This book investigates the role played by the Asahi Newspaper, one of Japan´s largest daily newspapers, as a mediator of information and power during the 20th century. Members of the staff at the paper, including Funabashi Yoichi, former Editor-in-Chief and one of the most trusted public intellectuals in Japan, examine the paper's role in Japanese history, showing how news agencies assisted in the creation and maintenance of the nation´s goals, dreams and delusions. The book draws on internal documents, committee meeting notes and interviews with the staff at the company as a means to narrate what newspaper editors chose to publish during Japan´s journey through the 20th century. As well as offering an original insight into wartime media, Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th-Century Japan explores the relationship between media and society during the postwar era and into the 21st century.
Lively, engaging, and frank, Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th Century Japan is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the complex forces that produced Japan's tumultuous 20th century. Focusing on the key events and developments of the Showa years (1926-89)-the rise of militarism, World War II, the emperor's role in the Occupation, postwar economic prosperity and pollution, relations with the Soviets, the Americans, and China-the paper's former editor-in-chief sheds new light on the way the press and the public influenced each other, often positively and often disastrously. Funabashi is particularly strong in analyzing the pre-World War II years and the paper's erratic role in sometimes fighting, sometimes defending nationalism and militarization. Rich in little-known human stories and in quotations from company and state documents, the work also has much to tell us about nationalism, censorship, and the media today.
