“Deru kugi wa utareru,” is the famous Japanese phrase that is often translated to English as, “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”.  It may also explain how and why the conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is silencing the media in Japan.

Outspoken former bureaucrat Shigeaki Koga caused an uproar last month when he announced on TV Asahi’s “Houdou Station” that it would be his last appearance as a paid commentator, blaming political pressure from the PM’s office.

“I have suffered intense bashing by the prime minister’s office,” Koga told the stunned host.  He went on to explain that he had been removed as commentator because of critical statements he had made about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  Later in the program, Koga displayed a sign that read “I am not Abe” – a play on the “Je Suis Charlie” signs that showed solidarity with the journalists murdered at a French satirical newspaper in January.  In context, it was the equivalent of saying, “Take this job and shove it.”

Koga has long criticized the Japanese government’s and media’s too-cozy relationship with the nuclear power industry.  After the disastrous triple-meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, Koga revealed how the nuclear power industry bought off the government by sponsoring research and giving post-retirement jobs to regulators; and influenced the media by throwing posh press junkets while buying huge amounts of public service advertisements.

For that, he was brushed aside by the Democratic Party government until he resigned in disgust.  He joined the formerly Left-leaning TV Asahi, until last month’s shocking display of independence in a country known as the ultimate “go along to get along” society.

Privately, journalists complain that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has stepped up a campaign to muzzle the media and silence dissent, and it looks like it’s working.  Members of his government now frequently threaten to yank the broadcasting and business licenses of media outlets that run reports counter to the government’s outlook.  Abe has taken top media executives out to expensive sushi lunches to win them over.  And in the case of the national broadcaster NHK, he merely replaced the chairman with an ally who announced the network would not deviate too far from the government’s views.

This is happening at a time when Abe wants to change the pacifist constitution to allow more military action.  He plays down responsibility for Japan’s World War II atrocities, and pressures publishers of school textbooks to follow the nationalist line on topics like the sexual abuse of Korean women forced to work in Japanese military brothels, and playing down the Nanjing Massacre.  Abe is also trying to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors, shut down after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns.

“The Abe government is showing an obsession with the media that verges on paranoia,” said Japanese journalist Keigo Takeda, a former editor in chief at Newsweek Japan.  “I have never seen this level of efforts to micromanage specific newspapers and TV programs.”

Ironically, one of people complaining about Abe’s crackdown on press freedoms is the guy who could have saved Shigeaki Koga’s career at Japan’s ministry that oversaw nuclear power.

The government is acting “like a bully who says, ‘Hey, I don’t like what you said, so meet me behind the gym,’ “ said senior opposition lawmaker Yukio Edano, who passed on Koga’s suggestion that the power monopolies be broken up and made more accountable when his party was in power back in 2011.  “And the ones who meekly obey also lack self-respect as press organizations.”

I’ll bet he said it with a straight face, too.