facebook profiles normally include a photo and various other information or affiliations. The result is a more ‘accountable’ commentary in the mainstream press, but also an indication that many Indonesians are happy to be more public in their opinions through mainstream news.

The transformation from print media to media convergence has been particularly stark for Kompas, Indonesia’s widest selling newspaper, which has a reputation for being cautious when discussing politics and religion. Although this reputation was founded during the Suharto era, in the post-New Order period many inside Kompas still believed that responsible journalism meant toning down reports on contentious topics such as race or ethnicity. But social and new media platforms are transforming this practice. Kompas Chief Editor, Rikard Bagun, believes that modifications are essential because the Indonesian audience was changing as a result of the introduction of social and new media platforms, noting that ‘We now have a very open society, where everybody is declaring criticism openly – through social media for example’. In response, Kompas is slowly altering its reporting philosophy. Bagun argues: ‘If the media doesn’t speak out about things, it is difficult to solve the issues.’

The kompasiana website allows users to produce content in the form of text, images and video www.kompasiana.com

As part of its reinvention, the Kompas group created kompasiana, a medium somewhere between blogging and citizen journalism, which allows users to produce content in the form of text, images and video. It is promoted in Indonesia as another attempt at media convergence. It incorporates print, internet, television and radio news, online and social media commentary including blogs and microblogs as well as social media sites Facebook and Friendster. In addition, photos can be uploaded through Flickr and twitpic and videos through YouTube. It claims to already have 2.8 million visitors per month.

Through initiatives like kompasiana, views and events discussed on social media that gain enough popular momentum are more likely to be viewed by the mainstream media consumer, providing an avenue for political activists to increase their visibility. However, some political activists fear that the diversity of viewpoints that currently characterises social media could decrease as the ownership ‘cartel’ gains increased control over the social media agenda. In some instances this seems to be occurring. For example, activists who campaigned for greater compensation for those displaced by the Lapindo mudflow on the outskirts of Surabaya could not get their viewpoint published in the Surabaya Post. This was because the daily newspaper was purchased in 2008 by the Bakrie group in 2008, whose subsidiary company, Lapindo-Brantas, was seen as responsible for the mudflow.

A market for free expression

As John Riady said, there will always be a market for news. But it is still unclear how this market will evolve. In the lead up to the 2014 Presidential election, media owners with political ambitions may attempt to control the information placed on their now increasingly convergent media networks. However, the rapid and complex ways in which media convergence is transforming Indonesian news and commentary makes controlling such information more difficult. The more voices and platforms through which people can express opinions and disseminate content, the more difficult it may be for elites to control the agenda.

As events around the world have shown, citizen journalism has found ways to circumvent attempts at censorship and control. Since Reformasi, Indonesians have become used to expressing their opinions online. Should media cartels attempt to hinder freedom of expression through cartelisation and convergence, they may be in for a fight. And in the battle for the Indonesian media market, the convergent media company whose business model allows for the greatest freedom of expression, may end up being the company which makes the most money.

Ross Tapsell (ross.tapsell@anu.edu.au) is a lecturer in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. He researches press freedom in Southeast Asia.

Mr. Norman-Mikine Desaki, a Japanese American who worked as an English language teacher in Itoman City in Okinawa Prefecture has produced two videos on his experiences and concerns regarding racism in Japan among his students.

Video One: Racism in Japan

Video Two: Racism in Japan Part Two

See also an article in the Washington Post looking discussing this issue.

According to credible sources, plainclothes police officers arbitrarily arrested Daniel Gobay and Matan Klembiap on 15 February 2013 in Depapre, along with five other men. They were then forced to strip, were kicked in the face, head and back, and beaten with rattan sticks and wooden blocks. Police officers allegedly pressed the barrels of their guns to their heads, mouth and ears. They were interrogated until late at night and the morning of the following day.

On 16 February, five of the men were released without charge but Daniel Gobay and Matan Klembiap remain in police custody and are reportedly to be charged with “possession of a sharp weapon” under the Emergency Regulation 12/1951.

Demand Daniel and Matan receive medical treatment, lawyers and have their torture claims investigated. Go here to take action on Amnesty’s website.

Japan’s diplomacy must always be rooted in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. These universal values have guided Japan’s post-war development. I firmly believe that, in 2013 and beyond, the Asia-Pacific region’s future prosperity should rest on them as well. (Abe Shinzō, Prime Minister of Japan, proclaiming Japan “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond”, 27 December 2012) [1]

The vision is beautiful. Japan indeed has something to be proud of. Though its democratic constitution was partly composed by postwar allied occupiers, it has been embraced by the Japanese people and has stood the test of time.

Japan’s democracy is not perfect. (Which country has a perfect democracy?) The political system has been lopsided, and has generally failed to generate vigorous two-party competition; some topics of debate – particularly relating to the Emperor – have long been the subject of media self-censorship. All the same, freedom of thought has thrived for more than half a century, and Japan has developed an impressive array of small scale grassroots social movements, willing to take up challenging reformist and human rights causes. [2]

But now, ironically, the loud proclamations of “democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights” are being accompanied by the rise of practices that suggest the opposite. A combination of soft repression and hard hate speech is creating a troubling reality in Abe Shinzō’s Japan.

Previous Form: Abe, NHK and the Comfort Women

It was an ominous harbinger of things to come: a sad tale of political interference, self-censorship, denials, cover ups, revelations and resignations.

In 2000, groups from that vibrant Japanese world of grassroots human rights action organized the Tokyo Women’s War Crimes Tribunal. Their aim was to address wartime acts of violence against women by the Japanese military which had not been prosecuted by the official tribunals immediately after Japan’s defeat. In particular, the Tribunal focused on the fate of very large numbers of Asian women who were forced or tricked into working in a network of “military comfort stations” all over the wartime Japanese empire, where they were subject to extreme sexual abuse.

The 2000 Tribunal was an NGO event,  but followed the procedures of formal war crimes trials. It was conducted before judges from Europe, North and South America and Africa with extensive experience in international human rights issues. 64 surviving former “comfort women” gave evidence, and the event concluded with a judgment condemning the role of the Japanese state, the late Emperor Hirohito and wartime military leaders. [3]

The Japanese national broadcaster, NHK, made a documentary about the Tribunal, which was shown in January 2001. But shortly before the program went to air, something unexpected happened. Members of NHK’s senior management suddenly demanded drastic changes to the completed program, removing (amongst other things) testimony given by former Japanese soldiers and all mention of the Tribunal’s preliminary findings. (The final judgment was yet to be handed down.)

A Representative of the “Comfort Women” receives the Tokyo Women’s War Crimes Tribunal Judgment

Four years later, in the midst of a protracted lawsuit over the mangled documentary, the program’s chief producer revealed that these cuts had followed intervention from two senior government politicians, one of whom was Abe Shinzō, then Deputy Cabinet Secretary, now Japan’s Prime Minister.

Abe denied pressuring NHK to alter the program, but admitted that he had indeed contacted NHK senior management before the documentary went to air to express his “concerns” about what he saw as its likely “bias”. The program was broadcast at a time when there was increasing debate in Japan about the fate of Japanese nationals who were believed to have been abducted by North Korea (and whose abductions were soon to be confirmed by Kim Jong-il himself). As Abe explained, he “suspected that [the NHK documentary] might be part of an underground plan to quell [public reaction] to the abductee problem and portray North Korea as victim”. [4]

The broadcast also took place just as the government was determining its next tranche of funding to NHK, and, unsurprisingly, NHK management took the Deputy Cabinet Secretary’s concerns very seriously indeed.

Old Politics in the New Media

Two motifs form a constant refrain in Abe Shinzō’s political career. The first is his hawkish stance towards North Korea, and particularly in his response to the abduction of Japanese citizens. This is the issue that helped to bring him to political centre stage.

The second is his close association with those who wish to rewrite Japan’s textbooks to remove references to the darker episodes of the wartime past – and who react particularly sharply to any mention of the “comfort women” issue. Abe and his associates do not deny the existence of the “comfort station” system – the evidence is too overwhelming for that – but they do seek to deny that women were forcibly recruited to the system by the Japanese army. Lobbying by right wing groups has in fact already resulted in all references to the “comfort women” disappearing from junior high school textbooks, but a further bête noire of the right survives: the cautiously-worded apology on the subject made by Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei in 1993. Steps towards retracting the Kōno Statement were taken under Abe’s first Prime Ministership in 2006-2007, but domestic and international outcry persuaded Abe to back down. Now, following Abe’s re-election, the issue is back on the agenda.

While the core of Abe’s political program remains constant, the nature of the media has undergone far reaching changes since the 2001 NHK incident. The greatest change, of course, has been the massive growth of the Internet, accompanied by a proliferation of chat and blog sites where anonymous users post social and political comments ranging from the anodyne to the eccentric to abusive diatribes. This is a worldwide phenomenon, but has been particularly visible in East Asia: booming mobile phone use has been accompanied by waves of Internet nationalism, in which the young in China, South Korea and Japan often trade insults with one another.

In Japan, the online bulletin board “2-Channel”, with many millions of regular users, has become particularly well known as a forum for virulent attacks on those seen as “unpatriotic” or “anti-Japanese”. Some of its discussion “threads” carry violently xenophobic or racist messages, recycling wartime language and imagery that had long disappeared from public discourse in Japan. A Social Media White Paper, published by private marketing companies in 2012, shows that 2-Channel users are predominantly young and male, though teenage girls are also significant participants in the site’s discussions. [5]

It is impossible to tell who contributes to the racist threads published on 2-Channel, as opposed to the site’s many other innocuous conversations on topics such a travel, celebrities and holiday jobs. But the popular image of the 2-Channel racist blogger is of a lonely, frustrated otaku [an isolated person with obsessive interests], probably unemployed or in a dead-end job, seeking some sense of identity by sharing anger and bitterness with nameless others. 2-Channel has recently been overtaken by global social media such as Twitter, but the anger of the “otakusphere” continues to replicate itself in ever changing forums.

Offline, the rise of 2-Channel has been paralleled by the emergence of new forms of far right movement in Japan. One of the best known of these is the “Citizens’ League to Deny Foreigners Special Rights” (Zainichi Tokken o Yurusanai Shimin no Kai, or Zaitokukai for short), established in 2007. Unlike older far right groups, whose loudspeaker vans with their military flags and martial music have long been a familiar sight on Tokyo streets, the Zaitokukai recruits the young, and makes very active use of social media to spread its message via video blogs of its demonstrations. Zaitokukai protest actions are most often directed at Korean residents in Japan, particularly those seen as being associated with North Korea, but the group’s list of other targets is long and eclectic, including indigenous Ainu organizations, China, the Democratic Party of Japan and the documentary movie Cove. Zaitokukai demonstrations are noisy and notable for the offensiveness of their slogans, but have generally attracted a rather small number of demonstrators. [6]

Japan is a country with low levels of violence, and the ugly rhetoric of 2-Channel and the Zaitokukai might be seen as having little more than nuisance value, at least by those who are not on the receiving end of the abuse. But the verbal violence of the frustrated and marginalized can be deeply intimidating, and is particularly alarming when it becomes enmeshed with the centers of political power: with the organs of national government and of its law enforcement agencies. That curious but calculated intermeshing of the marginalized and the powers-that-be is increasingly evident in Japan today.

Facebook Friends to the Rescue: Mobilizing the Otakusphere

Abe Shinzō is one of the Japanese politicians who has responded most enthusiastically to the political opportunities created by the Internet age. He was quick to create a personal website, and has maintained a Facebook page since well before his recent election. He or his personal secretary post comments on the page almost every day, and it boasts over 4,800 Facebook friends and more than 230,000 followers.

On 22 December 2012, six days after the election which returned Abe to the prime ministership, NHK devoted its evening prime time to a discussion program about the election results and the implications of the new government for Japan. The participants in the program were the Secretary-General of Abe’s ruling party, Ishiba Shigeru, the head of the government’s coalition partner, Yamaguchi Natsuo, three university professors and an economist from the influential think tank the Japan Research Institute. NHK invited viewers to send in questions that they would like to have raised during the discussion.

About two hours before the program went to air, Abe’s secretary posted a message on the prime minister’s Facebook page mobilizing its friends and followers to action. The secretary slammed the “bias” of NHK and warned readers that the forthcoming program would be a “clean sweep of Abe bashing”. The web link, email address and fax number of the program were included in the post, and Abe’s friends and followers were urged to bombard the program with their messages. The secretary’s message also made derogatory comments about the discussion program’s panelists, describing one (University of Tokyo political scientist Fujiwara Kiichi) as being “famous for saying that ‘the five abductees who came home to Japan should be sent straight back to North Korea”‘. [7]

Later the same evening, after the program had gone to air, the Prime Minister added his own comment to his secretary’s post, describing the program’s participants (other, presumably than Ishiba and Yamaguchi) as “too low-level” (osomatsu sugi). One panelist was described as being “beyond the pale”, and of two others, the Prime Minister wrote that they should be “ashamed to show their faces in public”. [8]

Shortly afterwards, Professor Fujiwara posted a mildly worded response on Twitter, pointing out that he has never said or written that Japanese abductees should be returned to North Korea. Energetic efforts by at least one pro-Abe website to prove him wrong ended in failure [9], but meanwhile his supposed “statement” on the abduction issue (which in the Japanese context is roughly the equivalent of an American politics professor expressing support for Al Qaida) was circulating like wildfire through Japan’s right wing blogosphere.

Neither Abe nor his secretary has apologized for or revised the comment about Fujiwara, which still remains on the Prime Minister’s Facebook page. No opposition politician and no national newspaper or TV station in Japan has questioned the Prime Minister’s use of Facebook to libel an academic public commentator. Nor did any of them discuss the propriety of the Prime Minister’s Facebook page being used to post a misleading description of a TV discussion program, with the intention of inciting readers to inundate the program with pro-government comments.

The Abe Facebook message can be read as a calculated warning to any Japanese media outlet or commentator proposing to direct searching questions at the current government that they are likely face officially sanctioned harassment and vilification. In the Internet age, direct intervention by politicians in the media is no longer needed; they can get their Facebook friends to do it for them.

The Wrong Side of the Law: Policing Freedom of Speech in Abe’s Japan

Since its establishment in 2007, the Zaitokukai has weathered ups and downs in its fortunes, but rising tensions between Japan and its Asian neighbours and the election of the new government appears to have given the group a new lease of life. It has also spawned a growing proliferation of similar groups which use the same tactics, and often work in coordination with one another: among them the bizarrely named Shinshakai Undō (literally, New Social Movement). The focus of these groups’ recent actions has been the Tokyo district of Shin-Ōkubo, which has a large concentration of ethnic Korean and Chinese inhabitants. On 9 February 2013, some 150 to 200 far right demonstrators staged a march through the busy main streets of Shin-Ōkubo, yelling vitriolic abuse and incitements to ethnic violence at inhabitants and passers-by, and carrying Japanese military flags and an assortment of placards with extremely violent slogans, of which “Kill Koreans” was one of the less obscene. The demonstation was organized by Shinshakai Undō with the support of the Zaitokukai, and featured  marshalls with armbands and face masks, who prowled the pavements, mingling with the very substantial police presence, and occasionally pushing, shoving or physically intimidating people who appeared to express disagreement with their views.

Japan acceded to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on 15 December 1995. Article 4 of the convention states that signatories agree to “adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination” by declaring it a crime to disseminate “ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another colour or ethnic origin”. [10]

Since signing the convention, the Japanese government has repeatedly lodged a reservation to Article 4. Japan, it says, does not intend to pass specific laws banning hate speech or incitement to discrimination, partly because such laws could limit freedom of speech. But equally importantly, according to the government, hate speech laws are  unnecessary in Japan because acts of race hatred are already crimes under normal Japanese criminal law. Reassuringly, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out, if ideas disseminated by any group damage “the honor or credit of a specific individual or group, such dissemination of ideas is punishable as a crime of defamation (Article 230, Penal Code), insult (Article 231), or damage to credit, obstruction of business (Article 233) of the Penal Code. If such activities include threatening contents against a specific individual, they are punishable as a crime of intimidation (Article 222), collective intimidation and habitual intimidation (Article 1 and Article 1-3 of the Law concerning Punishment of Physical Violence and Others). Incitement to racial discrimination is punishable as a crime of instigation (Article 61,Penal Code) or assistance (Article 62) of the crimes if an act constitutes one of the above-mentioned crimes”. [11]

The Ministry goes on to cite a list of other laws prohibiting (amongst other things)  “cases in which a large number of persons assemble and use violence or threat (Article 106)”, “collective violence/intimidation/destruction of utensils (Article 1)”, and incitement to any of these acts (Article 61). [12]

Japan’s most recent report on its implementation of the Convention, delivered in January 2013, re-emphasizes these arguments against hate speech laws, adding that “the Government of Japan does not believe that, in present-day Japan, racist thoughts are disseminated and racial discrimination is incited, to the extent that the withdrawal of its reservations or legislation to impose punishment against dissemination of racist thoughts and other acts should be considered even at the risk of unduly stifling legitimate speech”. [13]

Interestingly, the large contingent of police, who stood by as the racist demonstrators marched through Shin-Ōkubo, seemed much more anxious to control the behavior of the local residents and passers by on the sidewalk than to enforce Articles 1, 61, 62, 106, 222, 230, 231 or 233 of the Penal Code. Video of the event provides abundant evidence of defamation, insult, obstruction of business, threats, collective intimidation and incitement to racial discrimination. Not one of the demonstrators was arrested.

Policing the Racist Demonstration in Shin-Ōkubo, 9 February 2013

The Japanese police are not always so relaxed in their attitude to demonstrations. For example, in October 2012 a peaceful demonstration against the incineration of nuclear-contaminated waste from the disaster of 11 March 2011 took place in Osaka. Almost two months later, three people who had taken part in the demonstration were arrested and imprisoned on the grounds that their protest route had taken a short-cut through Osaka Station concourse, thus violating the “Railway Operations Act”, which prohibits demonstrations on railway stations. Two of the demonstrators were released after a couple of weeks in gaol, but one, Mr. H., remains incarcerated, more than two months on. Mr. H’s crime was considered particularly grave because, police allege, he remonstrated with a railway official who asked him to stop handing out leaflets, and in the process trod on the official’s toe. [14]

This incident may seem unconnected to the racism of the Zaitokukai and its allies, and so it was, until 13 February 2013, when Mr. H. and three others were accused of a new crime. This time, their supposedly criminal acts stem from a gathering held in September 2012 to discuss the issue of the “comfort women”. The mayor of Osaka, Hashimoto Tōru, had recently published a series of somewhat incoherent comments on Twitter in which he denounced the 1993 Kōno apology and expressed support for Abe Shinzō’s position on the “comfort women”. [15] In response, Osaka citizens invited an 86-year-old Korean former “comfort woman”, Kim Bok-Dong, to speak to a public meeting about her experiences. The  meeting took place without incident, despite (in the words of a friend of mine who attended) the presence of “quite a few ‘nasty’ looking men… standing near the main door of the building making dreadful stares at people who attempted to enter”. A small number of police were also in attendance outside the meeting hall.

It was not until more than four months after the gathering (and almost two months after Japan’s general election) that a member of the Zaitokukai filed a complaint with the police, claiming that he had been “assaulted” by supporters of the “comfort women” (including Mr. H.) who had denied him access to the September 2012 meeting. Despite the delay, police took up the case the alacrity, descending on the houses and offices of “comfort women” supporters to search their premises for incriminating evidence, and even conducting a search of a cafe where the support group holds informal meetings. [16]

In this case, the authorities appear utterly unconcerned about any “risk of unduly stifling legitimate speech”.

Japan’s diplomacy (and Japan’s domestic policy), to cite Prime Minsiter Abe, must always be rooted in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Many in Japan have worked for these aims for a very long time. But there is no rule of law if the instigators of violence are left to peddle hatred with impunity, while those who pursue historical justice and responsibility are subject to police harassment. There is no respect for human rights where those in power use cyber bullying in an attempt to silence their opponents. And democracy is left impoverished when freedom of hate speech is protected more zealously than freedom of reasoned political debate.

NOTES

[1] Shinzō Abe, “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond”, Project Syndicate, 27 December 2012, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a-strategic-alliance-for-japan-and-india-by-Shinzō-abe (accessed 15 January 2013)

[2] See, for example, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu, East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, London, Routledge, 2013, particularly ch. 4.

[3] See the VAWW-Net website, http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/womenstribunal2000/whatstribunal.html (accessed 18 February 2013).

[4] Quoted in Norma Field, “The Courts, Japan’s Military Comfort Women, and the Conscience of Humanity: The Ruling in VAWW-Net Japan vs. NHK”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 10 February 2007 (accessed 18 February 2013). Although VAWW-Net won a suit for damages against NHK and another company involved in making the censored program in the Tokyo High Court, this was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

[5] Tribal Media House KK and Cross Marketing KK eds., Sōsharu Media Hakushi 2012, Tokyo Shoeisha, 2012.

[6] On the Zaitokukai, see Alexis Dudden, “Memories and Aporias in the Japan Korean Relationship”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 5 April 2010 (accessed 20 January 2013).

[7] See http://www.facebook.com/abeshinzo, post dated 22 December 2012 (accessed 15 January 2013).

[8] See http://www.facebook.com/abeshinzo, comment by Abe Shinzō, 21.59, 22 December 2012 (accessed 15 January 2013).

[9] See http://kokkai-sokuhou.iza.ne.jp/blog/entry/2963640/  (accessed 20 January 2013).

[10] International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, see the Website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,  http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm (accessed 18 February 2013).

[11] See the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human/race_rep1/article4.html#1  (accessed 19 February 2013).

[12] Ibid.

[13] See the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan,http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human/pdfs/report_789_1.pdf (accessed 19 February 2013).

[14] For details of this case, see the “Fukushima Voice” website, http://fukushimavoice-eng.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/third-letter-from-jailed-professor.html (accessed 19 February 2013) and the website “Hōshano Kakusan ni Hantai suru Shimin o Shien suru Kai”, http://keepcivicactivity.jimdo.com/ (accessed 19 February 2013).

[15] See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Out with Human Rights, In with Government Authored History”, Asiarights, August 2012. http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/asiarights/2012/08/26/out-with-human-rights-in-with-government-authored-history/ 

[16] See the website of the “Nihongun ‘Ianfu’ Mondai Kansai Nettowāku”, http://www.ianfu-kansai-net.org/ (accessed 19 February 2013).

Reflections on Yodok Stories 

Directed by Andrzej Fidyk. Released South Korea 2008

Christopher Richardson

Art and power have an uneasy relationship. Whether now revered, like Michelangelo, or reviled, like Leni Riefenstahl, many of the greatest artists in history created for the glory of Caesar, Pope, King, or Fuhrer. Their works have roused people to worship, or called them to war. Today, most states rely on the tropes of advertising for propaganda, or “public service announcements” as they are usually called; yet the North Koreans are traditionalists. As both General and artist, Kim Jong Il oversaw the production of thousands of films, songs, paintings, and stories. In treatises, such as On The Art of the Cinema, he unashamedly championed the connection between art and power for the advancement of the revolution. Under Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung, artists and performers were elevated like soldiers to heroes of the republic, but only if they adhered to the conventions of the courtly style. In that sense, North Korea resembles the feudal kingdoms of pre-modern Korea more than any of its former Marxist-Leninst allies. Until the recent advent of DVD and USB smuggling, these were the only arts a North Korean could expect to encounter.

Yet for just as long as art has reinforced power, so has it challenged and exposed its ideational hegemony. The South Korean film, The King and the Clown, brilliantly captures how this occurred even under the Chosun Kings. As Hamlet would have it, “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” For every artist whose career has advanced under the patronage of power, another risked life and reputation to present alternatives to the narratives of the state, whether through graffiti, subversive songs, paintings, or plays. But in North Korea, where social life is characterized by almost all-prevailing surveillance and control, such examples are rare. As far as we know, there is nothing so grand as a North Korean equivalent to the Belarus Free Theatre. For now, the next best thing is the art of exile, created by those who have left the state behind. Yodok Stories, first staged in 2006, is perhaps the most famous such example.

Even today, the phenomenon of North Korean defection remains rare, rarer still when Yodok Stories entered production. Its genesis was during the era of South Korea’s “Sunshine Policy”, the governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun seeking reconciliation with Pyongyang, sometimes at the expense of defectors who felt their stories marginalized in the name of expediency. In other words, this was a story crying out to be told: a concentration camp, in the early 21^st Century, in the heart of East Asia. Although the idea for the musical came from Polish filmmaker, Andrzej Fidyk, its strength comes from the creative participation of so many North Koreans. Yodok Stories is a powerful corrective to the stereotype of defectors as passive victims, or welfare dependent castaways. Behind-the-scenes footage reveals individuals of incredible passion and courage, a far cry from the clichéd image of North Koreans as stunted automatons, waiting to receive orders from above.

Although the bombast, blood and thunder of Yodok Stories might initially seem bizarre, or kitsch, to Western audiences, the musical powerfully evokes the aesthetic of North Korean arts, notably the revolutionary operas The Sea of Blood and The Flower Girl. Such operas seek to arouse patriotic emotion, reminding North Koreans of the glory days of revolution, when they defied Japanese occupation and won independence under Kim Il Sung. Yodok Stories drags that aesthetic into the present, showing how bankrupt has become this vision of an idealized past, whilst re-claiming a popular North Korean medium for real lives lived in the present.

Even so, I’ll admit, when I first saw Yodok Stories I was afraid the medium of musical theatre would prove an obstacle to seriousness. Yet Jung Sung San has created something less like The Producers, and more like Les Miserables. Of course, like Les Miserables, one’s ability to connect with the material partially relies upon the ability to accept the reduction of historical memory to archetypes, and personally harrowing experiences to show-tunes. Whether “reduced” is the right word depends entirely upon one’s feelings towards musical theatre in general, and the vexed relationship between art and real-life. Perhaps distilled is a better word. Yet these are complex burdens to place on a musical achieving precisely what it sets out to do, and a documentary that captures a moment in time when the North Korean community in exile started to find its voice. There are more than 24 million North Koreans alive today, and at least as many stories. Both at home and abroad, it is time they were told.