Netflix Japanese drama “The Journalist” is ripped from the headlines — and faithful to them
At the very end of a long closing credits sequence in The Journalist, the first series Netflix has commissioned from Japan, there appears the only credit that is translated. It is full screen, not buried in the fine print as its American counterpart would be. It says:
The characters and events that appear in this work are fictitious. And do not depict real life.
Don’t believe it.
What elevates The Journalist beyond what otherwise would be a routine crusading-reporter-exposes-corruption melodrama is the fact that parts of it are almost a docudrama.
The scandal at the center of The Journalist parallels almost exactly a scandal involving the government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party. And not just the scandal itself. The coverup, a tragedy caused by the coverup, and how the coverup was exposed all are “ripped from the headlines” more faithfully than any episode of Law and Order.
That may be explained by the fact that the Netflix series is part remake part update of a similar feature film on the same topic, which won Japan’s equivalent of the Oscar for Best Picture in 2019. Both are based on a novel written by Isoko Mochizuki, the Tokyo News reporter who exposed the real scandal. Newsroom scenes were shot in the Tokyo News newsroom. Mochizuki also has been the subject of a real documentary — produced by the producer of the feature film and the Netflix series. Like her fictional counterpart, Mochizuki became well-known in Japan for asking Mike Wallace-style questions at news conferences. Such questioning is far less common in Japan than in the United States or Britain.
As for details of the scandal(s) I’ll tell only as much as is revealed in the first episode:
In real life and the series, the scandal involves the sale of government land at a deep discount — almost a giveaway — to the owner of what is apparently a chain of private schools, who wants to expand. The owner of the schools has close ties to the Prime Minister (who, in the series is neither named nor seen) and the First Lady, who is made an honorary principal of the school.
(One element of the real scandal that is not mentioned in the series: There’s ideology at play as well. Abe was often described as a far-right ultra-nationalist, as keen to whitewash the ugly parts of Japanese history as any Texas school board is to cover up our own. He could probably revive his career as an advisor to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The owner of the private schools shares that view, and apparently, sought to indoctrinate even very young students accordingly.)
It’s not the crime …
As usual, it’s not the crime it’s the cover-up. When the land deal is revealed, the Prime Minister goes off-script during question time in the Japanese parliament, the Diet. He says if he or his wife were found to know anything about the deal, he would resign. There quickly follows what became known in the American Iran-Contra scandal as a “shredding party.” Lots of documents are destroyed and revised versions substituted.
To tell more would reveal spoilers. I started Googling after Episode Two. I found knowing the real events helpful — the story can be hard to follow, especially during the first episode. The best account I’ve found of the real scandal is from this Japanese news site. The case took another turn in December, 2021, too late for the series; you can read about that (and learn something interesting about the Japanese legal system) here.
In the Netflix version, there also are two other scandals both involving the uber-villain of the story Shinjiro Toyoda, (Yusuke Santamaria) a powerful, corrupt businessman who also serves as a special advisor and spin doctor for the government. I don’t know the extent to which these scandals are based on actual events. In the series, the title character, Anna Matsuda, (Ryoko Yonekura) a reporter for Touto News, has a big personal stake in bringing down Toyoda.
For an international audience, the most important character may be Ryo Kinoshita
(Yokohama Ryusei) a college student who delivers the newspaper, but never bothers to read it. He’s not interested in the news. As that changes (the reason is another spoiler, I’ll just say it turns out the stakes are personal for him, too) he becomes the character who can ask all sorts of naïve questions, allowing others to explain and recap key plot points. This character wasn’t in the movie, and I wonder if Netflix executives urged inclusion of someone like this to help international viewers. If so, those executives have my thanks.
As intriguing as those other scandals is the role of an agency called CIRO — the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. Officially, it coordinates and analyzes information gathered by Japan’s intelligence agencies. But in The Journalist, it’s portrayed as having another function: A massive, government-funded opposition research organization, digging up dirt on opponents of the ruling party and creating astroturf support for the party on social media. I don’t know how much resemblance that bears to real life, either.
The fact that so much is true makes up for The Journalist’s flaws as drama. With so many characters affected by tragedy, it’s no wonder The Journalist is the most lugubrious story I’ve ever seen set in a newsroom. There’s no wisecracking here, no sick humor, no joy of the chase. Nor is there much sense of the day-to-day work of uncovering a story. Instead, there is immense seriousness of purpose. Civil servants torn between doing what’s right and following orders speak lines that sound like something out of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Among the journalists, the dialogue resembles J-school admissions essays, with lots of talk about “giving voice to the voiceless.”
But the fact that so much is true makes this forgivable. And besides, perhaps we could use a dose of old-fashioned unsubtle idealism right now. As Jack Seale writes in The Guardian:
In its later episodes, it is explicit about Japan being a country that has slid into a swamp of dishonesty because its citizens’ apathy has allowed it to do so. If you want something better, the programme says, you — as an individual — have to speak up. Naive and sentimental though The Journalist may be, it is not wrong about that.
Details about a culture
The other reason to watch The Journalist is a reason to watch foreign TV in general: the small insights into another nation’s politics and culture.
Perhaps it’s the tradition of Japanese reserve in the workplace, but the newsroom in The Journalist is one where people almost never raise their voices. Even when the Touto News is beaten on a big story — twice — the editor handles it with remarkable equanimity.
And while print may be dying in Japanese journalism and elsewhere, paper is alive and well. In the Touto News newsroom (which is the real Tokyo News newsroom), there are almost no desktop terminals, everyone types on small laptops — surrounded by piles and piles of paper — the way American newsrooms looked in the 1980s. At one point, a story is actually edited by printing out a draft and marking it with a red pen. At another, a potential whistleblower considers using a convenience store kiosk to upload a cache of documents and send it to the reporter — but if he does it, the documents won’t arrive as an attached file, they’ll come pouring out of a newsroom fax machine. As someone who has been known to print out memes (much to the amusement of my daughter) I think all of this is good — except the fax part.
In politics, one learns about the sheer physical stamina involved in testifying before the Diet. In business, one gets a glimpse of the fierce competition among students for that first job. And, more seriously, one learns a bit about the Japanese culture of apology, funerals, and how and when to bow.
As with the Senegalese-French political drama Wara, The Journalist cries out for a “making of…” feature to help us better understand what all this says about a country’s culture, politics and journalism.
Ryo can’t be expected to explain everything.
