Cross-border investigative journalism from Japan

Thank you very much for your interest in and support for Tansa’s activities.

Here is a report on this year’s highlights.

It has been decided that we will add new reporters, with the increase of monthly supporters!

The donations from the citizens support Tansa’s activities. When we first established Tansa, we were so focused on covering stories that we did not have the capacity to increase our monthly supporters.

A few years ago, we finally started getting our monthly supporters in earnest to make Tansa a sustainable organization.

Thanks to each of you, Tansa’s activities are currently supported by over 700 domestic and international supporters. The number of supporters has been growing at a great pace, increasing 1.5 times year-on-year for three consecutive years. We are deeply grateful for your contributions. 

As a result of this progress, it has been decided that we will have two new reporters next year. Both of them are capable young individuals who did an internship at Tansa during their student days. We are sure that we will be able to impact on the society through more reports by adding new members.

However, we still need more funds to expand our team further. We would like to ask you to register as our monthly supporter. 

Suing the Japanese government: fighting to restore the Freedom of Information Act, a foundation of democracy. 

In September 2024, Tansa filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government. 

The government resolutely carried out a state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which divided the years and nays of the people. The documents which were the evidence of the government carrying out the funeral resolutely were denied disclosure when Tansa requested the records. That is the cause of this lawsuit. 

In recent years, the Freedom of Information Act has not functioned fully or the sloppy management of official documents by the government and administration can never be overlooked. We are obliged to claim that the foundations of democracy are crumbling.

That is why Tansa filed the lawsuit against the government, seeking the disclosure of documents to question the approach to national governance. For further information, please click here. 

The data of the first court hearing is December 25, on Christmas. We will provide updates on the trial proceedings and the results of interviews with the government on the website of Tansa. We would like to ask for your attention and support.  

The impact of our reports: cited in the Diet and the local assemblies.

Tansa has published approximately 90 articles based on investigative journalism and sixty columns this year. Each one of the articles contains detailed and dense content. The members of the Diet and the local assemblies requested that Tansa would provide the information about each issue and the deliberation was held in the Diet and the assemblies based on the information.

For example, a series “Polluted with PFOA” has deeply reported the pollution of PFOA for the last three years. Tansa’s original articles have been released and the reporter in charge issued a book based on the results of research for these last three years. Although the government is timid toward the regulation of PFOA, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba made reference to a policy that the legislation of PFOA would advance in the latest Diet.

Tansa will continue forceful investigative reports in order to improve the situation of people who suffer on the margins of society and make society better. The base of that is support from all of you and funds.

We would like to ask each one of you to support keeping the torch of journalism burning. 

We wish you a wonderful holiday season.

Sincerely, 

The Tansa Team