The Press: The Big Tree

In a Tokyo suburb one day last week, near the spot where a sabotaged railroad train had just killed six people, a ramshackle automobile flying a tattered red Rising Sun flag drew up with a screech of brakes. Like the celebrated clown act in the Ringling Bros, circus, nearly a dozen reporters and photographers poured out of the jampacked car. After hastily pitching a brown tent by the roadside as a temporary city room, the journalistic task force spread out to hunt for clues. Asahi (Rising Sun), the Far East's biggest and best newspaper,...