These are not happy times for people who make a living writing about Japan. With the country apparently having become, as one magazine put it, the "Switzerland of Asia," i.e., rich but boring, foreign newspapers are shuttering their Tokyo bureaus as fast as they can move their correspondents to cover bigger stories in China and elsewhere.

In the last two years alone, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, the British Daily Telegraph and The Guardian and a host of other famous titles have downsized or closed their Japanese ops.

Membership of the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan has fallen by over a quarter since its peak and even specialist publications like Japan Quarterly and Insight Japan have hoisted the white flag.