The intense, watchful journalist kept peering out the window of the luxury hotel restaurant, ignoring the salmon on his plate. A beer had relaxed him a bit, but his luncheon conversation was half-hearted. He was preoccupied.
Suddenly, he jumped out of his chair and ran for the door, abandoning his guest.
This was the week of Japanese-American trade talks, and there was no time for luncheon chatter if Waichi Sekiguchi wanted a quote from the Japanese trade official he had spotted at the hotel entrance. He proceeded to interview the official, write a news story on a laptop computer, transmit it via telephone-and return to the lunch table 30 minutes later.
As one of 75 Japanese reporters who cover Washington, the 34-year-old Sekiguchi is used to vying for good stories with an unusual intensity. He and most of his colleagues at the Washington bureau of the 3-million circulation Japanese economic newspaper Nikkei have to adapt their reporting techniques to a foreign country, cover more news events than most American reporters and write stories with a Japanese spin.
For Sekiguchi, a Tokyo native and the top trade correspondent at what could be called Japan’s Wall Street Journal, the arrival of Foreign Minister Tsutomu Hata on Feb. 10 was the start of a hellish week. Through the early-morning breakdown of trade talks, a tense press conference involving President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and the subsequent announcement of America’s trade retaliation against Japan, Sekiguchi covered it all.
Hectic schedule
Leisurely meals are just one of the many things sacrificed in a job that averages 14-hour days. Because it’s 14 hours later in Tokyo than in Washington, Sekiguchi usually has to be writing when most other journalists in the U.S. are just getting started covering their daily beats, between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., to meet the deadlines for his paper’s two editions.
Sekiguchi doesn’t eat at home with his wife and three children on weekdays, and he occasionally sleeps at a hotel near his office because he works so late. When, for a time, he did try dashing home at 2 a.m., he got so many speeding tickets that his driver’s license was suspended.
“Even though you’re not assigned to cover a particular thing, you have to be there,” Sekiguchi said earnestly as he explained why he and a colleague attended the same press briefings. “You have to show your willingness to do anything.”
On the eve of the Clinton-Hosokawa meeting, American and Japanese trade officials haggled until 4 a.m. That left Sekiguchi two hours of sleep sandwiched between writing a story and appearing at an 8 a.m. press briefing, writing another story and racing on to the afternoon press conference of the two leaders.
At the White House event, a trademark of Japanese journalism was evident: While about 200 reporters of both sexes filled the East Room, women were noticeably absent on the side reserved for Japanese reporters.
“In journalism, it’s very hard physically, so women sometimes cannot compete enough to survive,” Sekiguchi said. “If you are obliged to work from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. maybe you can’t do that and if you have a family, you might have to do more homework, so in that sense, the Japanese paper industry has been considered a job for men for a long time, but it’s now changing.”
After college, Sekiguchi hoped to work as a Japanese diplomat, but when he failed the foreign service exam he became a reporter for Nikkei instead. Early in his career the company allowed him to study at Harvard University as a Fulbright scholar, and now, like other Japanese professionals, he plans to stay with his first employer for life.
After the Clinton-Hosokawa press conference, Sekiguchi went out in a winter storm looking for toothpaste and underwear to get him through a second hotel night. Then he worked until dawn cranking out a story on the failed attempt at a trade accord.
Rivals
The Nikkei front-page headline the next day proclaimed, “Japan and U.S. trade framework fails.” The story, written by a Sekiguchi colleague on assignment from Tokyo, suggested that probable U.S. retaliation would make the two countries’ relations tense. Sekiguchi’s secondary story, or sidebar, detailed the events leading up to the breakdown.
By comparison, the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Nikkei’s rivals, described the failure to reach an agreement and highlighted Hosokawa’s call for cooler heads and further negotiation at a later date.
Competition among Japanese newspapers is strong, but Sekiguchi’s employer-best known for its compilation of the Nikkei average, a barometer for the Japanese stock market-dominates economic reporting in Japan through its five newspapers.
The real pressure on Nikkei correspondents comes as the result of their getting bylines on their stories. Colleagues in Japan do not get bylines, and that makes the Washington correspondents’ names open to scrutiny. There also are $100 to $200 bonuses for reporters who get big scoops.
While Sekiguchi chases stories, regardless of the time, he says his family is supportive and lets him rest when he does make it home.
“Actually, my wife recommended that I become a reporter,” said Sekiguchi. “I wanted to be a government servant-they go home early,” he joked.
Balancing act
On the morning after Friday’s Clinton-Hosokawa press conference, Sekiguchi overslept and was late to a Hosokawa briefing open only to Japanese journalists. American and Japanese officials commonly hold press conferences limited to their own country’s journalists, which can lead to an us-versus-them flavor in coverage.
Sekiguchi’s bureau chief, Hirotsugu Koike, said he tries to guard against either too much American or Japanese perspective. “We reminded ourselves that we should get information in Tokyo and Washington and compare before our final decision was made,” he said, regarding the newspaper’s coverage of the trade negotiations.
A bigger problem for Japanese journalists is language. For example, when business and government leaders gathered at a Monday meeting to discuss the failed trade negotiations, Japanese reporters huddled in packs and compared notes to check quotes of American officials. The problem was crystalized when an American spokesman vainly tried three times to understand and answer a Japanese journalist’s question.
The following Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor announced that trade sanctions would be imposed against Japan for breeching an agreement to open its cellular-phone market to American businesses, specifically to Motorola Inc.
As Nikon cameras flashed and Olympus tape recorders picked up Kantor’s denunciation of Japan’s trade practices, Sekiguchi was in the front row. A few minutes later he relayed Kantor’s statement to an office colleague via cellular phone while walking to the Motorola press conference, where he proceeded to doze.
Thursday topped off the week of trade milestones. With a host of other journalists, Sekiguchi arrived early at the Commerce Department to study the new trade figures before their official release. When the OK came, they speedily typed the figures into their laptop computers and transmitted them via modem to their newspapers.
With this latest figure and probably the year’s biggest trade story behind him, Sekiguchi wrapped up his three-year U.S. tour of duty in Washington and headed back to a less hectic career in Tokyo.
Though he would like to return to the U.S., where all his children were born, Sekiguchi said he welcomes the change of pace.
“Here I have to rush and run all the time, but in Tokyo I will be the one who gives the orders,” said Sekiguchi, now Nikkei’s chief electronics reporter in Tokyo.
