Media Harassment in Japan: An Interactionist Approach[1]
Tsukasa Kuwabara[2]
Professor
at Kagoshima University
1. Starting from a
“vague pain”
In August 1981, when I was a
sixth-grader, two classmates forcibly pulled down my bathing suit while I was
swimming and removed it, leaving me stark naked.
In July 2001, when I was suffering
from diarrhea, someone suddenly opened the cubicle door while I was doing my
business at a unisex public restroom (Japanese style) within a Japan Railways
train car, exposing my derriere to the public. The person who had mistakenly
opened the door was a lady about 70 years old.
Both of these incidents
have left me with emotional scars that cannot be erased. In the past, I have
attempted to verbalize and externalize these two incidents.[3]
However, I thought there was a strong possibility that others might perceive
these events as “not a big deal” based on their “common sense.” In any case, I
find that I cannot properly deal with the aforementioned emotional scars unless
I somehow transform my experience into a medium known as language and drive it
outside my heart. By doing so, I cause my experience to have a solid existence
in the “world of reality out there,” in a format that can be understood by an
indefinite number of others. Furthermore, if I do not perform such an act of
setting forth my experience in the realm of this world of reality (in other
words, defining it), I will not be able to actively assert my emotional scars
when interacting with others.
Shameful events
themselves are difficult to describe. However, recounting the details of
emotional scars caused by such events is even more difficult. Even though these
events are impossible to verbalize unless feelings of shame are pushed forward,
one feels compelled to choose language that conceals and tones down (or denies)
such feelings of shame. Because of this, the details depicted tend to become
vague. I have been carrying such vague pain around with me all this time.
One day, a person who
had a similar vague feeling of pain consulted me. This man explained that while
he was bathing at a public bath house in Kagoshima City, a newspaper
photographer suddenly entered the venue. The photographer bowed and immediately
started snapping photos. The man recounted having the following feelings: “If
this happened to a woman, it would be understandable to be concerned about
this. But I felt embarrassed being concerned about such an event.” I felt that
this person was carefully selecting—or forcing out—his words while discerning
how he himself appeared in my eyes (i.e., assessing one’s own identity as
viewed by the other person). Although I was experiencing tremendous difficulty
when it came to defining my own experience, it was surprisingly easy to
verbalize (define) what had happened to others, disclosing their experience to
the real world out there in a form that is understandable (or so I think) to an
indefinite number of other people.[4]
Based
on my own perspective, or on the perspective of a person who suffers from an
emotional scar described above, the experience of the aforementioned man seems
to be strongly intertwined with two types of “obviousness.” The first type
stipulates that “men are beings who do not (or should not) feel a sense of
sexual embarrassment” (this is an obviousness that I also share, wonder about,
and am attempting to dissect). The other type deals with “the freedom of
reporting and news gathering by the mass media.” I am not so skillful as to be
able to concentrate on two different things simultaneously, and even if I can
effectively verbalize or define things concerning other people, I still
struggle to properly define things pertaining to myself (though this problem
may not be unique to me). Thus, I have decided to focus my attention concerning
this issue on the latter type of obviousness, the one that does not involve
me—that is, the freedom of reporting and news gathering by the mass media. I
have actively engaged in dissecting this obviousness. My discussion with the
man described above became an impetus drawing my attention to the phenomenon of
harm caused by media reporting (also known as “trial by media”).
2. “Serving” and “a platter”
I
have been professionally engaged in research related to Herbert Blumer’s theory
of symbolic interactionism since 1994.[5]
In 1971, Blumer published a paper titled “Social Problems as Collective
Behavior,” and we translated it into Japanese in 2006.[6]
Blumer made the following statement at the beginning of the paper: “My thesis
is that social problems are fundamentally products of a process of collective
definition instead of existing independently as a set of objective and fixed
social arrangements with an intrinsic makeup.” (translated, page 41)
Blumer
was not intending to say that objective social arrangements are of no concern
in the creation of social problems.[7]
Instead, he stated that even if many people were tormented by such “objective
social arrangements,” these social arrangements or conditions would not become
a social problem unless not only those people but others as well came to
consider them as a social problem.
Many
“objective social arrangements” in Japan have passed through the process
described by Blumer. Sexual harassment is a clear example. Before the point at
which events involving “a type of social behavior, performed by men toward
women, that has a high likelihood of causing emotional damage to women beyond
simple discomfort as a general rule” were given the name of “sexual harassment”
and constructed as social problems, they were viewed as essentially a
non-issue. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that until that time,
“common sense” dictated that women who viewed such events as problems were
themselves the problems. Even if one wanted to turn such events into an issue
of concern, there was no suitable language available by means of which to do
so.
Yoshiko
Miya, in the foreword to her book Sexual Harassment: The New Edition (Asahi
Bunko, 1999), described such circumstances prior to the 1980s in the following
manner:
“Sexual
harassment” has been described as an old, yet also a new problem. Although the
term itself seems like something new, the phenomenon itself has existed from
olden days (new paragraph/omission). …
The
phenomena that exist around us would be seen as non-existent if there were no
language to scoop up such phenomena. Thus, to describe a phenomenon, a new
language or a “serving” of a concept will become necessary.
The
term “sexual harassment” was indeed this new “serving.” In order to serve it, a
“platter” on which it could be served was also needed. However, the fact that a
platter known as “the era,” as well as another platter known as “awareness of
human rights”—in particular, the rights of women—had been prepared played a
large role (new paragraph/omission).
Although
the 1980s concentrated on the task of listening to female victims, the women
who recounted their suffering feared being identified as an involved party more
than anything. They were cautious regarding the process of being interviewed
and, even if they agreed to an interview, they did not express their true
feelings easily. To begin with, the task of verbalizing the experience they had
gone through was fraught with difficulty. Often described as a “second rape,”
raising issues involving sex required the victim to prove to the people around
her that she was 100% a victim. Back in the 1980s, there were many Japanese
lawyers who, despite being specialists in law, were completely ignorant about
sexual harassment. Therefore, they had to start by obtaining Western works and
studying them.
Following
the “era of labor pains,” as Miya put it, described above, the 1990s saw the
social establishment of “sexual harassment” as an object. Immediately after
this event, various other types of social issues), such as academic harassment,
power harassment, and alcohol harassment, became successively framed under the
broad umbrella of a superordinate category, “harassment.” The term “sexual
harassment” thus not only established sexual harassment as a social issue but
also served to expedite the turning of other previously “buried” and objective
social arrangements or conditions into issues.
What
requirements must be met for an objective social arrangement to attain the
status of a social problem? According to Blumer’s paper cited earlier, such
objective social arrangements need to pass through five stages (or clear five
hurdles) along the way: emergence of the social problem, legitimation of the
problem, mobilization of action, formation of an official plan of action, and
implementation of the official plan. The one thing that remains important
through all five stages is that the social arrangement must “continue to be
defined as a social issue.”
After
that, what requirements must be met for a certain objective social arrangement
to continue to be defined as a social problem within a society?
The
cooperation of the mass media (for molding a “platter”): Blumer himself, albeit
in simple form, pointed out the importance of mass media in his aforementioned
paper (translated, page 47). The impact of the four types of mass media (TV,
newspaper, radio, and magazines), especially TV and newspapers
(pseudo-environment composition ability/agenda setting ability), remains
substantial even in modern-day Japan, despite the Internet’s growing number of
users and its extension into every crevice of society. No matter how much an
objective social arrangement may be defined as a problem by online users, it is
nearly impossible for the arrangement to attain a status as a social problem
without backing from TV or newspapers (hereinafter, “mass media”). Even though
a great number of sites that view a certain objective social arrangement as a
problem may pop up online, as their number increases, the likelihood that
multitudes of people will access each site decreases inversely. And even if
many people access each site, should these people fall into the state of
pluralistic ignorance, such an objective social arrangement will not become a
widely recognized issue within the general public. This means that it will not
become established as a social concern or readily obvious as a social problem.
Language
that contains an explicit definition (for “serving”): Even if one decides to
define a certain objective social arrangement as a social issue and object to
it, a language appropriate for representing this arrangement will be
indispensable in most cases. It is even more favorable if this language has a
signifier that has been explicitly defined and can be easily spread among other
people. A language possessing a moniker that is easy to use when mentioning the
said arrangement (i.e., the ease by which an image can be conjured up from the
moniker) and the clarity of the specification of the concept will become
powerful tools when one is seeking to turn a certain arrangement or condition
into a social issue.
3. The difficulty of “harm caused
by media reporting”
The
first time I saw the term “harm caused by media reporting” (now more commonly
referred to as “media harassment”) within the mass media was in a newspaper
report in Minami Nihon Shinbum[8]
on the Okinawa rape incident by American soldiers that took place on June 29,
2001. This “serving” was a perfect tool for me, as I was attempting to dissect
the obviousness of the freedom of reporting and news gathering by the mass
media. Initially, the mass media described the perpetrator of this harmful
reporting as “a certain segment of the media.” They kept reporting the story as
if they themselves (the TV and newspaper outlets) were outsiders. However,
immediately after the (old) Human-rights Protection Legislation was submitted
in 2002 to the Diet, the mass media were forced to report in such a way as to
acknowledge that they themselves had been active perpetrators in order to
protect their own rights and interest. Therefore, the mass media were forced to
frequently use the term “media harassment” in their broadcasts and newspapers.
During this period, the object of a social problem, referred to as “media
scrum,” was being formed. Ironically, the serving and the platter for what we
now call media harassment were provided simultaneously by the perpetrator, the
mass media themselves.
However,
after the above-cited legislation was abolished in October 2003, the term
“media harassment” disappeared rapidly, at least in the mass media. The terms
“harm caused by media reporting” and “media scrum” lost their platter, although
“media harassment” was again accompanied by a serving and a platter during the
formation process of the Basic Plan for Crime Victims from February 2004 to
December 2005.
Despite
having lost its platter, the serving of “media harassment” remains alive in
various places other than the mass media. However, without its platter, media
harassment no longer maintains its obviousness as a commonly known social
issue.
Moreover,
the serving of “media harassment” itself was problematic, because the
definition of the concept was vague. In contrast, sexual harassment has a very
detailed definition that stipulates exactly what actions, committed by what
persons and in what settings, constitute sexual harassment. It also stipulates
the types of relationship—in reality or in the eyes of victims—that may exist
between the perpetrators and the victims. In contrast, media harassment is
defined broadly as “a type of human-rights violation where people who are or
were being reported on by the TV, newspapers, and magazines have their
characters defamed or their privacy abused. It destroys their lives and
isolates them from their neighbors and friends” (Kazuyuki Azusawa,
Harmful Media Reporting, Iwanami Shinsho, 2007, page 22).
Yoshiko
Miya, in her previously mentioned work, states that her own mission is to “dig
up phenomena that have been buried within a society and expose them to society”
(ibid, page 4).
Many
articles and papers have been written on media harassment.[9]
However, I have yet to come across a detailed and clear definition of the term.
In a future paper, I intend to attempt a more specific clarification of media
harassment. (To be continued.)
4. Bibliography
I
would like to continue to expand and enhance this section.
*Organizations
(those that traverse industries) dealing with human-rights violations by the
media
TV,
radio: BPO (The Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization) [10]
Magazines:
Magazine Human Rights Box[11]
Newspaper:
None
*Organizations
addressing media harassment
LAMVIC
(Lawyers’ Network for Media Victims damaged by news coverage)[12]
GoHoo (watchdog for accuracy
in news reporting)[13]
*Citizen
groups that examine media harassment
The
Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct[14]
The
Association of Reporting and Human Rights[15]
A
Society for Researching Human Rights and Media Reporting (Sendai)[16]
The
Tokai Association That Examines Mass Media and Human Rights[17]
The
Association That Examines Mass Media in Kyoto (currently not in operation)
The
Kitakawachi Association That Examines Broadcasting
and Human Rights[18]
The
Kansai Society for Human Rights and Media Reporting[19]
Fukuoka
Association That Discusses Reporting (Representative: Hirofumi Uchida,
professor at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University)
*Major
researchers, activities, and involved parties
Yoshiyuki
Kouno[20]
Kenichi
Asano[21]
Masanori
Yamaguchi (Representative, The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media
Conduct)
Kazuyuki
Azusawa[22]
Minami
Ooka[23]
*
Related literatures, sites and memos[24]
[1] This article is the English version of the following paper: Kuwabara, T., (2012), Clarifying the Concept of “Harm Caused by Media Reporting” [=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304105240/http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/0016/00010644 ].
[2] https://megalodon.jp/ref/2020-0404-1044-36/https://web.archive.org:443/web/20200404014402/https://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/11454418/ecowww.leh.kagoshima-u.ac.jp/staff/kuwabara/
[3] Kuwabara,
T., . The Errata of “Introduction to a sociological
perspective of Symbolic Interactionism(3) (The Summary
of a doctoral dissertation, Tohoku University)” KEIZAIGAKU-RONSHU~ OF KAGOSHIMA UNIVERSITY ( No.54 ) et al.. Discussion Papers In
Economics and Sociology (0701). 2017-10-04. URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20200201032332/https://sites.google.com/site/20120430prfphd/home/the-errata-of-introduction-to-a-sociological-perspective-of-symbolic-interactionism-3-the-summary-of-a-doctoral-dissertation-tohoku-university-keizaigaku-ronshu-of-kagoshima-university-no-54-et-al-discussion-papers-in-economics-and-sociology-issn-1347-085x-no-0701.
Accessed: 2017-10-04. (Archived by https://megalodon.jp/ref/2020-0404-1347-46/archive.ph/4lc5C).
Kuwabara,
T., . No. 0501, 0601, 0701: Collection In One Volume. Discussion Papers In Economics and Sociology (0902). 2017-10-04.
URL:https://web.archive.org/web/20171004051328/http://www.peeep.us/cf31a989.
Accessed: 2017-10-04. (Archived by WebCite® at
http://www.webcitation.org/6txEzBiXL).
[4] http://archive.ph/mso17#selection-1379.0-1379.142
https://web.archive.org/web/20171118072547/https://megalodon.jp/ref/2012-0918-1705-27/liveweb.archive.org/http://www.geocities.jp/issn03890104no57/DPno0701Reflected/anti-humanrights.htm
[5] Kuwabara,
T., 2003=2019, “Symbolic Interactionism Notes” Web Release, Journal of Economics and Sociology,
Kagoshima University, 93: 33-39 .
Kuwabara,
T., 2011, Book Review: Introduction to
the “Sociology of Self” by Mamoru Funatsu, The Book Review Press, 3019 [ https://web.archive.org/web/20141109085850/http://www.geocities.jp/ptk20120118/Comment-on-Mamoru-Funatsu.pdf
].
Kuwabara,
T., and K. Yamaguchi, 2013, An Introduction to the Sociological Perspective of
Symbolic Interactionism, The Joint Journal of the National Universities in
Kyushu, Education and Humanities, 1(1): 1-11.
[6] http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120001394128
[7] http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40019193469
[8] https://web.archive.org/web/20030603204607/http://373news.com:80/index.php
[9] https://scholar.google.co.jp/scholar?q=%E5%A0%B1%E9%81%93%E8%A2%AB%E5%AE%B3%E3%80%80%E5%AE%9F%E5%90%8D&btnG=&hl=ja&as_sdt=0%2C5
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20160313142445/http://www.bpo.gr.jp/
[11] https://web.archive.org/web/20150810005527/http://www.j-magazine.or.jp/opinion_001.html
[12] https://web.archive.org/web/20150810113956/http://lamvic.j-all.com/
[13] https://web.archive.org/web/20150813001453/http://gohoo.org/
[14] https://web.archive.org/web/20150923022713/http://www.jca.apc.org/~jimporen/index.html
[15] https://archive.is/JgLZz#selection-9677.0-9677.29
[16] http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40004395067
[17] http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/40004395068
[18] http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA56717342
[19] https://web.archive.org/web/20090721054310/http://www.geocities.jp/citizenandmedia/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130729025446/http://www.geocities.jp/shimin_media/
[20] https://web.archive.org/web/20160505103701/http://www2k.biglobe.ne.jp/~ndskohno/
[21]
https://web.archive.org/web/20140723122736/http://www1.doshisha.ac.jp/~kasano/
[22]
https://web.archive.org/web/20150203152345/http://azusawa.jp/houdouhigai/index.html
[23]
https://web.archive.org/web/20140817225330/http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~norin/
[24] https://twilog.org/TK65802767/search?word=Media%20Harassment&ao=a