Art is trolling life in Japan as the Oscar-winning "Spotlight" hits theaters just as the nation's press-freedom ranking plummets.
The film has nothing to do with Japan directly. It depicts a 2001 Boston Globe project to uncover the Catholic Church's failure to address decades of serial sexual abuse by priests. But it's really about how the media has the power to bring entrenched vested interest to heel and exact justice, something all too rare in our declining-circulation times.
And it's arriving at an embarrassing moment for Shinzo Abe's government. It nosedived 11 spots in the 2016 Reporters Without Borders media-freedom index to 71st place, trailing Tanzania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dominican Republic. The second straight year of precipitous declines for the Group of Seven nation says more about why the economy is sputtering than meets the eye.