Nikkei Net warns:
Press Holiday
Morning Edition will not be updated on Monday, March 12, because of a press holiday on Sunday.
That’s right. The concept of a 24-hour news cycle (or even a day-to-day news cycle for that matter) means nothing to Japan’s newspaper companies. On Sunday, none of the major newspapers will go to print, nor will they update their websites (though to be fair, most of them slack off on weekends anyway). This behavior is unheard of in the US, but I have to admit giving reporters a day off isn’t that bad of an idea. Given the sometimes volatile nature of breaking news, there might be a similar justification to forcing reporters to sit it out a while that there is for keeping capital markets closed on holidays and after hours. Still, it’s pretty ridiculous that newspapers took the day off on the day the postal privatization bills were initially rejected (Aug 8, 2005):
As news days go in Japan, it rarely gets bigger than it was Monday. In a narrow vote, the upper house of the Japanese Parliament voted down a pivotal piece of legislation intended to privatize Japan’s $2.9 trillion postal savings system, the world’s biggest bank. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had staked his reputation on postal reform, so in retaliation, he dissolved the lower house and scheduled a general election for Sept. 11. Pundits bloviated that the turn of events could even mean the end of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s half century of nearly unbroken control of government…
Yet if you relied on Japanese newspapers for your news, you wouldn’t have heard about those momentous events Monday. That’s because Monday was one of Japan’s monthly newspaper holidays.
The holiday coming up is less likely to make Japan’s newspapers look so obviously like archaic relics of the past, but it still bores me half to death. I mean, why are Japan’s newspapers even allowed to form a cartel and agree all at once when not to publish? More on that later.
Read more about newspaper holidays (kyukanbi / 休刊日) at the sadly defunct Japan Media Review.
Update: This citizen journalist claims that there were no newspaper holidays when he was young. I can’t seem to find when this practice started, but apparently it’s rather recent, though these days they are accepted as a part of everyday life. And as JMR notes, the wire services Jiji Press and Kyodo News as well as the sports newspapers don’t participate. I will get to the bottom of this.
I wonder if it’s a real cartel…As part of the 1947 Antitrust Law (the first one in Japan), small and medium size company cartels were allowed to exist. In 1953, recession cartels made legal, and also in 1953, rationalization cartels. Perhaps it’s a recession cartel meant to deal with overcapacity, or a rationalization cartel meant to enhance quality. I doubt it’s an export-import cartel. They came around in 1952…
The Machine industry and electronics industries have their own laws. I don’t see anything in Fair Trade Commission reports on them, though it’s too late to really dig. They could be classified as その他.
Wow, I’m tired. That second paragraph was vague. Second paragraph, second sentence. Replace ‘them’ with ‘the existence of newspaper cartels.’
They may not be a “cartel” in the formal, JFTC sense of the word, but the newspapers engage in government-sanctioned price collusion and of course they cooperate to decide when not to go to press so no ‘excess competition’ gets started.
OK, the Wikipedia article states that the current system of 12 holidays per year started in 1991, and before that there were only 9.
Interesting issue. Here there are only two or three newspaper holidays (Holy Friday and New Year), but the situation here is different, because of the monopoly of the only national newspaper, with a ridiculous circulation figure, and increasingly less text.
About JMR, I guess you and marxy, among others, could “revive” that site. Why don’t you contact the administrators? It’s parent site (Online Journalism Review) it’s still quite active.
The price-fixing is done through a law, though I can’t recall which one at the moment and I’m too lazy too look it up…I remember it coming up a few years ago that someone wanted to lift the law but it didn’t happen. Too bad…
There are “special designations” (tokushu shitei) under the antimonopoly law whereby the JFTC issues “notifications” that specifically point out unfair trade practices and regulations thereof. The designation for newspapers was issued by the JFTC in the 1955 when there was apparently chaos after the wartime paper rations were lifted. It requires newspapers to charge the same price nationwide and resembles the retail price maintenance system except that it’s required by law.
The JFTC moved to remove the designation last year but gave up after the newspaper industry refused to cooperate and ran a massive campaign in their own publications to bash the JFTC’s motives and appeal to the public that “the culture of the printed word” needed to be protected. (This Mainichi interview is pretty standard of the material taht came out at the time).