The year 2017 may be remembered as the collapse of mainstream media authority in Japan.
Major newspapers once wielded excessive influence, encouraging protest movements during the 1960 Anpo protests before abruptly shifting course.
An analysis of the relationship between media power and political activism in postwar Japan.

Until then, the major newspapers had wielded authority beyond their proper bounds. People accepted it uncritically.
2018-01-14.
The following is from a special dialogue feature by Masayuki Takayama and Yukihiro Hasegawa published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, titled “The Asahi ‘Mori-Kake’ Reporting That Ended in Much Ado About Nothing” and “Activists Wearing the Mask of Journalists.”
All emphasis in the text except for the headings is mine.
Is fighting the administration their mission. What nonsense.
If so, they are merely anti-government and neither free nor anything else.
The fall of authority.
Takayama.
Will 2017 be remembered as the year in which the authority of the “mainstream media” (hereafter MSM), such as newspapers and television, collapsed.
Until then, the major newspapers had wielded authority beyond their proper bounds.
People accepted it without criticism.
Looking back, during the 1960 Anpo protests, led by Asahi Shimbun, all major papers adopted a tone supporting the student movements shouting “Kishi, resign.”
Amid such circumstances, on June 15, 1960, Michiko Kanba, a 22-year-old University of Tokyo student (a Communist Party member and Bund secretary-general), died after protesters stormed the Diet.
The truth was that she collapsed during clashes with riot police and was trampled by fleeing students, but the officially claimed 350,000 demonstrators, enraged by her death, went into an uproar.
There was an atmosphere suggesting that demonstrators might occupy the Diet the next day, bloodshed could escalate, and a leftist revolution might occur.
The year before, Asahi Shimbun had launched Asahi Journal, which sold explosively.
It was a publication that relentlessly incited revolution, and in the wake of Kanba’s death, Shin Taro Kasa of Asahi (who served as editorial chief) quickly moved.
He convened executives from seven Tokyo newspapers (Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, Nikkei, Sankei, Tokyo, and Tokyo Times), and they published a joint editorial opposing violent demonstrations and calling for the defense of democracy, the so-called “Seven-Company Joint Declaration” crafted by Asahi.
Each company obediently followed.
The newspapers that had incited the protests collectively pulled the ladder from under the demonstrators.
The Anpo struggle subsided as if water had been poured over it.
To be continued.
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