Old Tokyo correspondents such as myself think of Japan as the country that abolished news, as a place of processes and trends rather than big events. So it came as a surprise that corporate Japan produced not just one big news splash but two last week: the Toshiba accounting scandal and Nikkei’s purchase of this paper. Beyond surprise, however, the two events raise a common concern about Japan’s corporate culture and the way it is reflected in the country’s media. Is the concern justified? Yes, but also no.
包括我自己在內的東京老記者都認爲,日本是一個廢除了新聞的國家,一個只有流程和趨勢、而沒有重大事件的地方。因此,當日本企業界最近在同一周製造了兩件轟動性大新聞——東芝(Toshiba)財務醜聞以及日本經濟新聞(Nikkei)收購英國《金融時報》時,人們感到意外。然而,除此之外,這兩件事還引起了人們對日本企業文化及其在該國媒體中的反映方式的共同擔憂。這種擔憂合理嗎?合理,但也不合理。