Bright Moonshine

On Tokyo's Asahi, which likes to call itself the New York Times of Japan, 30-year-old Hiroshi Nagaoka was only a police reporter in the bureau at Kobe. But like all reporters everywhere, Nagaoka dreamed of the great beat that would make his name & fame.

One night last week, Nagaoka rushed into the bureau chief's office with exciting news. Ritsu Ito, one of the nine Japanese Communist leaders whom the police have sought for three months, was in hiding near Kobe, reported Nagaoka, and an intermediary had arranged for him to interview Ito. At 1 a.m. Nagaoka left the Asahi bureau by taxi to keep his rendezvous. At 5:30 a.m. he was back in the office and pounding out his story.

After picking up his intermediary, wrote Nagaoka, he drove 20 miles to a spot where two men blindfolded him and led him into a deep pine forest. There the mask was taken off. "The moon was shining bright," reported Nagaoka, "and sitting on a huge rock three feet before me was the man I had come to interview." Not to be fooled, Nagaoka pulled out a photograph of Ito and compared it with the man's face. "Except for the grizzled tired face, the sharp gleaming eyes and the shabby suit," wrote Nagaoka somewhat ambiguously, "the man was undoubtedly Ritsu Ito." But Ito told him precious little in the three-minute interview that followed.

Nevertheless, Asahi (circ. 3,610,209) liked the story so well that it gave Nagaoka one of its rare bylines and spread the adventure across Page Two (Asahi's top spot for "sensational" news). Not so impressed were Kobe's police. They went over the story again & again with Police Reporter Nagaoka, each time noting discrepancies. Finally, Nagaoka broke down and confessed: the whole story was a hoax.

Never in sober old Asahi's 71 years had there been such a damaging blow to its integrity. In a Page One box next day it ran a profuse apology to its readers. Gravely, Asahi's board of directors met in emergency session, fired not only Nagaoka but his two superiors in Kobe, as well as the managing editor of Asahi's Osaka edition who had relayed the story. Nine other Asahi news executives caught blistering reprimands. Said lanky Kanichiro Shinobu, managing editor of the Tokyo edition and one of those reprimanded: "This is very embarrassing."

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