Any competent journalist here knows that the civil servant laws here (公務員法) and the State Secrets Law make it a crime for government officials to divulge confidential information to third parties. In other words, there is nothing unusual about the fact that I keep the identity of my sources carefully concealed. This is standard practice in this country. To the contrary, the fact that I have been good about respecting the confidentiality of my sources is one of the reasons that I have been able to work in Japan for so long.

Japan Subculture Research Center