The International Press Institute (IPI) today expressed sadness at the news of the death of former IPI Executive Board Member and Japanese National Committee Chair Kiyofuku Chuma on Nov. 1.
Chuma, 79, was an accomplished journalist who served the news community in Japan for more than 40 years through his work at the Asahi Shimbun, the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, and the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association, Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (NSK).
He was also an active participant in the international sphere, serving as a member of IPI’s executive board from 2008 to 2012.
N. Ravi, the chair of IPI’s Indian National Committee and a fellow IPI Executive Board member, said of Chuma: “He was a noble and upstanding leader of the IPI family, and his presence and thoughtful and considered contributions to our deliberations were of great value. Ever polite, considerate and helpful, he was a model of a gentleman media professional. I have had an enduring friendship with him built on our twice a year meetings over the years at IPI. His passing is a great personal loss to me as well as to the larger IPI family.”
IPI Senior Press Freedom Adviser Steven M. Ellis added: “We are very saddened by the passing of our friend and colleague, Mr. Chuma, and we will remember him fondly. All of us at IPI extend our heartfelt condolences to his family and to the many friends and colleagues he leaves behind.”
A farewell ceremony in Chuma’s honour is scheduled to take place at the Hotel Kokusai 21 in Nagano on Dec. 1.
Kiyofuku Chuma was born in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan on Aug. 22, 1935. He graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan University with a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities in 1960 and in April of that year he began his career at the Asahi Shimbun.
Chuma became assistant general manager of the newspaper’s Political News Department in 1978 and in 1982 was named senior researcher at its Centre for Research and Analysis. From 1983 to 1984 he held the post of Visiting Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
He returned to Asahi Shimbun as a political editorial writer in October 1984, becoming deputy chairman of its Editorial Board in 1990 and then chair in 1994. Three years later, he was named executive director and Osaka Head Office representative, and in 1999 he became the Asahi Shimbun’s senior managing director and executive editor.
Chuma served as an NSK board member from 1997 to 1999. Kojiro Shiraishi, the current NSK chair and chair of IPI’s Japanese National Committee, noted the importance of Chuma’s contributions in that role.
“In 2000, he took the lead and exerted great effort to revise the Canon of Journalism, adopted when NSK was founded, to make it more suitable for the 21st century,” Shiraishi said.
Chuma served as a full-time advisor to the Asahi Shimbun and the President of the Asahi Shimbun Asia Network (AAN) from 2001 on, and retired from the newspaper in 2003. He later became chief editor of the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun in Nagano Prefecture in 2005, where he contributed the front-page column “Kangaeru” (Thinking).
IPI Executive Board Member Pavol Mudry, from Slovakia, said that Chuma’s passing represented the loss of “a valuable member of the IPI press freedom community”, adding: “His [actions] with the IPI Board were always a contribution in dealing with press freedom issues worldwide, especially in the Far East region. We have lost a friend and a great personality in the press freedom world.”