The Press and Social Cohesion during a Period of Change: The Case of Early Meiji Japan
Author(s): Albert A. Altman
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1981), pp. 865-876
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Modern Asian Studies, 15, 4 (198I),
pp. 865-876.
Printed in Great Britain.
The Press and Social Cohesionduring
a Period of Change:The Case of
Early Meiji Japan
ALBERT
A. ALTMAN
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
from an historical, comparative perspective, the newspaper has
an unusually adaptable tool of communication. It has
itself
proven
served many masters: national states with different political ideologies;
political parties of right, left and centre; economic interests of capital
and labour; national movements and individuals. The contents of
newspapers have been equally as varied, ranging from newspapers of
record, newspapers offering their readers news of national and local
politics, finance, and international affairs to those specializing in news of
sex, crime, sport and scandal. Newspapers have differed, too, in their
physical dimensions: some print enough in a single issue to fill a weighty
book, others are no more than a single page of type.
This multiplicity of possible content, form and matter has eased the
newspaper's adaptation to a heterogeneity of purposes in societies of
varied complexion throughout the world. The newspaper as a medium
of public communication is a European invention and the press's
diffusion to non-Western societies is a phenomenon of the past century.
When Louis Eugene Hatin published his study of the French periodical
press in 1866, his statistical data indicated that newspapers hardly
existed outside Europe and the United States. Of a worldwide total of
I2,500 newspapers, 7,000 were published in Europe and 5,000 in
America, leaving the balance of 500 for the rest of the world.1
TheJapanese version of the Western original is, therefore, only one of
the many created during the last one hundred years.2 This paper
VIEWED
The author wishes to thank the Harry S. Truman Research Institute of the Hebrew
University for providing the physical facilities and ambience that make writing less
painful.
1 Louis
Eugene Hatin, Bibliographiehistoriqueet critiquede lapressefranfaise (Paris, 866),
p. cxvi.
2 Albert A. Altman, 'Shinbunshi:The
Early Meiji Adaptation of the Western-Style
Newspaper,' in Wm. G. Beasley (ed.), Modern Japan, Aspects of History, Literature and
0026-749X/81/o40o-o80I$o2.oo
?
I98I Cambridge University Press
865
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866
ALBERT
A. ALTMAN
concentrates on a very narrow time period in the history of theJapanese
press: the nearly six years between the coup d'etat in early January
1868, commonly known in the West as the Meiji Restoration, and
October 1873, when the government leadership split during the crisis
blown up by the issue of war with Korea. The main focus of attention
will be the use to which theJapanese press, then a new medium of public
communication, was put by governmental authorities, particularly at
the local prefectural level. Although the time span is relatively brief, the
character acquired by theJapanese press during this short span of years
was significant also for a new kind of journalism that took shape
afterwards.
The Japanese press came into being almost simultaneously with the
modernJapanese state. Each in its own way was a response to changes at
home and abroad during the late i86os and early i87os and the two
co-existed in a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship until late
1873 in the capital, Tokyo, and until well past the mid-I87os in some
prefectures. The reason for this symbiosis was two-fold. Firstly, Japan's
new leaders used the young press as an adjunct of government out of
weakness and uncertainty. They had embarked upon a course of
far-reaching change for Japanese society and not having the absolute
power to command acceptance of its disagreeable consequences, these
leaders resorted to the press as a channel through which to transmit
information about the government's policies and accomplishments, and
as an instrument for convincing and persuading the population to
accept the new national framework in which its life was now set.
The early I87os witnessed the promulgation of a series of decrees
laying the foundation of Japan's modern institutional structure. A
simple listing of the more striking innovations will indicate their broad
scope and suggest their potential for stirring up dissatisfaction among
the samurai elite being stripped of their privileges and among the
peasantry being forced into a pattern of life of their superiors' making
and serving their superiors' interests.
* in
August 187 , the abolition of the semi-independent han and the
establishment of a unitary, national administrative framework
* in
September i872, compulsory education for all children, regardless of sex or the social standing of their parents, in government
schools.
Society(London, I975). For comparable examples in Asia, there are Roswell B. Britton,
The ChinesePeriodicalPress, I80o-i912 (Shanghai, I933); S. Natarjan, A History of thePress
in India (Bombay, 1962); Kemal H. Karpat, 'Turkey,' in Ward and Rustow (eds),
Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, I963).
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EARLY
MEIJI JAPAN
867
* in December 1872, the
Gregorian solar calendar replaced the lunar
calendar
* in
January 1873, compulsory military service for all males
*
inJuly 1873, the imposition of a national system of taxes calculated
on the value of the land rather than of its crop as formerly, and
payable in money, not kind.
Uncertain about the future of the new regime, dependent upon the
samurai who were being deprived of their economic and social
privileges, often to the extent of sinking into poverty, and needing quiet
in the villages where most Japanese lived, in order to avoid stirring up
social unrest that might be exploited by disaffected samurai, the
government used the newJapanese press to put across its message. The
press was particularly well suited ideologically to this task. This brings
me to the second half of the symbiotic relation.
News publications had appeared intermittently and had been sold
commercially during the Tokugawa period, but the authorities forbade
them, as well as all other printed matter, from reporting on or
commenting upon affairs of state. Information that a different kind of
news publication was printed in the West, one that also reported
political news, and even an occasional copy, filtered through to Bakufu
officials and scholars.3 The trickle became a torrent after the forcible
3
The earliest evidence that educated Japanese had some knowledge, even though
hazy, of the existence of European newspapers dates to the early eighteenth century and
is found in the official report that Arai Hakuseki prepared of his interrogation of
Giovanni Battista Sidotti, aJesuit priest who was captured and imprisoned in 1708 after
having smuggled himself into Japan in violation of the ban on Christianity. Arai, a
prestigious Confucian scholar and adviser to the shogun, prepared a report on what he
had learned from the priest about the West. In the section on Brazil, Arai wrote a few
lines on 'corontos', a contemporary word for newspapers in several European languages.
'Concerning the corontos, it is common that whenever anything happens, it is
illustrated, explained and printed....'
(Seiyo kibun, quoted in Yamamoto Fumio, Nihon
shinbunshi(Osaka, 1948), p. 7. The number of persons permitted to see Arai's report must
have been exceedingly small, since it contained much about Christianity and, in fact, it
remained in manuscript until I883 before it was printed inJapan. We do not know what
sense even these few readers made of Arai's terse description and there is no evidence that
either he or they had ever seen a coronto.
Opportunities to see Western newspapers increased, at least for officials, when stray
copies began reaching Japan after a growing number of foreign vessels started entering
Japanese waters a century later. An early such instance is known from a letter sent in
1818 by an English merchant-mariner, Captain Peter Gordon, to Robert Morrison, the
English missionary, who was then in Malacca. Describing his arrival offEdo in search of
trade and his conversation with two Bakufu officials, Gordon added that 'I also said it
would afford me pleasure to leave them with newspapers and other publications relating
to the political state of Europe, as well as a few maps and books on geography, seeing
they were particularly anxious to acquire information on these subjects. .... ' The letter
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ALBERT
868
A. ALTMAN
American 'opening' of the country in 1853-54. The end of isolation and
the resumption of foreign and trade relations heightened the awareness
of this Western medium of communication among officials and
intellectuals. The Dutch substituted newspapers for the intelligence
report they had formerly submitted to the Bakufu,4 Bakufu officials and
representatives on missions abroad saw newspapers at first hand,5 and
also wrote about newspapers in their letters home, in their diaries and in
official reports,6 and in the early I86os the Bakufu published translations from European, American and Chinese (missionary) newspapers
for sale to the public.7 And in the winter of i866, on the eve of the
Bakufu's demise, a popular best-seller, Fukuzawa Yukichi's Seiyojijo
(Conditions in the West), devoted a chapter to newspapers so that even
those Japanese who were neither officials nor had traveled abroad might
understand what these publications were.
In Japan itself, newspapers had been published in the foreign
settlements for Western readers in their own languages since 1861 (and
became a Bakufu source of intelligence information between I863 and
is quoted in the original English in Iwasaki Katsumi, ShibataShokichiden(Tokyo, 1935),
pp. 9-10.
4
Ono Hideo, 'Waga kuni shoki no shinbun to sono bunken ni tsuite ' Meiji bunka
zenshu(henceforth MBZ), Shinbunhen,Kaidai, p. 3.
5A
particularlyinteresting case is that ofFukuchi Genichir6 who later became one of
the Meiji period's leading pioneer editors. He recalled in his memoirs having seen and
trying to read French and English newspapers during the early I86os when he was
abroad as a member of official Bakufu missions. The memoirs, Shinbunshijitsureki
were
published in 1894 and are reprinted in MBZ, Shinbunhen.Fukuchi's recollection of this
experience appears on p. 4.
Excerpts concerning newspapersfrom the diaries kept by members of the first Bakufu
mission to the U.S. in 1860 can be found in Yamamoto Fumio, Nihonshinbunshi,
pp. 9- 0.
6 One
example among many is the letter sent in the late autumn of 1862 from Parisby
a samurai, very likely Terajima Munenori, who was in Europe as a member of the
Bakufu'sTakeuchi Mission. He tells his correspondentthat he had purchased an annual
subscription to an English newspaper while he was in London, Ihi nyiukroku(Tokyo,
1931),
vol. I, p. 257.
Not to be overlookedis the report that Ikeda Nagaaki, Chikugo no kami, submitted to
the Bakufu upon his return from France in 1864, in which he recommended using
Ishin
European newspapers to muster support for Bakufu foreign policy. See Bakumatsu
gaiko shiryo shusei (Tokyo, 1944), vol. 6, pp. I50-1.
7
There were seven altogether: (i) KanpanBataviashinbun(1862),
(2) KanpanKaigai
shinbun(1862), (3) KanpanKaigaishinbunbesshu(1862), (4) KanpanRikugosodan(1862?),
(5) KanpanChugaishinpo(1862?), (6) KanpanChugaizasshi (I864), (7) KanpanHongKong
shinbun (1864?).
The firstthree were collections of translationsfrom the Westernpress;the 4th, 5th and
6th were reprintsof missionarypublications in China and the 7th contained information
from a commercial Hong Kong paper. Only the first two items have been reprinted.
Both are in the MBZ, Shinbunhen and in BakumatsuMeiji shinbunzenshu(henceforth
MBSZ), vol. 2.
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EARLY
MEIJI JAPAN
869
I866).8 A Westernized Japanese soon published a newspaper in
Japanese in Yokohama, but he had little commercial success.9 As in
other places at other times, it was a war that provided the conditions
favourable to a press in Japanese, in this case, the civil war that erupted
soon after the coupd'etat in January I868.
Between early spring and midsummer at least 17 newsbooks were
published in Edo and nearby Yokohama. In the absence of effective
government (whether of the Bakufu or the Restoration regime whose
seat was in the capital, Kyoto), these newsbooks printed uncensored
news and opinions about the course of the conflict. And, what is of
particular relevance here, they emphasized the idea that newspapers
had a social value, that reporting the news of events for general
consumption was not simply, or only, a private idle curiosity, but rather
an activity of considerable pragmatic and symbolic importance for
society. One or two examples will suffice to illustrate how this idea was
phrased. The Prospectus of the Nichi-nichi shinbun(Daily News) said that
the fact that newsbooks were being published in Edo was
truly a sign of civilization. By bringing new information to the readers'
attention and broadening their knowledge, newsbooks are naturally of great
benefit to the four estates [shinokosho:
The samurai, peasants, artisans and
merchants] ... in the transaction of their daily affairs. Consequently, if a great
volume of news circulates among the public, the country will benefit
greatly.... 10
A reader of the Chigai shinbun(Domestic and Foreign News) wrote that
papers could help create a 'wealthy country and strong military' (fukoku
kyohei).'Newspapers,' he suggested, 'should be set up in all the provinces
and should consider everything without fear of incurring the authorities'
displeasure. Nothing excels a newspaper for enabling the four estates to
study international conditions, and for high and low to learn about each
other. 1 A man who later became one of MeijiJapan's most influential
8
Ebihara Hachir6 Nihonojishinbunzasshishi(Tokyo, I934); Robert M. SpauldingJr.,
'Bibliography of Western-language Dailies and Weeklies in Japan, 1861-1961,' n.d.,
n.p. Translations from the Yokohama foreign press for the information of the Bakufu
authories are in MBSZ, vol. I, pp. 1-27I.
9 The reference is to
Joseph Heco (Hiko), the editor and publisher of the Kaigai
shinbun.This newspaper translated foreign news from English newspapers brought to
Yokohama by foreign vessels. Heco did not indicate the publication date on any pfhis
issues, but at the head of each he informed his readersof the arrival date of the ship that
had brought the original newspaper. The earliest issue was translatedfrom newspapers
that had reached Yokohama on 8 April 1865. The Kaigaishinbunis reprinted in BMSZ,
vol. 2.
10
vol. p.
11 BMSZ, vol. 3, p. 329. From the context it seems
BMSZ,
3, 236.
fairly certain that the reader in
question was a foreigner, an American, Eugene M. Van Reed, who among his other
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ALBERT
87o
A. ALTMAN
editors wrote in his Koko shinbun (Public News) that 'News concerns
secret things, yet by writing it down for all to see, it becomes of great
value.'12
The Confucian education common to the editors of newspapers led
them to emphasize the priority to be assigned in this new medium of
communication to the requirements of the state. To have stressed the
individual's needs would have been inadmissible. This priority given to
the needs of society and the concern with the newspaper's potential
contribution to the state also led the editors to point to Western
newspapers, to which they attributed a significant part in creating
Western strength, as their model, rather than to the non-political
Tokugawa newssheets and pamphlets, which, from the viewpoint of a
Japanese educated in the values of the 'great society,' dealt in trivia and
which, at best, could amuse the reader, but certainly not improve him.
Shortly after the Meiji regime established its authority in Edo, it
asserted the right of a Japanese state to control publication, including
that of newspapers, and on 3 September i87I, five days after the
abolition of the feudal polity, the social role of the press was enshrined in
a state document entitled the Shinbunshijjrei (Newspaper Regulations).
The document was addressed to the Kyoto authorities and enunciated
the principles that should guide them in formulating policy towards
newspapers. 'The object of newspapers,' the Regulations asserted, 'shall
be to develop people's knowledge' and 'developing people's knowledge
means destroying the spirit of bigotry and prejudice, and leading [the
people] to civilization and enlightenment.' And lest there be any
misunderstanding of this purpose, the Regulations declared categorically that 'compiling a newspaper shall be considered equivalent to
composing the authentic record of the times ... Though care must be
taken not to bore readers, it is forbidden to make a mountain out of a
molehill, to turn falsehood into truth, to agitate men's hearts or to
deceive the public.' 3 In other words, newspapers were to serve the ends
of state policy and not be vehicles for the expression of discontent.
Given this definition of the newspaper's role in society, it comes as no
surprise that the publication of many early newspapers was an act of
government. In most cases, these papers were edited in government
offices, or by persons with close ties to officialdom. The most prestigious
activities, was connected with a Japanese-language newsbook, the Moshiogusa,then
being published in Yokohama. His colourful career inJapan is described in my 'Eugene
Van Reed, A Reading Man inJapan, I859-1872,' HistoricalReviewof BerksCounty,vol.
30, no. I (Winter, I964-65).
12
BMSZ, vol. 4, p. 3.
13
Hoki bunruitaizen,Dai ippen, monjo mon, shuppan, pp. 405-6.
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EARLY
MEIJI JAPAN
87I
were newspapers edited and published in Tokyo and nearby Yokohama
under the patronage of senior government officials with the assistance of
bureaucrats. In 1872, the government decided to purchase copies of
each issue of four such newspapers (Shinbun zasshi, Tokyo nichi-nichi
shinbun,Yokohamamainichishinbunand the Nisshin shinjishi) and send them
to the offices of local metropolitan governments (Tokyo, Kyoto and
Osaka) and of the prefectural governments. There the copies were made
available to officials. One of these newspapers, the Nisshin shinjishi, was
given priority in publishing the texts of official matter released by the
Sa'in, one of the three branches of the Dajokan, the Grand State Council.
This matter included records of Sa'in deliberations, texts of Sa'in
decrees and of memorials submitted to the Sa'in.14
This symbiotic relationship was reproduced in the prefectural
capitals. The August 1871 reform eliminating the old han had created a
national administrative framework of 302 prefectures and 3 metropolitan governments. In four months, amalgamations and redesignations of
boundaries had reduced this unwieldy figure to 72 prefectures, creating
an entirely new political geography. The senior official in these new
prefectures was the governor who was appointed by the central
government. The policy was to give this job to men from outside the
prefecture, thus lessening the likelihood of a united front of the governor
and the local elites against the authority of the government in Tokyo.
Without roots in the prefecture within his jurisdiction, the governor
perforce had to depend on the support of Tokyo in administering his
prefecture. His powers were wide-ranging. We can get an impression of
just how extensive they were from the description of the responsibilities
placed upon the han chiji (ofOkayama han) following the administrative
14
See Okurash6 tasshi 47, May 4, 1872 in ibid., p. 483 for the Treasury Instruction
concerning the Shinbunzasshi (News Miscellany), the Tokybnichi-nichishinbun(Tokyo
mainichishinbun(Yokohama Daily News). See Yamamoto
Daily News) and the Yokohama
Fumio, Nihon shinbunshi,p. 38 for the Treasury Instruction dated August Ii, 1872
concerning the Nisshinshinjishi(The Reliable Daily News).
The Nisshinshinjishiof April 29, I872 informed its readers that the paper had been
granted the privilege of publishing material made available to it by the Sa-in.
As one example of how the Tokyo and Yokohama press was used to keep local
authorities informed of foreign and domestic news, there is the case of the Hokkaido
kaitakushi(Hokkaid6 Colonization Office) reproducingsuch news in its own publication,
the Shinposetsuryaku(News in Brief), which it began issuing in October 1873 for
distribution to its officials,see Watanabe Ichi6, 'Hokkaid6 shinbunshi,' Chihobetsu
Nihon
shinbunshi(Tokyo, I966), p. I.
It should be kept in mind that the policy of making newspapersavailable at no cost to
prefecturalauthoritieswho, in turn, used the newspapersto keep their officialsup to date
on the latest developments was a way of assuring that at least officials would see
newspapers at a time when they were still expensive and circulations were low.
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872
ALBERT
A. ALTMAN
reform of October I870 in which a number of han returned their land
registers to the Emperor, to have the daimyo become, formally, a
representative of the central government. 'He shall keep himself
informed as to population, number of houses, and census registration in
the han, and shall supervise the rearing of the people, diffusion of
education, improvement of manners, collection of taxes, encouragement
of corvee, allocation of reward and punishment, and superintendence of
han troops. 15 The new governors had the powers of a daimyo, but they
were not always the objects of loyalty as the daimyo were. In many
instances, quite the contrary was the case, particularly when men from
Satsuma and Ch6shu were appointed to governorships in prefectures
that formerly had been han on the losing side in the post-Restoration civil
war.16
These governors had to enforce policy decided in Tokyo, sometimes in
the face of local opposition, but to do so in a manner not likely to stir up
dissatisfaction. Thus, the local prefectural authorities, too, were interested in using the newspaper as a channel through which to spread
information and garner support for official initiatives.
The relationship of the authorities to the publishers and editors
assumed a number of forms depending on local conditions. A few
examples will illustrate how intermeshed official and private initiatives
were. In Akita, the gon rei, Kunitsukasa Senkichi, brought a man,
Shibaura Denjir6, from Tokyo to establish a plant to print official
material and then permitted him to publish a newspaper as well, the
Kaji shinbun (News from Near and Far) which began to appear on 2
February I873.17 In Niigata, the prefecture established its own printing
plant in 1873 and published Dajokan decrees as well as its own decrees,
notices of official appointments and awards and punishments under the
overall title of the Jiigata kenji hochi (The Niigata Prefecture Intelligencer).18 Similar arrangements were found in other prefectures, too.
In Okayama, the Oda kenshinbun(Oda Prefecture News) was published
from August 1875 by the officials of what was then Oda prefecture, one
of the predecessors of present-day Okayama prefecture.19 In Fukui, the
prefectural News Company (Shinbunsha) began publishing the Satsuyo
shinbun(The News Compendium) in September I872, the editor being a
15 Ardath W., Burks, 'Administrative Transition from Han to Ken: The Example of
Okayama,' Far Eastern Quarterly,vol. xv, no. 3, pp. 377-8.
16 For the
example of Aomori prefecture, see Aomorikenseijishi (Sendai, 1965), vol. I,
pp. 364-6.
17 Kamata Kiichir6, 'Akita ken shinbunshi,' ChihobetsuNihon shinbunshi, p. 41.
18 Matsui Kei, 'Niigata ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 174.
19
Koriyama Tatsumi, 'Okayama ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 365.
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EARLY
MEIJI JAPAN
873
schoolteacher.20 The same was done in Saitama and Fukushima.21 In
Hiroshima, the Nichu zakki (A Miscellany of Daily News, Explained)
was published from 24 January I872 by the prefectural news Bureau
(Shinbunkyoku) and distributed free of charge each month to all towns
(machi) and villages (mura).22
The News Bureau (Shinbunkyoku)in the Nagoya prefectural administration (the predecessor of Aichi prefecture) had a different purpose,
namely, to encourage the formation of newspaper companies and the
purchase of newspapers. In December 1871 to January 1872, on the
occasion of the first issue of the Nagoya shinbun, the prefecture
promulgated a decree that 'Newspapers develop wisdom and are of
great benefit to human life. Each ward of a town or city [ku] and villages
[mura] are to purchase a copy without fail so that knowledge may be
extended, the foundation of industry laid and progress made toward
civilization.'23
Occasionally, newspaper reading was encouraged within what were
known as shinbunjuransho or shinbun etsuransho,'news reading rooms'.
Such rooms sprang into existence in I872 and spread throughoutJapan.
In December 1872, the Mizuma ken, one of the predecessors of Fukuoka
prefecture, announced that it was establishing such a juransho in the
prefectural office, where 'everyone, whether of samurai origin [shizoku]
or commoner [heimin], may read newspapers whenever he wishes, since
newspapers develop people's knowledge and lead them on towards
civilization.'24 In Chikuma ken, now part of Nagano prefecture, the
governor in 1873 ordered the establishment of juransho and instructed
the village headmen, teachers and prefectural employees to read
newspapers.25
The local authorities did not always stop at simply encouraging the
establishment of such reading rooms. In some cases, they ordered that
villagers were to have newspapers read to them. The role of such public
newspaper readings in the maintenance of social order was dramatically
displayed in Yamanashi ken in September-October I872, when troops
were summoned from Tokyo to quell a riot of several thousand farmers
protesting against revisions in the land tax. The next month, the
following instructions went out to all village headmen:
20
Yanaimura Ki'ichi, 'Funkui ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 204.
21
Saruyama Yoshinari, 'Saitama ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 99; Sat6 Tamitaka,
'Fukushima ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 59.
22
Takasu Kazumi, 'Hiroshima ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 373.
23
Kakegawa Kiyu, 'Aichi ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 257.
24 Gond6
Takeshi, 'Fukuoka ken shinbunshi,' ibid., p. 436.
25 Honda Suketaro, Tsukada
Masaaki, 'Nagano ken shinbunshi,' ibid., pp. 225-6.
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874
ALBERT
A. ALTMAN
In the present civilized times, people of the lower classes,including women and
children, have absolutely no knowledge of what is going on in the world . . . Nothing equals a newspaperfor obtaining this knowledge. Newspapers describein
detail conditions in Japan and abroad. They report good and evil behaviour
faithfully. Good is praised and evil decried quite naturally. Newspapers are a
short cut to improving manners. Furthermore, they are often useful in the
family enterprise. It is regrettable, however, that there are many who are
illiterate and cannot themselves read and understand. It is decreed that,
henceforth, in all villages qualified persons from among the Shinto priests,
Buddhist monks and farmers shall be selected to serve as reading masters to
explain (at lecturesheld six times a month) what is printed in the newspapers.26
The government split of 1873 and the jiyu minken ('people's rights')
movement that followed sounded the death-knell of such newspapers in
Tokyo although they continued to exist outside the capital until the end
of the decade. The split in the national leadership provided conditions
for the appearance of another kind of newspaper, one devoted to
polemic and criticism of the government. The split brought into
existence political patrons for an opposition press at the highest level of
Japanese politics and it is of particular interest that they justified their
opposition on Confucian grounds, as well as on axioms drawn from
Western political and philosophical theory. In Confucian terms, the
press was conceived as an instrument with which to inform the ruler, and
the officials around him, of how his subjects fare, and about their
problems and needs. Channels of communication open all the way from
26
The text of the instructions to the village headmen is quoted in Nakayama
Yasumasa, ShinbunshuseiMeiji hennenshi(Tokyo, I936), vol. i, pp. 496-7.
This Meiji period practice of assemblingvillagers to read them newspaper articles and
to lecture them on the meaning of the news was a continuation of a Tokugawa practice
whereby 'The responsibilitiesand the rules of conduct of the villagers were made known
to them... through moral exhortations given them by the intendant or bailiff and the
village head.' K. Asakawa, 'Notes on Village Government in Japan,' Journal of the
AmericanOrientalSociety,vol. 30 ( 9IO), p. 268. Asakawa also indicates that this practice
was, in turn, based on measures of social control used in China, '... some Barons
followed the historic customs of China of giving the people moral exhortations through
teachers. They were usually Confucian scholars. Sometimes they were sent in circuit
through the fief, villagers assembling to receive them and listen to their lectures,' ibid.,
vol. 31 (1911), p. 200. On Chinesepracticesduring the Ch'ing period, see Hsiao
Kung-chuan, Rural China,ImperialControlin theNineteenthCentury(Seattle, I960), pp.
in
184-205. For several examples of Tokugawa practices, see Ronald P. Dore, Education
TokugawaJapan (London, I965), pp. 235-41.
For Meiji period examples of villagers having newspapers read to them, see
Matsuzaka Takejiro, 'Miyagi ken shinbunshi,' Chihobetsu,
p. 3I, and Tokyonichi-nichi
vol. 2, p. 48I. That
shinbun,February 5, 1876, cited in ShinbunshuseiMeiji hennenshi,
attendance at such readings was compulsory rather than voluntary is suggested by a
record of attendance from a village in Yamanashi prefecture that has survived, dated
November 28, I873, Koshi geppo, no. 31 (March, I933), p. 4.
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EARLY
MEIJI JAPAN
875
the ruled to the ruler were considered one of the hallmarks of benevolent
rule. Conversely, rule was not benevolent if such channels were blocked
and the ruler unaware of his subjects' plight.
In ideological terms, therefore, the supreme value continued to be
social harmony, the unity of the ruler and the ruled. The political
struggle determined who would decide the consensus and policies to
which all had to conform and the opposition sought for itself a role in this
process. They did not cast doubt on the grand principles in which it was
rooted. The political conflict played itself out on the local, prefectural
level as well. And the press was used by the local elites, often in different
political camps, as a weapon in this conflict.
The editors and writers of the press were, in large measure, available
locally. Although after the Restoration, office seekers, entrepreneurs
and students flowed to the capital, the countryside was not stripped of its
traditional leadership. Former hanofficials remained to take up positions
in the prefectural bureaucracy; wealthy farmers, merchants, petty
manufacturers, sake brewers, money lenders-in short, the elite of the
in the towns
Japanese countryside during the Meiji period-remained
and villages which were the sources of their wealth and power. From
among them as well as sons who returned home after an education in
Tokyo came the editors and writers of the new journalism.27
These elites, including the journalists, on the prefectural slopes below
the Tokyo peak, are less well known, perhaps because they have been
less studied. They accounted for the diffusion of the Meiji press beyond
the main cities, and because they were the necessary intermediaries
between the capital and the prefectural population, their importance for
the course ofJapan's modernization cannot be overemphasized.
In a comparative perspective, more study is needed before we can say
with any authority what is unique about the role played by theJapanese
27
For example, when the Tokushima han was replaced by Myoto prefecture in 1871,
there was a 'minor exodus of leading men to the central government....
However, most
of the leading executives of the domain remained behind as prefectural officials.'
Andrew Fraser, A Political Profileof TokushimaPrefecturein theEarly and Middle Meiji Period
i868-I902 (Canberra, I97i), p. i .
Yanagida Kunio mentions 'graduates of the new normal schools (who) came to take
charge of the public schools. (They) ... were often second or third sons of local landlords
... Not infrequently a young man served as a teacher in an unfamiliar district for some
years and then returned to his home to become the principal of the local primary school.'
Japanese Manners and Customsin the Meiji Era (Tokyo, I957), p. 74.
Cases of graduates of Tokyo institutions of higher learning returning to their
prefectural homes to take up positions on local newspapers are found among the
graduates of Fukuzawa's Keio gijuku listed in Maruyama Makoto, Fukuzawa Yukichi to
sono monkaseishoshi (Tokyo, 1970).
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876
ALBERT
A.
ALTMAN
press during a period of great change and what that role shares with
newspapers in other societies also undergoing transformation. That the
Japanese press does, indeed, stand apart from others is suggested, for
example, in an investigation of social change in India in which the
author concludes that the Indian press was primarily a means of
communication among elites, rather than an instrument for the
mobilization of popular support.28
28
Reuven Kahane, Sociological Analysis of Processes of Legitimation and Integration in
Developing Societies: The Case of India (Mimeo., Hebrew University ofJerusalem, 1979),
ch. 9, pp. 26-8.
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