I would normally think so for lists like “best 10 mysteries” or “top books I read in 2022” but this is a video of all the 本屋大賞 award nominees and I’ll be shocked if he has anything negative to say about any of them. Not done yet though. Shock me Masaki!
I wonder if it’s tied to the over the top anti-defamation laws of if that’s over stated.
Good to know the truth is always a defense, right? Well, in Japanese libel and slander cases, the truth won’t necessarily help you. Instead, it all comes down to reputation. (The Japanese word for defamation is meiyokison 名誉毀損, which, when broken down, literally means “damaged honor”.) Even if a published statement is 100% true, it can still be considered defamatory if it irrevocably hurts the subject’s reputation and oftentimes the question of truth doesn’t really enter the equation. For example, in 2012 a Japanese man discovered that when he put his name into the Google search bar, it autocompleted results that implied he had a criminal record, and this man argued these autocomplete search results were severely damaging his reputation.
so maybe I just need to listen closely for not-quite-as-ringing endorsements to pick out the bad ones 