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Julian Ryall

Japan is often seen as one of Asia’s most stable democracies, with a sophisticated media industry and constitutional protections for free expression, yet one of the world’s leading press freedom indexes has once again rated the country’s media environment as “problematic”.
Analysts and journalists say the label points to a contradiction at the heart of Japan’s press system – reporters are rarely subject to the overt repression seen in authoritarian states, but political pressure, access journalism and newsroom self-censorship have steadily narrowed the space for scrutiny.
While Japan rose four places in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index released by the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders last month, it still came in 62nd out of 180 nations, leaving it well below many of its democratic peers and regional neighbours.
Norway topped this year’s rankings for a 10th consecutive year, while New Zealand ranked 22nd, Australia 33rd and South Korea 47th.
Japan did, however, rank two spots higher than the United States, which fell seven places to 64th after Donald Trump returned to the White House.


Reporters Without Borders, known by its French initials RSF, ranks countries according to the political, legal, economic, sociocultural and security conditions in which journalists work, drawing on a tally of abuses against journalists and media outlets as well as questionnaires completed by press freedom specialists.
For Japan, RSF said that despite the country’s parliamentary democracy, “traditional and business interests, political pressure and gender inequalities often prevent journalists from completely fulfilling their role as watchdogs”.
The result, it said, was “heavy self-censorship on topics that could be deemed sensitive, such as corruption, sexual harassment, health issues and pollution”.
Observers and industry insiders said those pressures had deep roots. Japan’s best showing on the index was 12th place in 2010, a high point they said was probably no coincidence, coming shortly before the deeply conservative Shinzo Abe returned for his second term as prime minister.
“I do not think it is a stretch to say that there is a correlation between Abe returning to power and Japan’s media landscape changing dramatically,” said Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Eniwa, Hokkaido.
“Abe worked hard to gain so much more control over the media and, because he had such a large majority in the Diet, there was little the opposition could do about it.”
The pressure was not comparable with the overt repression seen in the bottom two nations on the RSF list – North Korea and Eritrea – Watanabe said, but it was subtler and, in his view, deeply corrosive.
Journalists who wrote positive stories about Abe and his government got better access and leads, he said, which rival reporters quickly realised. Those who were critical of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), on the other hand, got little or no access.
That helped the LDP and the government promote positive stories, while Abe himself courted senior television and radio executives, as well as newspaper editors, meeting them regularly for meals.
Watanabe said Abe was “being very clever” in his influence campaign, but added that the media was complicit as soon as it stopped being independent.
“I see the Abe years as the transition in the relationship and, since then, Japan has had a weak media,” he said. “They are very careful what they report and, very often, they simply do not report matters that paint the government in a negative light. And that means the public is not getting all the news.”

And while Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was not as hands-on with influencing the media today, Watanabe said, she did not need to be.
“She has inherited a media that does not resist the government or the LDP,” he said. “She does not need to put pressure on them any more because she is benefiting from Abe’s policies.”
A former journalist with national broadcaster NHK, who declined to be identified by name, said he saw the change occurring around him in the newsroom.
“Reporters who were out in the field felt the pressure,” he said. “The pressure was especially strong from the government, but then companies saw that it worked and they started doing the same. It was almost as if the media gave up on reporting the real news and just started repeating what they were told. And I think it is getting worse.”
Japan’s system of “kisha clubs” – closed press clubs attached to ministries, agencies and other institutions – made life more difficult for reporters, he said.
Each of the government’s ministries and agencies granted access to briefings and interviews with ministers and senior bureaucrats, he said. But there was an unspoken threat that a reporter’s membership of a ministry’s kisha club could be withdrawn if they wrote a negative article.
“When I watch press conferences on television now, all I see is the reporters typing away on their computers exactly what they are being told,” the former reporter said. “When I joined NHK, I was told to go and get the story behind what we were told and to back it up with good quotes.
“Young reporters are no longer hungry,” he said. “They just sit in the press conferences or rewrite press releases.”
The former NHK reporter said journalists and their editors now faced a different kind of pressure: an expectation that they avoid “causing trouble with government officials or businesses”, leaving them less willing to pursue misdeeds by those in power.
And if the media were not holding the powerful to account for their actions, he said, then democracy was arguably in danger.
Dan Sloan, president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) and a former bureau chief with Reuters, also traced changes in the domestic media back to Abe’s rise to power and said those attitudes had become entrenched.

“The politicians do not feel they need the media as much as they used to, and certainly not as much as their own social media feeds, where they write what they want,” he said. “That is how they get their message and image out now, although I think that is not just a problem for Japan but around the world.
“In the past, these people had to stand up in front of the media and face the music with tough questions, but there is less of that nowadays,” he said. “Abe never came to the FCCJ to speak while he was prime minister and it is really difficult to get cabinet members to give press conferences to the foreign press, which is just inexplicable to me.”
RSF has also criticised the 2014 Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which was designed to prevent leaks of security-related information, saying the law had a “chilling effect” on journalism because it did not protect confidential sources.


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Media insiders say Japan’s press is rarely overtly repressed, but access pressures and newsroom caution still shape what gets reported


Media insiders say Japan’s press is rarely overtly repressed, but access pressures and newsroom caution still shape what gets reported.


Shinzo Abe

Censorship

Hokkaido Bunkyo University (Japan)

Is self-censorship behind Japan’s ‘problematic’ press freedom ranking?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Media insiders say Japan’s press is rarely overtly repressed, but access pressures and newsroom caution still shape what gets reported

Media insiders say Japan’s press is rarely overtly repressed, but access pressures and newsroom caution still shape what gets reported