It's not surprising that the local media glossed over the World Health Organization's 14th annual World No Tobacco Day last Thursday. The government, a member in good standing of the United Nations and a conscientious contributor to its causes, didn't start preparing a seminar to mark the occasion until May 15.
Everyone knows that the government is the main shareholder in Japan Tobacco and that the official line on the smoking issue is to approach it from the standpoint of "manners" and "fairness": Smokers and nonsmokers should respect each others' rights; young people must wait until they are 20 before they light up; and cigarettes are a matter of choice.
Still, everybody loves a good fight, and when the media does cover nonsmoking stories they tend to see it as a them vs. them issue rather than a health one. The reason is partly due to economics: TV and print media receive a great deal of tobacco-related ad revenues, even though the tobacco industry itself voluntarily "restricts" cigarette ads. On Thursday night, after a perfunctory mention of WHO's aims, Asahi TV's "News Station" ran an analysis of how much tax revenue the country would lose if Japanese smokers really did quit.