"Japan’s decision to go forward with the release of the treated, radioactively contaminated water is not surprising, but certainly disappointing.  Both Japan and the IAEA can turn a challenging situation…

In the yakuza world they say, “As soon as you get to the top, someone will try to kick you down.” The world of journalism is, sadly, surprisingly “If you’re…

Share your data. The internet is a vast and endless storage hub. If you’ve written something the world should know--put up supporting data and documents on the web, maybe in…

Clients say they want to know, but they don't They want you to tell them what they want to hear But that's not the job My job is to deliver…

S’il y a une maxime de connue chez les yakuza, c’est bien « Dès que tu arriveras au sommet, quelqu’un essaiera de t’en faire tomber. » L’univers du journalisme est,…

by Robert Whiting (reprinted with permission) TOKYO — Over a recent early weekend, there were a series of threatening calls made in English and Japanese to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club…

This coming Sunday (May 15, starting 10am), sees a unique event at the Yokohama campus of Meiji Gakuin University and online via Zoom, called THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, marking the…

Any competent journalist here knows that the civil servant laws here (公務員法) and the State Secrets Law make it a crime for government officials to divulge confidential information to third…

"1. Write the truth by any means possible. 2. Protect your sources. 3. If you can't write the story, without protecting your sources, find new or different sources or drop…

In a departure from our usual somber posting, I’ve written an original prose-poem, which is for a friend’s upcoming “Where is the Romance” theme party in Tokyo–a pre-valentines’s day event.…