In May 1993, David Butts, then Tokyo bureau chief of Bloomberg Business News, was fed up. After years of unsuccessful efforts to penetrate Japan's press clubs through polite negotiation, the tall Texan chose a more direct approach. On the day annual company reports were released, Butts, with other foreign media recording the event, marched into the Tokyo Stock Exchange press club and demanded that he be received at the same time as the club members, rather than 15 minutes later that had been the practice.
The press-club members were shocked that their clubhouse had been so publicly invaded. Others were quite happy. Butts' aggressiveness was applauded by the foreign media, some Japanese politicians and businessmen, and even sympathetic Japanese reporters, who ran stories the next day on the problems of the press club system.
But the sight of Japanese journalists attempting to block their foreign colleague was a major embarrassment for the Japan Newspaper Publishers Association. Coming a few months after the Washington Post scoop that announced Masako Owada would marry the Crown Prince, a fact the Japanese media knew but didn't tell because of a promise to the Imperial Household Agency, Butts' action was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. After years of foot dragging, the association could no longer ignore heated public criticism of the closed nature of the press clubs. In the summer of 1993, it adopted a new policy that opened up a few clubs to foreign media firms, including Bloomberg.