THE JAPANESE PRESS AND JAPANESE FOREIGN POLICY 1927-1933 by Tsutomu David Yamamoto for Ph.D. School of Oriental and African Studies ProQuest Number: 11010590 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010590 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Preface Considering the indirect linkage between public opinion, as reflected in the press, and government policy, in particular in the foreign policy sphere where the government is at its most secretive, it is not surprising that very little research into their inter-relationship has been carried out. It is easy to understand, therefore, that this situation applies with regard to pre-War Japan which had a more authoritarian tradition than most Western nations. Even the Japanese press, however, had a role to play in the formation of government policy and its attitude at times did have serious implications for foreign policy and diplomacy. In this sense, the decline of the Japanese press as an Opposition force between 1927 and 1933, which is the subject of this study, is significant. It was in this period, with the Manchuria Crisis of 1931-1933 as the decisive turning point, that not only the Japanese press but also Japanese foreign policy tilted from a tendency to internationalism, as reflected, for example, in the Washington treaties of 1922, to the more xenophobic nationalism which was to lead Japan to the Sino-Japanese War and, ultimately, to Pearl Harbor. Well before the ManchurianCrisis, it could be foreseen that Japanese foreign policy would face serious challenges. Its internationalist tendency still remained to some extent in the form of 'Shidehara Diplomacy1 or even in the supposedly more nationalistic ‘Tanaka Diplomacy1* Japan*s w illingness to p a rtic ip a te in the Geneva and London naval conferences of 1927 and 1930, though undoubtedly derived partly from financial necessity, suggested such remaining internationalism* Her readiness to agree, principle, to China*s recovery of tariff autonomy and extrar-territoriality also indicated that Japan would even accept a certain amount of financial sacrifice in an endeavour to obtain some goodwill either from China or the West* It was clear, however, that the growing nationalist sentiment in China would, sooner or later, challenge any and every form of foreign encroachment and the ‘special interests* in Manchuria and Mongolia which Japan had been seeking to expand and consolidate would then be in jeopardy* Japan*s main problem would., therefore, be how best to protect the ‘special interests*. The Japanese press also found itself in a confused situation in the same period* The growth of education during the previous ’Taisho Democracy* period had enabled the *non-partisan* * commercial’ newspapers of this period to boast of ^ circulations of hundreds of thousands or even of millions each compared with/tens of thousands A • Meiji predecessors, which had been used as political forums for their proprietors cum editors* The 'popularisation' of newspapers had also led to the flourishing of various 'quality' journals which catered mainly for the equally growing liberal or left intelligentsia* The phenomenal growth of the Japanese press, coupled with its traditional anti-government attitude, with the enactment of universal male suffrage in 1925 f and with the subsequent consolidation of the party cabinet system, had transformed itself into a force which the government could not afford to ignore* On the other hand, such growth inevitably contained problems which were bound to surface* The excessive commercial rivalry among the press organisations had pushed the press, ct especially the major newspapers, to sensationalism^ was not always supported by the editorial departments, thus creating schism not onl^ between the rival newspapers but also within a single newspaper* At the same time, the untested internationalism of the Japanese press, which pressurised the government to take 3- more sympathetic attitude towards China's national iv aspirations but which nevertheless failed to question the validity of the government contention that Japan possessed f special interests1, was being challenged by the harsh reality of Chinese nationalism* These factors, •t&jether with the secretive handling of the China issue by the Foreign Ministry, pushed the Japanese press, if gradually, to adopt an attitude which was still anti-government but which was less conciliatory towards China than that of the government* The outbreak of the Manchuria Crisis pushed the reluctant Foreign Ministry towards guideline^drawn by the military authorities whose 'spokeaman1 the press had virtually become* In retrospect, the weakening and ultimate loss of the traditionally liberal and anti-government attitude of the Japanese press in the period between 1927 and 1933 was significant because it was in this period that the Japanese press had a real chance to influence the course of foreign policy to a greater degree than ever before or after, and did so, but in a regrettable direction* V It is not uncommon for students of Japanese foreign policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s to quote press opinions in order to indicate the trend of 'public opinion'* Neither in English nor in Japanese, however, is there a systematic presentation of these opinions and their causes and consequences. Takeuchi Tatsuji's War and Diplomacy in the Japanese Empire ( London, 1936), i t is tru e , placed major emphasis on press attitudes in his study of Japanese foreign policy, but his work covered a much longer period and the fact that official documents were not available to him meant that he was unable to research into government press co n tro l. There have also been a number of stu d ies on the methods of such press control, especially those of the 1930s, mostly by Japanese scholars. Okudaira Yasuhiro's P o litic a l Censorship in Japan from 1931 to 1943 ( University of Pensylvania, 1962) and Uchikawa Yoshimi (ed.) Gendaishi Shiryo : Masumedia Tosei I & I I (Materials for Modern History : Control of Mass Media I & II) (Tokyo, 1973 & 1975) provide much information on legal regulations concerning press control as well as official figures on their effectiveness but do not indicate what effects they had on the tone of press opinions or the conflict among the government departments concerning the implementation of these regulations. Some contemporary scholars have dealt with the relationship between a specific foreign policy issue and 'public opinion' as reflected in the press, with some reference to the 'guidance* provided by the government. Ito Takashi's Showa Shoki Seijishi Kenkyu (study of Political History in the Early Showa Era) (Tokyo, 1969) is informative on the general attitude of the major newspapers towards the London naval conference of 1930 and Stephen Pelz*s London Naval Disarmament Conference (1934) and Public Opinion in Kokusaiseiji No.I (Tokyo, 1969) has also touched upon government ♦guidance* on the press. In the same ed itio n of K o k u saiseiji, Ogata Sadako dealt; with the press attitude towards the Manchurian C risis in her a r tic le e n title d Gaiko to Yoron (Diplomacy and Public Opinion) whereas Kakegawa Tomiko*s The Press and Public Opinion in Japan, 1931-1941 in Dorothy Borg ^ Okaraoto Shunpei (ed„) Pearl Harbor As History (New York, 1973) focuses attention on the attitude of the Japanese press towards the U.S. in the period between the outbreak of the Manchuria Crisis and Pearl Harbor. These studies have been,however* either confined to one or two newspapers or journals whose views were not n ecessarily representative of ’public opinion*, or^limited in their research into the interrelationship between government press control and the press a ttitu d e . V/atanabe Toru Inoue Kiyoshi (ed„) Taishoki no KyUshinteki Jiyu Shugi (Radical Liberalism in the Taisho Period) (Tokyo, 1 9 7 2 )though confined to the economic journal, Toydkeizaishinoo, is the only study to have examined a journal or newspaper so thoroughly and systematically that the reader can follow the change of its attitude not only towards domestic but also towards specific diplomatic issues. The limitation of this study is that Tdyokeizaishinpo * s view is compared almost exclusively with that of the Osaka Asahi which was generally accepted as the most liberal among the major newspapers but which did not necessarily v±i represent the majority press opinion in the political capital, Tokyo. Moreover, because the journal escaped much of the press control imposed upon the major ' newspapers and other more influential journals, little of the government 1 guidance* is discussed in this study which covers the first three decades of this century* It is also appropriate to mention the studies of Ono Hideo who was already an established scholar of Japanese journalism when the Manchuria Crisis broke out in 1931* His Nihon Shinbunshi (History of Japanese Newspapers) (Tokyo, 1948), Shinbun no Rekishi (History of Newspapers), (Tokyo, 1955) and Shinbun Kenkyu Gojunen (Fifty Years' Study of Newspapers) (Tokyo, 1971) make . essential reading for any student of Japanese journalism, but are too general in their content and do not the interrelationship between government press control and press opinions* This situation applies also with regard to Okamoto Kozo (ed*) Nihon Shinbun H.yakunenshi (One Hundred Years' History of Japanese Newspapers) (Tokyo, 1961).