A is a Japanese news-gathering association of reporters from specific news organizations, whose reporting centers on a press room set up by sources such as the Prime Minister's Official Residence, government ministries, local authorities, the police, or corporate bodies. In English, it also called a Press Club.
Institutions with a kisha club limit their press conferences to the journalists of that club, and membership rules for kisha clubs are restrictive. This blocks access by domestic non-member media, such as magazines and smaller newspapers, and the foreign media, as well as freelance reporters, to the press conferences.
While similar arrangements exist in other countries, the Japanese form of this type of organization is seen as one of the most extreme, with journalists actively denying access to other journalists, which has led to use of the Japanese term in other languages, often with a critical meaning.
History 1890 In response to the ban imposed by the first Imperial Diet on reporting by newspaper reporters, a reporter from the newspaper called together the Diet correspondents from the Tokyo newspapers to form a , which in October merged with newspaper companies across Japan, changing its name to the , to become the first kisha club. March 1941 With the formation of the , a newspaper control organization, the number of kisha clubs was reduced to one third, and kisha clubs were forbidden from governing themselves. October 26, 1949 The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association created a "Policy on Kisha Clubs", stating that they were "an organization for the purpose of socialization, and are not to intervene in matters related to reporting". December 1997 The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association changed this policy, stating that kisha clubs were "bases for reporting" which allowed easy access to information held by public bodies. March 24, 2005 Livedoor became the first Internet media company to apply for membership of the Japan Meteorological Agency kisha club. However, on March 15, 2006, the former president of Livedoor, Takafumi Horie, was charged with a breach of the , and for this reason the application was rejected unanimously by the companies present. July 9, 2005 The freelance journalist and the deputy editor of the weekly magazine submitted an application for a provisional ruling against the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the 15 companies in the related kisha club to the Tokyo District Court and Tokyo High Court, stating that groups such as kisha clubs must not be allowed to obstruct journalists wishing to attend at the offices of the Metropolitan Police and give questions, but the application was refused. A special appeal is being made to the Tokyo High Court. November 8, 2005 When a journalist from NHK Ōtsu bureau was arrested in relation to an arson incident, the offices of the Shiga Prefecture Police kisha club to which he belonged were searched by the Shiga Prefecture Police.
Reporting agreements Kisha clubs often make agreements on reporting, which are known as because they are communicated via a blackboard in a press room. The aim of making reporting agreements is often to avoid excessive competition during reporting. Agreements may also be made based on a request by, for example, the police, to protect the victims in cases such as kidnappings. These backroom agreements came under criticism following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, when they were blamed for causing journalists to self-censor, and limit their coverage to official announcements by government and plant officials.
Magazine kisha clubs In 1956, the association was set up, containing " and , formed from member companies, to expedite the reporting activities related to magazine editing".
Disadvantages of kisha clubs The kisha clubs have been widely criticized, both in Japan and abroad, for encouraging an extreme type of access-driven journalism that undermines the quality of journalism in Japan by stifling criticism and turning reporters into mouthpieces for the institutions that they are supposed to cover. In one representative criticism, Jonathan Watts, the former Tokyo bureau chief for The Guardian, said the kisha club create a problem of "watchdogs becoming lapdogs" because "the kisha-club system rewards self-censorship, fosters uniformity and stifles competition."
In its 2023 rankings of World Press Freedom, the non-governmental group Reporters Without Borders singled out the kisha clubs as a major reason that it ranked Japan 68th out of 180 countries, saying, "journalists find it hard put to fully play their role as democracy’s watchdog."
Smaller media companies, freelance journalists and foreign news organizations are often blocked from joining kisha clubs, leading to one of the most common criticisms, that the clubs foster opaque, exclusive ties between government officials and member journalists, who become overly reliant on their sources for information.Takahara, Kanako, "Tight-lipped Tepco lays bare exclusivity of press clubs", The Japan Times, 3 May 2011, p. 3.
There have been cases when members of kisha clubs have been subject to penalties, such as being forbidden from attending the kisha club, for reporting information that was supposed to be kept secret, or that challenged the official narrative of the government agency where the club was based. In 2009, reporters for the Tokyo Shimbun, a regional newspaper, were banned from talking with Tokyo prosecutors for three weeks for naming a governing Liberal Democratic Party politician in their coverage of a political corruption scandal, when prosecutors were focusing their investigation solely on an opposition leader, Ichiro Ozawa.
There is criticism that press rooms set up for kisha clubs by government agencies, local public bodies and the police are paid for with taxes, but can only be used by the member companies, leading to corruption. If local government agencies are included, the total yearly costs are thought to run to 600 million yen.
In 1921, a gas company bribed the to gain approval for a rise in gas prices. It was discovered that newspaper reporters attending the city hall and Tokyo Metropolitan Police kisha clubs had also been bribed, an event condemned by public opinion. (The Tokyo Gas suspected bribery incident.)
In 1974, when the weekly magazine Bungei Shunshū reported on the Kakuei Tanaka funding problem, the allegations were already well known in the kisha club but the media was silent about the story.
In 1998, during the broadcast of TBS' TV program , "A Conversation with the Prime Minister", News 23 anchor Tetsuya Chikushi suggested to the prime minister of the time, Keizō Obuchi that, given the success of the Town Meetings held by President Bill Clinton, also shown by TBS, perhaps Obuchi would also like to take part in Clinton-style Town Meetings. Obuchi was keen, but the plan was scuppered due to opposition from the kisha club, and in the end Sori to Kataru continued to be shown in the same format as before. (Chikushi related these events in his book, Newscaster. Incidentally, Chikushi is known for having a critical stance towards kisha clubs.)
In 1999, there was an incident where some members of the media had a row with staff at the Ministry of Agriculture, Farming and Fisheries over the display of a Japanese flag at the meeting hall of the ministry kisha club. This was just after the National Flag and National Anthem Law was passed, in the midst of a debate about whether the government was forcing groups to display flags. In response to actions by some sections of the media, there was criticism from both those in favor of the National Flag and National Anthem Law and those against, including comments such as "They shouldn't be making a scene inside Ministry buildings in the first place" and "Isn't this just a sign of the egotism of kisha clubs?"
In 2000, the then Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi suddenly made telephone calls to Nippon TV and TV Asahi, and was allowed to appear live on these channels. The related kisha clubs criticized TV Asahi, saying that this was "unprecedented". (Nippon TV was not criticized.)
On June 25, 2000, some notes titled "A personal view on tomorrow's press conference" were found lying on the ground at the , a kisha club in the grounds of the Japanese Prime Minister's official residence. This was the day before the meeting at which Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori was due to make an explanation about his "Kami no kuni" statements about religion in Japan, and the notes appeared to be a set of directions to the Prime Minister on how to handle questions from the media. Even though weekly news magazines published the name of the media organization (NHK) responsible for writing the document, the Cabinet Kisha Club did not take an active efforts to investigate the cause of the incident. The format in which the document was printed was the same as that of "communication e-mails" from the 5300 system terminals used for printing NHK stories, and the document also contained a term meaning "private broadcasters", , which was only likely to have been used by NHK.
There has been criticism that the main work of reporters in a press room tends to be to summarize the contents of press conferences, so that they neglect to check whether what is announced is true and are more easily subject to media manipulation, and that this leads to fewer reporters learning to go out to different locations to do research. Akira Uozumi, a former Kyodo News journalist, stated that kisha clubs slowly wear down reporters psychologically, and blunt their instincts as journalists, saying (in the Asahi Shimbun, on May 26, 2001), that "if 70% or 80% of your job is collecting secondary or tertiary information from government agencies as quickly as possible, it dulls your instinct for sensing what is actually going on in the world. Before you know it, the logic of the civil servants works its way into you, and it gets more difficult to think from the point of view of the people being governed. I thought it wasn't happening to me, but five years after becoming freelance, I gradually began to realize it was."
As a result of this, most media reports are reports of announcements to kisha clubs, a phenomenon unthinkable in a developed country. In addition, there is criticism that the kisha club system decreases the distance between reporters and politicians, leading to improper relationships. As proof of this, Taro Kawano, a member of the House of Representatives, has said that it is normal for reporters (from the Japanese media) to have meals paid for by politicians (which would never happen in any other developed country), that when politicians go on visits reporters stay in the same hotel, and that the media consider that the sign of a "good reporter" is when "the reporter and the politicians are the best of friends". (Quoted in by , published by . In addition, during the Matsumoto sarin incident, reports based on information given by the Metropolitan Police to a kisha club treated the first witness as a criminal.