The Asahi Shimbun’s breaking story on bogus ground beef prompted the Hokkaido police to launch a criminal investigation.

Asahi Shimbun articles reporting on the practice of “disguised contracting” which is widely prevalent in factories of major manufacturers.

“Disguised contracting” is a type of employment practice that leaves contracted workers at an extreme disadvantage with no prospects for pay raises or of ever becoming full-time employees, no matter how hard they may work. The practice itself is clearly illegal. Yet it has been widely upheld in various workplaces at many Japanese manufacturers. In the summer of 2006, The Asahi Shimbun began conducting in-depth investigations and uncovered a string of revealing facts pertaining to the issue.

In disguised contracting, a company that actually uses workers at its own facilities tries to shirk various employer responsibilities by falsely claiming the work is arranged through an administrative subcontract with another company. The improper practice quickly spread in the 1990s and, in fact, had been left neglected until quite recently. People working under such conditions were easily dismissed or discarded as soon as there was no need for them anymore. The disparity in wages and benefits between these “contracted” workers and full-time workers kept on growing, and work-related accidents occurred frequently. The harmful effects of the improper practice seemed to have grown into a full-blown crisis.

As a result of news reports exposing the disguised contracting practice, major manufacturing companies such as Canon Inc., a subsidiary of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., and an affiliated company of Toyota Motor Corporation moved toward changing the status of disguised contract laborers to one of direct hire. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare also changed course in imposing stricter guidelines. The ministry actually issued its first business suspension order and moved to press criminal charges. There were laborers who were initially unaware that they were working under disguised contracts until they read the newspaper articles. They began raising their voices.

The first article exposing the practice ran on July 31. There was a huge rippling response. One scholar referred to the phenomenon as the “7.31 shock.”

In the 2003 Kagoshima prefectural assembly election, twelve people were accused of violating the Public Offices Election Law. The case was later found to be groundless and the defendants were acquitted. From 2006 through 2007, The Asahi Shimbun independently covered the Kagoshima election fraud case, reporting that the incident was a “fabrication” based on confessions coerced by investigators who had resorted to excessive interrogation practices.

Had it not been for the Asahi reportage, there is no knowing how the court would have ruled. We at The Asahi Shimbun believe we played a vital role in smoking out injustices committed through reckless law enforcement by conducting exhaustive investigations.

Furthermore, in an effort to address the “food safety” issue which is a matter of high concern among consumers, The Asahi Shimbun broke the story on a meat processing company in Hokkaido which had been systematically mixing pork scraps with ground beef. The dubious practice had been going on for an extended period. Frozen croquettes and other processed food items containing these falsified meat products were actually distributed nationwide. The Asahi Shimbun conducted thorough investigations and gathered information from related sources, while independently commissioning a DNA analysis to determine the contents of the meat in order to pinpoint the fraud.