Asia’s Version of Paparazzi Leaves Royalty Off-Limits

Snapping wedding photos was an easy job for veteran cameraman Toshi Nakayama--but it drove him out of Japanese journalism.

In a cautionary tale well known to all who might consider challenging the formidable “chrysanthemum curtain” that shields the staid Japanese imperial family from the rambunctious media, Nakayama was barred from palace work by the Imperial Household Agency for having the gumption to take a candid photograph at the 1990 wedding of the emperor’s second son.

Was it a titillating shot of the bride arranging her petticoats or an intimate close-up of the nuptial kiss?

Hardly. Nakayama’s offense was to have made public the chaste, charming moment when Princess Kiko reached out a white-gloved arm to brush a lock of hair from the forehead of her bridegroom, Prince Akishino, as they prepared for their formal wedding portrait.

Decorum still reigns almost supreme in media coverage of the Japanese imperial family. It is the product of an unwritten but vigorously enforced code governing photographic access; of self-censorship by the media maintained in part by fear of the pro-emperor right wing; and not least, of the extreme self-restraint that is practiced by the Japanese royals.

“His majesty the emperor never does anything that would give reporters a scoop,” said Nakayama, who was a Kyodo News Service photographer assigned to the palace for the wedding. And the same is expected of the rest of the clan that claims to have ruled Japan in an unbroken line for about 3,000 years.

As the West ponders whether paparazzi were culpable in the death of Britain’s Princess Diana, a shocked Asia is scrutinizing the role of its own celebrity hunters, particularly in the feisty and lucrative media markets of Japan and Hong Kong.

While Japanese royalty are given kid-glove treatment, politicians, celebrities and criminal suspects are considered fair game.

Focus magazine, famous for having once run a large picture of a Japanese lawmaker urinating in the parliament garden, came under intense fire this summer after it printed the photograph of a 14-year-old Kobe boy who had confessed to murdering and decapitating another child.

Focus and other Japanese publications are also fond of “secret assignation photos” of glitterati slinking out of hotels or condominiums with an attractive companion who is not their spouse.

Recent quarries have included a top pop singer, a famous writer caught with another woman for a second time (he slugged the first tabloid reporter who tried to photograph him) and a former Olympic gymnast whose pregnant wife was also interviewed once her husband confessed to his infidelity. Many of the shots are taken with hidden cameras.

Hong Kong’s press corps is also famous for exceeding the limits of good taste. One favorite circulation-boosting tactic is to sneak up on ordinary couples smooching along the waterfront and then print the photographs. But several recent incidents have helped redefine decency and discretion.

Last year, gangsters attacked a magazine publisher and cut off his left arm with a meat knife in gory apparent retaliation for articles about regional gang wars and tycoons’ mistresses. The publisher, Leung Tin-wai, had his arm reattached and is now back at work overseeing the provocative Surprise Weekly.

Leung and the police do not know who was behind the attack on the Chinese-language magazine or which story prompted the attack. But “it sent a message to stay away from some people’s private lives,” Leung said.

He has taken the hint and is now more circumspect. “I don’t think it’s necessary to chase celebrities like that, and we definitely wouldn’t print a photo of Diana in the wreck,” Leung said. “I remind my team of reporters not to do those sorts of things.”

Likewise, the weekly Next Magazine, which has a reputation for the most sensational reporting in Hong Kong, said it won’t publish photos taken of Diana as she lay dying.

“First of all, we couldn’t afford it, and we have to maintain good taste,” said its publisher, Yeung Wai-hong. He said he learned his lesson a few years ago when the magazine put on its cover a photograph of a young boy’s body after he was kidnapped and murdered.

“Readers really objected,” Yeung said. “Their letters are still ringing in my ears. They said it was like murdering the kid a second time. We learned gradually to respect that.”

Mainland China’s tightly controlled press is banned from reporting on the private lives of Chinese public figures, but it thrives on scandals from abroad. The Jiefang Erbao (Liberation Daily) translated paparazzi as “pai-pai [the sound a camera makes] la ji [rubbish]” and denounced the capitalist media.

“Diana cast off the royal family, but she could not break out of the circling Western media,” the newspaper said. “To the Western press, Diana was like a coin on the ground. . . . Our Western peers’ sense of social responsibility has deteriorated.”

Though errant celebrities are definitely “a coin on the ground” to Japanese freelance photographers, they tend to earn much less than Western paparazzi. Magazines have been known to pay up to $30,000 for sensational shots, but most Japanese celebrity shots go for closer to $1,000--in part because there is no international resale market for photos of celebrities not known abroad, photographers and publishers said.

“We were really surprised to hear they chased Diana on motorbikes,” said Masakazu Araki of the Nikkan Gendai tabloid. “That kind of thing has never happened in Japan. There is no reason for paparazzi to exist in Japan because the pay is so low.”

Unlike the British tabloids that ran photos of a pregnant Princess Diana seaside in a bikini, Japanese paparazzi have never even snapped a shot of Crown Princess Masako, wife of Crown Prince Naruhito, in a nightclub, let alone in a swimsuit.

They did hound the former diplomat before her 1993 marriage to the crown prince--so much so that she once reportedly called a photographer a “worm”--and the tabloids have since made much of her failure to produce a male heir.

But it is now the job of the 1,130 employees of the Imperial Household Agency to make sure Masako is never ambushed by cameras. She makes their job easier by rarely appearing in public, and she is never seen around town shopping, dining or socializing.

Nakayama, who was banned from the palace after his famous photograph of Kiko, ultimately quit journalism in disgust over the Japanese media’s failure to challenge the unwritten rules for covering the emperor. But he credits the Japanese system with keeping the paparazzi at bay and preserving the dignity of the Chrysanthemum Throne while the House of Windsor has plummeted in the British public’s esteem.

“This is going to sound paradoxical, but the Japanese Imperial Household Agency is doing a good job of protecting the imperial family,” Nakayama said. “[Buckingham Palace] is falling down on the job.”

Still, there are rare lapses in security. One weekly recently printed a photo of Empress Michiko swimming in the ocean that had been taken with a hidden camera through a telephoto lens, said an industry source who asked not to be named.

Publishers said most Japanese magazines would not risk displeasing the Imperial Household Agency, which owns all photographs taken of the emperor at public ceremonies and can refuse to distribute the images to any newspaper, magazine or agency whose disrespect might damage the imperial mystique.

Moreover, while only members of the Imperial Household Agency’s press club have the access to do any real reporting, they face expulsion if they print much of what they learn.

Attacks believed to be the work of right-wing thugs exercise an even more chilling effect.

The offices of two Japanese magazines were sprayed with bullets in 1993 shortly after they printed criticism of Empress Michiko attributed to an unnamed Imperial Household Agency source. Among the empress’ alleged misdeeds: Asking the palace staff for instant ramen noodles and peeled apples at 2 a.m. No one was arrested for the shootings. Both magazines printed apologies.

Efron reported from Tokyo and Farley from Hong Kong.