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Yomiuri and its two largest rivals compete for scoops in the go-getter fashion of Fleet Street. Yet the Japanese newspapers can be cautious, often in concert, to the point of professional embarrassment: the 1974 allegations of financial misconduct that brought down Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka were first exposed in a magazine, Bungei Shunju; the Big Three newspapers did not pick up the story for weeks. Moreover, supposedly competing journals band together in a peculiarly Japanese institution, the "press clubs." At major sources of news (government ministries, political party headquarters, the 47 police prefectures), correspondents from daily newspapers control the flow of information. Though most politicians profess to hate the press, they comply with club rules. Generally, only a member may ask questions at press conferences; in some cases, only members may attend. Membership is denied to magazine reporters and foreigners.
In recent years, the Japanese press has become less of a monolith. All of the Big Three papers are occasionally xenophobic, but Yomiuri has grown conservative and progovernment, positions that Asahi and Mainichi generally do not share. Moderate support of the government reflects a gradual but radical change at Yomiuri, which was built on suspicion toward whoever was in power.
Founded in 1874, the paper dates its rise from 1924, when it was bought by a former police official, Matsutaro Shoriki. A business associate of the American press lord William Randolph Hearst, Shoriki echoed Hearst's populist impulses in his own dictum, "Do not trust experts because they know nothing of the masses."
Yomiuri was the first major Japanese paper to run a full list of radio programs and later formed Japan's first commercial TV network. Shoriki's most enduring brainchild was baseball, which he helped popularize. Says one Yomiuri official: "Each time the Giants win, our readers yell 'Banzai!' while watching them over our NTV, and again when reading about them in our paper."
After Shoriki died in 1969, the paper was headed by Mitsuo Mutai, 87, who is known as hanbai no kamisama—god of newspaper sales.
In June, Mutai was succeeded by Yosoji Kobayashi, 70, a son-in-law of Shoriki.
Yomiuri has no trouble attracting reporting talent: some 2,000 university graduates competed this spring for 38 jobs by taking Yomiuri's test. It includes history, civics and foreign languages (reporters must be fluent in at least one), and poses such journalistic problems as devising a story to fit a photograph. Jobs last until retirement; it is all but unthinkable for a Japanese reporter to shift to public relations. The glamorous style of travel helps compensate Yomiuri reporters for a modest salary (the average: $24,500). One aspect of working life that would displease most Western reporters: Yomiuri gives almost no bylines. Editorial Board Chairman Tsuneo Watanabe explains, "I would want to develop star reporters, but the Japanese tradition of anonymity among writers dies hard." If any one thing would make Japanese newspapering seem utterly alien to U.S. reporters, that is it: journalists who prefer to be unknown and who nonetheless ride in limousines. —By William A. Henry III.
Reported by S. Chang/Tokyo