COLUMN ONE : Japan’s Media: How Watchful an Eye? : Investigations into nerve gas attacks create a dilemma for the passive press. Instead of challenging questionable tactics, journalists join public in rallying behind police.

Within hours after the first lethal gas fumes began poisoning people in this central Japanese town last year, police had pinpointed a man who fit a likely criminal profile.

Yoshiyuki Kono lived in the neighborhood where the fumes were set off. He had bottles of pesticides in his yard and once worked for a chemical firm.

As he and his wife lay hospitalized from the gas, Kono says, police used lies, verbal brutality and an illegal search of his home to force confessions. In bedside interrogations, they exhorted: “You’re the criminal. Be honest!”

They reduced his 16-year-old son to tears by dishonestly telling him that his father had confessed and he’d better do likewise.

In a frenzy of coverage, the media reported that Kono had caused the tragedy by inadvertently mixing a lethal brew of pesticides--all this based on leaks from anonymous police sources.

There was just one problem. The police and the press were wrong.

Kono was never arrested. Today, the Nagano prefectural, or state, police in Matsumoto say he was never considered a suspect, only a victim.

As the soft-spoken salesman struggles to rebuild a life threatened by anonymous callers and shattered by sensational headlines--”Background of the Poison Gas Man,” for instance--suspicion has shifted to the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult.

That group is alleged to have manufactured the nerve gas sarin and carried out a rampage of terror ranging from kidnapings to the Matsumoto attack that killed seven people to the March assault on Tokyo subway riders that killed 12 people and sickened more than 5,500.

Kono’s case--and the extensive investigation into Aum--underscore a pointed dilemma for Japan’s media as the nation grapples with one of the most sinister crimes ever perpetrated against its public. As guardians of the public trust, do the media raise their voices over the police probe? Or, given the horrifying public threat, do they support the police with obliging coverage--even at the risk of damaging individual lives?

The same situation might spark controversy in the United States over the role of the media, over balancing public safety against individual liberties, over the rights to a free press versus a fair trial. But even though the Japanese enjoy nearly identical rights by virtue of an American-written constitution, the most striking sound here is silence.

The point is, quite simply, moot: The overwhelming majority of Japanese support the police activities. As a result, many reporters here say, it is neither the time nor the place for them to raise ticklish questions.

Asked if he suspected that police were employing the same kinds of tactics against Aum as they did against Kono, court reporter Yoshio Kurabayashi of Nippon Television said: “The straight answer is yes. But public opinion is that people don’t want anything at all to interfere with the police. So we are not looking into any illegalities.”

*

In an editorial last week, the Sankei Shimbun, Japan’s most conservative national newspaper, criticized human rights attorneys for “going overboard” in advising Aum clients of their right to remain silent and to reject police questioning.

“We cannot accept this kind of activity because [the lawyers] are ignoring public security,” the editorial said.

At the other end of the ideological spectrum, the Asahi Shimbun is largely silent on the issue.

“We are going to have to examine these issues, but now is not the time,” said Junichi Mori, an editor involved in Aum coverage.

They are backed by enormous public support. In a new poll by a third newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, 63% said the police are doing a good job, 28% said they want them to press even harder and 4% said they have committed excesses.

Americans wearied by crime might envy such national consensus. But a few voices here worry about the accuracy and fairness of the media coverage.

“The police have used the irregular mode of leaking to the media information that creates an overwhelming impression that Aum did it and the police have made no mistakes,” charged Makoto Endo, who is representing Aum attorney Yoshinobu Aoyama. “The public has been mind-controlled. We have become a fascist state.”

Some commentators here say coverage of the sarin probe reflects the differences in social roles played by Japanese and Western journalists.

Eamonn Fingleton, author of “Blindside,” a provocative new book on Japan’s economic might, says reporters in Confucian societies view their primary role as supporters of the Establishment rather than as impartial referees.

“There’s a feeling that we’re all in this together,” he said. “They generally don’t make it difficult for other members of the Establishment because they essentially see [the Establishment] as benevolent.”

Shigenori Kanehira, producer for the Tokyo Broadcasting System’s popular show “News 23,” said Japan’s democratic freedoms of the media and religion are not yet well understood because they are only 50 years old in a society with a 2,700-year history.

In trying to promote those rights and walk the fine line between propagandizing for Aum or for the police, Tokyo Broadcasting System has distinguished itself by presenting a wide variety of voices--cult leaders, former prosecutors, investigative journalists, sociologists.

*

Although the nation’s most influential network, the publicly run NHK-TV, has refused to invite Aum members onto its current affairs programs, Kanehira said TBS believes that viewers are smart enough to judge the cult for themselves.

The show has probed everything from Aum’s Russian connection to today’s disenchanted youth to the shadowy powers behind the cult. And TBS was alone in giving prominent exposure to Kono--deliberately broadcasting a long interview with him on the day of Aum guru Shoko Asahara’s arrest, when ratings were sure to be high.

The network also gave voice to lawyers concerned about forced confessions and other police abuses in a special May 30.

“We want to make people think,” Kanehira said. “Our most important role is to check government power, but this function is still weak in Japan.”

Tatou Takahama, a Yomiuri Research Institute senior fellow, argued that the media have begun to more actively challenge the Establishment since the end of the Cold War, and that amassing the intellectual credentials to do so is a key aim of his institute.

In its biggest mobilization of resources for an ongoing story, the Yomiuri Shimbun has assigned about 60 reporters--two-thirds of its city desk--to cover the sarin probes.

Television stations at one point had dispatched virtually all of their camera crews and were churning out up to 25 specials a day.

Yet most news accounts are compiled by anonymous teams of reporters based on anonymous police sources impossible to confirm because the National Police Agency steadfastly declines to comment. With the exception of one televised news conference to announce Asahara’s arrest, police have not issued any official statements in open public forums.

In this bewildering world of superheated Aum coverage, mistakes have been made.

Early reports that a man suspected of the subway attack had been overwhelmed by fumes and hospitalized were wrong. More recently, one newspaper reported that an attorney believed kidnaped by the cult was seen arriving at the group’s Mt. Fuji compound, while a competing newspaper reported the same day that he had died en route in a car after he was injected with drugs.

It is simply not known by anyone but police how accurate the leaks are, whether the Aum suspects reportedly confessing are really doing so and whether any of their statements are being forced under duress, as has occurred in numerous documented cases here.

Unlike the United States, Japan does not allow attorneys to be present during police questioning, even though Japan’s constitution contains language identical to that of the Fifth Amendment. Attorneys are also denied the right to review their clients’ written statements to police before they sign them, said Takashi Takano, an attorney attempting to obtain the same rights for Japanese as are granted to Americans.

As a result, Takano and others charge, police excesses have been a long-running problem in Japan, exacerbated by a relative lack of media coverage. Kono’s is the only sarin-related case that has come to light so far, and his account paints a sobering picture of the relationship here among police, the press and criminal suspects.

He is suing the local Shinano Mainichi newspaper for libel and has recently obtained public apologies from the Asahi, Sankei and Yomiuri newspapers. He has also asked the Japan Bar Assn. to look into his charges of police excess.

Recounting the gas fumes incident, Kono says it was the grisly death of his two setter dogs that first tipped him off that something was terribly amiss the night of June 27 last year. His wife and three children were about to go to sleep when he heard a noise outside--the thump of the agonized dogs against the house. Frothing at the mouth, they soon died.

Moments later, his wife began convulsing, and Kono started going blind and feeling nauseated. They were rushed to the hospital, but by the next day he began to realize he was being viewed as a suspect, not a victim.

The children, all teen-agers, were unharmed.

Police apparently targeted him because of the chemicals in his yard, but Kono says the materials were used for his extensive botanical garden and hobby of photography.

He never tried to make pesticides, he said.

But one day after the attack, two police officers visited his hospital room and said: “What happened? Please tell us honestly.”

*

The same night, police raided his home. Although the search warrant authorized only the seizure of chemicals and the canine corpses, police also confiscated his floppy disks, business cards, resume, notebooks, videos, pots and pans, watering pot, rubber boots and other items, according to police and court documents that Kono showed reporters.

By June 29, the media were reporting that Kono had set off the gas cloud by making mistakes while mixing pesticides. Not every publication identified him by name, but Kono says many townspeople quickly figured out who was the “44-year-old company employee from a forklift firm.”

One newspaper, quoting unidentified sources, said Kono had disclosed his “mistake” to his ambulance driver. Kono says he did no such thing.

Another newspaper reported that there were “chemical drips” in Kono’s yard. There weren’t; the “drips” turned out to be pieces of dried grass, Kono said.

Other reports had him “hinting” to his daughter that he was involved in the incident and said he had confessed to making poison in the yard with his wife. Another account said the chemical Freon, with which poison gas could be made, was found in his yard. All of the reports were false, Kono said.

“The media decides on a conclusion first and finds the evidence to support it,” he said. “The conclusion was that Kono is a criminal.”

A Nagano prefectural police spokesman said he could not respond to Kono’s charges because he was unaware of them. He also said accuracy was the media’s responsibility. But reporters say they were merely following the police lead.

“We have to report the direction of the police investigation, and 100% of it was tilting toward Kono,” one reporter said. “It can’t be helped. This is not a characteristic of Japan but also occurs in America, doesn’t it?”

Even though police had not officially identified him as a suspect, Kono says they battered him with questions: “You’re the criminal, aren’t you?” “Don’t you feel bad for the people who died?” “We know what you’ve been doing for 44 years.”

His children were hounded by the media; he began receiving hate mail and more than 100 threatening phone calls.

“You are a liar, eccentric, coldblooded, mentally deranged and abnormal man,” one postcard read. “Matsumoto citizens fear and hate you.”

The tide finally began to turn when chemists started speaking out, saying sarin could not possibly have been made with the substances seized from Kono’s home. And a mysterious flyer began circulating in town that said Aum, not Kono, was the perpetrator.

Police ended their questioning of Kono last July 31 but continued to contact his friends and acquaintances, he said.

Despite his harrowing tale, many reporters say they trust police and see no particular need to revise their relationship--to insist on more public statements, for instance, or to bear down on irregularities.

When a small group of attorneys here held a news conference this week to protest the Sankei editorial against the right to refuse police questioning, they garnered mostly negative reviews for impeding the investigation. And they received threatening calls.

“I just want people to think about this issue, since most Japanese don’t know what actually goes on inside an interrogation room,” said Takano, the attorney.

That is Kono’s message as well. Although he wants apologies, he does not plan to sue either the police or the major media because, he said, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fighting.”

He has more pressing things to do.

Every day, he visits his wife, Sumiko, who is still hospitalized in a vegetative state, speechless and strapped to feeding tubes, her eyes blankly moving but not seeing. The doctors have told him that she is beyond recovery, but Kono refuses to give up hope and quietly talks to her every day.

He also pauses daily before his Buddhist altar, especially giving thanks to the spirits of his two dogs, Pipi and Hime. “If it weren’t for them, my whole family would be dead,” Kono says.

Every day, he checks his mail. While hate letters still come in, notes of support from strangers kind enough to care are starting to outstrip them. Here is one:

“You are the first and most serious victim of sarin. We are praying for the fast recovery of your wife and we apologize to your entire family.”

Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.