Interview with David McNeill

David McNeill writes regularly for the Irish Times and the Independent, teaches at Sophia University in Tokyo, and is also a coordinator of Japan Focus. We met David at a cafe near Sophia's Yotsuya campus to talk about his experiences teaching media studies and writing as a foreign correspondent in Japan.

David McNeill

gyaku (g): What got you interested in Japan and originally brought you here?

David McNeill (DM): Well it was a complete fluke actually. When I was an undergrad student, I wanted to study journalism. I enrolled in what used to be called in the U.K. a humanities course, and in the humanities course you have to choose three subjects. I chose journalism, and then I was completely stuck for the other two. I had no idea what to study.

So I remember walking around this big hall, where all the different departments were hawking their subjects. I stopped at Asian studies, and I said: "Why should I study Asian studies?" And they said: "Oh because we'll teach you about the Arab-Israeli conflict!" And I said: "Oh I always wanted to learn about that!" So that's exactly why. I started the course, and there was a Japanese language component. I started studying that and I really liked it.

That's the kind of "subjective" reason for why I came. The "objective" reason was that Japan, at the time ― this was like the late 1980s ― was becoming a major power. It was the middle of the bubble economy, and Japan was becoming a place where people would want to study. And there were very few researchers at the time coming to Japan. The Japanese government was desperately trying to increase the number of students coming here. So while I was a post-grad, I heard about the Monbusho scholarship, one of the world's great inventions. They basically give you 200,000 yen per month to only study in Japan, and you are completely pampered. You can work, you can travel, it's an amazing scholarship.

So that's how I came. I started with a PhD, looking at the information society (jouhou shakai), and realized that that idea began in Japan.

g: Can you talk more about this information society?

DM: Do you really want to hear about that? Well, I can sum it up really quickly. There's a branch of thought in sociology and economics ― and maybe a bunch of other disciplines ― which says that societies are moving toward something called an "information society". Which means different things to different people, but to some people it means that all the problems of an industrial society are going away. Class, income disparities, social strife, those problems first of all are disappearing. There's also this utopian version in which we will all have much more time for leisure, we'll all be able to work at home, and we'll have no more bosses, there will be this huge paradigm shift in society, and we will become the controllers of our destiny.

And it just seemed to me that a lot of that was bullshit. So that's what I came to do, I came to topple that academic paradigm.

g: Do you mean like the "Network Society" that Manuel Castells writes about?

DM: Well Castells is a big name. But Castells is one of the smarter people, he's actually thought about it. But some of the other stuff, the really utopian version of the information society, it's kind of dumb, you know? Like I remember 20 years ago reading that we would never have to go to work. We would be working 20 hours a week, at home. And all of the stuff that was predicted, it is actually the complete opposite of what's happened. We're working harder than we ever were in most cases. And we're still traveling to work. Income disparities are growing. I don't think anybody could say that the proliferation of information has made our lives qualitatively any better. I mean you could make an argument that we're more free as people now maybe, because we have access to information.

g: You've taught in China, and Ireland, and in England. How do you find teaching students in Japan, particularly about media, different from your experiences teaching in other places, and generally how do you find the experience of teaching about media in Japan?

DM: Well in general, the big difference I suppose is ― from a Japanese and an English university, let's say, let's leave aside China ― is that Japanese students tend to be used to a one-way model of teaching. So they're not used to being asked to share their view, and to participate in a debate. You find this over and over again at Sophia. You ask the class for their opinion, and it's always ― in 90% of the cases ― it's the Westerner who gives his or her opinion. And most of the Japanese sit quietly and listen, and will only really volunteer an opinion if they're actually physically picked out, and even then only reluctantly.

I think that's the product of a different education system. Japanese students tend to be a product of a system where they listen quietly to what the teacher says and take notes. They're not used to the idea of interacting with the teacher, you know two-way flow. I suppose that would be the biggest single difference in university students.

Also Japanese university students, in my experience, and I don't want to make this more dramatic than it sounds, but they tend to be less politicized than Westerners, or British students at least. British students are not hugely interested in politics, but they tend to be interested in issues. So if it's not politics with a big "P", it's the environment, or recycling, or something like that. And they tend to have political views that they can call on when you ask them. They've consciously thought about a political view. Whereas Japanese students, in my experience, don't have political views. Or not consciously thought out political views.

I know it's a bit of a cliché. But in Sophia for example, there is no political literature at all. Every campus I have ever been in, and this includes some Japanese campuses like Tokyo University, there are always political pamphlets lying around, or fliers, or something like that. But nothing at all at Sophia. There's a beauty contest, and I'm always amazed that you can still have a beauty contest in a university. I mean, I don't think you could have one in the U.K. anymore. It's too politically dodgy.

g: So how do you deal with this in class, then?

DM: Well, first of all I make sure that the students know that I'm interested in hearing what they have to say. That what they have to say is as valuable as what I have to say. Because if it's only you talking to the students then your teaching becomes stale. If you never interact with them. And also you have to find physical methods to break down the gap between the teacher and the students. So one of the ways you do that is breaking the class up into small groups, making sure that you mix your groups together, and then going and talking with them in the small groups. Making sure you avoid a big class atmosphere, where it's just you at the top of the class.

g: And the students that you have are in a particular program?

DM: Generally Liberal Arts ― well, Social Sciences ― but I think most of my students are Political Science majors. Even despite that, you know I can show you some of the feedback I've had. Some of them say: "sometimes I don't exactly know the political terms". Like "left wing" or "right wing".

I had a student a few years ago, and it was week 11, and she came up to me and said: "Sensei, I don't understand your course." And I said: "It's week 11 and you're telling me this?" And she says: "Yeah, I'm really sorry."

So I explained it to her. And it's not a very difficult course. Basically my idea is that, the central idea of the course is that the media doesn't reflect reality. It doesn't simply reflect it. It defracts it, it distorts reality, in the interest of power. You know, it's not a particularly difficult thing to understand. But she didn't understand it, so I explained it to her.

And then she said: "Actually, I don't understand what mass media means." So I said: "Mass komi? You know, mass media." And she said, "Iya, sore ga wakaranai." And so I thought: you're a fourth-year Political Science student and you don't know what mass media is?

g: Is that an extreme case?

DM: Yes that's an extreme case. But you know, most of the students, even in the Political Science class, struggle to understand the concepts, political concepts that should be quite straightforward. Part of it is language. Obviously, they're struggling with a different language, you have to take account of that. But also it's just something about Japan, it seems to me, that diffuses political thought, or discourages political thought. You're just not really encouraged to think about ― certainly not at high school ― political issues, and to think for yourself, to question things.

So for example in this course I talk about the imperial family. I say, why don't we know certain things about the imperial family? And they say, for example? And I say, some of the big stories about your imperial family, which you pay taxes for, were broken outside of Japan. So, you know, Masako's depression. Or the wedding between Masako and Kotaishi, that was broken by the Washington Post. The story about Masako-san's depression was broken by the British Times newspaper. The story about the shikenkan baby, you know Masako's IV treatment, the test-tube baby, that was broken in the British Independent. But why did these stories get broken outside of Japan? Why don't you know about it?

One or two students got quite upset. They said: "I feel kind of uncomfortable when you talk about the Imperial family." Which is a strange thing to say, you know? You feel uncomfortable talking about the Imperial family?

So I asked [this student], one thing you like about the course, one thing you don't like about the course:

"One thing I don't like. Sometimes I don't like how certain issues like Imperial family are talked in the class. But at the same time it is interesting to know the perspective from outside."

So the whole point of the class is to look at why the media distorts things, to explore taboos. And half the course is about America, so we look at Fox News, how Fox distorts and distorted the coverage of the war in Iraq, the invasion, how they continue to distort the debate on the election. And how they do that in the interests of power. Because it's basically the mouthpiece of the Republican Party. So half of it is about America. But when it comes to Japan, some people get uncomfortable when you challenge things. I kind of like it in a way, I mean it's good to make people feel uncomfortable.

g: Is it that they're uncomfortable with everything, for example the Fox discussion as well, or just when it comes to Japan?

DM: Well the Japanese aren't uncomfortable about the Fox discussion. In fact, maybe we should say ― in fact we should say ― that some of the American students tend to bristle a bit when you criticize America. They'll accept it, but you can tell that they're not particularly happy about it. The interesting comment from both sides is: "Yeah, Sensei is biased." So I'll always have to confront this question. I always say, yes I am biased, yes of course I am biased. You have to be biased if you are criticizing power and abuse of power. I'm trying to teach you to be skeptical, to distrust what you hear, and see, and read. To be thinking political people.

g: But don't you have to be biased if you are human? Bias is a very tricky word.

DM: Right, well what they mean is biased on the left, against the right. So like the two students ― I'll show you in a few seconds ― the two students said: "Why don't you talk about the Asahi Shimbun, what they do?" Because I talked about the Sankei. The Asahi is biased, right. So why don't you talk about them. Because we live in a conservative society, overwhelmingly we live in a conservative society. I'm not defending the Asahi, I think it's a lone voice, you know.

g I don't know what other universities teach, other universities that have programs in media studies, journalism, but I have a feeling, from my own experience, that the idea of media studies and media analysis itself is a very foreign idea in Japan. When you teach your students at Sophia, what's your impression? Do you feel they see what you're teaching as kind of foreign, or very strange?

DM: Well I think you're right. Media studies is a new subject ― well new means like post-70s ― also in America and in the UK, certainly in the UK. Most media studies courses started in the 1980s. So it's a new area there as well. Japan is slightly behind there, compared to the UK and America. So yes, they tend to say things like: "Oh I've never heard these ideas before." Or: "I've never heard criticism like that before."

But there are a growing number of professors here who look at media studies and cultural studies. Like there's a guy called ― a guy at Doshisha university, Asano sensei ― he's got quite a well-known media studies course. Quite critical. But basically yes, these are new ideas, students don't know about them.

g Do you ever get Japanese students who are really interested in this stuff?

DM: Oh sure. I mean, last year there were a bunch of students who really go into it. Top of the class every day, furiously studying. They got really into Okinawa. They looked at the difference between the way that Okinawa press covers Kempo Kyujo and the Japan-U.S. alliance, and basically any political issue, and they saw major differences, you know, in the way that the Okinawa press covers things and the way the mainland covers them. And they were fascinated by that. They would be the best examples.

g: I just wanted to ask about your experience working in the media ― we talked about teaching media studies, but you also work in the media ― how has that been now in Japan writing for the media? Are you still doing radio?

DM: No, not anymore. Often what happens to you is that the Japanese big bureaus ― like NTV and all those ― will ask you for a comment, as a British correspondent, on a topic of the day, you know like a topic du jour. The last one was Fukuda's takeover ― or Kikosama's pregnancy, that was a big one as well. And it's kind of irritating, actually, because they always ask you: "Igirisujin toshite wa?" you know: "As a British person, what do the British people think about this issue?" And you're expected to be like the spokesperson for the whole of the British nation.

Well first of all I'm not British. Second of all your job is not to be a spokesperson for anybody. Your job is to be a correspondent writing about Japan for a British paper. So it's a real poisoned chalice, taking those jobs on.

So the answer is that I don't do radio anymore. The radio show is gone. And I do a little bit of TV, but only when they ask.

g: And you still write for the London Independent right now?

DM: Yes, four stories last week. That's actually exceptional for me, I don't normally write that much.

g: So what is the rate usually that you write at?

DM: Well, I'm a really weird correspondent. Correspondents, if you ask them, will tell you ― British correspondents will say ― you should aim to have three stories a week in your paper, otherwise you're starting to get in trouble. Because they're wondering: why are we paying this guy? I'm not a paid correspondent, I write per word. And I don't worry about writing three stories per week. If there's something to write about, I'll write about it. Otherwise I just won't write.

So most correspondents are constantly worrying about what to write, and if they have no big story to write about ― like this week there has been no really big story, apart from the corruption bank scandal, but even that, you see, that's really difficult to sell to a British newspaper, because they go: oh Jesus, another scandal, another money scandal in Japan, who gives a shit?

I tend to write stuff that I'm interested in. I write big features, big 2000 word, 2500 word features about big issues, which most journalists don't really like to do because it's a lot of work, and you don't get paid very much for those kinds of stories. And I also do a lot of art stories, for the South China Morning Post, but that's because they ask for them. And I do stories on third-level education for the Chronicle of Higher Education. And I do other pieces here and there, like I just did a story for New Scientist magazine. About a technology called "Red Tacton", NTT is developing it ― I won't bore you with it, it's in the insert ― but you transfer information by touching somebody.

g: You've also been writing for OhmyNews a lot. What are your thoughts on citizen media, in general but particularly in Japan? There is OhmyNews now in Japan, but it's quite different from the Korean version.

DM: I think, first of all for progressives, citizen media has a lot of potential. You can see why they're interested in it. I wouldn't like to predict where it can go. But I think the people who are most interested in it tend to overestimate its potential, because they only focus on the technology. It's a classic technological determinist problem. They say: this technology allows us all to have person-to-person communication, no more of the one-to-many mode of communication. Therefore democracy will blossom!

And actually if you look at it, it's much more complicated than that. Like the reason that this kind of technology has taken off in South Korea is because you've had almost a political revolution in Korea. I mean you've had the overturning of the military dictatorship within the last two decades. And you've had a much more open, lively political system. The press club system, for example, has been abolished in South Korea, while it's still here in Japan. You just have a much more lively political environment there than you have here. And that's because of the objective political changes that you've had there in the last 20 years.

So the attempt to graft that onto Japan, as if technology will make people more aware ― it just won't work. And I think Ohmy is discovering that now. Japan is a very peculiar place in some ways. I don't want to make it sound exceptional ― in a really conservative sense ― but look at the newspapers. Everywhere else newspaper circulation is tumbling, but in Japan [that's not yet happening]. My next door neighbours still get the Yomiuri sent to them every morning, 4 o'clock there it is. There are like 14 million readers of the Yomiuri, it's by far the biggest newspaper in the world. And the boss of the Yomiuri was at the correspondents club last year. He said that they had lost one percent circulation in ten years. One percent in ten years. And most of the newspaper here are the same. It's very difficult to shift political conservatism here.

But I think ― I mean, we were talking about this in class today ― about how big a change there has been in the last five years. We were talking today about censorship, about whether you should censor the Internet ― have censorship over the Internet, rather.

One of the examples that I gave was that I once went online, last year actually, and saw a video of a guy's head being sawed off. In the Middle East. And I was so upset I couldn't get it out of my head for a week. This living human being having his head cut off. But, the fact that I didn't like it, would I give the power to censor that to a government? No I wouldn't. And that's the major thing that's happened in the last five or ten years, is that those kinds of decisions have shifted away from the gatekeepers.

Five or ten years ago that video would have gone to a news desk, like the BBC, or CBS or something, and a producer would have looked at it and said, we can't show this at tea time. Or we can never show this. It's too upsetting, it would upset the sponsors, the advertisers, we would get lots of complaints. The FCC would complain.

Now, we have the power to decide whether we're going to watch that or not. That's one example but there are lots and lots of different ones. Like the Danish cartoons, right? I couldn't see them in the UK because the British newspapers decided ― for very good reasons, by the way ― that they weren't going to publish them. So I just went online and I had it in thirty seconds. So that's a profound change, it seems to me. That those decisions are slipping out of the hands of those people who used to make them for us, and into our hands. And with that comes a lot of responsibility.

g: A lot of people in the media are quite worried about blogs and other types of media taking away all the resources, the advertising money, and so on. I'm curious what you think about that.

DM: Well, we just did a special issue on this, in Number One Shimbun [December 2007 issue], I'm editing it this year. And I think that one thing that won't change, whatever happens ― blogs are definitely blogs, and other information sources are taking people away from newspapers, no question about that ― but whatever happens, people will demand some kind of editing of information. By a brand, or a person, or an organization whom they trust. What I mean by that is that there is more information than there ever was. You just can't filter it. And some of it is just so bonkers, you could spend weeks, or days, just trying to read through it. I mean anyone who's ever got involved in an online discussion knows that there are some fucking lunatics. The whole 9-11 conspiracy stuff, it's so vast, and you could spend weeks and weeks and weeks going through it.

So what I want is for somebody ― and I suspect most people want this ― somebody, a brand you trust, a person you trust, an organization you trust, to filter the information for you and present it to you. And that's basically what a newspaper always did. So if I want to get information on something that's happening in the UK, I don't go online and go to somebody's blog. And I don't go to some headbanger's news organization read by 5000 people. I go first of all to a brand that I kind of semi-trust, which is the Guardian newspaper, or the BBC.

I semi-trust them, I have to say that, because I know that they have their blind spots. And then I get a kind of an idea of what's going on, with their own biases. So the Guardian's got a liberal bias. I know that it's going to have that perspective. And then I might go somewhere else, like the Socialist Workers Party website in the UK. A socialist website. Or something like that.

The point is that I think people are always going to need that kind of thing. It's never going to be this like completely atomized system, where everybody is scrambling around and looking for information in the dirt. I think it's always going to be an organization that filters. And even if those organizations move away from print, and online, like let's say the Japan Times becomes only an online organization, a website organization. It's still the same. You still need somebody who's going to filter Japan for you. Give you the information in a way that you trust, organize the information in a way that you trust.

g: Our time's almost up, and we were planning to ask you about some other issues as well. I guess just to pick the topic of the day, the whole fingerprinting issue, do you have any thoughts about this as a non-Japanese living in Japan?

DM: Well, the most sensible thing I've heard ― obviously I'm against it ― but the most sensible thing I've heard anybody say about it was a guy called William Wetherall, who writes a lot of letters to the Japan Times.

And he said that people are looking at it in the wrong way. It's not that it's discriminating against foreigners. Which it is, in the sense that it's only foreigners that they check ― which is a really bad idea, if they check people who've been here, like me, a long time, permanent residents who pay taxes, it is insulting ― but he said no, these kinds of things are always used first on the weakest part of the population, and then they are expanded.

So it's aimed at Japanese people, not at foreigners, and that's why you have to fight these things. They tend to be used initially against a group [about whom] everybody says: "oh, we have to protect ourselves from them". If you ask an average Japanese person who hasn't thought about this issue much in Japan, they'll say, oh yeah, we could fingerprint foreigners. Why not? It's only 5 minutes at the airport. And if they don't have anything to hide, then what's the problem? And anyway, there are some foreigners who are criminals, you know. People say that, right?

But those kinds of things tend to be used in that way and then expanded and used against everybody. And that's why I think Japanese people should be against this.

9-11 is used to legitimize so many bad things. Censorship and surveillance. And suspicion. It's just a very disturbing trend, and nobody knows where it's going to end.