Thanks so much! Sorry for this very late response, I am very grateful for the translation to Italian (and Spanish!). The issue is indeed very complicated… and I have the feeling (for the most part) misrepresented in English. So I’m glad to hear that you found the summary so informative.

Chris

I think we cannot stress enough that, as Michi Kaifu wrote: “people do not read such disclaimers”, and that for foreigners is dangerously misleading to read such stories published in English by major trusted media companies…

Thanks, Chris, for the brilliant summary of such complicated issue (again, for non-Japanese audiences)!

Thanks for your comment. Actually I think I didn’t really understand the point that BEA was making in the first part of their comment… but in any case my point was just to establish that my use of “largely fabricated” was sourced (should have included that link in the article).

In terms of the double standard of charging Mainichi with “sexual harassment” but not the trashy magazines, it’s again a difference between a national newspaper that “everybody” reads (in Japan), and a weekly specifically targeting a particular audience. It’s a bit like someone hanging the poster of the naked women in their private room (trashy tabloids which can be ignored), as opposed to hanging it on the wall of the office (shared space everybody uses). Mainichi is a national newspaper, hence it is seen to correspond to the latter in this analogy. Not sure whether that’s a valid analogy when you’re talking about the English version (different audience, different context etc.), but that’s the thinking behind this.

Michi Kaifu commented in English on the “disclaimer” issue in a separate post (original in English):

The problem is that people do not read such disclaimers. Japanese readers would dismiss it a total nonsense by looking at the source, but from the eyes of English speakers who don’t know Japan very well, it is a part of a Japanese national newspaper and one of the small amount of English information about Japan. It can be very misleading for them. It could get away if it were a part of the original stupid tabloids or Conell’s personal blog, but since it is a part of mainichi.co.jp domain, it is clearly inescapable.

To take up what BEA hints at though, I’ve heard as well that this is not only about WaiWai — there were apparently a lot of “bottled up grievences that were not expressed” before this all came out. So in this sense the “sexual harassment” card is maybe being overplayed here — this is not exclusively about WaiWai.

The core objection here, I think, is that the people reading this stuff overseas are not familiar enough with Japan to recognize that these articles are likely to be very exaggerated or outright false. Most people reading this stuff through the likes of Fark and Digg don’t know what a weekly magazine is in Japan, any more than a typical Japanese person would understand the distinction between USA Today, the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News.

Sure, there are some participants in the argument who want to sanitize Japan’s image to the world, which is not really a good or ethical thing. But I don’t think that’s really the main point of the arguments against Mainichi. The real anger comes from the fact that the message was transmitted in a way that misled the audience as to what it meant: people were buying the stories as true.

Now, I agree with BEA when it comes to one question. Why are the housewives showing anger at Mainichi for “sexual harassment,” but not at the trashy magazines who published this crap in the first place? I’m not saying that one was necessarily more virtuous than the other here — just that if one is worthy of scorn based solely on the attitude behind the content, the other should be just as worthy of scorn.

See: Matthew Moore, “Japanese newspaper admits infamous sex column was untrue“, The Telegraph, July 22, 2008.

I don’t recall WaiWai causing any permanent damage or inciting a war because of some article.
WaiWai articles have no truth to it, hence no truth was perverted. The name itself WaiWai (meaning crooked　歪) should have clued you in on the value of the contents.

In the final analysis, it’s just a bunch of otaku going – this is OK in Japan and Japanese, but not OK for non-Japanese. No foreigner is the least bit bothered or offended by WaiWai. I’d be very surprised if anyone took these articles at face value.

We can’t all be perverts like yourselves – who pervert the truth for their own sick entertainment.

Should we in the US and other English using countries limit our gossip to our borders? I don’t think that anyone would actually try to hide something that may be a half truth. I think that we would at least explain to the person what part is the truth and what part is fabricated. That or explain why it is a lie.

Or it could just be bottled up grievences that were not expressed until know, but my question is Why after 6 years was it time to shut down WaiWai? It makes no sense that the Japanese wouldn’t cancel it sooner. Also, if you notice that one the one that got fired recently by Mainichi( I believe) was at the head of each protest. That seems a bit suspicious to me. WaiWai was a great bit of entertainment, though not believable. ….Sigh