Sokaiya

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

>Thanks to Aaron for his follow-up to my question on the sokaiya case.  I
>had been wondering how much of this was a case of 'privacy' or 'victim's
>rights' and how much was journalism's cozy relation with business
>interests--of the kind that we were criticizing earlier on the list, though
>then specifically in relation to film reporting.

That is probably one factor, but given the rules about individual 
defendants, and that even the names of "bad businesses" (like the Aum 
computer shops) are usually suppressed, one would tend to think that it 
is not one of the major factors.  To emphasize how strict this is, note 
that the defendents in the recent Ibaraki lynching incident (a horrific 
incident indeed--the Japanese police are criminally incompetent!) were 
all 19 years old and, even though the leader was sentenced to life in 
prison, none of the papers have printed his name or even his photo 
because he is still technically a minor under Japanese law.  Of course, 
some of the press are strongly protesting such restrictions.  Maybe 
things will change in the next few years, but probably not in the case of 
corporate reporting.

Aaron Gerow