In Japan, a Journalist Takes a Stand by Striking Out on His Own

Makoto Watanabe has never forgotten the day when his previous employer, one of Japan’s biggest newspapers, retreated from its biggest investigative scoop about the Fukushima nuclear disaster: that workers had fled the plant against orders from the plant’s manager.

It was 11 years ago, and the Asahi Shimbun had come under fire from other media and government supporters, who said the newspaper had misrepresented what were just garbled instructions. After proclaiming that it stood behind the story, the Asahi did an abrupt about-face at a news conference and retracted it.

The newspaper later gutted the investigative group he worked on that produced the article, telling reporters to be less contentious toward authorities. Mr. Watanabe quit his job at the leading newspaper, a rare move in Japan. But what he did next was more unusual: Mr. Watanabe started Japan’s first media nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism.

“The newspaper was more interested in protecting its privileged access than informing its readers,” Mr. Watanabe, 50, recalled. “I wanted to make a new media that wouldn’t fold.”

Eight years later, his Tokyo Investigative Newsroom Tansa remains small. As the editor in chief, he supervises a staff of two full-time reporters, a volunteer and an intern. On a recent afternoon, they worked in a spartan room with two small tables and bookshelves on the second floor of a nondescript Tokyo office building.

But Tansa, which roughly translates as “in-depth investigation,” is finally making a mark. Last year, it published a series of articles that exposed decades of forced sterilizations of mentally disabled people, forcing the government to issue an apology and pass a law to pay compensation to the victims. Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, signed a deal to use some of Tansa’s content.