NOT SO long ago Ryann Connell, an Australian journalist, happily declared he was doing his "dream job" in Japan.

Since accepting police protection against incensed Japanese patriots last week, the chief editor of the English website of The Mainichi Daily News has been more circumspect.

In the past month the 41-year-old has become one of the most reviled figures in Japan, where thousands of posters have flooded chat sites to decry the "sleazy Australian journalist" whom they feel has deliberately besmirched Japan's image around the world.

Connell's troubles began in May with one of his now infamous WaiWai columns, which cited a Japanese magazine article about a restaurant in the Tokyo district of Roppongi where patrons allegedly have sex with animals before eating them. The piece caught the attention of a blogger called Mozu, whose angry post was soon picked up by 2channel, a massive, fractious web forum popular with Japan's hot-headed conservative element.

There it triggered an explosion of bile and culminated in a co-ordinated attack on Connell, his family, The Mainichi and its sponsors, some of which have pulled advertising estimated to be worth more than 20 million yen ($195,000).

The Mainichi, whose Japanese-language newspaper has the fourth-highest circulation in the world, has issued a remarkable 1277-word explanation and apology. It has also terminated the column, reprimanded several staff and put Connell on three months' "disciplinary leave".

When contacted this week, Connell said he was unable to comment on "any aspect of the case". But the Herald understands he has received several death threats and is under strict police instructions to stay inside his suburban Tokyo home until the matter dies down.

Since he began contributing to the newspaper in 1998, Connell has trawled Japan's smut-filled weekly magazines to bring mostly unsourced tales of the utterly shocking and often improbable to the English-speaking world.

Many previous WaiWai instalments - such as the story about mothers who pleasure their sons to stop them from chasing girls at the expense of schoolwork, the article about chikan (men who grope women on trains) holding monthly meetings to trade tips about the best ways to surreptitiously manhandle fellow passengers, and the account of emotionally stunted salarymen who use lifelike mannequins as surrogate wives - have entered world folklore.

"Campus Confidential: Co-eds Collect Currency Conducting Extra-curricular Coitus" began one of Connell's recent columns, all of which are transcribed from Japanese before being rendered - with creative licence and brain-melting alliteration - in the style of the raciest British tabloid stories.

It is their popularity with some Western readers that has especially incensed Japanese bloggers. Many feel their country's reputation has been "debauched" around the world. "Foreigners who don't know the truth will believe these stories are true," wrote one. Another railed: "Ryann Connell is a degenerate scatologist - a typical Australian." And a third wondered: "Why doesn't someone drop a hydrogen atom bomb on Australia?"

In an interview with the Herald late last year Connell admitted his transcriptions might have contributed in part to a lazy notion that if Japanese are not totally inhibited by their strict social codes, they are hopelessly debased by their bizarre fetishes.

"It does concern me that we resort to these stereotypes all the time," he said. "Downtrodden salarymen, slutty schoolgirls, crazy housewives, corrupt old bosses and so on. And there have been times when I picked stories of questionable accuracy to write up. But by and large I'm presenting to the English-speaking world things that the Japanese are writing about themselves."

Defending the weeklies, as well as Connell and his collaborators, is the unflagging media critic and campaigner for human rights Debito Arudou, who wrote that WaiWai was an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives. "Too many Japanese believe that they can say whatever they like in Japanese ('that statement was for a domestic audience' is very often an excuse for public gaffes), as though Japanese is some secret code," he wrote.