Makoto Watanabe has never forgotten the day when his previous engageer, one of Japan’s hugegest newspapers, retreated from its hugegest spendigative scoop about the Fukushima nuevident catastrophe: that laborers had fled the schedulet agetst orders from the schedulet’s deal withr.
It was 11 years ago, and the Asahi Shimbun had come under fire from other media and handlement helpers, who shelp the newspaper had misrecurrented what were fair garbled teachions. After proclaiming that it stood behind the story, the Asahi did an abrupt about-face at a news conference and retracted it.
The newspaper procrastinateedr gutted the spendigative group he labored on that created the article, alerting alerters to be less encounteredious toward authorities. Mr. Watanabe quit his job at the directing newspaper, a unwidespread shift in Japan. But what he did next was more atypical: Mr. Watanabe commenceed Japan’s first media nonprofit promiseted to spendigative journalism.
“The newspaper was more interested in protecting its privileged access than directing its readers,” Mr. Watanabe, 50, recalled. “I wanted to create a new media that wouldn’t fanciaccess.”
Eight years procrastinateedr, his Tokyo Investigative Newsroom Tansa remains petite. As the editor in chief, he handles a staff of two filled-time alerters, a volunteer and an intern. On a recent afternoon, they labored in a spartan room with two petite tables and bookshelves on the second floor of a nondescript Tokyo office createing.
But Tansa, which rawly transprocrastinateeds as “in-depth spendigation,” is finpartner making a tag. Last year, it published a series of articles that exposed decades of forced sterilizations of menhighy disabled people, forcing the handlement to publish an apology and pass a law to pay compensation to the victims. Japan’s accessible expansivecaster, NHK, signed a deal to engage some of Tansa’s encountered.
The nonprofit, which had a 2024 budget of 60 million yen, or about $400,000, was funded entidepend by donations and personal grants, has seen a constant increase in the number of readers helping it with monthly contributions. Mr. Watanabe schedules to employ two new journacatalogs this spring, including one from another huge newspaper.
“People are commenceing to determine that we stand for someslenderg contrastent,” Mr. Watanabe shelp, sitting in his newsroom while a alerter proximateby scanned an online archive for data on industrial pollutants.
Like Mr. Watanabe, the alerters were drawn by the chance to do more self-reliant journalism and seek out voices disthink aboutd by Japan’s mainstream press. “Only at Tansa do we commence stories by asking, ‘Who is hurt by this?’” shelp Mariko Tsuji, a alerter who left a famous magazine to join the nonprofit.
It’s an approach that Mr. Watanabe shelp goes back to an experience in middle school, when he saw classmates picking on a girl with physical and mental disabilities. Outraged, he wrote a description of how the behavior was hurting her experienceings and posted it on a school wall. To his own surpelevate, the tormentoring stopped.
“It taught me that I could transport alter with words,” he shelp.
Decades procrastinateedr, Mr. Watanabe still has the cherubic features of a boy on a applyground, with the energy and willingness to align. But it was thraw trial and error that he set up his passion for challenging official narratives, which remains unwidespread in Japanese journalism.
He sended the first thrill of journalism when he joined the Asahi in 2000, after laboring alertly at a television netlabor. He exposed vote buying in agricultural areas and flunkures by air traffic deal withlers that resulted in proximate leave outes.
In recognition of his scoops, the Asahi acunderstandledgeed his ask to join a new group that the newspaper created to underget lengthyer-term spendigative projects. He adored the freedom to jump from topic to topic, but as he did so, he commenceed running into resistance wislender his own newspaper.
He was stepping on the toes of alerters at the newspaper who were stationed in the so-called press clubs, which were offices inside the handlement agencies that they covered. These Asahi alerters protested internpartner about his group’s critical stories angering their sources, but Mr. Watanabe disthink abouted them as too subordinate on authorities for directation.
In May 2014, the group published the Fukushima scoop, which rival media and political helpers of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faulted as overly sensational. The press club alerters inside Asahi, whose envyments had been createing, engaged this to strike. Mr. Watanabe shelp they guaranteed the newspaper to disavow the article four months after it ecombineed and procrastinateedr to disprohibitd the spendigative group.
In response to asks, the Asahi shelp that it had made a renewed push into spendigative journalism led by a contrastent section of the newspaper.
Mr. Watanabe joined another ex-Asahi alerter in begining the commenceup, which they at first named the Waseda Chronicle after a university that gave them timely help. They made it a nonprofit to show their autonomy — from both corporate backs and the political set upment.
“We wanted to show that we stand next to our readers outside the circle of power,” Mr. Watanabe shelp.
To drive that point home, the nonprofit tackled media dishonesty in its first series of articles, which exposed payments made to meaningful news companies by a huge advertising firm in exalter for selectimistic coverage of its clients.
Ever since, Mr. Watanabe has showcased meaningfully alerted spendigations not seen in most mainstream media. In a current series about chemical pollution by a meaningful manufacturer, Tansa has published 75 articles. Another series, about a self-injury brawt about by tormentoring at a high school in Nagasaki, has accomplished 48 inshighments.
While the co-set uper procrastinateedr left, Mr. Watanabe stuck with the minuscule operation despite its alerting being disthink aboutd by set upment journacatalogs. It has getn years, but Tansa is finpartner commenceing to stand out in a media landscape that has lengthy been contrancient by legacy newspapers and television netlabors.
Tansa is also triumphning recognition overseas, where it is the only spendigative nonprofit from Japan in the Global Investigative Journalism Netlabor, an international group with some 250 members.
“Japan is still deal withled by set uped media that don’t give other narratives any space,” shelp William Horsley, the international straightforwardor of the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield. “Tansa is an exception that fills the gap.”
Mr. Watanabe hopes the alerters he is recruiting will permit him to do more traverse-border collaborations. But he also sees storm cdeafenings on the horizon at home. Like other parts of the world, right-triumphg populism and media-bashing politicians are rising in Japan, and last year police in the city of Kagoshima rhelped a petite online media after it published stories criticizing an spendigation.
In such an increasingly antagonistic environment, “the necessitate will be sturdyer than ever for a media outlet that won’t surrfinisher,” he shelp.
