In Memoriam
April, 2024 One of nature’s gentlemanby Masanori Kikuta (No.1 Shimbun April 2024 issue) A tribute to Shiro Yoneyama (1950-2024) Shiro Yoneyama
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April, 2024

One of nature’s gentleman

by Masanori Kikuta (No.1 Shimbun April 2024 issue)

A tribute to Shiro Yoneyama (1950-2024)

Shiro Yoneyama

It is with profound sadness and regret that I inform you of the death of Shiro Yoneyama, a long-time regular FCCJ member working for Japanese and foreign news agencies, who passed away at a Tokyo hospital on February 29, 2024, a few days after he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. He was 73. He is survived by his wife, two sons and a grandchild.

A graduate of Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Shiro studied journalism at California State University, Fresno, for a few years and joined the kaigaibu (English news section) of Kyodo News in 1981 after working as a reporter for several years at UPI’s Tokyo bureau. He also worked as Kyodo’s correspondent and editor in Washington (1988-1991) and New York (2003-2005). At the FCCJ, he sat on the Professional Activities Committee.

After reaching the retirement age of 60 in 2010, Shiro worked as part-time editor of Kyodo’s newspaper, published in Japanese and English for radio transmission twice a day to about 800 oceangoing ships and fishing boats, as well as hotels in resorts abroad. He also taught students for a few years at two private universities in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Shiro was a competent and caring journalist. During his stint in Washington, he had to cultivate news sources from scratch as he was the first kaigaibu reporter to work in the United States when other Japanese colleagues writing in their native language would take sources over from their predecessors. In his early years at kaigaibu, Shiro inaugurated a self-managed in-house English newsletter for better communication with non-Japanese colleagues, including those at overseas bureaus, at a time when there was no convenient tool of communication like the Internet. One of the overseas bureau staff members would say it was like “shooting in the dark” to write stories for kaigaibu in the absence of any feedback or reaction from Tokyo.

Shiro “had the true reporter’s gift of being able to easily approach people and get them talking in a friendly way,” says Michael Watson, a former kaigaibu copy editor now back in England. “Shiro was a decent, kind man who will be much missed by everyone who knew him. As a mutual friend said of him, he was one of nature's gentlemen.”

Shiro was also a convivial man, associated most obviously with his love of wine and conversation, recalls another former kaigaibu colleague Anthony Head, better known as Tony among us. “For me, Shiro was and will forever be ‘The Wine-Giver’,” says Tony, now a resident in England. “I could not begin to count the number of occasions on which, after midnight struck and the late-night shifts we worked together at Kyodo came to an end, Shiro would produce a bottle or two of wine from his locker, accompanied by some cans of beer and snacks from the convenience store downstairs, and we would sit around with our remaining colleagues and put the world to rights.”

Michael remembers how caring a man Shiro was. “There are times in life where you find yourself being blamed or criticized unjustly, but most people look away and don't want to get involved in case the bully turns on them,” he says. “When it happened to me, the one person I could rely on for unquestioning support was Shiro. He was a true and steadfast friend who would never let anyone down.”

Shiro was a true oenophile, and generous with it. He often organized a wining-and-dining get-together at Kyodo’s staff canteen, inviting not just friends but people he had known for a week or two, sometimes free of charge for newcomers, particularly ladies. He would bring a couple of bottles of wine - red and white – purchased at the FCCJ’s tasting sessions to offer participants.

I was a regular participant in these social gatherings. I enjoyed his very good company for nearly half a century, including the whole period of his career at kaigaibu, as well as during the long private time we shared after work, sometimes at the FCCJ’s dining bar we frequented as members.

Masanori Kikuta is former chief editor of the foreign news department at Kyodo News and an ex-FCCJ member

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Last call

by Shogo Kawakita (No.1 Shimbun April 2024 issue)

The last time I spoke with Yoneyama-san was on February 26, 2024. I first called him just after 11 am. but could not get through for some reason. I called back about 30 minutes later and he answered the phone.

I said: "I would like to interview a former Trump administration official at the bar next to the podium after his press conference at the FCCJ. But I am not a member of the club and can’t use the bar, so I would appreciate it if you, as a member, could help me.”

He turned down my request at first, but after a while, he called me back and said: "Okay. You can put my name out there to use the bar, and I'll call the FCCJ secretariat.”

It was at Yoneyama-san’s funeral that I learned he had been hospitalized on February 26. He must have been feeling ill when I called him. Nevertheless, he did everything he could to help me.

He passed away three days later. I regret very much that I knew nothing of his condition.

Yoneyama-san, please rest in peace in heaven. Your peaceful smile will live forever in my heart.

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Shogo Kawakita

Shogo Kawakita, Deputy Managing Writer & Editorial Writer, Kyodo News

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I'll miss his dad jokes

by Shigemi Sato (No.1 Shimbun April 2024 issue)

I encountered Shiro Yoneyama on the frontline of big-time news reporting for the first time when we covered the 1977 F1 Japan Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway.

Early in the race, Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari flew into the stands, killing two people. We scrambled to gather tidbits about the accident for our senior sportswriters, knowing that the whole world was waiting. With an adrenaline rush, we felt like war buddies in our mid-20s.

And so began our camaraderie as two among several dozen locally hired reporters who were part of a vibrant foreign media in Japan. Yone-san, one year my junior, was in his second year at UPI, and I had been at AFP for three years. We were both general assignment reporters. I remember sneaking into several booze-ups at UPI’s Tokyo bureau to mingle with him and the likes of Marianne Ohe and Toshio Aritake.

In 1981, the Fresno State alumnus moved to the English service of Kyodo News, just as several local “Unipressers” led by Ted Shimizu did during that time, when UPI was in decline. I visited him at Kyodo’s Washington bureau in 1989 to see his steady rise at Japan’s leading news organization. But he remained kind and helpful to his fellows, including a stagnant “lifer” like me.

A few months after I retired from AFP in 2014, Yone-san organized a good luck party in my honor at the FCCJ, bringing together two dozen journalists, mostly Japanese in international media.

Active on an FCCJ committee, he also recommended me for writing notices for the club’s news conferences and helped me land translating jobs at Kyodo’s subsidiaries. “You deserve more,” he often told me with a broad smile.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, Yone-san was a familiar face at the club’s wine-tasting events. He organized afterparties at nearby izakaya, as well as get-togethers with friends such as Reuters’ Teruaki Ueno at the restaurant of Kyodo’s main office.

But the virus scare kept him at home until recently. In his 2024 New Year’s card to me, he wrote that he had finally re-visited the club late last year. “It felt like ‘Yasuragi-no-Sato (Home of Peace),’” he said, referring to a hit TV serial about a nursing home for retired showbiz celebs.

I am still not sure what he meant by that, but I wish I could have enjoyed more time with him in our golden years to repay him and share his timely dad jokes!

Shigemi Sato, a retired Agence France-Presse journalist

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November 29, 2023

Obituary

Robert L. Kirschenbaum

With deep sadness and regret, we announce the passing of veteran FCCJ Life member, Robert L. Kirschenbaum at the age of 87 in early morning on Wednesday, November 29, 2023 and after a lengthy period of illness.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan

Cover Story of No.1 Shimbun January 2024

A tribute to FCCJ life member Bob Kirschenbaum (1936-2023)

Robert Kirschenbaum was born Robert Dorne and spent his early years living in a New York tenement. After his mother, who was secretary to a judge, remarried, her new husband, a lawyer, adopted Bob, giving the boy his surname, Kirschenbaum. His mother had one more child, Bob’s younger half-brother David.

Bob was proud of his Jewish heritage, but wasn’t interested in organized religion. He remembered his father taking him to see boxing matches at Madison Square Garden and baseball games at the Polo Grounds, home stadium of the New York Giants.

A young Robert Kirschenbaum in 1938, thought to have been taken in the New York area. Photo by Kirschenbaum family

He graduated at 17 from the nationally top-ranked Bronx High School of Science. A classmate was Bobby Cassotto, later better known as the musician, songwriter and actor Bobby Darin (Mack the Knife, Dream Lover). Bob got interested in music thanks to his friend, and took up the clarinet.

When Bob went to Indiana’s Purdue University, which was noted for engineering and football, he found he was bored because he was required to study the same courses he’d already completed in high school. He dropped out of Purdue in 1954 and traveled around the United States on buses, sleeping in bus stations.

In Houston, a cop picked him up and told him that, in lieu of locking him up for vagrancy, he was taking Bob to an Air Force recruiting office. Too young and naïve to realize he was being conned and could have simply walked out of the recruiting office, he enlisted.

The Air Force sent Bob to Syracuse University for six months to learn Russian. Then he was told that he would be using his newly acquired linguistic skills living and working on one of the extremely remote Aleutian Islands, listening to Soviet pilots’ radio transmissions and translating what they said. The prospect of this miserable assignment depressed the city boy to the extent he did a repeat of the Purdue exit and went AWOL, traveling to the Catskill mountains to catch a performance by his friend Darin.

Eventually, he turned himself in. He had earned a single stripe but that was taken away and a permanent notation went into his Air Force record about the AWOL episode. But Bob was welcomed back to the service and given a far less arduous assignment as a journalist working on a newspaper at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi. Eventually appointed sports editor, he had to learn enough photography to carry out those duties using a Speed Graphic camera that produced four-by-five-inch images.

If not as remote as the Aleutians, Mississippi was culturally a long, long way from the airman/journalist’s New York home. Bob fell in love with the music: blues, soul (then also known as rhythm and blues), and gospel. He was unimpressed by being present for the invention of rock and roll, recognizing that the genre and its giants, such as Elvis Presley, were appropriating and rebranding black music in wholesale fashion. He liked to go to black churches and listen to gospel singing, even if he had to stand outside during the services.

Segregation was still the law in Mississippi. One day, Bob sat down in the back of a local bus, where black passengers were forced to sit. The driver stopped the vehicle and instructed the Yankee passenger about the local rules. Thus, while disappointed, he came to understand why black people he met at the base or in downtown Biloxi kept their distance from him.

In 1957, when his enlistment was almost completed, Bob was transferred to Tachikawa Air Base near Tokyo, where he ran the base newspaper. He had a Jeep, so could travel into Tokyo and frequent the bars and restaurants. Signing up for classes organized for the U.S. military by the University of Maryland, he studied Japanese under Richard Lane. He met and befriended Al Cullison, a U.S Navy veteran who held a civilian job as base historian.

Returning to New York from Japan as a civilian in 1957, Bob enrolled in Columbia, paying his way in part with the GI Bill. He continued studying Japanese but didn't graduate. Eventually, he returned to Tokyo – permanently, as things would turn out. One leg of his journey was aboard the SS President Wilson from Hawaii – “of course the lowest class you could be in. We slept on a hammock”. On that voyage, he met and befriended Hoki Tokuda, who would become novelist Henry Miller's last wife. The two passengers played ping pong together.

In Tokyo, prominent FCCJ member Mas Ogawa hired Bob for a desk job designing pages at the Japan Times. He caught up with his friend Cullison, who by then was an FCCJ member working for Shipping and Trade News and the Asahi Evening News. Bob joined the FCCJ in 1963. In around 1964, the two men started a company handling publicity for foreign firms. After a time, Cullison went back to regular journalism duties. (For many years until he retired and returned to the States, Al was Tokyo bureau chief of the New York-based Journal of Commerce.)

Kirschenbaum developed the company they’d begun into the leading representative in Japan of many of the world’s best photographers. If you attended a photo exhibition in a top-ranked department store or other venue, you probably were struck by the exquisite taste of the arrangers – in which case there would have been a strong likelihood that Bob and his staff at Pacific Press Service had worked their magic. An earlier No. 1 Shimbun article by former FCCJ president Bob Neff tells that story very well.

As active club members, Kirschenbaum of PPS and Neff of Business Week were recognized for their work as co-chairs of the Food & Beverage Committee. From their perch at a correspondents’ table in the main bar, the Two Bobs, as they were called, applied their hard-earned taste in wine to their work as the club’s chief tasters. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. They assembled a stellar wine menu.

The board of directors at one point took up the idea of honoring Bob Kirschenbaum with a life membership. (The other Bob, as a former president, was already a life member.) One of the board members at that time, a co-author of this obituary, argued that the board should postpone conferring that honor while squeezing some more work out of Bob K. He eventually got the promotion in 2011 – and didn’t flag in the least in his diligent and creative work for the club during the many years that followed until his health failed. He was deeply involved in starting the club’s Saturday Night Live free musical performances. It was no coincidence that the artist who appeared on the first designated evening was a fellow admirer of Mississippi blues, Rambling Steve Gardner.

Bob Neff was the first of the two Bobs to fall ill. Sadly, in recent years Bob N has been unable to make the trip to the club from his home in Hayama. After it could no longer serve as the base of the Two Bobs, their table became known as the meeting place for a Friday evening “benkyokai,” which thrived before the Covid-19 virus arrived. Regular attendees such as Bob K – until his own health started to fail – and Anthony Rowley have held out hope that those gatherings can regain their former appeal, as masks and social distancing have become mainly matters of pandemic history.

And now Bob K himself is part of history. He left behind tangible reminders of the man we have known so that, although he’s now gone, he will not soon be forgotten. Among his many contributions to FCCJ life, he headed the group that selected the archival photographs to be framed and placed on the club walls, such as Max Desfor’s shot of the flight of refugees over the Taedong River in the early days of the Korean War.

Most recently, when he gave up his Tokyo apartment to move to a nursing home in Saitama Prefecture, he bequeathed to the club his personal library. Valuable and important books that the FCCJ library previously had not owned have now been incorporated into our collection.

Duplicate volumes are currently being sold at a sixth-floor book sale, with the proceeds going to benefit the library’s work. Buy a book (only ¥100), go down to the main bar and ask Hanif or another member of the wait staff that you’d like to try Bob K’s favorite white wine. Then raise your glass in remembrance of a great fellow member, now departed at age 87.

Bradley Martin joined the FCCJ 46 years ago when he arrived in Tokyo as Baltimore Sun bureau chief. Employers in Asia since then have been the Asian Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Asian Financial Intelligence, Bloomberg News and Asia Times. A former 1st vice president, he's currently co-chair of the Library and Workroom Committee and serves on the Membership Committee.

Roger Schreffler is a veteran business journalist and Wards Automotive correspondent who has covered the Japanese auto industry since the 1970s. Schreffler interviewed Bob Kirschenbaum at length about his life and career and retained tapes and notes. Martin was able to follow up with a brief interview at the nursing home in October before the nurses told him his visiting time was up and shooed him away.

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Tribute to Bob Kirschenbaum

No.1 Shimbun Issue: January 2024 | Obituary

Uncle Bob

Anthony Rowley

If I were allowed only three words to describe Bob Kirschenbaum, I would say that he was “a good man”. That may sound inadequate to describe someone of Bob’s quality and stature, but the word good can mean many different things.

It can mean simply someone who is kind and generous to others – a true friend. Bob was certainly that. It can mean a person of honesty and integrity. Bob was certainly that too. Or it can mean someone who is fair minded, upright and caring. Bob was all of those things and more.

He was an avuncular figure – the name “Uncle Bob” would have suited him well. Bob was someone you could tell your troubles to and get a sympathetic hearing, but he was never judgemental. I rarely heard him criticise others.

His genial smile was never forced. With Bob, the quality of friendship was never strained (to paraphrase Shakespeare).

He was a connoisseur of good wines (and whiskies) but I never saw him in his cups.

It’s difficult to imagine the FCCJ without Bob. He was not just part of the institution after an incredible 60 years of continuous membership; he was an institution in himself. A benign presence and stabilising influence, he was clubby in the best sense of the word.

He had been in failing health for several years but he didn’t let that deter him from coming almost daily to what was in effect his second home: the FCCJ

In more recent years, he came with the aid of a walking stick and later in a wheelchair until he entered a care home in Saitama prefecture.

Those of us who visited Bob during that time were always impressed by his invariable good cheer and undying concern for the welfare of the FCCJ. He seemed almost to care more about the health of the club

than about his own health.

I will not say “rest in peace”, Bob, because you were never one to rest when there were things so be done. Instead, I will say “go in peace” and God bless you as you continue your journey.

Anthony Rowley is a columnist and contributor for the South China Morning Post.

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No.1 Shimbun Issue: January 2024 |

Bob Kirschenbaum

Bob Neff

“It’s not an easy business,” says Bob Kirschenbaum about the world of photography, in which he’s been deeply involved for more than half a century. But it has been a good business for the 80-year-old head of one of Tokyo’s most dynamic photo agencies. His career has not only satisfied his love of art but given him much pleasure over his years of interacting with some of the world’s great photographers.

Interestingly, Kirschenbaum has never wanted to be a photographer. “Photography never interested me as photography,” he says. “It interested me as art. To this day I don’t really know how to use a camera, with all the settings and stuff.”

He stumbled into the field through standard journalism. After growing up in Manhattan and attending the acclaimed Bronx School of Science and Mathematics, he found himself at Purdue University in Indiana, best known at the time for its engineering program and powerful football teams.

But that wasn’t enough to maintain the interest of Kirschenbaum, who dropped out, wandered around the American South, got picked up for vagrancy, and beat jail by joining the U.S. Air Force, which taught him Russian in order to listen in on Soviet internal communications. Soon after, in 1957, he wangled a transfer to Japan, mainly to escape an anti-Semitic superior, and within three months had become editor of a newspaper at the Tachikawa U.S. Air Force Base west of Tokyo.

“I’d know if the photos were good or not because of my interest in art,” he recalls. He also spent time learning page design, a job that proved fateful because it led to sharing an office with Al Cullison, the base historian. Cullison was also a venerable denizen of the FCCJ’s then highly popular No.1 Shimbun Alley bar.

Kirschenbaum drifted back to New York after being discharged and, at Columbia University, completed Japanese studies he’d begun in the Air Force. But bitten by the Japan bug, he moved back to take a job with the Japan Times. When Cullison, who was then at the Asahi Evening News, sponsored him for membership in the FCCJ in 1963, he signed up. Except for a brief stint in Seoul to help set up what is now called the Korea Herald, he has been here ever since.

KIRSCHENBAUM HAD LEFT THE Japan Times and established a fairly successful PR company when he decided to launch the photo agency Pacific Press Service (PPS) in 1965 in partnership with Cullison. Among the first syndicates they represented were the London Express News and Feature Services, and the Telegraph and Sunday Times magazines, at a time when newspapers’ weekend magazines were lavish publications with many well-known and well-paid photographers.

Getting the Sunday Times business was a real coup, and came with the help of fellow FCCJ member Henry Scott Stokes. The owner of the company, Lord Thomson, was on his way to Japan for business talks in 1969, when Stokes begged Kirschenbaum to give him a briefing about the Japanese newspaper business. Kirschenbaum agreed, and spent over an hour breaking it down for the press magnate.

As their meeting drew to an end, Lord Thomson said, “You’ve been so generous. What do you want in return?” “I’d like to represent the Sunday Times magazine,” Kirschenbaum recalls saying. “And Lord Thomson said to me, ‘Okay, it’s yours.’”

The opportunity to represent the respected photo agency Magnum soon followed. In 1969, Kirschenbaum received a phone call from a magazine editor acquaintance offering to introduce him to the photographers Cornell Capa and André Kertész, who were hanging an exhibition called “Concerned Photography” at the Matsuya Department Store. “I went over and met them and Hiroshi Hamaya and Hiroji Kubota,” says Kirschenbaum. “Over dinner with Cornell I found out that Magnum had dropped their Japanese agent, and after about a year of negotiations I ended up representing them.”

By 1974, things were running smoothly enough that Kirschenbaum could look for new frontiers. “I realized there was a huge market for photography exhibitions at the department stores, which were doing great shows of art, kimono, lacquerware . . . everything.” He had visited an exhibition held by the well-known photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. “I met him there, and even though he was surprised that a stock photo agency wanted to do it, he said okay,” says Kirschenbaum. He made a presentation to the Odakyu Department Store, who signed on. “It just seemed like a natural progression for our company to me,” he says.

It was clearly the heyday for such exhibitions. Kirschenbaum organized more than 50 major shows over the years, producing lavish catalogs of 100 to 150 pages that would sell for under ¥2,000. The list of photographers was impressive: Ansel Adams, William Klein, Sarah Moon, Alfred Stieglitz. . . . The shows would draw two or three thousand visitors on weekdays, with double and triple those figures on the weekends.

IT WAS A PHENOMENON THAT was particular to Japan and nowhere else and one that has since collapsed along with the department store business. But at the time, PPS was also helping develop the business of selling prints, an area that had been largely ignored in Japan. “We sold a tremendous amount to museums,” says Kirschenbaum. “A collec-tion of 412 prints by CartierBresson to the Osaka University of Arts. 542 prints of Eugene Smith’s only exhibition and the first photography book in history, The Pencil of Nature by Fox Talbot, and 542 prints of Eugene Smith’s only exhibition to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. We sold a lot, including 100 prints by Robert Capa, to a Yokohama museum.”

“Technology changes, science changes, society changes. We have to learn to use the new tools.”

But some sectors of the market were even beyond the talents of Kirschenbaum and PPS. While Japanese were, and are, interested in looking at great photographs, they do not collect it. Or hang it on their walls. “The average person doesn’t think of using photography in their home,” says Kirschenbaum. “Photographs are all around and people are always taking pictures. But the wall space at home, which is generally very small, is mostly for mementoes and stuff. Not great photographs.”

PPS, which was known for having knowledgeable sales staff who could talk to editors and buyers about photography, then expanded further. “After meeting Hiroshi Hamaya that day with Capa, we became friends, and I ended up working with him,” says Kirschenbaum. “We organized the exhibition on his 50 years in photography.” Hamaya ended up as one of many local photographers that his agency went on to work with, including Eikoh Hosoe, Takeji Iwamiya and many less well-known photographers. The company had such effect on photogra-phers and photography in Japan, in fact, that the Professional Pho-tographers Society of Japan gave PPS an award in 1989 for increasing awareness of the public about the cultural value of photography.

Kirschenbaum says that PPS’s business was to make money for the photographers and that’s what they did. They did it by selling to magazines, educational companies and advertising agencies, among oth-ers. Corporate calendars became a huge business. “Most people know about the Pirelli calendar,” Kirschenbaum says, “but the Japanese corporate calendar business was, and is, second to none.” In fact, at one time, Sony had more than five calendars for their various markets, and PPS was selling corporations photographs by such esteemed shooters as Ernst Haas.

TIMES CHANGE, AND SO has the photography business, though Kirschenbaum remains optimistic. “We had 70 employees in our Ginza office at the peak,” he says, “and we have 12 now. And instead of people squinting at light boxes we have people peering at computers, which can call up over 30 million photographs.”

And while one might think that someone who built a business might be bitter about the technological revolution that has changed all the parameters, Kirschenbaum says no. “The world changes,” he says. “Technology changes, science changes, society changes. We have to learn to use the new tools.”

But he does sympathize with the photographers whose business models are changing daily. “You can feel the frustration of the photographers who see those people who just happen to shoot a celebrity or an accident in the street and are happy to get five dollars and their name out there,” he says. “That’s run a lot of photojournalists out of the business. In fact, a lot of photojournalists I know have given up their jobs and, ironically, are teaching young people who want to be photojournalists.”

Kirschenbaum, who has just turned 80 but still works in his office (“as long as I enjoy it,” he says) believes that photographers today need a niche if they want to get by. Wedding photography a huge market in the U.S. that is making inroads in Japan is one example. “It’s something similar to the shashinkan, ” he says, “the local photo studios that would take photos of families at important times in their lives. Now people are hiring photographers to document the whole marriage process, from betrothal to honeymoon.”

But whether it’s famous photojournalists or those working at local studios recording moments in people’s lives, Kirschenbaum says it’s the people behind the lens that have kept him focused on photography. “They are what makes it interesting,” he says. “And they are what has kept me going all these years.”

LUNCH AT THE CLUB WITH HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON AND FORMER FCCJ PRESIDENT AND PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AP PHOTOGRAPHER MAX DESFOR

“THIS WAS ABOUT 1978 or 80, somewhere around there. I had just sold Cartier-Bresson’s collection to Osaka University of Arts, and the organizers invited him to Japan for the opening. He came to Tokyo, where he worked out of our office for about 10 days, and we got to know each other. For some reason, I happened to mention the name of Max Desfor, who was a friend and member of the FCCJ. And Henri instantly said, “Max? Max Desfor? I gotta see him!”

“So I set up a lunch at the Club. They were so happy to see each other because, it seems, they had worked together at Gandhi’s funeral way back in 1948. They described what they did together back then. Caught up in the crowds, Cartier-Bresson was flat on the ground, holding his camera high above his head, so high that he couldn’t reach the shutter. Max had happened to get a perch a bit higher up, so Cartier-Bresson asked him, “Max, can you press the shutter for me?” So Max did.

“And what makes the story great is that the picture which Cartier-Bresson had no way of knowing exactly what he was shooting won the Overseas Press Award. They thought it was hilarious and were laughing about it over lunch.”

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May 8, 2023

In Memoriam - Patrick J. Killen

To All Members:

I am writing with deep regrets to let everyone at the FCCJ know that Patrick J. Killen, former Secretary of the Board 2000-2001, a former correspondent at UPI and a long-time member of the FCCJ, passed away last week in Dallas. He was 93.

Peter Elstrom

FCCJ President

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Out of the park

Dan Sloan

No.1 Shimbun Issue: June 2023 | Obituary

A tribute to former FCCJ member and Alleycats stalwart Pat Killen, who has died age 93.

Patrick J. Killen, a Lifetime Member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, died this month at the age of 93. Pat was likely not an early pick to embody changes in journalism over the last century, but became a living bridge from its analogue past to digital present, who recognized that regardless of modern tools, nothing matters more than a good story – or joke – well told. Hopefully, here’s his.

Our hero was born in 1929 in Carbondale, Illinois, and then moved to Los Angeles. Attending Santa Monica High School, he lived with the family that owned Dick’s Sporting Goods, who treated him like a son. Pat went to Colorado College, played football, and was a strapping young lad, according to his own versions of youth (I would tease by asking if teams played without helmets then). After naval service during the Korean War that brought him to Japan for the first time, Pat went to UCLA to study a Masters in Journalism. He then worked for United Press and UPI for 30 years in South Asia and Southeast Asia, later joined the Yomiuri Shimbun, and became editor of this publication. In his finest moments, he married Miyoko in Japan, and became father to Kimberly. Separately, he also managed the Press Club softball team for decades, which is how I met him.

His career began when competing newspapers were delivered two or three times a day, foreign correspondents waited for feed times or telephone transcriptions, and overseas journalists were often pseudo-ambassadors or spies. In the last year of his life, Pat wrote and published the book Asia Ernie at 92, kept in touch with colleagues and friends around the world, including those at the FCCJ, and would reply in minutes with details of world events or a Cubs game.

Pat’s beats in no particular order were Pakistan and India, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. He covered wars and internal conflicts, the occasional “holy shit” story, and the wonder of making a huge world smaller. Many unpublishable tales from those days were often retold in the FCCJ bar with colleagues such as Dai Inoshita, Bruce Dunning, Jack Russell, Corky Alexander, and Charles Pomeroy. Thankfully walls can’t talk. However, as Number 1 Shimbun editor, he always featured “then and now” content reflecting the FCCJ’s changing demographics, and also his inclusive way of dealing with people and their stories.

I first met Pat in 1989 on joining the Alleycats, when there were few journalists playing besides Glenn Davis, Roger Schreffler, Bruce Rutledge, Andy Adams, the Faas brothers, Hiro Morita, and David Cady. However, FCCJ staff and their families, including “The Jimmys” – Horikawa and Semoto, Hiroshi Hosono, Fumio Okuda and his son Tatsu, and “Mr Triple” Kubo graced our teams. Kantoku Killen gave everyone playing time, which lifted a group of good athletes to become great friends. Later, we won two titles against superior foes, as Pat pulled the strings to recruit talent.

This April, team members including Mike Cline, Jim Clark, Kurt Kafentzis, the Faas Brothers, Andy Wiedlin, and friends joined Pat and Kimberly for “Patapalooza” in Las Vegas, in which tales from softball, embellished over years, were rehashed. Some who couldn’t attend sent video messages. Pat had faced some health issues , but put them aside to join us. For many, Patapalooza was a chance to express his impact on our lives while raising a glass and tell stories.

Pat relished sharing how, in one game, Andy Adams in right field was yelling so vehemently at teammates about their poor defense that he was oblivious to a ball flying over his head, as well as the infamous bases-loaded ground ball episode, which purportedly ended with at least three errors, including a ball thrown by an unnamed left fielder over the backstop, and all runs scoring in a Press Club loss.

This anecdote perfectly sums up Pat’s attitude.

Mike and his brother Clint Faas were in a game in Austin, Minnesota, on a field with a rickety wooden outfield fence, not far from the Hormel Factory pig farm. Their team was down three runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, but the bases were loaded after Mike walked. Fleet-footed Clint came up and hammered the first pitch to deep centerfield. At the same moment, a runaway boar from the farm shot through a hole in the outfield fence and darted straight for the rolling baseball, putting it firmly inside its jowls. The plucky pig then ran through another hole in the outfield fence, as all runners charged towards home plate. Umpire Patrick J. Killen now had to rule on this unprecedented moment in baseball. After brief reflection, he waved his finger to indicate all runs had scored, and that the game was over. His call: In-the-Pork Homerun.

With Pat, everyone who played always scored.

Friends and family will celebrate Pat's life on Saturday, June 24, 11 am-2 pm at Urban Rio Cantina & Grill, 1000 14th St #100, Plano, TX 75054 Please RSVP at this link even if you cannot attend: https://forms.gle/F42BMsZs2Md17KgQ9

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Dan Sloan is a former president of the FCCJ, author, journalist, communications specialist, and - purportedly - the infamous left-fielder who threw the ball over the home plate backstop. He managed the Press Club Alleycats to two titles, and still plays for a remnant of Pat's team.

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February 8, 2023

In Memoriam - Pio d'Emilia (1954-2023)

I learned with great sadness that journalist member Pio d'Emilia passed away in hospital overnight. He was 68 and had been suffering from the long-term effects of Covid-19. The Club understands that his son is currently in Tokyo making arrangements, and we will keep you informed of any details about a memorial service. In the meantime, I'd like to share a tribute to Pio written by David McNeill.

Woke up this morning to the sad news that our friend and colleague Pio d'Emilia is gone. He was 68 with a heart condition and was visibly struggling with the aftereffects of coronavirus, but as a friend noted this morning, he seemed indestructible. Pio could always be found in the journalistic thick of it and right until the end he was jetting off to China, Okinawa and Myanmar to cover the stories that interested him.

Among his journalistic gifts was a pair of brass balls that helped him barge through bureaucratic rules and cajole his way into the offices of the powerful. He seemed to know everyone and only recently brought Ai Wei Wei to the FCCJ and persuaded two former Japanese prime ministers, Koizumi Junichiro and Naoto Kan, to sit together and speak to the same anti-nuclear message.

Among my favorite memories is waking up on the morning of March 12, 2011 preparing to head northeast to cover the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami and learning that Pio was already there - on a motorbike.

He was a force of nature - opinionated, confrontational, contrarian, the rebellious kid at the back of the classroom lobbing wisecracks at the teacher. He infuriated as many as he enthralled. A born journalist. Even his detractors will admit that we are, as his Sky TG24 obit says, a little more alone.

Peter Elstrom

President

Remembering Pio d'Emilia

The contrarian with a twinkle in his eye

Roger Schreffler

A vivid life, well lived. Remembering Pio d'Emilia

An unusually large afternoon crowd had gathered in the main bar of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. It was election day, 2002. Pio d’Emilia was running for second vice president. His candidacy was controversial not only because of his leftist leanings, but because the club’s second vice president is in charge of personnel policy and there were concerns that he would try to introduce European-style labor practices and create problems.

Pio won. The sky would not fall in and the club would flourish during his tenure.

Nevertheless, the first thing he did after ordering the obligatory champagne to mark his victory was to announce that, henceforth, staff would be required to wear red underwear. He was joking, of course, but with Pio no one ever knew for sure.

He liked to be unpredictable. He relished being a “contrarian,” to quote one of his friends, and, with that endearing twinkle in his eye behind his trademark red-rimmed glasses, stir the pot. There was never a dull moment for anyone in his company.

Pio passed away suddenly when his heart gave out on February 6, at the far-too-young age of 68. We knew he wasn’t well and was suffering from the lingering effects of Covid-19. But Pio seemed indestructible. His passing, though not completely unexpected, still came as a shock. D'Emilia reported from across the region for Sky TG24.

His colleagues have characterized him as a “force of nature” with a “larger than life” personality. His editor at Sky TG24 described him as “inquisitive and courageous,” adding: “Every time there was an international crisis, a street protest, an earthquake or some other natural disaster, the phone call would come: 'If you want, I’m ready to go.'”

And he went – to China, to both Koreas, to Myanmar and elsewhere in Asia and to almost every place imaginable in Japan, covering breaking news spanning many years.

The Guardian's Jon Watts, Pio’s decades-long friend, said that Pio “was someone who lived vividly. He always brought color and flavor and passion to whatever he was doing, more so than I think almost anybody I've met. And that made him really interesting to be around. He was learned, intelligent and incredibly kind at times. He also cut corners in ways I would never dream of. But he was a good friend and someone who made the world a much more fun place to be”.

Anthony Rowley, another longtime friend who delivered what amounted to be a eulogy at Pio’s FCCJ memorial on February 15, characterized Pio as a “man of many parts. He was big in heart, big in warmth and big in personality and presence. He was dedicated to human rights and freedom. He was dedicated to free speech and by definition to the freedom of the press …. He would not hesitate to challenge what he saw as insincerity or untruth”.

All true. And while he was at it, he could be difficult, even with friends, sometimes especially with friends.

As is the case with many driven people, Pio was no saint. In his own words several months ago, he reflected that he had been “disturbing the perceived Japanese wa for four decades – first as a criminal lawyer and then as a journalist”.

Pio was a magnet for controversy, often initiated by Pio himself to draw attention to his many causes. And his causes included everything from getting the FCCJ management to buy an espresso machine to fighting Japan's discriminatory fingerprint laws - which targeted foreigners - opposing the death penalty and supporting workers' rights. He also fought to open up the kisha clubs to foreign journalists.

Pio was an activist. Whether it’s a good or bad thing for a news reporter to be an activist is subject to debate. But he stayed true to his beliefs to the end, dragging himself to moderate a panel discussion on the death penalty in Japan 10 days before his death, when he clearly wasn’t well.

One of the most notable controversies he initiated involved the George W. Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq in spring 2003. Several weeks before the “shock and awe” campaign began, Pio placed a petition on the FCCJ’s noticeboard, urging members who opposed the war to sign their names.

Journalists are supposed to remain neutral and treat issues impartially and without bias, and there are good reasons for that. But it is by no means a universal standard and surely wasn’t one of Pio’s.

Predictably, he was challenged by a senior member of the American media establishment to remove the petition. The individual – there is no need to mention his name here – worked for an organization that had very strict rules about expressing opinions. Pio disagreed, and the debate eventually went public in a feature article in the Tokyo Shimbun, in which Pio, petition in hand with more than 70 signatures, made a compelling case that journalists should be able to express opinions about war and peace.

History, of course, went on to help his case by producing revelations of a massive US intelligence failure involving weapons of mass destruction and alleged American media complicity.

Any regrets, he was asked later? “None at all. Journalists are entitled to have opinions, and we should always err in favor of total freedom of expression.”

Italy’s other ambassador

It is hard to measure Pio’s legacy. Some chroniclers of Japan – Pio covered everything from the inner workings of Japanese politics to hot springs and sex clubs – have been influential. Others have been politically connected. Almost none of them – including Karel van Wolferen, Murray Sayle and Sam Jameson from an earlier era – had access to 21st century recording technology that Pio used so adeptly in his reporting.

Pio was essentially a citizen journalist. A night out with him could change in a moment if something of interest caught his eye. He would immediately switch into reporting mode and aim his camcorder, or in later years his iPhone, at the subject in question, followed by hours at home sitting in front of his computer editing his find.

He was, as one of his obituaries noted, a “fast and prolific writer”.

On television, he had a presence. Often wearing a scarf as part of his anti-establishment uniform (Pio could dress well), he went back and forth among languages – he spoke five, including Japanese – while covering demonstrations in Hong Kong, atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima or interviewing the likes of Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, the activist actor Richard Gere, anti-war writer/intellectual Noam Chomsky and Aung San Suu Kyi.

During the 2002 World Cup, he personally arranged for soccer legend Diego Maradona to speak at the FCCJ, going to Maradona’s hotel to seal the deal.

Born on July 18, 1954, in Rome, Pio arrived in Japan in 1979 as a young lawyer intent on studying comparative criminal procedure at a Tokyo university. Pio would adopt Japan as his home away from his native Italy.

We couldn’t nail down the exact date of his earliest connection to Japan, but we know that he established both professional and personal ties with Japanese radicals in those early years, specifically with the notorious Japanese Red Army.

His first connection to the FCCJ can be found on his membership application, where he listed previous consultancy work for the Parliamentary Commission for the Enforcement of the New Criminal Procedure Code in Rome (from January 1978 to January 1979) and employment at the Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo (from May to September 1979) as his main career experience. He had graduated from the law department at the University of Rome in 1978.

Stamped as received on February 10, 1981, when he was 26, Pio’s application for regular membership listed his media affiliations as L’Espresso and Quotidiano Associati, both based in Rome. He was sponsored by Maria Romilda Giorgis, the Italian news agency ANSA’s Tokyo correspondent. Also sponsoring him was an officer at the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Japan, an organization Pio cultivated over the years, becoming the first editor of the chamber’s magazine, Viste, in 2006, and even serving on the chamber’s board of directors in 2010.

Pio would become a fierce crusader for Italian culture, in particular the country’s cuisine. He’s been characterized as an “ambassador” of all things Italian except the Catholic Church and the Italian right, although in the case of the church his feelings are nuanced. Guido Busetto, one of his early friends in Japan, recalled with a sense of irony that Pio, working as a freelancer in those early years, wrote for Avvenire, a newspaper affiliated with the “progressive wing” of the Vatican Council.

David McNeill, another friend, said that Pio, professionally, “seemed to know everyone”. That, he did. He would occasionally show pictures of himself slurping ramen noodles with the Dalai Lama, whose representative attended Pio’s memorial and said optimistically, while acknowledging Pio’s friendship with His Holiness and support for the Tibetan cause, that maybe Pio “will come back very quickly”. As what, he didn’t say.

Naoto Kan, another of Pio’s influential friends, was in attendance and recounted a phone call from Pio from Fukushima on the day after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Kan was prime minister at the time. Pio had ridden his scooter through the night to get to the area and was one of the first reporters on the scene, since Japanese media organizations had been ordered not to enter the area.

“But Pio did,” said Kan. “He didn’t care about the rules.”

His contact list is massive, from the rich and famous and politically powerful to the little guy, the most vulnerable among us. In a largely autobiographical article published on an online news site in Italy on the day of his passing, Pio in his own words identified the following accomplishments in his more than 40-year career:

He is a journalist and writer and currently the East Asia correspondent for SkyTg24. He reported for various newspapers. including Il Messaggero, L'Espresso, Il Manifesto and, in Japan, the Tokyo Shimbun and Shukan Shincho.

He was among the first journalists to reach Fukushima after the nuclear accident on March 11, 2011, published a book in Italian Tsunami Nucleare (Nuclear Tsunami), which was subsequently made into the documentary Fukushima: A Nuclear Story, which won a DIG film award in 2016.

He served for many years as vice president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan [five times to be exact], and in 2011 co-founded the Free Press Association of Japan together with Japanese journalist Takashi Uesugi.

Since 2010, he has collaborated in the Press Office of the Permanent Secretariat of Nobel Peace Summit, which organizes the world meeting of the Nobel Peace Prize winners every year.

In 2016, he won the Ischia Journalist of the Year Award in Italy.

His most notable recollection was playing tennis with the former emperor of Japan – who was crown prince at the time – Akihito, winning a doubles match that pitted Akihito and his grand chamberlain against Pio and the Financial Times bureau chief at the time, Jurek Martin.

Pio is survived by five adult children, whom he doted upon, and his partner, Elisabetta Nepitelli Alegiani.

Roger Schreffler is a veteran business journalist and Wards correspondent who has covered the Japanese auto industry since the 1970s.

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King of the slopes

Anthony Rowley

Pio was a gifted journalist and commentator, no doubt about that. But sometimes actions speak louder than words, and it is for some of those actions, among other things, that I will remember him with respect and admiration.

Pio was an avid skier until his final months, when Covid-related damage to his lungs tragically put mountains beyond his reach. It was during skiing trips to resorts in the northern Japanese Alps that I witnessed Pio in action. He would whizz off from the top of the piste, making dizzying swoops and loops across the snow, hurtling between trees, plunging into gullies and whooping with the joy of just being alive.

But he would stop frequently with a powdery whoosh to ensure that the more pedestrian among his skiing partners (myself included) were still on our feet. Pio noted that my skiing style was of less than Olympic standard but then restored my morale by praising the fact that I was ready to tackle the slopes despite my frequent falls.

His concern for the safety of others was paramount. On one trip, our group had returned to the Hakkoda Hotel in Aomori by different routes and at different times. Pio called my room to ask whether I had seen Joan Anderson (one of our party and a member of the FCCJ) as she had not returned to her room by the evening. I replied that I hadn’t, but assumed that she would show up soon.

Pio did not leave it at that. He put on his skiing gear and set off in the cold and dark, torch in hand, along a narrow track bordering a frozen river and leading to a piste. Repeatedly calling out Joan's name, he finally managed to locate her where she had plunged into a snow drift and lost one ski. They returned safely.

Pio's sons were even more spectacular skiers than their father - in the Italian Alps in their case. Pio would proudly show us videos of them flying down slopes and even skiing off the edge of mountains to complete their descent in full James Bond paragliding mode. Either that or tightrope walking from one rocky peak to another.

It was Pio's sheer presence that made those trips so memorable. Whether it was on the ski slopes or relaxing in the sulfurous haze of an outdoor onsen (some of them mixed), where a boisterous Pio would spring out and hurl snow at us, or drinking large quantities of grappa before a blazing log fire, these were celebrations of Pio’s making and a reflection of his character.

He wasn’t just a man of action in the physical sense. While I was president of the FCCJ, Pio was active in ensuring staff welfare. As one senior member of the FCCJ commented on hearing of Pio's passing: “It is really sad news. He was always stood by the staff, in good times and in bad.”

Or, as Joan Anderson noted in heartfelt recognition of Pio's compassion: “There are so many moving tributes being posted on his Facebook page. A common theme [of these] is, 'I was just an unknown journalist/student/person and Pio was the only person who helped/listened/introduced me to people.’” His capacity for kindness, she added, was “huge”.

Whether you speak of Pio's kindness, compassion, bonhomie or joie de vivre, the fact is that those characteristics, with which he was so liberally endowed, far outweigh his occasional outbursts against what he saw as self importance, hypocrisy or obstinate bureaucracy. He went too soon. Will there ever be another like him? Perhaps not in my lifetime.

Anthony Rowley is a columnist and contributor for the South China Morning Post.

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Never a dull moment

Agnes Tandler

The first time I met Pio, he arrived in style with a spent Toscanello cigar in his mouth. He was riding his Vespa scooter, which he used to park on the grounds of the Italian embassy in Tokyo. We talked about a ski trip to North Korea. He had survived as a freelancer for many years and understood my professional struggles. “I know how tough it is,” he said. “I depended on others to lend me a hand, so I’d like to return the favor now that I’m better off.” Solidarity was not an empty phrase for Pio. He was there to offer help, share contacts and give advice on everything in life, from the mundane to the complicated. He brought endless energy and enthusiasm to his craft. His lust for life guided him.

Pio was never short of surprises, including eccentric musical tastes that included obscure German bands like Ash Ra Temple or Popol Vuh. His love for food led him to stake out a farm in Kyushu that grew vegetables you could normally only find in Italy.

He liked to gather friends and colleagues around his terrace dining table, battered by long rainy seasons. Here you would encounter unexpected company. Pio paired former prime ministers with palm readers, opera singers and manga artists with ambassadors and diplomats. He welcomed students and strangers he just had met per caso - by chance. Tandler, left, with D'Emilia and friends at a bar in Golden Gai

Pio had a unique gift for bringing together people from vastly different backgrounds, cultures and opinions. He did “dining across the divide” before there even was a divide. There were heated arguments, board games, music, Italian food, aperitivo, wine and digestivo. Pio would also organise bar-hopping trips around Golden Gai, visits to fetish parties at Department H in Uguisudani, and champagne-fuelled cherry blossom viewings at Yoyogi Park. There was never a dull moment.

While Pio was a gritty professional who never gave up on a story, he was also the kind of person who looked after an abandoned cat in his apartment building and helped Italian students enter Japan when pandemic restrictions had otherwise closed the borders. He opened his house to complete strangers, fed everyone and shared his well-stocked bar of Italian grappa.

Curiosity never left him. After more than 40 years of living in Japan, he was still fascinated by Japanese culture. He once mentioned that he would like a seizensou – a funeral held for someone while they are still alive – where friends and family gather and share stories while the “departed” sits and listens in silence. But then Pio had second thoughts: “It would be impossible,” he said. “I just can’t keep my mouth shut.”

Agnes Tandler has worked as foreign correspondent for almost 20 years and is currently based in Sapporo.

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Breaking down barriers

Hans van der Lugt

The boldness and kind-heartedness of our late friend Pio d’Emilia are well known, and have been well recounted since his unfortunate departure. In Pio and Jon Watts, I found kindred spirits at the FCCJ in that we were at home in Japan and would go around the country on our own. In 2000 I think, all three of us got elected to the board. As president of the club a few years on there was definitely one moment where I thought of Pio: with a friend like this, who needs enemies? But that thought passed very quickly. His heart was in the right place, and his judgement sound.

Regarding his journalistic legacy in Japan, one specific story should be retold here for our records, and for Pio to be remembered by. It happened in 2003 when I was chair of the Foreign Press in Japan … but here I have to digress a little. Ever since I had learned (by coincidence, well after I joined the FCCJ) about the FPIJ, I thought the organization was not doing what it was supposed to do: break down the Japanese press club barriers. Pio held a similar position. We wanted direct access to sources, as language was no barrier. We did achieve something in the end, thanks to some scuffles featuring our dear friend.

In autumn 2003, Tokyo was rocked by a corruption scandal involving the chairman of the Japan Highway Corporation, Haruho Fujii. He had been sacked by his boss, the then land minister, Nobuteru Ishihara, and a “public” hearing for Fujii was scheduled for October 17. Someone at the ministry duly gave me the time and location when I asked, though later they said that only members of the ministry kisha club could attend.

We discussed this at the club. Our sense - well at least Pio’s and mine – was that it was pointless to continue to plead with authorities and get assurances that next time they would do their best to grant us access. Pio – who else? – said: “I’ll go anyway.” He later provided the FPIJ with a written account of events after he arrived at the hearing.

Showing my Gaimusho Press Card and wearing my Diet Press Pass, I tried to make it through the ‘checkpoint’. A man called Takashiba, who identified himself as "Dai-ichi Kohoshitsu Kakari-cho" told me I was not allowed further. "This hearing is only for invited press, namely, those who belong to our kisha club". I replied: "What about avoiding any confrontation and let me in exceptionally, as a courtesy. After all it looks like I am the only foreign, uninvited journalist.”

Of course, the official didn’t let Pio pass. But he tried anyway.

Weighing 95 kilos and having played for many years rugby, they had some difficulties in blocking me. So I was able to proceed, despite the ‘opposition’, until about 40 meters from the building entrance. I could have gone further, but the Japanese press (most of them NOT being members of the Ministry Kisha Club) rounded me up, shooting the scene, asking questions and, to my surprise, even showing some kind of solidarity. "Just let him in," shouted a reported from NTV, and I heard similar comments by other people whom I did not have time to identify.

The scene Pio described here was featured in the Tokyo Shimbun – picture included. But more importantly, Pio came away from the scene with a document issued by the ministry stating that reporting was restricted to kisha club members. The age-old excuse from bureaucrats - that they were not responsible for keeping the foreign press out as it was not them, but the kisha clubs, that organised press conferences - no longer worked.

At the same time, the European Union had been pressuring Japan to open up press conferences to European media as part of EU-Japan trade negotiations. European media, the EU embassy in Tokyo said, clearly had a disadvantage compared to Japanese media operating in Europe.

These developments led to a breakthrough in Japan’s policy on foreign media activities. On March 29, 2003 the foreign ministry issued a statement about participation in press conferences by holders of foreign press registration cards, in which it said that accredited foreign media should have access to public press events. This was accompanied the same day by a statement from the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association to all its member organizations and the secretaries of all kisha clubs stating the same. Pointless? Not long afterwards, I joined a press conference at the National Police Agency, thanks to these statements.

We owed this success in large part to our friend Pio.

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No questions asked

Isabel Reynolds

The first time I really became aware of Pio was outside the Crown Prince’s residence just before a press conference. He was becoming very heated about how important it was for the foreign press to have fair and equal access to the event, including the audio feed that only the press club were using. Great consternation ensued among the retainers of the Imperial Household Agency. Anyway, he eventually sat down quietly next to me and the event began. After about five minutes I heard an unmistakable sound from my right … yes, Pio was snoring loudly and remained fast asleep for most of the press conference.

After I became president of the FCCJ in 2020, Pio was, to say the least, unsparing with his advice and we had frequent video calls on WhatsApp. One night he called me and his opening gambit was: “I'm very pissed off.” I wondered which one of my constant transgressions had drawn his attention this time. It turned out he had fallen victim to an online scammer using my name and pretending to be in dire trouble. He had sent this person ¥50,000 in Amazon tokens. Several other people had received the same emails and not sent any money, but I think it was typical of Pio to want to help someone in difficulty straight away – absolutely no questions asked.

Isabel Reynolds has been reporting for Bloomberg in Tokyo since 2012. She has lived in Japan for more than 20 years and been a regular member of the FCCJ for most of that time

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A helping hand

Monzurul Huq

I got to know Pio soon after joining the FCCJ more than two decades ago. He had this wonderful quality of attracting people who came from places that were not so familiar among club members. This was later confirmed by my Egyptian friend Kamal Gaballa, who was Tokyo bureau chief of Al-Ahram in early 2000. As with me, it did not take long for Kamal to become a close friend of Pio, a friendship that both maintained and nurtured long after Kamal left Tokyo. As a result, the untimely demise of our Italian mutual friend saddened Kamal no less than the many others who were known to Pio. In a comment posted in my Facebook entry on Pio, Kamal said: “I remember attending a press conference at the Imperial Palace in 2002. They had instructed us beforehand to dress formally. However, Pio came in his casual attire and to my surprise, he was the only foreign journalist who was allowed to ask a question. This small episode convinced me that here was a person different from others we see around; and from then on, we became friends. He always insisted on behaving as he wanted.”

Yes, that was typical of Pio D’Emilia, a characteristic that convinced many of his true stubborn nature, both in his professional and his “real” life; and which caused irritation in some others who probably felt a bit uneasy about his unconventional attitude. However, even his enemies would agree that Pio had professional integrity that made him a leading Italian journalist, covering not only Japan, but also East and Southeast Asia. Wherever in the region there was trouble, Pio would not hesitate to rush to the scene, sometimes even bypassing official barriers.

I remember his trip to the Myanmar-Bangladesh border region soon after the second Rohingya refugee crisis unfolded in August 2017. He asked me if I could help him quickly obtain a visa that would enable him to reach the area from Bangladesh. I told him I was not sure, but would try to introduce him to our ambassador. Accordingly, Pio met the then ambassador of Bangladesh who wanted to help, but told Pio that it might take time as he needed to obtain permission from the appropriate authorities, since foreign journalists travelling to an area of disturbance needed to get official approval so they could be afforded protection. Pio was visibly upset, since as a true journalist he wanted to go there without delay.

I didn’t see him at the club for about a couple of weeks after that, but later, a smiling Pio told me that he had already been to the region via Thailand, using his old unofficial channels in the border areas. He showed me footage he had taken on his phone of suffering Rohingya refugees at makeshift camps. This episode convinced me once again of his professional commitment, which had been on display during his coverage of the March 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Whatever role he played at the club as an elected board member or on various committees, they were secondary to his primary role as a full-time correspondent.

When I served several times as co-chair of the professional activities committee, Pio often helped us invite important newsmakers. During his several terms as second vice president, Pio was instrumental in ensuring that our staff were fairly treated. This was another side of his character that remained hidden from most other people. He saw staff welfare as one of his duties, not something to advertise. He and I served on the board at the same time on at least in two occasions. During my term as president in 2009-2010, Pio was elected second vice president and played a crucial role in dismissing a general manager whose performance had been called into question. The club had to pay the departing GM financial compensation for terminating his contract. Pio, with the help of other committee members of, devised a way of ensuring that the club was able to recover those losses in a sensible and timely manner.

Pio always pushed to invite people who had experienced adversity in Japan and beyond. His close relationship with the Tiananmen Square activists resulted in some of them appearing at the club. His similarly close relationship with the Dalai Lama began after he visited Dharmashala to interview the Tibetan spiritual leader. He was close, too, to the Bangladeshi Nobel Peace prizewinner Dr. Muhmmad Yunus, who has spoken at the club a number of times.

Several dignitaries have paid tribute to Pio, as have those who have faced oppression and discrimination. They include Zaw Min Htut, a representative of Rohingya refugees in Japan, who posted on Facebook that he was “really heartbroken to learn that my very good friend, an Italian journalist based in Japan, is no more. He cared about human rights for all. Rest in peace, my friend; you’ll be remembered for your noble endeavor forever!” Writing from Prague, the former FCCJ member and Iranian journalist Nazafarin Mirzakhalil said: “Pio was a great man. He was kind and loved to help other people.”

It is unusual for an FCCJ member to be remembered with such warmth by so many people, spread out around the world. They do so as a way of acknowledging everything he did for them – extending a helping hand to make sure that their voices were heard in an unjust world.

Monzurul Huq is Tokyo bureau chief of Prothom Alo, the leading national daily of Bangladesh. He joined the FCCJ more than two decade ago and was president in 2009-2010.

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January 13, 2023

In Memoriam - Michael "Buck" Tharp (1945-2023)

We regret to announce that Michael Eugene “Buck” Tharp, a former president of the FCCJ, passed away in Plano, Texas, on January 6, 2023. He was 78. The immediate cause of death was reported as kidney failure but he had been under treatment for bone marrow cancer for some time.

Buck’s career as a foreign correspondent got under way in 1976 when he was posted to Tokyo by the Wall Street Journal as bureau chief. He subsequently worked in Japan for the New YorkTimes (1980-81) and the Far Eastern Economic Review (1981-84). After a stateside stint as San Francisco bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal (1984-87) he came back to Japan with U.S. News and World Report. In 1990 he returned to the USA.

He was FCCJ president 1989-1990.

Tharp set his sights on becoming a journalist while quite young. At the age of 16 he joined the Topeka Daily Capital newspaper as a copy boy. He studied English literature at St. Benedict's College in Atchison, Kansas, earning a B.A. honors degree, and followed this with a one-year scholarship at the University of Wales. He subsequently studied briefly at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

That phase of his schooling ended when he was drafted by the U.S. Army, with which he served in Vietnam. He was known to say that the experience proved useful when, later in his career, he reported on wars for U.S. News.

Buck taught journalism at California State University, Fullerton, while doing graduate studies there; he was awarded an M..A. In communications in 2007. In the same year he joined the Merced Sun Star paper as local news editor, becoming executive editor in 2008.

He was a keen basketball player until illness took him off the court.

We offer our sincere condolences to his family and his many friends. We have reached out to family members to discuss a possible memorial evening at the Club and will provide details if and when details are worked out.

Peter Elstrom

FCCJ President

Friends, colleagues and relatives pay tribute to Buck Tharp

Rich Read

I landed in Tokyo in 1987, eager to get started as a foreign correspondent. Riding Japan’s economic ascendancy, the FCCJ was in its heyday, with hundreds of journalist members from around the world and legions of associates who rounded out the club’s events and fattened its finances.

Plenty of correspondents at the top of the foreign media’s social hierarchy took little interest in a green American freelancer fresh from a year’s reporting in Bangkok. But Mike, of U.S. News and World Report — “You Snooze” as he and his sidekick (and my college classmate) Jim Impoco put it — and Brad Martin, then Newsweek bureau chief, were generous with beers, laughs and reporting advice as I began pursuing stories across Asia, the Soviet Far East and Down Under.

I regarded Buck and Brad as senpai as I opened a one-man bureau for the Oregonian — Portland, Oregon’s daily newspaper, where I had worked for five years previously. The publication with a name unpronounceable in Japanese joined other U.S. regional papers that were posting staff in Tokyo.

Mike, tall with shaggy black hair and a down-home accent, spiced up weekly foreign ministry briefings with blunt questions and ribald humor. He spun across the dance floor at FCCJ events with his then wife, Shelley Smith. While Mike had a wild side, he was always the gentleman, incapable of passing through a door ahead of a woman. He would stand in a Yurakucho Denki Building elevator saying “Dozo” and motioning politely for as long as it took for a startled Japanese “office lady” to realize that this towering gaijin actually meant that she should step out the door before him. When he became FCCJ president, I began serving on the board, where he presided with humor and crisp efficiency, keeping club finances in the black and professional events lively.

I moved back to Portland in 1994. Mike stopped by the next spring, en route to visit his brother, the Oakridge, Ore., police chief. With a grin and a guffaw, he popped a cassette into the VCR. He had just celebrated his 50th birthday, he said, and could still do a mean basketball layup. Sure enough, the video showed Mike dribbling hard, going in for the shot and dunking the ball. He always got a kick out of his athletic accomplishments, a major part of his life. Somehow he always found time thereafter to keep up with my stories for the Oregonian, sending generous critiques.

Mike loved telling stories about his reporting adventures, especially his war coverage, with a mix of bravado and self deprecation. Having been to North Korea a couple of times, I especially recall a story that he told about his trip there during the ping-pong diplomacy days, when he got in to cover an international tournament. I think that Brad might have been on the same trip. There was an encounter with a tractor that had an obscene name which Mike found hilarious.

Brad, Urban and all of us who have been to the DPRK are familiar with the tight controls placed on visitors, especially journalists, who typically get assigned a minder named Mr. Kim to take them to predesignated sites, interpret and watch their every move. Like every foreign reporter seeking authentic glimpses of the “workers’ paradise”, Mike cast about for ways during the ping-pong visit to escape his Mr. Kim, finally developing an original strategy. One morning before the start of his approved itinerary, Mike donned his jogging shorts and T-shirt and headed out of his hotel room. He strode across the lobby, where Mr. Kim awaited, attired in the usual cheap suit and tie. Mike didn’t stop. Outside, he broke into a relaxed run, quickly outpacing the frantic Mr. Kim, whose short legs and dress shoes were no match for Mike’s long legs and jumbo-size running shoes.

Mike cruised through the streets of Pyongyang, soon reaching the outskirts, beginning to get more revealing views of everyday North Korean life. All went well until two soldiers suddenly stepped into the road ahead of him. Yelling at him in Korean, they raised their AK-47s. The soldiers directed Mike to kneel down in the street in front of them. Soon he was on all-fours, the soldiers standing above him still yelling, a rifle pointed at each temple. This wasn’t good.

“Ping-pong, ping-pong,” Mike kept saying desperately, raising his right hand and waving it like a table tennis paddle.

Eventually, Mr. Kim showed up and rescued him. Mike had survived another scrape without causing a major international incident, and as always, had emerged with a good story to tell.

I kept in touch with Mike sporadically during his teaching days and his editorship in Merced. I recall a story about him stepping forward during a meeting between reporters and cops to volunteer to take hit from a Taser gun. He was always particularly proud of his kids, and told me about Nao’s photography and Dylann’s reporting accomplishments. Like all of his friends, I was thrilled when Mike told me about reconnecting with Jeralyn and his plans to drive a U-Haul to Plano. He kept active in journalism, writing about veterans for the Dallas Morning News.

I am quite sure that Mike made the difference in 2018 when I applied for the job of Seattle bureau chief and national reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He got in touch with his old friend Norm Pearlstine, by then LAT editor in chief, and gave him the word that I was OK. That led to a terrific few years at the end of my career covering the pandemic as it made its U.S. landfall in Seattle, the riots there and in Portland following the George Floyd killing, Northwest wildfires, Alaska mine developers, Coast Guard icebreakers and so on.

In the summer of 2019, Mike and Jeralyn came through Seattle. I was eager for Brenda — my main squeeze, as Buck would say — to meet them. They stayed in the master bedroom of the apartment in the waterfront tower where I was living and working, with a sweeping view across Elliott Bay to the Olympic range. We had a memorable evening on a houseboat-out-of-movie owned by Russ Daggatt and his wife Gemma — Brenda and me jumping from a second-floor diving board into Lake Union. Russ was a running buddy of Mike’s from Tokyo days. He and Gemma have since become great friends of ours.

It was wonderful to see Mike after so many years, and to get to know Jeralyn. It meant a lot to me for them to meet Brenda, whom I went on to marry last September. Buck was his same old jovial self. But it was hard to see the physical toll that the years had taken. Neuropathy made him unsteady on his feet, and there were other health challenges. He wasn’t going to let a bunch of ailments get in the way of a good time, though, and we enjoyed every minute of the visit, all the way until Jeralyn pushed his wheelchair onto the plane back to Dallas.

Mike and I stayed in touch after that by text, email and phone as he dealt with escalating medical issues. His courage and cheer toward the end were epic.

Mike saw me all the way from obscurity in Tokyo through fame, if not fortune, with the Pulitzers, to newfound obscurity and true love in retirement. It’s been a fantastic ride. I was sure lucky throughout to count him as a solid-gold friend.

Ron Yates

Mike Tharp was a good friend and longtime colleague. I first met him more than 45 years ago when we were both foreign correspondents based in Tokyo, Japan. Mike was with the Wall Street Journal, and I was with the Chicago Tribune.

Since then, we remained in almost constant contact. I watched Mike put together a stellar career at the highest levels of journalism, working for major news organizations such as the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times, and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Most recently, he served as executive editor of the Merced Sun-Star.

We bonded quickly after meeting in 1976 in Tokyo because we had a lot in common. We were both natives of Kansas and graduates of the University of Kansas, and we both played basketball in high school and college.

Here’s a little history about Mike:

Mike began his journalism career as a copyboy for the Topeka Daily Capital when he was 16 and later worked there as a darkroom boy, sports desk assistant, intern, and environmental writer. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English literature from St. Benedict's College, Atchison, Kan., where he was student body president and a two-year letterman on the national championship basketball team.

He then spent a year in grad school at the University of Wales as a Rotary Foundation Fellow, followed by a semester on scholarship at the University of Notre Dame Law School, from which he was drafted into military service. As a soldier in Vietnam, he wrote for the Army magazine Hurricane and was awarded a Bronze Star.

After completing coursework for a master's in journalism at the University of Kansas, he was hired by the Wall Street Journal, where he served as a reporter and bureau chief in Dallas, Tokyo, and San Francisco. He also was a correspondent for the New York Times in Tokyo and Tokyo bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review. In 1989-90 he was elected president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and I served as his vice president.

For 14 years, he was a bureau chief in Tokyo and a correspondent in L.A. for U.S. News & World Report, covering four wars in the 1990s.

He taught journalism for seven years at Cal State Fullerton University, where he was awarded an M.A. in Communications in 2007 and was named Outstanding Graduate Student. He became the local news editor of the Merced Sun-Star in June 2007 and executive editor in October 2008.

He won first place for local news writing in the 2007 Inland Press Association Contest for his story on a Merced marine killed in Iraq, and a Gruner Prize for meritorious public service in journalism for 2009. He covered the war in Iraq for six weeks for McClatchy in the summer of 2008 and returned there in mid-June 2009 for another deployment.

Mike was a consummate professional. He was an excellent reporter and a superb writer. Journalists such as Mike are rare and his expertise and talent will be missed – both in the newsroom and at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he taught journalism.

RIP, old friend.

Rich Tharp

Cousin Mike Tharp, 13 years older, inspired me to earn Eagle Scout, play high school basketball, and be an adventurous journalist. Also mentor to college students, young journalists, and ballplayers, Mike stayed friends for life with hundreds. We played hard together. Among Tharp raconteurs, Mike was best. His filmmaker son Nao and I humbly step into Buck’s storyteller void. Huge shoes ....

Anthony Rowley

I was not exactly looking forward to my first encounter with Mike Tharp back in 1981. I was business editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong and he had recently been appointed chief of the Review's Tokyo bureau in the old Nikkei building in Otemachi.

The Review, or FEER as many knew it, had also dispatched a young English journalist James Bartholomew, fresh from the Financial Times, to the Tokyo bureau to beef up the magazine's coverage of Japanese finance and economy.

As sometimes happens in newspaper bureaus, the chemistry between the bureau chief and the number two did not always work. Mike was a laid-back Texan, while Bartholomew was a “proper” - perhaps even a little uptight – Englishman.

When the friction boiled over, the then editor of the Review, a former British diplomat named Derek Davies – a rather fiery Welshman – ordered me during a visit I made to Tokyo to read the riot act to the warring colleagues and get things running smoothly again.

One Monday morning I strode into the bureau determined to lay down the law to both Tharp and Bartholomew. Mike was a giant of a man physically, which could be intimidating, while James was languorous and unconcerned.

I began my little speech about the need for harmony within the bureau when Mike suddenly grinned broadly, stuck out his hand to shake mine and said: "Sure, boss.” James erupted into giggling. The tension disappeared in an instant thanks to Mike's big-hearted personality. My job was done. He was a big man every sense. Our loss is the great newspaper in the sky’s gain.

Urban Lehner

I was the late, great (how painful it is to have to call him late) Mike Tharp’s immediate successor. It was late July to early August 1980. Typical Buck: he and I were going to be direct competitors, but he arranged a two-week transition in which we had about five meetings a day with sources of his he was introducing me to. Having just come from the more cutthroat world of Washington I was bowled over by his generosity.

Norman Pearlstine

Buck succeeded me in Tokyo as the WSJ’s correspondent and I believe that Masayoshi Kanabayashi (aka "chief") left AP-Dow Jones to work as Mike's assistant. But Mike and I never worked together and his New York editors discouraged him from having much to do with the AWSJ team in Hong Kong. I recall he got into North Korea with a visa to cover an international ping-pong tournament. Buck and I also spent a long, drunken night in the Hamilton Hotel's basement bar in Itaewon, Seoul, after we failed to leave before the overnight curfew kicked in. We did a couple of joint interviews in Japan and South Korea. I marvelled at how good a listener he was. He let the person he was interviewing do all the talking after asking one or two questions. He was able to sit, saying nothing, until the person he was interviewing felt the need to break the silence.

Roger Schreffler

Mike was a great friend and senpai. I can't count the number of times I reached out to him for advice over the years, both professional and personal, and he was always there. We had a mutual love of basketball, including the greatest Kansan (by way of Philadelphia) ever to play the game.

A short note for FCCJ members: Mike made me one of the chairs of the club's library committee back in 1989 when he was president. That would be my first active role in the club.

I will miss him.

Robert L. Kirschenbaum

Buck was always an optimist. Particularly when things were down for me, buck would buck me up. He will be greatly missed.

Mary Corbett

Buck was always someone I wish I could have known better before he left Japan, as he was always remembered around me as someone with infinite common sense, knowledge and love for the club whose advice was in constant demand long after his retirement and which he dispensed very generously.

Bob Reid

Truth be told I don’t think I ever met Mike face to face. However, as a once-faithful reader of the Far Eastern Economic Review, I knew his name and admired his work. So, when he reached out to befriend me on Facebook years ago, I was proud and humbled to accept. He was kind enough to say he remembered my work when I was based in the Philippines in the 1980s and 1990s. I considered that high praise coming from him. I admired his service in Vietnam and his love of Asia. Over the years we exchanged notes in the spirit of grumpy old survivors of Asian journalism of a bygone age. I shall miss him.

April 22, 2022

It is with deep sadness and regret that we announce the passing of veteran FCCJ Regular member, foreign correspondent and author Henry Scott Stokes at the age of 83 and after a lengthy period of illness.

Something of a legend in his time, Henry first came to Japan nearly sixty years ago in 1964 when he founded the Tokyo bureau of the Financial Times. which he headed until 1967 when he became bureau chief of The Times of London. He later went on to become Tokyo Bureau Chief of a third leading international newspaper, The New York Times, a position he occupied from 1978 to 1983.

Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes (to give him his full name) later went on to become a successful author with his best known book being "The life and death of Mishima Yukio" published in 1985. He also co-wrote "The Kwangju Uprising: An eyewitness press account of Korea's Tienamen" with Lee Jai Eui.

In a message informing the club of his father's passing, Harry Sugiyama Scott Stokes (a well known broadcaster and TV personality) referred to Henry as "my dear father, best mate and hero, Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes, former Tokyo Bureau Chief of the FT, The Times and The New York Times passed away peacefully in my mother's arms on Sunday morning, April 17th 2022." For now, added Harry "besides the pain and overwhelming grief, all I have for Henry is pure gratitude for being the best father I could ever have had."

Henry is survived by his son Harry and his widow Akiko.

A memorial event will be arranged shortly at the FCCJ.

Suvendrini Kakuchi

President,

FCCJ

Mr. Henry Scott-Stokes (1938-2022)

by Anthony Rowley

Henry Scott-Stokes (or Henry Johnstone Morland Scott-Stokes to use his full name) was quintessentially English, even though he spent the greater part of his life in Japan. He had a polish, charm and style that were perhaps better appreciated in his adopted home than in the increasingly brittle country of his birth.

He also had the quirkish sense of humour characteristic of "Wykehamists” as former pupils of Winchester College are known. Henry had studied at the independent boarding school for boys before going on to New College, Oxford.

He was entertaining and congenial, which made him an asset to life at the FCCJ. Henry had the singular distinction of having been bureau chief of no fewer than three leading international newspapers, all in rapid succession: the Financial Times bureau, which he opened in 1964 (the year he joined the FCCJ), The Times of London bureau (1967-1970) and The New York Times bureau (1978-1983).

The life of a foreign correspondent and bureau chief had a touch of romance in those days, before the arrival of the digital age meant dispatches from “our man in Tokyo” had to share space with agency reports and social media posts.

Henry's name was well known beyond Tokyo as I can attest from my days on The Times in the late 1960s and 1970s, when I would often hear him mentioned by colleagues at The Times and The Financial Times during our nightly gatherings at the bar of the Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars – an unofficial press club.

Henry was perhaps better known for his books than for his articles. The best-known was The Life and death of Mishima Yukio, published 1985, in which he chronicled the life and dramatic end of his close friend.

He also co-authored, with Lee Jai Eui, The Kwangju Uprising – an eyewitness account of the bloody suppression of South Korea’s pro-democracy movement in 1980.

A more recent book examined Japanese atrocities committed during the 1937 Rape of Nanking. Henry questioned the validity of some claims made about the incident, but later appeared to retract, and then reassert, his misgivings.

"Henry was both talented and controversial," says fellow correspondent and FCCJ veteran Bradley Martin. "He and I overlapped in Japan and Korea through some turbulent times [after] I arrived in 1977. I came to appreciate his willingness to rethink his own position if he concluded he had been in the wrong, and to try to make amends."

For almost a decade after leaving The New York Times, Henry worked with New York artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude on a joint work of art for Japan and America titled “The Umbrellas”. In the l990s, he worked for several years for Mary Moore, daughter of the British sculptor Henry Moore.

Henry was, according to one account of his life, "raised in an atmosphere shaped by his Quaker mother’s pacifism and his father’s eclectic interests as an army officer in two world wars and also a scholar of both Winchester College and New College Oxford before becoming a lifelong businessman”.

Born on June 15th, 1938, in Glastonbury, Somerset, Henry married Akiko Sugiyama, with whom he had a son, Harry Sugiyama Scott-Stokes. Harry, too, was educated at Winchester and then at Beijing Normal University and London University. He has since gone on to become a celebrity broadcaster and TV host.

Harry recalled a 2021 interview he did with his father for NHK, in which he asked him how he felt about his son failing to continue the long family tradition of studying at Oxford. Henry replied: "You failed upwards. Look at yourself now."

In a moving message informing the FCCJ of the death of his “fantastic” father, Harry referred to Henry as "my dear father, best mate and hero [who] passed away peacefully in my mother's arms on April 17th 2022. Henry died peacefully in hospital at the age of 83 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease".

He added: "You may know Henry as a hard-working, gregarious, sometimes stubborn, classic British journalist with an extensive knowledge of Japan. I knew him as a fun-loving, smiling and proud father; a best mate who always had my back. I would like to thank everyone who supported him."

Fellow FCCJ member Haruko Watanabe, who served with Henry on the FCCJ Board and election committee, recalled the delight Henry had taken in striking the gong at the end of the first Speak Out event. No one who met Henry will forget that irrepressible sense of humor.

Mr. Stefano Carrer

In memory of Stefano

by Pio d’Emliia

Stefano Carrer, 59, our long-time friend and colleague, passed away on May 21 2020, in Italy. He was returning from a whole day of hiking near his home city, Como, where he he was serving the lockdown period at his parents’ old house. He was late, and called his relatives who were waiting for him to join them at dinner. “Sorry I’ll be late,” he said. “Please go ahead. And don’t worry.” They didn’t. They should have.

Sometime after that call, at around 7:30 pm, he disappeared. Rescue teams, which are very efficient in Italy thanks to thousands of volunteers and experienced alpine guides, started to look for him in the middle of the night. It took them two full days, a helicopter and several drones to find his body at the bottom of a very steep ravine. We can only hope that he died immediately, without any painful suffering. Aldo, his brother in law, joined the rescue team and formally identified the body. He also made sure nobody else saw it.

Stefano was an FCCJ member for the last 20 years or so. A senior member and mutual friend once called him “the good Italian,” as compared to the bad one, me. He was right. For as much as I could be nasty, irreverent and (at times) furious, he was always gentle, polite, patient, and reasonable.

THE TRIPLE TRAGEDY OF March 11, 2011 brought us very close. On the very first night of the earthquake I called him and told him of my intention to try to reach the Sanriku coast and possibly Fukushima Daiichi on my scooter. My intention was just to let him know, something colleagues usually do in emergencies. I never expected him to ask me, “Do you have a spare helmet?” But he did; and I did.

In a matter of minutes we hit the road in the direction of Fukushima in the middle of the night, doing live reports here and there on Skype, which we were both using for the first time. Unfortunately, the road was totally blocked after Iwaki, so we had to return to Tokyo, wondering what to do. He was the one who had the brilliant idea to fly “beyond the battle field”: if we can’t reach from south, he said, let’s get there from the north.

We boarded the last flight to Akita (Haneda airport would close shortly after) and went on a hectic and quite unusual quest for a car. (Eventually we got one for free from a small public works contractor who was a fan of Nakata and Moritomo, the famous Japanese soccer stars who use to play in Italy.) We reached a totally devastated city of Kesenuma at dawn. We were the first foreigners there, reaching it even ahead of the Self Defense Forces.

Among the first people we met was an old man walking amid the ruins of his home. When he heard us speaking he smiled at us, like only Japanese people are able to do even in the most tragical situation, and welcomed us in perfect Italian. We later found out he was a leader of the Japanese rowing team at Rome Olympics, back in 1960. We continued exchanging nengajo from then until he passed away last year.

AFTER ONE FULL DAY driving south along the coast, we finally reached our destination right in front of the main entrance of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. There were no check points, only a couple of unattended road placards that read: “danger, traffic subjected to regulation.” I would never have imagined Stefano could be so fearless and brave, determined to get our story out.

Stefano pursued a journalist career, specializing in economy and finances, after graduating with a law degree. After a few years as a stringer in the US, he was hired by the the prestigious economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian equivalent of the Financial Times or Nikkei Shimbun. Japan was his dream, although nobody really knows what was the first impetus that drew him here. There must have been some personal reasons, probably an early love affair. He never married, but was very successful in getting women’s attentions until he settled for the love of his life, Keiko, whom he was probably going to marry, in the end.

From his first moments in Japan on a formal assignment, he produced hundreds of stories—and, more recently, short videos—not only on the economy and finances. He was curious, deeply cultured, thanks to his classic studies, and a voracious reader. His stories, even the “driest” ones, always featured some proof of his deep understanding of the history, culture and tradition of Japan and East Asia.

Quite often, he also competently covered China, despite a very difficult relation with the local colleague who saw him as a threat for her post. This internal conflict probably contributed to the recent decision by the paper’s bosses to close both offices, leaving East Asia with no resident correspondents. Stefano accepted the decision, of course, but was despondent and frustrated by the move. The last time I met him in Italy, back in February, he mentioned for the first time that he was looking forward to retirement, something that was hard for me to imagine.

Besides being a great and competent colleague and a very close friend, Stefano was a very active person. We would play tennis here in Tokyo and he used to join a sort of FCCJ ski club that we informally created a few years ago, along with Anthony Rowley, Joan Anderson and several other mutual friends. We will always treasure deep in our hearts the memories of our off-piste slopes and wild onsen adventures in wonderful, wild Hakkoda in Aomori prefecture.

Ciao Stefano, we will all miss you very much.

In Memoriam – Stefano Carrer

by Monzurul Huq

Monday, July 06, 2020

Stefano Carrer was the rare foreign correspondent in Japan who covered the country, but also took Japan deep into his heart. He did not simply cover Japan for his readers and audience, but presented the country with a love for the place and people, and Japan became his second home. His loss is great for his family and friends, and for those over the years with whom he shared his words and insights about the country. We would like to share some memories.

He traveled throughout Japan, often in the company of fellow journalists from other countries. Starting as a pen reporter in his early days in Japan, Stefano gradually moved to video for Il Sole 24 Ore. This was a transition that not everyone could do, but he managed it in a short period of time. Newspaper reporters now are asked by editorial bureaus to handle video, and many still feel uneasy handling video cameras. However, Stefano was quick to learn, and simply flooded his editorial office with video reports from Japan on issues, ranging from cos-play to Yasukuni visits. During his decade-long tenure in Japan, Stefano also covered every important story in the country. He later returned to the country to cover significant events after he was reassigned to his editorial office in Milan. I met him for the last time in Osaka for a G-20 summit. He was also the only foreign correspondent who had accompanied the now Emeritus Heisei Emperor on his last official visit to Vietnam and Thailand.

At the FCCJ, his warm presence was reassuring to friends and acquaintances. He talked about matters from his personal experience that were rich and colorful. This is what made him an eternal traveler willing to take any hardship for the sake of news coverage. I remember how eager he was to visit the border areas of Bangladesh and Myanmar to cover the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017, although he couldn’t go due to bureaucratic restrictions on both sides of the border.

Stefano was a true representative of media in the changing news world — always true to his convictions. His small video camera was with him wherever he went. I fondly remember that on some press tours he humbly requested me to hold the camera and record while he would continue narrating.

Stefano was not only a fellow journalist in Tokyo, but a pleasant companion with whom I’ve traveled around Japan. I remember during a press tour to Hokkaido that I joined him in a rafting competition. Neither of us were master rafters, and Stefano told me a story about always ending up on the losing side when someone joins an Italian. In death you don’t disap- pear, Stefano! Your dedication, professional integrity and warm smiling presence will never be forgotten.

In Memoriam – Stefano Carrer

by Nanako Yamamori

I ran into Stefano on a Milan street just after he moved back from Tokyo. Life in Milan wasn’t as exciting for Stefano, although he was busy and occasionally got away for short business trips. In Italy, he looked for every chance to stay in touch with Japan, such as Japan festivals, the Japan-Italy Business Group convention, the Far East Film Festival, and the Uniqlo Milan opening. If an event had anything to do with Japan, Stefano was there. He told me that he couldn’t decide whether to join a gym or buy a car because he tried to postpone any decision that could tie him to the city. He was always ready to leave for Japan.

He took advantage of his Milanese salary-man status and look