Karel van Wolferen

The reason why Washington-based think tanks, like the Stimson Center, are important is because those are where the news about Japan is made, or rather amplified. Few people until now have realized that news about Japan has to be made outside it because most foreign newspapers, TV companies, and magazines that used to have regular correspondents in Tokyo have withdrawn them. … There are of course financial correspondents in Tokyo catering to the international investors community, but these wear visors that produce a heavily filtered picture of reality. …
Regular correspondents of the classical variety are paid to write about what they have figured out must be close to actual reality, perhaps with an eye on editorial preferences and prejudice. Scholars and analysts in think tanks are paid to peddle a line, no matter their protestations of ‘neutrality’ or ‘nonpartisanship’. The line in the case of Japan’s new government was created by reporters interviewing Pentagon officials, Pentagon alumni and their friends, and a couple of academics who must keep in mind on which side their bread is buttered.
Japanese are sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, part of this game. The main Japanese newspapers jumped at the opportunity to copy Washington concerns about the government in Tokyo breaking routine, …