Introduction Japanese Closed Linguistic Space

Introduction

1. Japanese Closed Linguistic Space

Although it seems that there are many reports about politics when you read a newspaper or watch television in Japan, many journalists realize that they have not reported the complete and actual circumstances of events and issues.¹ One Japanese journalist confessed that no less than 90 % of articles in major newspapers are written in conjunction with the more than 400 press clubs that exist today.² Although there are tidbits of factional strife often reported, a major national newspaper hardly issues an investigative report of criticisms of men in power. While there is political argument and debate, there are only a few limited policy arguments, which take place at periodic intervals.³ The press clubs are located or affiliated with the central ministries, governmental organizations, the Bank of Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party, the police, local governments, and economic federations. These are notorious for their cozy relationship between major media and centers of power, and they often exclude freelance writers, magazines, smaller local newspapers, and foreign journalists.⁴

Within the realm of the everyday, if an individual discusses politics he or she is prone to be treated as somehow dangerous or perhaps a bit subversive. Many ordinary Japanese people thus have to behave in a seemingly apolitical manner in everyday life.⁵ In quite a few companies, employees observe each other.⁶ Some people who oppose government policies in public may even be followed by the police or by members of the Public Security Investigation Agency.⁷ Ordinary citizens who support illegal foreign workers or refugees sometimes receive visits from police officers in their workplace.⁸ If victims of crimes or accidents protest against the government or the police, they may receive hundreds of slanderous letters from anonymous people.⁹ While some citizens do take the risk of raising controversial arguments, almost all citizens have kept silent and have applied mutual pressure for others to likewise keep silent so as to maintain order.¹⁰

Thus, public debate on politics among ordinary people has not been fostered in Japan. From when have these phenomena been observed? Kazutoshi Yamamoto, a Japanese historian who researches the mass media control before/after the war, insists that the interrelationship between the media and ordinary people was a product of long feudalism from before the Meiji Restoration in 1868.¹¹

After the Meiji Restoration, despite the declaration of “the Imperial Covenant of Five Articles,” which stipulated that “everything should be decided based on public debate,” conservative politicians of the Meiji government suppressed the growth of free public debate among people during the latter half of the Meiji era. The Press Law of 1909 and the Publishing Law of 1893 were two pillars of the suppression of the freedom of speech.¹² At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Katsura government began seducing big newspapers by utilizing the extant press clubs that were against the establishment. He was successful and the press clubs gradually became more amenable to government publicity and propaganda.

The government in the Showa era, 1926-1989, suppressed freedom of thought and expression through censorship on a large scale. Newspapers, journalists, and filmmakers were soon forced to collaborate with the national war effort. The Maintenance of the Public Order Act of 1925, the National Mobilization Act of 1938, as well as the establishment of Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940, completed this system of controlling media and of sealing people’s lips. Many people willingly cooperated to stir up militaristic sentiment, e.g., most Japanese filmmakers collaborated with the war effort in one way or another.¹³ The period after the Meiji Restoration until the end of World War II was thus a process of upsurge of the strong suppression of freedom of thought and speech.

What were there then in the consequent occupation period after the defeat of World War II? There are two distinct positions on the problem of free speech in Japan during this period. The first argues that Japan was liberated or released from the suppression of pre/during war days. It was chiefly a left intellectual opinion, but was also shared by many ordinary Japanese.¹⁴ The second position was articulated by the Japanese literature critic Jun Etō.¹⁵ He maintains that Japanese society continued to be oppressed even after the war and that this had its immediate roots in the heavy hand of the American military, which were the principle architects and enforcers of the occupation. In Etō’s view, the Occupation had an adverse effect on Japanese “linguistic space.”¹⁶ This assertion has strongly influenced the discourses of right-wing thinkers and grass-roots conservatives, and has supported nationalistic tendencies within the Japanese society.¹⁷

In this thesis, I would like to investigate what actually took place in terms of freedom of speech in Japan during the American occupation. I will ask whether the restrictions on Japanese discursive space during the period under study came only from American censorship and propaganda, as Etō has claimed.

It is also necessary to compare other cases of American occupation in order to answer this question better, by presenting a contrast. Germany will be the most suitable case to compare the conditions and effects associated with American occupation, with special reference to the problem of freedom of speech and the effect of occupation upon it.

2. 
   
   Directory: bitstream -> handle -> 1874
   handle -> Master of science
   handle -> Healthcare utilization among persons living with hiv with attention to the influences of hepatitis
   handle -> The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and Beyond Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole
   handle -> A dissertation
   handle -> The Rise of Digital Curation and Cyberinfrastructure: From Experimentation to Implementation, and Maybe Integration
   handle -> Mobile augmented reality applications for library services
   handle -> Libraries, Archives, and Museums as Epistemic Infrastructure1
   1874 -> Artful Murder An Exploration of the Language of Raymond Chandler and its Translation into Dutch Master’s Thesis Translation Studies University of Utrecht Supervisors
   
   
   
   Download 0.89 Mb.
   
   Share with your friends: