Japan's Total Empire. Louise Young

conversion to militarism in the wake of the Manchurian Incident? In the argument thus far, media activism has been ascribed to the mercurial nature of the cultural marketplace, situating jingoism in the string of media fads that punctuated the cultural history of the 1920s and 1930s. Taking a different position on this question, the explanation of the volte-face one hears most frequently in Japan is that this was a forced conversion: government censorship silenced media criticism of the army and prevented the expression of liberal sentiment. But both of these arguments provide only partial explanations. Newspapers and magazines were necessarily responsive to consumer demand, but editorial decisions were also driven by political and ideological beliefs. Government certainly began to tighten censorship during the Manchurian Incident, a process which intensified over the course of the decade. But in the early thirties, it was still possible for editors and directors to evade government censorship had they wanted to. Thus, the explanation for the media's conversion to militarism must also be sought in the political convictions of editors and journalists: they wrote articles in support of the Manchurian Incident because they believed army policy was justified.

      Before jumping on the Manchuria bandwagon, producers of mass culture rode the Taish

fashions in urban culture. As magazine publishing entered a new era of circulation growth after World War I, leading journals such as Ch kron and Kaiz became champions of the movement for universal suffrage. In the early twenties, left-wing books made good business sense. A printing of 10,000 copies which sold out in two days of the second volume of Shimada Seijir

's Chij (Earth) and reputed sales of over 1 million copies of Kagawa Toyohiko's Shisen 0 koete (Overcoming the Struggle) taught publishers the meaning of the term besuto seraa (bestseller). Both books depicted the injustice of urban poverty and championed the struggle against the degradation and exploitation of the working class. When Kagawa was arrested for his involvement in a Kobe strike in 1920, demand for his book rose, boosted by full-page newspaper ads which dramatically announced the author's arrest.⁶⁶ The triple media hit of 1929, “Tokyo March” (Kikuchi Kan's serial novel first published in the magazine Kingu, then made into the movie whose title song sold 250,000 records), glorified the consumer culture of Tokyo's Ginza, with its department stores, jazz halls, cafes, and crowds of modan gaaru (modern girls) strolling the tree-lined streets.⁶⁷ Thus, mass-culture producers were equally capable of responding to popular interest in democracy, social justice, or consumerism, as they were to an enthusiasm for military imperialism.

      In the press, a long-standing policy of championing disarmament and a “soft line” toward China had earned the Asahi and Mainichi newspapers the enmity of the army and made its editors the target of physical assaults by right-wing organizations.⁶⁸ Prior to World War I, the large dailies had supported government expenditures for armaments and applauded the performance of the armed services in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. But beginning with the navy's involvement in the Siemens bribery scandal of 1914, a succession of blunders brought the military under increasingly stinging editorial attacks. Both papers sharply criticized the Siberian Intervention of 1918–1922. The army's insistence that the reporters assigned to accompany the troops onboard ship quarter themselves in the stables with the horses probably did nothing to improve the newspapers’ view of the expedition.⁶⁹ When the first proposals for reductions in the military budget were voted down in 1921, the newspapers took up the disarmament cause, denouncing the “tyranny of military influence” in politics. They applauded Japan's signature to the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty in 1922; they cheered the subsequent elimination of four army divisions and abandonment of plans for warship construction.⁷⁰ More damage was done to the army's reputation when news of the murder, in 1923, of fourteen socialist and labor activists by army officers and military police leaked out. The victims had been arrested during the chaos after the Tokyo earthquake. Though the army banned all coverage of the murders, the Osaka Asahi defied army censorship to release an extra reporting the news.⁷¹ The army's China policy invited yet more criticism from the press. When General Tanaka Giichi's cabinet dispatched troops to Shandong in 1927 and 1928 in a show of force against the Northern Expedition of Jiang Jieshi's Nationalist Army, the papers called for diplomacy instead of strong-arm tactics. The Tokyo Nichinichi refused to accept the army's version of events during the second Shandong Expedition in 1928, when fighting broke out between Chinese and Japanese troops at Jinan. An editorial called on the government to “tell the truth,” and protested the subsequent troop reinforcements.⁷²

      After more than a decade of criticizing army excesses and advocating diplomatic solutions to the “China problem,” the Asahi and Mainichi papers made a dramatic volte-face in 1931. Close on the heels of September 18, Asahi managers resolved that “though the newspaper remains in favor of disarmament,” in the interests of “unifying public opinion behind the army,” the paper would not “criticize or oppose in any way military action or the military itself.” In a more mean-spirited vein, Mainichi editors decided their paper would treat China “as an enemy country” and therefore refrain from using “titles and honorifics for Chinese nationals.”⁷³ In practice, reports wired in by special correspondents in the field came straight “from the lips” of Kwantung Army spokesmen. As one contemporary described the situation, “not only did virtually all the coverage from the front take a hard-line slant,” but reports from Tokyo journalists “gave preferential treatment to army information.” Moreover, journalists in the rest of the country were “following suit.”⁷⁴

      There were a number of factors operating to shape these decisions. Undoubtedly the government maintained a vigilant attitude toward press coverage of the Manchurian Incident and applied pressure to run pro-government articles. Editors were similarly influenced by the commercial opportunities of the war fever to give pro-military coverage of the Manchurian Incident. But neither government repression nor market pressures can entirely account for the alacrity and enthusiasm with which Mainichi and Asahi editors embraced the army's policy in Manchuria. In the twenties, they had genuinely opposed the Shandong Expeditions, but they just as sincerely regarded the occupation of Manchuria in a different light. While it may seem politically inconsistent to criticize the army one day and then endorse military expansionism the next, both positions were consistent with a commitment to the empire. In other words, it was possible to favor economic and diplomatic methods of protecting Japanese interests in the 1920s and yet perceive, in 1931, the need for a show of force in Manchuria. In short, editors committed themselves to unifying public opinion behind the occupation because they were convinced that the army was right.

      Changes in radio programming and the initiation of a public-education campaign by NHK mirrored the support given by the national dailies to the army's position. During the year following the Manchurian Incident, NHK broadcast 279 lectures and educational programs on Manchuria, including special programming aimed at women and children. NHK began this public-opinion crusade very quickly, squeezing in 4 lectures in the last days of September. Peaking in December with 40 scheduled programs, NHK hosted military men as the most frequent speakers on their public-education programs. Moreover, the civilian contributors featured, such as political firebrand Mori Kaku and right-wing scholar Yano Jin'ichi, were hardly neutral observers in the foreign-policy debate over Manchuria.⁷⁵ Mori, for example, represented the extremist wing of the hawkish Seiy

party doves. A close associate of General Tanaka Giichi, the symbol of a “positive” China policy, Mori himself was a firm advocate both of military expansionism on the continent and of a greater role for the army in domestic politics. Like Mori, Kyoto University professor Yano Jin'ichi was a long-time proponent of a stronger Japanese presence in Manchuria and went to work for the Kwan-tung Army as a propagandist for Manchukuo in 1932.

      In contrast to the press, radio support for the army did not represent a shift in position, for NHK was too new to have acquired a track record on military