The new Netflix Japanese series The Journalist feels both general and specific. It’s a show that could have been set anywhere, while also being a show that is unique to the people, politics, and culture of Japan.
The Journalist is essentially the story of a cover-up. It is a potboiler that chronicles the financial wrongdoings of a dodgy Japanese Prime Minister and how it affects the lives and livelihoods of everyone around him. The series follows journalist Anna Matsuda as she fights against the system to bring the story of a sweetheart deal that implicates both the PM and his wife. (Sound familiar? #Relatable!)
All the Prime Minister’s Men
The Netflix description for the series also does it some disservice. Despite the series being called The Journalist, Matsuda is just one of the characters whose lives are impacted by the scandal. The series doesn’t just take the one perspective, but that of everyone involved in order to tell the story of this political crime.
There’s the story of Kazuya Suzuki, who is transferred to the financial bureau of the small town, and told to manipulate and falsify records. There’s Shinichi Murakami, a rising bureaucrat in the Japanese government who begins to have a change of heart in his part of the fiasco. And then there’s Ryo Kinoshita, an apathetic university student, whose interest in national politics grows as the scandal hits too close to home.
At times, The Journalist plays out like a Japanese House of Cards, especially with the brazenness of how the events are dealt with within the corridors of power. The ease of which orders are handed down, and the expectation that those orders be executed without question and without remorse, feels very familiar to anyone with a passing interest in national politics.
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
The other obvious comparison here is with the fifth season of The Wire. Here too journalist Anna Matsuda is fighting for the truth, while opposing outlets (on orders of the government) end up releasing stories to discredit her. The Journalist treats both traditional media, and the new social media, as weapons of mass disinformation. And if name calling and discrediting articles don’t work, there’s always the option of leaning on the owners of those outlets.
Those parallels aside, it is important to note that The Journalist is innately Japanese. The series doesn’t shy away from how important it is to be “honourable” and do what you’ve been told, as opposed to what you think is right. Both Kazuya Suzuki and Shinichi Murakami regularly face orders handed down to them with the expectation that they be done without question. Both characters then have to deal with their inner turmoil, as not following those orders would be a grave dishonour.
Honne vs. Tatemae
As the series ended, I was left feeling unsure about the perpetrators of the crime. I was sure that there were guilty people at every level of this story. This wasn’t a simple case of a misunderstanding. This was greed, supported by a coverup by a national machine that lives off votes and sentiment, all under the guise of tatemae.
The Journalist is a heavy watch. It isn’t a particularly complicated story; in fact, the scandal itself is fairly straightforward (especially if you’ve been following our very own 1MDB scandal). But over the course of six episodes, the audience is shown that the truth can really be a malleable thing. At the end of the day, politics, corruption, and cover-ups seem to go hand-in-hand, no matter the country. The Journalist is a great piece of fiction and a great look into Japanese politics at its worst.
The optimist in me wants to think that justice will ultimately be served. But the pessimist in me knows better.
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