G8: Japanese MSM ignores demos, focuses on Bush Reassurances

Photo: The Maneki Neko, often translated into English as the "beckoning cat" or "money cat", is seen in places of business throughout Japan. It is widely recognized as a good luck omen for monetary gain. R. Robertson for Indybay.org

Despite continued daily rallying against the G8 Summit in Japan, Japanese mainstream media largely ignored any footage that would mar an otherwise pristine image of that nation. Scenes of carefully screened and prepped street food vendors near Toyako, the remote Summit location, and George W. and Laura Bush's airport arrival aired throughout the day Monday, the first day of the international meeting.

Japan public television NHK news channel 7 repeatedly broadcast scenes of President Bush's reassurances to Prime Minister Fukuda this morning, related to the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s. The Mainichi Shinbun newspaper last week described Japanese fears of abandonment on this issue as the US proceeds in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Forgotten were the scenes of thousands of anti G8 demonstrators that flocked to Sapporo, the nearest large city to the Summit location, on Saturday and Sunday. Instead, mainstream Japanese media re-aired Bush's words, "We will not abandon you on this [kidnapping] issue," ad nauseam.

Japanese citizens are unhappy about the US move to take North Korea off the State Department's terror list in exchange for the DPRK's work to dismantle nuclear facilities. US diplomats have hinted broadly that they find the Japanese attitude parochial in light of the the test missiles that North Korea has shot into the Japan Sea and the danger of nuclear proliferation in general. Most Americans are unfamiliar with the abductions of Japanese from the western coast facing the Koreas that took place 30 or more years ago. At the time many Western observers found Japanese claims that young lovers strolling on the beaches at night were whisked away in North Korean submarines to be unimaginable.

Bush's oft-repeated utterance, "we will not abandon you" may be a form of reassurance to a re-emerging right wing Japan that draws on ancient animosities left over from Japanese colonialism and atrocities that began before WWII. Japanese mainstream media continues to focus on the abduction issue while, by contrast, anti G8 demonstrators from the Philippines found scant media attention given to their harassment at the hands of the Japanese police. Rentao M. Reyes, Jr. of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, an umbrella group of farmers, students and workers, said that Japanese authorities even slept in a car outside the activists' hotel. The deployment of 21,000 police has made it possible for authorities to put G8 protesters under constant surveillance.