Setchūbai (Plum-blossoms in snow) and Kwakwan-ō (Nightingale Among
Flowers) by Suyehiro. This idea of subserving literature to political
ends is said to have been suggested by Nakae Tokusuke’s translation
of Rousseau’s Contrat social. The year 1882 saw Julius Caesar in a
Japanese dress. The translator was Tsubouchi Shōyō, one of the
greatest writers of the Meiji era. His Shōsetsu Shinsui (Essentials
of a Novel) was an eloquent plea for realism as contrasted with the
artificiality of the characters depicted by Bakin, and his own works
illustrative of this theory took the public by storm. He also brought
out the first literary periodical published in Japan, namely, the
Waseda Bungaku, so called because Tsubouchi was professor of
literature in the Waseda University, an institution founded by Count
Okuma, whose name cannot be omitted from any history of Meiji
literature, not as an author but as a patron. As illustrating the
rapid development of familiarity with foreign authors, a Japanese
retrospect of the Meiji era notes that whereas Macaulay’s Essays
were in the curriculum of the Imperial University in 1881–1882, they
were studied, five or six years later, in secondary schools, and pupils
of the latter were able to read with understanding the works of
Goldsmith, Tennyson and Thackeray. Up to Tsubouchi’s time the
Meiji literature was all in the literary language, but there was then
formed a society calling itself Kenyūsha, some of whose associates—as
Bimyōsai—used the colloquial language in their works, while
others—as Kōyō, Rōhan, &c.—went back to the classical diction
of the Genroku era (1655–1703). Rōhan is one of the most renowned
of Japan’s modern authors, and some of his historical romances have
had wide vogue. Meanwhile the business of translating went on
apace. Great numbers of European and American authors were
rendered into Japanese—Calderon, Lytton, Disraeli, Byron, Shakespeare,
Milton, Turgueniev, Carlyle, Daudet, Emerson, Hugo, Heine,
De Quincey, Dickens, Körner, Goethe—their name is legion and their
influence upon Japanese literature is conspicuous. In 1888 a
special course of German literature was inaugurated at the Imperial
University, and with it is associated the name of Mori Ogai, Japan’s
most faithful interpreter of German thought and speech. Virtually
every literary magnate of the Occident has found one or more interpreters
in modern Japan. Accurate reviewers of the era have
divided it into periods of two or three years each, according to the
various groups of foreign authors that were in vogue, and every year
sees a large addition to the number of Japanese who study the
masterpieces of Western literature in the original.
Newspapers, as the term is understood in the West, did not exist
in old Japan, though block-printed leaflets were occasionally issued
to describe some specially stirring event. Yet the
Japanese were not entirely unacquainted with
journalism. During the last decades of the factory at
Newspapers
and
Periodicals.
Deshima the Dutch traders made it a yearly custom to
submit to the governor of Nagasaki selected extracts
from newspapers arriving from Batavia, and these extracts, having
been translated into Japanese, were forwarded to the court in Yedo
together with their originals. To such compilations the name of
Oranda fusetsu-sho (Dutch Reports) was given. Immediately after
the conclusion of the first treaty in 1857, the Yedo authorities
instructed the office for studying foreign books (Bunsho torishirabe-dokoro)
to translate excerpts from European and American journals.
Occasionally these translations were copied for circulation among
officials, but the bulk of the people knew nothing of them. Thus the
first real newspaper did not see the light until 1861, when a Yedo
publisher brought out the Batavia News, a compilation of items
from foreign newspapers, printed on Japanese paper from wooden
blocks. Entirely devoid of local interest, this journal did not
survive for more than a few months. It was followed, in 1864, by
the Shimbun-shi (News), which was published in Yokohama, with
Kishida Ginkō for editor and John Hiko for sub-editor. The latter
had been cast away, many years previously, on the coast of the
United States and had become a naturalized American citizen. He
retained a knowledge of spoken Japanese, but the ideographic script
was a sealed book to him, and his editorial part was limited to oral
translations from American journals which the editor committed
to writing. The Shimbun-shi essayed to collect domestic news as
well as foreign. It was published twice a month and might possibly
have created a demand for its wares had not the editor and sub-editor
left for America after the issue of the 10th number. The
example, however, had now been set. During the three years that
separated the death of the Shimbun-shi from the birth of the Meiji
era (October 1867) no less than ten quasi-journals made their
appearance. They were in fact nothing better than inferior magazines,
printed from wood-blocks, issued weekly or monthly, and
giving little evidence of enterprise or intellect, though connected
with them were the names of men destined to become famous in the
world of literature, as Fukuchi Genichiro, Tsūji Shinji (afterwards
Baron Tsūji) and Suzuki Yuichi. These publications attracted little
interest and exercised no influence. Journalism was regarded as a
mere pastime. The first evidence of its potentialities was furnished
by the Kōko Shimbun (The World) under the editorship of Fukuchi
Genichiro and Sasano Dempei. To many Japanese observers it
seemed that the restoration of 1867 had merely transferred the administrative
authority from the Tokugawa Shōgun to the clans of
Satsuma and Chōshū. The Kōko Shimbun severely attacked the
two clans as specious usurpers. It was not in the mood of Japanese
officialdom at that time to brook such assaults. The Kōko Shimbun
was suppressed; Fukuchi was thrust into prison, and all journals
or periodicals except those having official sanction were vetoed.
At the beginning of 1868 only two newspapers remained in the field.
Very soon, however, the enlightened makers of modern Japan
appreciated the importance of journalism, and in 1871 the Shimbun
Zasshi (News Periodical) was started under the auspices of the
illustrious Kido. Shortly afterwards there appeared in Yokohama—whence
it was subsequently transferred to Tōkyō—the Mainichi
Shimbun (Daily News), the first veritable daily and also the first
journal printed with movable types and foreign presses. Its editors
were Numa Morikage, Shimada Saburo and Koizuka Ryū, all destined
to become celebrated not only in the field of journalism but
also in that of politics. It has often been said of the Japanese that
they are slow in forming a decision but very quick to act upon it.
This was illustrated in the case of journalism. In 1870 the country
possessed only two quasi-journals, both under official auspices. In
1875 it possessed over 100 periodicals and daily newspapers. The
most conspicuous were the Nichi Nichi Shimbun (Daily News), the
Yūbin Hōchi (Postal Intelligence), the Chōya Shimbun (Government
and People News), the Akebono Shimbun (The Dawn), and the
Mainichi Shimbun (Daily News). These were called “the five
great journals.” The Nichi Nichi Shimbun had an editor of conspicuous
literary ability in Fukuchi Genichirō, and the Hōchi Shimbun,
its chief rival, received assistance from such men as Yano
Fumio, Fujita Makichi, Inukai Ki and Minoura Katsundo. Japan
had not yet any political parties, but the ferment that preceded
their birth was abroad. The newspaper press being almost entirely
in the hands of men whose interests suggested wider opening of the
door to official preferment, nearly all editorial pens were directed
against the government. So strenuous did this campaign become
that, in 1875, a press law was enacted empowering the minister of
home affairs and the police to suspend or suppress a journal and to
fine or imprison its editor without public trial. Many suffered under
this law, but the ultimate effect was to invest the press with new
popularity, and very soon the newspapers conceived a device which
effectually protected their literary staff, for they employed “dummy
editors” whose sole function was to go to prison in lieu of the true
editor.
Japanese journalistic writing in these early years of Meiji was marred by extreme and pedantic classicism. There had not yet been any real escape from the tradition which assigned the crown of scholarship to whatever author drew most largely upon the resources of the Chinese language and learning. The example set by the Imperial court, and still set by it, did not tend to correct this style. The sovereign, whether speaking by rescript or by ordinance, never addressed the bulk of his subjects. His words were taken from sources so classical as to be intelligible to only the highly educated minority. The newspapers sacrificed their audience to their erudition and preferred classicism to circulation. Their columns were thus a sealed book to the whole of the lower middle classes and to the entire female population. The Yomiuri Shimbun (Buy and Read News) was the first to break away from this pernicious fashion. Established in 1875, it adopted a style midway between the classical and the colloquial, and it appended the syllabic characters to each ideograph, so that its columns became intelligible to every reader of ordinary education. It was followed by the Yeiri Shimbun (Pictorial Newspaper), the first to insert illustrations and to publish feuilleton romances. Both of these journals devoted space to social news, a radical departure from the austere restrictions observed by their aristocratic contemporaries.
The year 1881 saw the nation divided into political parties and within measured distance of constitutional government. Thenceforth the great majority of the newspapers and periodicals ranged themselves under the flag of this or that party. An era of embittered polemics ensued. The Era of Political Parties. journals, while fighting continuously against each other’s principles, agreed in attacking the ministry, and the latter found it necessary to establish organs of its own which preached the German system of state autocracy. Editors seemed to be incapable of rising above the dead level of political strife, and their utterances were not relieved even by a semblance of fairness. Readers turned away in disgust, and journal after journal passed out of existence. The situation was saved by a newspaper which from the outset of its career obeyed the best canons of journalism. Born in 1882, the Jiji Shimpō (Times) enjoyed the immense advantage of having its policy controlled by one of the greatest thinkers of modern Japan, Fukuzawa Yukichi. Its basic principle was liberty of the individual, liberty of the family and liberty of the nation; it was always found on the side of broad-minded justice, and it derived its materials from economic, social and scientific sources. Other newspapers of greatly improved character followed the Jiji Shimpō, especially notable among them being the Kokumin Shimbun.
In the meanwhile Osaka, always pioneer in matters of commercial enterprise, had set the example of applying the force of capital to journalistic development. Tōkyō journals were all on a literary or political basis, but the Osaka Asahi Shimbun (Osaka Rising Sun News) Commercial Journalism. was purely a business undertaking. Its proprietor, Maruyama Ryūhei, spared no expense to obtain news from all quarters of the
