Caught in the Net: Japanese Scholars

Foreign Policy
November/December 2006
Caught in the Net: Japanese Scholars

A government-funded Japanese think tank recently shut down an online publication edited by one of its scholars after the publication criticized Junichiro Koizumi, the outgoing prime minister. Edited by Masaru Tamamoto, a scholar at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Commentary was created as a forum for discussing Japan’s foreign policy. But after it cited Koizumi’s August visit to the Yasukuni Shrine as evidence of the country’s new “hawkish nationalism,” Yoshihisa Komori, editor-at-large for the conservative newspaper Sankei Shimbun, called the journal “anti-Japanese” and demanded it be closed. Less than 24 hours later, the institute caved in.