second volume of Shimada Seijir
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
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 policy. Since the founding of the NHK network in 1926, NHK was technically privately owned and managed. Government regulations, however, subjected radio to strong state controls and made it virtually an instrument of the Communications Ministry. Even so, before the Manchurian Incident NHK had not taken an active role in news reporting, nor was it used as a vehicle for political propaganda. The political and ideological role of radio was not yet fixed, and many sought to reverse the course NHK seemed to have embarked upon in 1931. The Minseit
To criticisms of Nogami and others, a manager of the Osaka branch of NHK replied, “those on the left often say that Japanese broadcasting is trying to fulfill its foremost function as an organ for the diffusion of reactionary thought. If one looks at the relationship with supervisory state officials, the scope of the limits on broadcast contents, etc., one cannot disagree with this observation, but it is only the organization and the system which foist [upon radio] varied functions favorable to a reactionary course—it is certainly not inevitable that we must advance along this road.”76
