Mitsuko Shimomura Breaks New Ground for Japanese Women

She joined the Asahi Weekly Magazine 10 years ago. She was the only female writer on the staff.

For eight months she has been a roving correspondent in the United States for Asahi Shimbun, one of Tokyo’s leading daily newspapers, with a circulation of 7,5 million. It is a lonely prominence. Shimomura, at the age of 41, is believed to be the only Japanese woman ever to have become a foreign correspondent. “I’m simply working my head off. I keep moving, moving, moving.” At the moment, Shimomura is doing the kind of important interviews that have made her famous in Japan. The subject is often economics because that is her field of expertise.

She majored in economics at Keio University in Tokyo and received a master’s degree in economics at New York University in 1964. Her first six months in the United States were a nightmare, she said, because of her faulty English. She would dream that English books were tumbling down on her, she said, and she invariably awoke with a scream. Finally, there was “a kind of melting”, and the English came to her.

She thinks her drivecomes from her mother, who became a doctor in the days when female physicians were in Japan.

Her mother was the fifth graduate of the Tokyo Women’s Medical College. “My father, who’s a business executive, wanted me to become a medical doctor, too, but I just wanted to write so much. At that time there was no opportunity – it was just like a dream”.

Her break came at 1964 Winter Olympics in Tokyo, where Asahi Shimbun hired her as an English interpreter. She interpreted for the newspaper’s reporters and interviewed athletes. In 1965 the newspaper took her on as a staff writer for This Is Japan, its English-language annual publication. In 1971 she was transferred to the Weekly Asahi: “I had to start writing in Japanese again, and it wasn’t easy. But I worked up gradually from little things to pieces on social changes among woman in that office. The editors didn’t know what was going on.”

Although courteously treated by the men in her office, she said she felt “alone and isolated.” Of Asahi’s 3000 reporters and editors, only seven at the Tokyo headquarters are women, with 20 more women in outlying bureaus. Once a year there is a “women’s network” luncheon at Asahi. The group’s greatest achievement, she said, was in obtaining equality between men’s and women’s wages.

Soon after becoming a foreign correspondent, Shimomura went to Copenhagen for the UN conference on women, then covered an OPEC conference in London. But above all she likes to do lengthy, one-person interviews.

Speaking about her interviewing manner she said: "I listen, I am very low-key. I want to let people say what they believe in. I want them to trust me so they will open their hearts."

She does not believe she will ever become Westernized or Ameri­canized. "My instincts and my ways of thinking are deeply Japanese. I want to keep it that way. It makes me a better journalist."

NOTES

a roving correspondent - разъездной корреспондент

circulation - тираж

to work one's head off - работать, не покладая рук

a master's degree - ученая степень магистра (присуждается университетом лицам, успешно завершившим по крайней мере год учебы и исследовательской работы после окончания уни­верситета)

drive и - энергия, напористость; his style has a drive - у него энергичный стиль

headquarters - штаб, главное управление

outlying bureaus [' bjuarouz] - отделы, находящиеся не в глав­ном управлении

"women's network" luncheon - торжественный обед, органи­зованный для женщин, работающих в газете

I am very low-key - я держусь в тени

4. a) Imagine you are interviewing Shimomura. Formulate questions. Work in pairs:

When/join/the Asahi Weekly Magazine;

How long/be/a roving correspondent/United States/Asahi Shimbun;

What kind of newspaper/be/Asahi Shimbun;

What/be/the circulation/Asahi Shimbun;

How many women/work/foreign correspondents/Japan;

What/be/subject/Shimomura's interviews;

What university/graduate;

What subject/receive/master's degree;

What university/receive/a master's degree;

When/hire/English interpreter;

What newspaper/hire/English interpreter;

Whom/interpret for;

When/taken on/staff writer;

What kind of publication/be/This Is Japan;

What language/write in;

When/transferred to/the Weekly Asahi;

How many reporters/editors/be/the Weekly Asahi;

How many women/work/Tokyo headquarters;

What kind of journalistic job/prefer.

b) Quickly look through the alternatives and mark the one which is nearest in meaning to the word or phrase given:

1. the field of expertise - a) the place of experiment

b) the problem researched

c) the province of knowledge

2. faulty English - a) well spoken English

b) English with mistakes

c) easily understood English

3. a break - a) opportunity

b) a nervous stress

c) an end

c) Sum up what the text has to say on each оf the following points:

1. The details of the career of Mitsuko Shimomura.

2. Her educational background,

3. Her family.

4. Women in Japanese journalism.

5. The professional qualities of Mitsuko Shimomura.

d) What do you think is the main idea of the article? Give arguments supporting your viewpoint. Summarise the text.

e) Look through the text "Work of the Foreign Correspondent" at the beginning of Unit 3 and state whether the text about Shimomura (a) illus­trates some viewpoints expressed in it; (b) contradicts some of the view­points.

5. Check your memory.

Text What Makes a Good Journalist (Unit 1)

предпочитать, качество, искренний интерес, знаменитый, скром­ный, пытливый ум, квалификация, развитой ум, скромность, ясный стиль, выскочка, суждение, хорошо информированный журналист, быть способным к языкам, быть уравновешенным человеком, чело­век с практическим складом ума, рассеянный человек, человек, ин­тересующийся международными проблемами, журналист с широ­ким кругозором, хорошо образованный учитель, проявлять блестя­щие способности ко многим предметам, опытный журналист

Text Journalism Is a Hard Life (Unit 2)

надоедать, возбуждать, волновать, требующий большого внима­ния и заботы, pасстраивать, нарушать, обманывать чьи-л. надежды, вознаграждать, принимать решения, брать на себя ответственность

Text What Does It Take to Be a Journalist? (Unit 2, Ex. 6)

обычный, средний; ответственный; надежный; заслуживающий доверия; искренний, неподдельный; преданный, посвятивший свою жизнь делу...; зависимый; зависящий; любознательный; восторжен­ный, полный энтузиазма; склонный создавать себе идеалы

Text Journalism as a Career (Unit 2, Ex. 10a)

редактор отдела, заместитель редактора; редактор; рукопись, материал; мальчик, который носит рукописи; выпускать газету; журналистское задание; выполнять задание; телетайп; наборный цех; пробный оттиск страницы; редакция газеты (аи.); работа в редакции; комната в редакции, в которой проходит отбор, анализ и обработка новостей; печатный станок; выпуск газеты

Text The News Editor(Unit 2, Ex. 13e)

редактор отдела информации; любой газетный материал; отдел городских новостей; отдел новостей по данному штату; отдел ново­стей по стране; отдел новостей телеграфных агентств; отдел ино­странных новостей; отводить большую (незначительную) пло­щадь...; редактор отдела верстки; делать макет страницы; освещать событие; репортер широкого профиля; сотрудник редакции, обраба­тывающий материалы репортера; личное досье

Text Work of the Foreign Correspondent (Unit 3)

освещать новости; депеша, корреспонденция; начинающий ре­портер; давать исчерпывающее разъяснение подоплеки событий; описывать событие как очевидец; воссоздавать обстановку; содер­жательная статья; первоклассный репортер широкого профиля; ино­странный корреспондент; чувство новости; остро развитое чувство значимости новости

6. Here are some quotations to think over and discuss. Write short es­says giving your arguments for and against.

It is the delight in telling somebody something, it seems to me, that makes a man go into journalism and thereafter constitutes his personal reward.

* * *

You cannot know too much or have too many useful qualities to be a good journalist.

* * *

The TV men are certainly more important than the newspapermen, which is undoubtedly true but they are certainly more noisy.

* * *

I cannot imagine any more rewarding way of life than journalism. I must admit i am in no position to speak of the advantages and disadvan­tages of other professions, since I have never worked outside journalism; but after 34 years in journalism I am still fascinated by the birth of the daily newspaper. Every day is a new day. Yesterday's news is history.

* * *

When he retired in 1977 after 33 years with the New York Times, in­cluding posts as a foreign correspondent, managing editor, and chief of the Washington bureau, Clifton Daniel said, "There's no profession that offers you more variety in life or more excitement."

* * *

As much as any other field, modern journalism offers the stimulation of action, the challenge of discovery, the sense of creativity.

* * *

There are two great characteristics that make news work worthwhile. First, journalists are forced to keep learning, to enter new worlds, to see life from yet another perspective. Second, they are supposed to say what things really are.

* * *

The Nineteenth Century was the era of the novelist, the Twentieth is the era of the journalist.

* * *

One of the editors sums up what he considers the minimum require­ments for a journalist: a thorough education, sound training, and disci­pline; familiarity with basic skills of the journalist; a deep respect for one's personal and professional integrity.

* * *

Most journalists find their work interesting and rewarding on the whole. They face new situations every day. They have chances to meet important and interesting people and deal with vital social and political issues. They get pleasure from doing a public service, however small their contribution. While they work constantly under deadline pressures, they consider this to be part of "being in the action". Most journalists develop a feeling of camaraderie toward their colleagues, of belonging to the news fraternity.

* * *

Editors and other experts have cited many qualities that go to make a good journalist. Some say curiosity, a "nose for news". Others say integ­rity and courage, or vitality, or diligence. Still others say an ability to write with style and a disciplined mind to understand and relate the com­plex issues of modern times.

I shouldn't worry too much whether you have this or that quality, let alone a couple of dozen of them. The chief question is. whether the idea of being a reporter attracts you.

* * *

It is fairly safe to say that the journalist who is most likely to get to the top is he who is a good, all-round man and at the same time has made himself something of an expert in one or two special directions. He must know a little about a lot, and a lot about a little.

* * *

I can testify, however, that it is not essential to be an aggressive, fire- breathing extrovert to become a reporter. I myself was and still am the shy type, uneasy in the presence of the loud, the muscular, and the men­acing. Even so I got a job as a reporter too. Such a meek fellow takes on new stature and prestige when he can say, "I'm from the News." For now a powerful organization stands behind him.

* * *

Compared to men, then, women in journalism are few, and the road is harder for them. But there is no doubt about it. Some of the best newspa­permen in the business are women.

* * *

A journalist has a choice of three basic roles to play in the news business. He or she can be a reporter; an editor who edits and otherwise processes the news gathered by the reporter; or a supervising editor who manages the overall editorial operation.

* * *

What you do every day is use your intellect and your talents to create something that is new and unique to you.

Unit 4

JOURNALISM IS INFORMATION

What is journalism? Journalism is information. It is communication. It is the events of the day distilled into a few words, sounds or pictures, processed by the mechanics of communication to satisfy the human curi­osity of the world that is always eager to know what's new.

Journalism is basically news. The word derives from "journal"; its best contents are "du jour", of the day itself. But journalism may also be entertainment and reassurance, to satisfy the human frailty of a world that is always eager to be comforted with the knowledge that out there are millions of human beings just like us.

Journalism is the television picture beamed by satellite direct from the Vietnam war, showing men dying in agony. It is the television picture of a man stepping on to the surface of the moon, seen in millions of homes as it happens.

Journalism can communicate with as few people as a classroom news-sheet or a parish magazine, or as with many people as there are in the world.

The cave-man drawing a buffalo on the wall of his home did so to give other hunters the news that buffaloes were nearby. The town-crier reciting the news in the market-place provided a convenient way in which a number of people could simultaneously learn facts affecting all their lives.

Today the news media are swamped by the very availability of news. There is simply more of it than ever before - unimaginably more, avail­able to many more people. This is a transformation that has been achieved in a little over 100 years.

When admiral Lord Nelson died aboard the Victory after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, it took two weeks for the news to reach the Admiralty in London (a young lieutenant of the Royal Navy brought the dispatches personally, sailing in the sloop Pickle to Plymouth and then riding to London). It was some hours before important people in London heard the news, some days before it reached the other cities of Britain. There must have been outlying villages that the news took even longer to reach.

When President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963, the news of his death was known around the whole world in a matter of seconds. The political leaders of Russia and China, the financial manipulators in Geneva, the obscure tribesmen of Borneo all heard the news simultaneously.

This profound change in the pattern of human communication has taken place in hardly more than one man's lifetime.

Even forty years ago, most people in the developed world obtained their news from the newspapers. The newspapers had changed little from the days of Caxton. The process of printing had hardly changed at all, and the only modernization had been in machinery to produce and dis­tribute a greater number of copies of each issue. Then radio arrived.

At first newspapers regarded it as a passing technical fad. One di­rector of the Press Association returned from America in 1923 and said that "broadcasting is on the wane... People are getting so tired of it that it reminds one of the almost forgotten skating-rink craze". He was, of course, profoundly wrong. In America, the effects of radio were more rapid in appearing, due to the springing up of hundreds of small town radio stations. In Britain, radio was put under the control of a non-profit- making body financed by government-collected licence fees and charged with the duty of providing a nationwide broadcasting service.

The war reports of the BBC radio from 1939 to 1945 should have warned newspapers that radio could rival them in the presentation of news. But it was not until television was introduced in Britain in 1956 (with the commercially backed Independent Television Authority rival­ing the BBC's television service) that the television set entered 80 per cent of British homes and the way in which most people learnt their news changed radically.

Journalism is about people. It is produced for people. So how has the ordinary man's receptivity to journalism changed in twenty years?

Fifty years ago, a family might listen to a news bulletin on the living- room radio over breakfast. Father would read his morning paper over breakfast or on the bus or train going to work. After work, he would buy an evening paper and read it on the way home, handing it over to his wife who would read it when she had washed up after the evening meal. Then they might listen to the BBC nine o'clock radio news.

What happens now? The bedside transistor radio switches itself on with the alarm. Mother has her radio on in the kitchen as she cooks, breakfast. The kids have their radios switched to Radio One with its mixture of pop music and news flashes. Father glances at the morning paper over breakfast, then gets into the car and turns on "Today" as he drives to work. Mother carries the radio around the house as she dusts and makes the beds to the voice of Jimmy Young. Father buys an evening paper as he leaves work, glances at the headlines, then turns on the six o'clock radio news as he drives home. After eating, they turn on the telly and sit down to an evening's viewing. Mother may read the evening pa­per if there is a sports programme on TV which she finds boring. They watch the BBC's television nine o'clock or ITN's "News at Ten".

It is an immense change. These are the people for whom journalists are working. They have to take account of these social changes, which have occurred in most countries of the world.

The newspaperman has to be aware of the changes in the lives of his readers. It is not enough for him to print the "hard news" of the evening before (most national newspapers start printing their major editions around 10 pm, with further editions for the city in which they are pro­duced coming up until 4 am), since his readers who look at the paper over breakfast will have heard most of that and seen many of the public figures and significant events on television the night before. Or they will hear on the early morning radio news items which have become news three hours later than the latest possible edition of the morning paper.

The press has been slow to catch on to this change and to revise its methods of operation so that the newspaper still has a function. That it has a function, there can be no doubt: for the television or radio news bulletin is tightly encapsulated, containing only a few of the main facts in a highly abbreviated form.

Newspapers are archives, objects of record. They can be referred to, checked back on, in a way that the television or radio news cannot. They can describe events at greater length, add more relevant detail, give authoritative comment from people in a position to detect trends and the likely lines in which a news story will develop.

But the old concept of a newspaper "scoop", the presentation of a startling hard news story a day before its rivals, is virtually dead-killed by radio and television.

NOTES

du jour - фр. ежедневный

parish magazine - a local magazine

medium [' mi:djam] n (pl media) - средство, способ; путь; com­munication media, media of communication - средства массовой информации (газеты, радио и т.п.)

Caxton, William (14227-1491) - the first English printer; estab­lished a press at Westminster from which he issued about 80 books, many of them translations by himself from French romances

BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation - Британская радиовещательная корпорация

news flash - вставка-молния, экстренное сообщение

telly informal - (a) television

ITN = Independent Television News

"hard news" - all news that recounts precise, immediate happen­ings, as distinct from background information or commentaries of the news. Hard news consists of the basic news facts which most editors feel must be included. The implication behind this phrase is that much other news is a matter of little importance

item n - сообщение, новость; небольшая заметка в газете

scoop - a news story, usually of special interest, which is discov­ered and published only by one paper

ESSENTIAL VOCABULARY

to entertain развлекать, забавлять; entertainment развлечение; en­tertainment programme развлекательная программа

television picture телевизионное изображение

a matter of secondsдело нескольких секунд

small-town radio stationрадиостанция в маленьком городке

to present[pri'zent] news подавать, преподносить новости

channel канал

service служба; broadcasting service служба вещания; national service национальная служба; nation-wide service общенацио­нальная служба; news service служба новостей; regional service региональная служба; television service телевизионная служба; to establish television service/to launch television service организовать телевизионную службу; to take service принимать передачи

broadcast v передавать по радио, телевидению; n широковещание, передача, вещание; educational broadcast образовательная передача; outside broadcast внестудийная передача; political broadcast политическая передача; produce television (radio) broadcast подготовить, выпустить телеви­зионную (радио) передачу; live news broadcast «живая» передача новостей, эфирная передача новостей, прямой эфир (remember the pronunciation of the word live adj живой)

broadcasting вещание, широковещание; direct satellite broadcasting непосредственное вещание через спутник Земли; domestic broadcasting внутреннее вещание; radio broadcasting радио­вещание; television broadcasting телевизионное вещание

bulletin бюллетень, сводка; news bulletin сводка новостей

headline заголовок

to produce and distribute newspapers выпускать и распространять газеты

Remember the Prepositions

to communicate with the listeners, the viewers, the audience - общаться, устанавливать контакт со слушателями (зрителями, аудиторией)