Sankei Shimbun

Sankei Shimbun is portrayed as a major Japanese newspaper whose reputation combines an association with the extreme right and a capacity for strong scoops. The book gives it a concrete role in the competition for police news: alongside Mainichi Shinbun, it published a report that beat the narrator’s paper to a consequential claim in a murder investigation.

Identity and Reputation

In the media landscape described by the narrator, Sankei Shimbun was probably Japan’s fourth-largest newspaper. Its political reputation was more sharply defined than its rank: it was regarded as the voice of the extreme right. Some observers dismissed its credibility by comparing it to a supermarket tabloid, but the narrator immediately complicates that judgment by acknowledging that the paper also produced good scoops. The contrast makes Sankei Shimbun more than a shorthand for a political position; it is a competitor whose reporting could not simply be discounted.

Competition on the Police Beat

That competitive role becomes tangible when the narrator’s paper loses a scoop in the investigation of Nakagawa’s murder. One morning, Mainichi Shinbun and Sankei Shimbun both ran articles suggesting that Abdul, the Iranian boyfriend, was the killer and was already in custody. The narrator recalls the episode as a bad day on the police beat: his newspaper had taken a cautious approach, while its competitors had moved aggressively and got ahead. The articles’ claims are presented as what the newspapers suggested, not as an independently established account of the case.

The episode also leaves the narrator uncertain about why his own reporting had fallen behind. He wonders whether the police’s reluctance to share information was connected to his earlier impersonation at a fitness club, but says he may be better off not knowing. Sankei Shimbun’s scoop thus belongs to a larger contest shaped not only by reporters’ choices but also by access to police information and the risks of acting before every detail is settled.

Place in the Press System

The book situates newspaper reporting within an institutionally restricted press environment. At the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department headquarters, the ninth floor contained separate press clubs for newspapers, television, and radio and local newspapers. Weekly and monthly magazines were excluded from the official list, and foreign media had no representatives; the narrator describes the mainstream Japanese outlets as having little incentive to challenge that closed arrangement. This is the professional setting against which Sankei Shimbun’s competition with other newspapers takes place, although the account does not identify the paper’s individual reporters or describe its specific conduct inside the press club.

Reporting, Access, and Silence

The newspaper’s appearance in the police-beat episode stands against later examples of how difficult investigative reporting could be to publish. When the narrator tried to place his investigation of Goto’s FBI-enabled entry into the United States, no Japanese newspaper took up his article; he later sent it to Yomiuri Shinbun, which ignored it, as did the other Japanese newspapers. The account does not single out Sankei Shimbun’s response, but places it within a national newspaper system in which a story could be left unpublished amid institutional caution and pressure.

Sankei Shimbun’s significance in the narrative therefore rests on two distinct features: its reputation as a politically right-wing paper and its demonstrated ability to beat a rival on a police story. The juxtaposition resists treating political reputation as a measure of journalistic competence. In the competitive press culture the narrator describes, a newspaper could be disparaged by some observers and still break news that its competitors had missed.