In 2010, Japan was ranked #11 in Reporters Without Borders’ global Press Freedom Index. By February 2015, that number had plummeted to #61 - and next year it will likely fall further.

Since coming to power in 2012, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party have embarked upon a war of attrition against press freedoms in Japan.

Assaults have included: embedding neo-nationalists in key positions at state broadcaster, NHK; issuing veiled threats to TV networks that coverage critical of the government might cost them their broadcast licenses; and accusing a German journalist - who’d written about PM Abe’s historical revisionism - of accepting a bribe from China.

This week, David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on the freedom of opinion and expression, was scheduled to visit Tokyo - a trip which would have brought international attention to the Japanese government’s suppression of the media. But at the last moment, Japanese government officials canceled his trip claiming they were too busy to meet him.

The LDP is particularly keen to avoid scrutiny of the State Secrets Law which it rushed through parliament in late 2013.

The law gives the Japanese government free rein to classify as a state secret any information related to security and diplomacy - with zero independent oversight. Information can be kept classified for an indefinite period, including reports related to the triple meltdowns at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant.

Under the new law, government whistleblowers can be jailed for 10 years while members of the media publishing leaked information face 5 years imprisonment; foreign journalists - like me - will probably be deported.

Realizing the future of their free press was at stake, the Japanese public - approximately 80% of whom oppose the act - organized some of the largest demonstrations seen here in decades.

Newspaper editors, journalists, publishers and lawyers slammed the law as an attack on Japan’s constitutionally-protected freedom of the press. Reporters Without Borders said: “[P]arliament is making investigative journalism illegal, and is trampling on the fundamental principles of the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and ‘public interest’.”

Opposition to the State Secrets Act was unanimous - with one exception: the US.

Shortly after the act was passed,US Ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, voiced Washington’s approval: