Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th-Century Japan by Asahi Shimbun Company (review)

Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th-Century Japan. By Asahi Shimbun Company; translated by Barak Kushner. Bloomsbury, London, 2015. xvi, 300 pages. $120.00, cloth; $39.95, paper; $83.99, E-book.

Since the Meiji period (1868–1912), with the return of political power to the emperor, Japanese have marked time through the passing of imperial reigns, a practice that continues into the present year, Heisei 28, which recognizes Emperor Akihito’s ceremonial and symbolic role. This reflective text about reportage in the Tokyo-based Asahi shinbun, one of Japan’s largest circulating newspapers originating in 1879 in Osaka, focuses on the mid-twentieth century, or Showa era, the time of Emperor Hirohito’s enthronement from 1926 to 1989. This rich historical period of over six decades includes dire economic depression; a devastating war in China, Southeast Asia, and then world war in the Pacific; imperial defeat and repatriation; postwar reconstruction under a democratic system; cold war conflict; vibrant economic success punctuated by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; renewal of relations with China; horrific environmental pollution; several top-level instances of political corruption; and the beginnings of the bubble economy. Readers are offered a plethora of events punctuating Japan’s middle years of the twentieth century and receive a thoughtful analysis of how they were reported by one of the country’s foremost liberal media sources analogous to the New York Times. However, during this time, the Asahi shinbun never enjoyed quite the independence it has today, a relatively recent phenomenon born of 1970s-era investigative reporting related to the 1976 Lockheed Incident, but recently threatened by right-wing criticism. From prewar times until after the postwar Allied occupation (1945–52), Japan’s media were restricted by Meiji-era news censorship laws, the 1925 Peace Preservation Act, and increased wartime strictures followed by demilitarization of a defeated empire.¹

With a foreword by Funabashi Yoichi, a former Asahi shinbun journalist, public intellectual, and current opinion leader, this collection of introspective narratives about key events in Japan’s Showa history examines the newspaper’s responsibility in accurate and objective reporting. However, the narrative that emerges is of a negotiated concept impinged upon by various factors depending on the political climate of the time. The book reveals fascinating background to stories and also the difficulties in maintaining timely reporting while having to conform to company and, often, government directives.

A key example is the August 15, 1945, reporting on alleged masses of people congregating near the Imperial Palace to express grief upon hearing the emperor’s declaration of surrender, indicating the war’s end. After notification by insider sources about the speech, reporter Suetsune Takurō wrote a report beforehand, with slight alteration of detail, since he “tried to depict the ‘correct attitude’ (the way of the imperial subject) that he believed ‘the people’ should be taking” (p. 103) and hoped to conform to the paper’s need to publish the edition by the afternoon. Tokyo reporters allegedly failed to take photographs of the mourners weeping and bowing down on their knees in the gravel with backs disrespectfully turned to the palace (thus, to the emperor), though on August 15, the Osaka edition published a staged picture for the afternoon edition (p. 105). But strangely, “For unknown reasons, the newspapers that carried those photographs from the time of surrender are nowhere to be found” (p. 106).

In another intriguing example, Asahi shinbun received criticism about its reporting on communist China beginning in 1964, when nine Japanese news agencies were allowed access; only Asahi remained in late 1970 due to its care not to anger authorities (pp. 231, 236–37). Chief executive Hirooka Tomo’ō explained this by famously asserting his “Historical Witness Theory,” in which:

There are certain things that will get you deported if you write about them. In those cases stop just short of writing anything that will get you in trouble. However, if I may say so, it doesn’t matter if you don’t write anything at all—better that you just see what you can see...