Interview with Yasuomi Sawa
2019
Yasuomi Sawa explores the culture of news reading and gathering in Japan. He shares insight on feature phone (mobile phones which use button-based inputs) and smartphone usage in his native Tokyo, and how, as an investigative journalist, the device has become useful in collecting evidence, research, and whistle blowing.
Yasuomi Sawa is a Japanese journalist and deputy editor for investigative and in-depth reporting with Kyodo News, Japan's largest news wire service. Among his recent investigative work are reports on the sex exploitation of teenage girls in Tokyo, the government's failure to track the school enrollment of more than 10,000 immigrant children, and overpopulation of public shelters (up to 150% of their capacity) for abused children in Tokyo and Chiba. Prior to this position, he worked in New York for over three years as Kyodo's correspondent primarily covering the United Nations. In 2006, Sawa was a visiting journalist fellow of the Reuters Institute of Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.