Nobuhiro Hiwatari wrote:

>(4) Maybe we don't have an adequate institutionalist account of the media in
Japan as an independent actor pursuing its own interests. Or, maybe I'm just not
aware of such accounts.

Ofer Feldman, POLITICS AND THE NEWS MEDIA IN JAPAN, Ann Arbor: U. Michigan,
1993, is a good place to start. Feldman's mentor, Ehud Harari, has been working
on the unusual degree to which Japanese media are members of government
deliberative councils. Taking this work into account, there is comparative
evidence that points to an degree of collaboration with government, not to
mention industrial organization that makes the media industry centralized and
highly concentrated, which has limited the range of dissent and supported
collusion.

The key question that arises is the degree to which new technology will
undermine media concentration. Just as University of Tokyo no longer dominates
intellectual life in Japan, Japanese big media may find its political control
undermine by electronic mail, other digital media, and the Internet-style of
open data network.
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Stephen J. Anderson
Associate Professor, Inforum Project Director Center for Global Communications
(GLOCOM) International University of Japan

Inforum Project http://ifrm.glocom.ac.jp/
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