The Japanese media presents some startling differences when compared with the press in other leading industrial countries of the world. At first glance, the condition of the Japanese press seems to be parallel to that found in the United States. There are major national daily newspapers, a prestigious financial newspaper, and many regional and local newspapers. The level of reporting is quite good. There is a vigorous and increasing use not only of television for the dissemination of news, but also of the Internet. The population is highly literate; indeed, Japan has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, at over 90 percent. The vast majority of Japanese people read at least one newspaper every day.
Just five newspapers are "national" papers, and their circulation (in both morning and evening editions) accounts for half of the country's total newspaper circulation. These are (with 1996 circulation figures in millions, combining morning and evening editions) the Asahi Shimbun (12.7), the Mainichi Shimbun (5.8), Nihon Keizai Shimbun(4.6), Sankei Shimbun (2.9), and the Yomiuri Shimbun (14.55).
A closer examination of editorial style and content shows a considerable uniformity among these newspapers. It is almost impossible to characterize one or another of them as predictably and regularly representing a specific political position, as, by way of example, the New York Times can be assumed to take a liberal standpoint, while the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page usually is conservative. Part of this uniformity in editorial posture is due, of course, to the overwhelming dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party, with its six or so internal political clans but a broad consensus on policy.
To understand this condition, it is useful to take a brief excursion into the history of Japanese journalism. Newspapers as we know them came late to Japan, and were not much present until the very end of the era of feudalism, which was precipitated by the arrival in 1853 of an American armada. Initially, they seem to have been crudely printed gossipy broadsheets ( yomiuri , literally "for sale to read"). The Shogunate made many efforts to control the dissemination of information and opinion, although with the proliferation of lending libraries it was not possible to make any tight controls effective. It was not until the modernizing reforms of the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) that a formal press was permitted.
Challenges From the Script System
The mechanical challenges of printing a daily newspaper anywhere in the world should not be underestimated. In Japan, as elsewhere, hand set moveable type was one option. Since the runs of Tokugawa broadsheets were limited to as few as dozens or the low hundreds of copies, crude materials such as rice cakes were used for inking the paper with the appropriate marks, and some publishers even resorted to the use of blocks of a hard, taffy-like sweetening material called mochi . If the Japanese newspaper world was to come of age in the Meiji period (after 1868), with high volume and multi-page runs issued daily, however, it would need to adopt modern machinery.
However, there are significant complexities in the Japanese script system that precluded the development of linotype machines in Japan until 1920. (Rotary drum presses were beginning to enter Japanese usage as early as about 1900.) The Japanese use a great number of Chinese characters ( kanji ), and to read a newspaper requires knowledge of at least 2,000 of these characters. Obviously, a keyboard is difficult to devise or to operate which would allow for these thousands of kanji .
However, since the Japanese language (unlike Chinese) is highly inflected, in order to express Japanese in writing at all a supplementary script is required ( hiragana ). Derived from stylized and simplified elements of the Chinese characters, this is a basic collection of forty-eight characters which, when combined with simple diacritical marks, allows for the representation of all 104 sounds that one can make in Japanese. A second and parallel syllabic system was later also developed, called katakana . Although the characters are similar in their essentials, this is a much more angular script in appearance than the rounded hiragana , and has been preferred in modern times for the written representation of foreign words and phrases.
Finally, it is possible to take the entire Japanese language and write it down in western style characters ( romaji ). It was briefly proposed after the Second World War that Japan be required to shift to western-style writing (as happened in Vietnam in 1906), but this idea died quickly.
In this most cumbersome of all the world's script systems, all four of these scripts are used in regular daily contexts, including in newspapers. The symbols of three of the four ( hiragana , katakana , and romaji ) tell the reader how to pronounce the word, but pronunciation of the kanji is not self-evident, and must be memorized. It is not uncommon to see a small-print pronunciation clue written above a kanji character in hiragana , and increasingly, signs in Japan are presented in two or more script systems simultaneously.
Adding additional complexity, the Japanese language is fairly "sound-poor" while nonetheless being "symbol-rich", which means that there are an extraordinary number of homonyms. For example, out of the 35 characters that can be vocally rendered by the sound rin , the meanings vary all the way from "morals" to "a female Chinese unicorn" to "luring fish with a bonfire." Finally, each character has both a classical Chinese pronunciation and a Japanese language pronunciation.
Therefore, we may come to three conclusions. It is very difficult even for native speakers to become truly and fully literate in their own language. It is a high challenge to achieve exclusive precision of meaning either in speech or in writing. It is also a major undertaking to devise a keyboard that will enable its user efficiently to write the Japanese language in the form that most closely approximates that which Japanese eyes and ears would find comfortable and familiar. As to this last problem, modern computers have helped greatly to mitigate the difficulties of typing in Japanese, since they can fairly easily supply pull-down scrolls and menus, listing options both for meanings and characters.
Press Laws and Censorship
Japan's history involving press laws is unusually complex, even considering its long march toward the twenty-first century. It is most coherent to approach the topic somewhat chronologically, noting the cumulative effect from era to era.
Transition to Constitutional Monarchy (1856-1889)
In an attempt to gain some familiarity with the news of the world, the struggling Shogunate established the "Barbarian Literature Research Department" in 1856. Initially comprising fifteen men, it rather quickly grew into an academic institute, was renamed the "Development Institute" in 1863, then progressed into the kernel that finally matured as Japan's great Tokyo University.
In 1868, as the anti-Shogun revolution proceeded, the triumphant "restorationists," who were going to "re-store" the Emperor to his "rightful position" at the head of the government, banned all pro-Shogun newspapers and sent publishers to jail. Newspapers in the future must have a publication license, obviously issued by the restorationists. Consequently, one of the first acts of the new government, in February, 1869, was to issue a Newspaper Publishing Ordinance, encompassing the key provisions that there would be no prepublication censorship, that editors' names and addresses must be carried in the newspapers, and that they would be responsible personally for newspaper contents.
Under this new law, the first true daily newspaper began on December 1, 1870, as the Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun (Daily News). However, the early days of the new government were marked by considerable unrest (as many as thirty riots per year), and so in 1873, the fundamental press law was revised as the Newspaper Stipulations. To the original eight articles of the 1869 Ordinance were now added ten additional articles. Their general tendency was to make it harder to publish editorial opinion that could be construed as unsympathetic to the authorities. The very next year, however, saw a major crisis, a revolt of a conservative wing of the 1868 restorationists, and there was a significant amount of political commentary in the newspapers. This opinion could roughly be divided into a pro-government and a pro-rights section; in response, the authorities issued and withdrew the status of "newspaper by appointment" quite freely.
The revolt of the conservative samurai having been contained, on June 28, 1875, a new "Press Ordinance" was issued, consisting of 16 articles. Its most startling bias was that any form of criticism of the state could lead to fines and imprisonment. Later that same year, on July 6, a Libel Law strengthened this tendency, and a year later, on July 5, 1876, the Home Affairs ministry gained the power to enforce a press ban for disturbance of the national security.
Nonetheless, a people's rights movement continued to emerge, so that there remained a number of relatively liberal newspapers in print. This led the government to issue a new Press Ordinance in 1883. Its forty-two new provisions allowed suppression of a newspaper if its editorial approach threatened "public peace or morals." The enforcement of this ordinance was devastating to independent partisan newspapers. Finally, on December 25, 1887, the Peace Preservation Law further supported tight control of the press.
Constitutionalism and Initial Imperialism (1889-1912)
After long discussion and negotiation, the Meiji Constitution was promulgated on February 11, 1889. This fundamental document in Japanese modern history had three articles that directly impacted the press. Article Eight allowed that extraordinary imperial ordinances could override any laws. Article Twenty-nine promised the citizenry that they "shall within the confines of the law, enjoy the liberty of speech, writing, publication, assembly, and association." "The confines of the law" was not, however, defined. Article Seventy-six established that all existing press laws as well as the Law on Public Meetings and Associations were to go into effect as part of the new constitution.
What these constitutional guarantees really meant can easily be measured. Between 1892 and 1895, 490 publications were suspended. National unity apparently over-rode all other considerations, as Japan entered an era of increasingly overt expansion. However, the introduction in this period of the rotary press method of printing had the effect of radically increasing the circulation of those newspapers still allowed to print. Circulations during this period of the leading papers were up to the 75,000-90,000 range, with a top figure of 140,000.
In these major newspapers in the 1890s, the nature of imperialism was openly debated, for instance the advisability of war with Russia. However, since Japan won both of its wars in this period (against the Chinese in 1895, and the Russians in 1905), this discussion was somewhat truncated by the passage of events. Nonetheless, the compromising nature of the resolution to the war with Russia led to widespread opposition to government policy, one result of which was that most Tokyo newspapers were shut down by the government, and there was considerable consolidation among the survivors.
Yet another new Press Law dated May 5, 1909, was issued to try to control criticism of the government. Legal responsibility now was extended even to proofreaders. Half of Japan's newspapers were out of business within a year.
Liberalism and Democracy (1912-1926)
Historians frequently and energetically debate whether or not there was a period that can properly be called "Taisho Democracy." Far from being a sterile or arcane argument among academics, the debate over the nature of Taisho democracy provides a central touchstone.
Before 1912, most of the institutions of government were in the hands of a collection of non-democratic power groups, including the institution of the Emperor, the remains of the restorationists, a collection of senior statesmen, the upper house of the parliament, the Privy Council, and the military leadership. Among those who felt that there should be more democracy as an abstract goal and those who worried that Japan could never really catch up to the West unless it went beyond superficial imitation, there was much frustration.
The catastrophic personal weakness of the Taisho emperor himself opened the door to a pro-democracy effort. Yoshihito, the Taisho Emperor (1879-1926), had suffered from meningitis as an infant. He was physically frail, hyperactive, and may have had some problems with mental stability. He was never able to exert public authority on behalf of the imperial institution, and had none of his father's genius for public symbolism.
An affiliated ingredient was the continuing concern that Japan had reached a kind of glass ceiling in its efforts to be a player on the world stage. Some felt that Japan had adopted the externals of western culture without buying into its essence of individualism. They saw liberalization as key.
The old Popular Rights movement resurfaced, this time in the form of a movement to encourage the development of political parties. These reformers emphasized that the only available route for the emergence of any true democracy was to control the government and its policies through the lower House of Representatives. Then, they hoped, public opinion, expressed both through the media and through elections, could be brought to bear on policy formation and the control of the various oligarchic factions might be diminished, if not entirely broken. Hence there occurred a long struggle to see if it might be possible to set up disciplined, policy-making political parties which were responsive to the electorate. Freedom of the press had the potential to play a central role in this effort. Debate has continued as to whether the Taisho democracy was a step on the way to true democracy or a tripping point.
Freedom of the Press in the Taisho Period
During the first half of the period, the central issue was whether or not cabinets could be made responsible to the Diets. With the restoration oligarchs aging but still struggling to control politics, the editorial policies of the Osaka Asahi Shimbun (Morning Sun) emerged as a key focus for the people's rights movement. In 1918 there were major rice riots, leading to martial law and a press blackout. The Osaka Asahi Shimbun responded defiantly by publishing with blank spaces where the censored articles originally would have appeared. The government, incensed, threatened to close the paper, whereupon the paper's editorial leadership resigned. Their successors published an apology on October 14, 1918 (as quoted in de Lange, 126-127): "in recent years our arguments have greatly lacked in moderation, and we realize we have been given to favouritism." Osaka Asahi Shimbun next announced it would in future be "free from party affiliations," and the movement for constitutional government and universal suffrage thus was damaged. In a highly ironic twist, the new prime minister to emerge in this crisis period was Takashi Hara, who had been president of the rival newspaper the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun .
Surpassing even this elaborate shuffle being carried out by the two great Osaka newspapers in 1918, 1923 brought a further element of drama. The great earthquake and fire of September 1, 1923, devastated Tokyo's newspapers, opening the door for the Osaka-based Asahi and Mainichi to become national newspapers with circulations of over one million per day. But by this time, with the 1918 humiliation of the Asahi fresh in mind, neither one was likely to become a partisan opponent of the government, especially since the mildly reformist Hara was assassinated in 1921 by a rightist.
If one of the hallmarks of a free and democratic society is a free and unfettered press, it is clear that the Taisho period, while marking the emergence of Asahi and Mainichi , hardly saw the parallel development of an uncensored press. Censorship was self-imposed, unless there was a public crisis of any description, at which time the government moved in forcibly.
The Age of Militarism (1931-1945)
Although there were minor incidents earlier, most historians would date the rise of militarism from the 1931 Mukden Incident. Yomiuri Shimbun had migrated from a small-circulation literate and literary paper, through a period of post-earthquake populism, to nonetheless losing ground to Asahi and Mainichi as these two papers moved into a commanding position as the nation's serious providers of hard news. Its relative market share dropping steadily from 15 percent down to 5 percent, after the Mukden Incident Yomiuri made yet another lurch in style, still seeking to locate a viable marketplace niche. In the early 1930s, it took on an editorial stance favorable to aggressive action on the mainland, notably in Korea, Manchuria, and China. Thereby becoming a leading force for public support of aggressive militarism, it was able to increase its circulation and at the same time immunize itself from hostile government action.
After the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai and an attempted coup by militarists on May 15, 1932, the now openly military government established a formal system of "thought police," supported informally by groups of right wing extremists, and bookstores and newspapers were raided and closed across the country. In February 1936 an even more extreme set of militarists attempted a coup but failed, resulting in a massive purge of the most radical militarists, but this had little impact on freedom of the press, since that liberal entitlement had already been drastically curtailed. However, on July 7, 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident opened the China war, and on April 1, 1938, a National General Mobilization Law included articles giving sweeping powers under Article Sixteen and Twenty to limit newspaper coverage, restrict or confiscate papers, and capture original plates.
By 1940, as the crisis deepened, the government created a single national press agency. A first step was to reduce the number of newspapers nationally from about 1,500 to 300. Later that year, the information departments of all key ministries were merged, further centralizing news flow. Paper was in short supply, with the result that the number of pages per issue was reduced, columns were crowded, and print made smaller. After the formation of "The Newspaper League" in May of 1941, the number of papers continued to shrink so that by the time of Pearl Harbor, there were only fifty-four papers remaining. The contents of the surviving papers increasingly were slanted toward the prevailing military ideology, with emphasis on State Shinto, Emperor worship, the way of the warrior, and the divine origins of the Japanese race.
The war did not go well, despite the creation of a "National Spiritual Mobilization Movement" which rhapsodized on the beauty of the shattered jewel and the solidarity of one million hearts beating as one. By March 23, 1944, Mainichi Shimbun was emboldened to criticize the war plans ("Of what use are bamboo spears against airplanes?"). However, it seems actually to be the case that most of the Japanese public was uninformed about the negative progression of the war and was genuinely stunned by the surrender.
The Occupation (1945-1952) and Beyond
One of the early acts of the Occupation government was to issue a "Memorandum on Freedom of Speech and Newspapers," a Press Code, and an order removing all legal constrictions on the press. The Press Code was the most important. Its ten articles emphasized adherence to the truth, but there were limits on the coverage of the Occupation itself. Not only could the Occupation government carry out pre-publication censorship, but also there could be no reference to such activity. In fact, there was more censorship over the Occupation government than over the old militaristic ideologies.
Under the tutelage of the Occupation, a new constitution was drawn on November 3, 1946, which included an apparently absolute statement about freedom of the press (Article Twenty-one). However, as the Cold War began and then deepened, American policy toward Japan entered into a period of change ("the Reverse Course"), through which Japan increasingly would be built up as an ally against the various socialist and communist forces of the world. This meant that there would be less and finally no tolerance at all for leftist newspapers, such as Yomiuri had become, and on June 26, 1950, the day after the invasion of South Korea, a "red purge" was carried out. However, the signing of a general peace treaty on April 28, 1952, allowed the Japanese left wing press to re-emerge.
Since that time, Japan has had an ostensibly free press system. However, this openness has been severely restricted by the existence of the press club system.
State-Press relation
Relations between the Japanese press and the state have gone through rather dramatic changes since the Occupation. As long as the economy and attendant issues of statecraft were working well, it seemed to matter very little if the Japanese media gave the government a "free pass." But it also meant that underlying difficulties in the system were not publicly debated, alternate arrangements were not explored, and corrupt practices were slow to be exposed. Superficially, this criticism might seem hard to sustain, since leading newspapers have been sharp on occasion in denunciation of a particularly inept politician. However, the underlying national economic and political system remains essentially unchallenged. In other advanced countries, the press might be expected to play a substantive role in the search for new approaches to national problems.
Journalism and Scandals
Little in the way of constructive analysis let alone criticism appeared in Japanese popular journalism at the time, although one could argue that deeper and underlying problems in the Japanese system pointed the way of the biggest story of the period 1985-1995. Foreign journalists long based in Japan wrote such critiques, but were quickly dismissed as "Japanbashers." In a curious echo of the Tokugawa era, Dutch journalists, led by Karel van Wolferen, provided most of the initial intellectual firepower.
Among the Japanese journalists, what negative attention was given to government once again was lavished on more scandalous breaches of the public trust, similar to coverage of the Lockheed scandal in 1976 that had exposed actual bribery of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Even in those instances, however, the initial energy for investigating Tanaka's "money politics" in 1974 and the Lockheed payoff in 1976 had come from American sources. In the first instance, it was a Los Angeles Times reporter, and in the second an American Senate investigating committee that asked all the difficult early questions and pressed the issue to the level of public consciousness in Japan.
The Japanese Media and Its Role in Setting the National Agenda
Therefore, finally, how should we characterize the relationship between the media and the state in Japan? Harvard's Susan J. Pharr has offered an exceptionally interesting and powerful metaphor in an essay published in 1996: "Media as Trickster in Japan: A Comparative Perspective" in the book edited by she and Ellis Krauss. In this essay, and in others that fellow scholars have written for her book, evidence and argument are provided both from theoretical assessments and from case studies, leading to a mildly more hopeful view of the Japanese media.
In addition to the many occasions on which the press has over-focused on scandal and avoided alienating government "handlers," there have also been moments of achievement. Environmental pollution, a surprisingly severe problem in Japan, is on the national agenda thanks to journalistic coverage. Twice at least a ten-year period, something resembling a moment of potential political reform has surfaced (in 1993, and again with the emergence of Prime Minister Koizumi in 2001), both significantly helped along by the media. The government's weak handling of the crisis presented by the 1995 Kobe earthquake certainly also was highlighted in news coverage. Furthermore, Pharr points out that the media in Japan should not be confined to the five national papers. The weekly publications as well as anti-mainstream papers seem freer to deviate from the "press club" and "lecture" systems of gathering news. Finally, it is probable that Japanese public opinion, informed and encouraged by newspapers and other forms of media, is much more sophisticated than the national political leadership in understanding what needs to be done. This certainly is the view of a leading American observer who has lived in Japan for decades (Alex Kerr, in his two important books Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons ).
After reviewing the standard social-utility positions traditionally assigned to the media in Japan (spectator, watchdog, and servant of the state), Pharr concludes that none of these are fully satisfactory in explaining the relationship. She borrows from symbolic anthropology the notion of "stranger-outsiders" living in an "unfixed social position." Pharr approvingly cites the work of Barbara Babcock-Abrahams in interpreting the tricksters as "active mediators who are independent and both creative and destructive simultaneously, and who ultimately alter or stretch social and political boundaries and prevailing arrangements of authority" (25).
What does a "trickster" actually do? The trickster "provides release" by bringing ridicule and defiance to bear on the structures and institutions of public life. It also "evaluates," often rather harshly, with the result that the national community must confront some of its own mythologies. Third, the trickster "horrifies" by making sure that the public must look at the outlandish aspects of modern society. Additionally, the trickster "induces reflection," and finally it forces the wider community to "bond."
This application of anthropological theory to mass communications reality provides a tool for deeper understanding of the potential role of the Japanese media, and goes far beyond the surface issues raised by such terms as "liberal," "conservative," "national," "regional," "self-censorship" and "free democratic press." When studied closely in Pharr's article and accompanying essays, the notion leads toward an approach with improved texture and nuance. It also requires that we distinguish (at the very least) between the media conglomerates and their front-line practitioners, a few of whom are able and willing to "secure a measure of autonomy and space." In such a view, without denying the problems that exist, Pharr and her fellow authors find good hope that Japanese conformism will not entirely overwhelm clear and free thinking in the media about the future needs of the land and its people.
Media is to serve the international community. Many Japanese who are involved professionally with the wider world, however, can read English well. Consequently, it is not at all unusual when using the bullet trains to see Japanese individuals reading The International Herald Tribuneor The Japan Times either to the exclusion of or in preference to Japanese language newspapers. English language versions of Asahi , MainichiYomiuri , and The Asian Wall Street Journal are also widely available.
The Japan Times mines the major international news services for articles and often reprints them whole and unedited. In this way, it serves somewhat as an anthology of world reporting, easily available inside Japan to those who can read English.
However, those five national Japanese newspapers publishing in the Japanese language and producing half of the daily copies available in the whole country rely much more heavily on their own reportage system for their information and texts. Perhaps this is why the business and intellectual leadership in Japan turns to the English-language press to the degree that it does. Just as in the 1850s, if one really wants to know what is going on in the outside world, one needs to seek information and interpretation from that world, and not rely solely on sources internal to Japan.
News agencies
As in other areas of media history, Japan's first news agency (1871) was associated with an external power, Denmark. Mitsui established its first native agency in 1888, with the active support of the Japanese government. By 1926, there were thirty-three news agencies based in Tokyo alone. However, as the age of militarism set in, centralization took place rapidly, and by 1936, the government permitted only the Domei News Agency to exist. After the war, Domei broke into two units (Kyodo and Jiji), still the largest in Japan.
Kyodo is a cooperative, comprising sixty-three newspapers and Nippon Hoso Kyokai's radio and TV. It is linked to international news agencies, and maintains thirty foreign bureaus. Daily, it provides about 150-200 articles, of which about 75 percent originate with its own writers.
Jiji in its earlier years emphasized the delivery of news to corporations, businesses, and government agencies, but after 1959 broadened its scope to compete with Kyodo in providing general news coverage.
The Radio Press specializes in translating foreign short wave broadcast information.
The major trading conglomerates maintain their own internal news agencies. Mitsui, for example, has about 1,600 agents in over 500 overseas locations, transmitting about 65,000 bulletins of information daily. The leading foreign news agencies have also made considerable penetration in Japan, usually operating through annual contracts and set fee structures.
Broadcast media
NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai) is the public broadcasting system of the country. TV users pay reception fees which produce 98 percent of NHK's revenues. In the mid-twenties, NHK was founded as the sole radio broadcaster, and remained so until 1945. The Broadcasting Law of 1950 allowed commercial competition, which began in the following year on radio and in 1953 on TV.
Early in the twenty-first century, NHK used two television channels, and for radio employed one FM and two AM channels. In 1987, NHK introduced twenty-four-hour satellite broadcasting, and as of 2002 was using twenty-two languages to send broadcasts around the world.
Commercial broadcasting dates from 1951, first of course on radio and after 1953 on TV as well. By 1990, there were 83 radio stations of all varieties, and 109 TV stations. Radio stations collaborate in cooperatives led by Nippon Cultural Broadcasting, Nippon Broadcasting System, and the Japan Radio Network. Prominent television networks are the Japan News Network, the Nippon News Network, the All Nippon News Network, and the Fuji News Network. One prominent station leads each of these networks.
The central enabling legislation, nicknamed "The Three Radio Wave Laws," passed in 1950, requires that broadcast media be independent of the government, but also that it maintains neutrality in politics. The same dynamic seen in other industrialized countries operates in Japan. Commercial TV news, heavy budgets for advertising, and continuous broadcasting all have given televised programming more weight in Japanese society than can now be assigned to the print media. Approximately 95 percent of Japanese people watch television daily for an average of three and one half-hours. In a country of 127 million people, there were 87 million TV sets (1997), and 121 million radios. Counting every station, Japan had 7,108 broadcasters in 1999 (CIA World Factbook).
Electronic news media
Internet communications have surged in Japan, with about 47 million people using the Internet in 2000. There are more than seventy Internet service providers, almost all having the potential to connect with customers through telephone lines. However, wireless Internet services are growing explosively, so that at least one third of the users opt for that form of connection.
A number of the leading newspapers have now developed web capability both in English and in Japanese. English-language versions of papers such as Asahi Shimbun, Chubu WeeklyChunichi Shimbun (Nagoya) and twenty-eight other papers ranging from the national to the local are all available online. Additionally, the Nippon Television network, a leading commercial TV organization, maintains its own web site, as does a site associated with the Nikkei stock market. A simple web search, using intuitive categories, reveals a rich world of electronic media. The full impact of this new form of news dissemination remains to be seen, but it is safe to assume that over the next few years, the entire information industry will be transformed.
Summary
Japan indeed has a complex news media industry and history. Although Japan has almost all the elements of a world-leading press, both its media history and its customs have combined to create a situation wherein its greater potential seems unlikely to be realized. In this view, Japan's media reflects most simplistic assessments of the prospects for the country as a whole.
On the other hand, Japan is open to almost all the forces lumped together under the rubric "globalization." Further, Japan has shown remarkable resilience in the past 150 years. It has a highly educated and energetic population, one of the most literate in the world despite the challenges of its language, and a long tradition of innovation and adaptation. Only the most foolhardy or willfully pessimistic would suggest that Japan has anything but a bright future, led by its public opinion and its news media. Japan will develop in its own way and on its own schedule.
| Number of Daily Newspapers: | 110 |
| Total Circulation: | 71,896,000 |
| Circulation per 1,000: | 669 |
| Newspaper Consumption (minutes per day): | 28 |
| Total Newspaper Ad Receipts: | 1,247 (Yen billions) |
| As % of All Ad Expenditures: | 27.60 |
| Number of Television Stations: | 7108 |
| Number of Television Sets: | 86,500,000 |
| Television Sets per 1,000: | 682.3 |
| Literacy rate | 99.0% |
| Number of Cable Subscribers: | 18,705,060 |
| Cable Subscribers per 1,000: | 147.4 |
| Number of Satellite Subscribers: | 10,620,000 |
| Satellite Subscribers per 1,000: | 83.8 |
| Number of Radio Stations: | 305 |
| Number of Radio Receivers: | 120,500,000 |
| Radio Receivers per 1,000: | 950.5 |
| Number of Individuals with Computers: | 40,000,000 |
| Computers per 1,000: | 315.5 |
| Number of Individuals with Internet Access: | 47,080,000 |
| Internet Access per 1,000: | 371.4 |
B IBLIOGRAPHY
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). World Factbook 2001 .
De Lange, William. A History of Japanese Journalism: Japan's Press Club as the Last Obstacle to a Mature Press . Richmond, England: Japan Library, 1998.
Frederic, Louis. Japan Encyclopedia . Cambridge: Harvard, 2002.
Huffman, James. Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan . Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1997.
——. Politics of the Meiji Press: The Life of Fukuchi Gen'ichiro . Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1980.
Japan: Profile of a Nation . Revised Edition. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999.
Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia . Two volumes. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993.
Kasza, Gregory J. The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945 . Berkeley: University of California, 1988.
Kerr, Alex. Lost Japan . Oakland, CA: Lonely Planet, 1996.
——. Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan . New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Landers, Peter. "Read All About It-and More Often: Japanese Newspapers Spike a Tradition." The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2002.
Pharr, Susan J. and Ellis S. Krauss, editors. Media and Politics in Japan . Honolulu: The University of Hawaii, 1996.
van Wolferen, Karel. The Enigma of Japanese Power . New York: Vintage, 1990.
