Public Opinion Propaganda Ideology Brill’S Japanese Studies Library

Public Opinion Propaganda Ideology Brill’s Japanese Studies Library Edited by Joshua Mostow (Managing Editor) Caroline Rose Kate Wildman Nakai VOLUME 39 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/bjsl Public Opinion Propaganda Ideology Theories on the Press and its Social Function in Interwar Japan, 1918–1937 By Fabian Schäfer LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 Cover illustration: Taken from volume 2 of Sōgō jānarizumu kōza (Naigai-sha, 1930/31), depicting violations against article 23 of the press law (shinbunshi-hō) and article 19 of the publishing law (shuppan-hō) in 1923 (right circle) and in 1929 (left circle). During the short period of only six years, prohibitions of sale on the basis of ideology-based violations of the public peace and order (an’nei chitsujō) rose from 122 to 565 cases, whereas offenses against public morality ( fūzoku kairan) sunk from 1.394 to 614 cases. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schäfer, Fabian. Public opinion, propaganda, ideology : theories on the press and its social function in interwar Japan, 1918–1937 / by Fabian Schäfer. p. cm. — (Brill’s Japanese studies library ; 39) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-22913-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Journalism—Social aspects—Japan—History—20th century. 2. Journalism—Political aspects—Japan—History—20th century. 3. Public opinion—Japan. I. Title. PN5407.S6S33 2012 02.230952—dc23 2012009656 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 0925-6512 ISBN 978 90 04 22913 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23054 5 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables ............................................................................ vii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ ix Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 1. The Formation of a Modern Mass Press in Japan .......................... 8 2. Transnational Contexts: Appropriation, Reciprocities, and Parallels ........................................................................................................ 16 3. Disciplining Knowledge: The Foundation of Newspaper Studies .......................................................................................................... 34 4. The Social Function of the Press: Education, Public Opinion, Propaganda ................................................................................................. 68 5. Marxian Intervention: The Crisis of Philosophy and the Actuality of Journalism .................................................................... 95 6. Latent Publics: Rumors and the Reciprocity of Communication ......................................................................................... 124 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 157 References ......................................................................................................... 173 Index ................................................................................................................... 187 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figures 1. Comparison of newspaper content ..................................................... 53 2. Exhibition grounds of PRESSA on the right bank of the river Rhine in Cologne ...................................................................................... 61 3. Ono Hideo, his wife Ono Tsuru and Karl d’Ester at the Starnberger See .......................................................................................... 61 4. Article by Karl d’Ester on Ono Hideo, published in the German academic journal Zeitungswissenschaft in 1926 ............................... 62 5. Karl d’Ester together with the editorial staff of the Tōkyō Imperial University’s student newspaper Teikoku daigaku shinbun (in autumn 1929) ....................................................................... 66 6. Karl d’Ester delivering a lecture on the history of the German press in the conference room of the newspaper Kyōto nichinichi ...................................................................................................... 67 7. Koyama’s model of the four strata of public opinion as adapted from Ferdinand Tönnies ........................................................ 94 Tables 1. Reading habits of Tōkyō’s conscripts in the 1930s .......................... 56 2. Information-seeking behavior of school children in the 1930s ... 57 3. The sociological meaning of the press ............................................... 81 4. Shimizu Ikutarō’s linguistic analysis of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ forms of news and public opinion ....................................................... 153 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I remain deeply indebted to many—to too many—for their enduring sup- port and encouragement without which this book would not have been possible. First and foremost, however, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, above all my parents, for their unwavering confidence in me, though doubts must have lingered from time to time as to what exactly I was doing on my various research and conference trips to Asia and the USA as well as throughout Europe during the many years I worked on the dissertation that has become this book. I am moreover grateful to many friends and colleagues without whose criticisms and comments on earlier drafts this book could not have come to completion. My dissertation advisors Steffi Richter and Kobayashi Toshiaki have supported me since I began my early studies, eventually encouraging me to continue on to doctoral research. We became colleagues at the University of Leipzig, and over the years this relationship has grown into friendship. Both have been essential to me, and to this project, from the beginning to the end and have made crucial interven- tions throughout my research. The result of their generous guidance is this book, for which I alone remain responsible. A Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship allowed me to take a trea- sured year to gather sources at the library of the University of Tōkyō and the Multimedia and Socio-Information Studies Archive of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies. Attending Professor Yoshimi Shunya’s weekly graduate seminars during my stay in Japan was insightful in many ways. It was also he who suggested, in 2001, the subject of my dissertation, at a time when he himself had just finished conducting research on the history of the Newspaper Research Seminar at the University of Tōkyō— the academic forerunner of today’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies. He and other scholars—among them Iwasaki Minoru, Arnulf Kutsch, Naoki Sakai, Richard Calichman, Annette Schad-Seifert, Shimada Shingo, and Stefanie Averbeck—allowed me to present my work at con- ferences or study groups; and their criticism and comments were essential in focusing my research at different stages. While in Japan, my dear friend Yui Toshiyuki not only introduced me to his fantastic colleagues in the Department of German Studies at the University of Tōkyō, but also re-introduced me to the beauty of the writings of Heinrich von Kleist, x acknowledgements whom I had almost completely forgotten about since I graduated from high school. My gratitude remains especially with Paul Droubie and Maya von Heyden for our time together while conducting research at Tōdai. A Writing-Up Grant by the Modern East Asia Research Center at the University of Leiden provided me with the opportunity to take a precious, year-long sabbatical and revise my dissertation into a publishable book. In particular, I would like to thank Christopher Goto-Jones, Esther Truijen, Chiara Brivio, and Annika Pissin for the fruitful and wonderful year I was able to spend in the Netherlands. To Yih-Jye Hwang, who shared his office with me, I remain tremendously grateful for him being the fabulous office- mate that he is. Our coffee breaks were the inspiration for my writing. The ups and downs of writing a dissertation have created strong bonds between me and my fellow doctoral students at the University of Leipzig, especially Cornelia Reiher and Katrin Gengenbach. Along with my good friends Martin Roth and Oliver Geppert, they not only provided personal and scholarly assistance when needed, but also the necessary non-academic distraction from work that makes any and all work possible. And finally, I would like to thank ML for contributing so much to the completion of this book—much

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