MIRRORS OF SOCIETY

Evening Star, Issue 22460, 3 October 1936, Page 29

MIRRORS OF SOCIETY

JAPANESE AND RUSSIAN PRESS REFLECT RATIONALISM AND COLLECTIVISM The modern Press is a pretty faithful mirror of the social system under which it is produced (writes R. H. Chamberlain, in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor’). Many of the outstanding characteristics both of Japan and of the Soviet Union may be learned from a systematic perusal of the Japanese and Soviet Press. Between the journalistic worlds of these two countries there is just one important point of similarity. Both Japanese and Russians are newspaperreading peoples. There are no certified figures of circulation for the Japanese PrOss. But an apparently reliable estimate assigns some 19,000,000 readers to Japan’s approximately 1,100 newspapers. This is an average of more than one copy to every household. During trips to Japanese country districts I have found that almost every Japanese peasant family subscribes to a newspaper. to the latest.figures at my disposal, there are now 9,700 Soviet newspapers, with a total of 36,000,000, against the 859 newspapers, with 2,700,000 subscribers, which were registered in pre-war Russia. , _ Perhaps the most fundamental and important contrast between the Japanese and the Soviet. Press is that the latter is exclusively Governmental, whereas the influence of the authorities on the Japanese Press is mainly negative. No newspaper in Japan has ever prospered after it acquired the reputation of being a mouthpiece of the Government. Negative control over the Japanese Press is exercised through the method of so-called police bans. When something occurs which the police or some influential Government department desires to keep secret, Japanese newspapers and foreign language publications in Japan receive instructions from the police to print nothing about it. Apart from the bans, the Japanese Press often exercises a good deal of freedom, even license, in fields where the Soviet newspapers are perforce extremely reserved. A synthetic sanctity hedges in the personality of the Soviet Commissar or high party functionary. Nothing disrespectful, nothing humorous, nothing really intimate may be published about him. The permissible limit in this connection is a laudatory description of Stalin visiting his mother, or talking with admiring delegations of workers and collective farmers. ‘ A Japanese Minister, on the other band, must be prepared for rough-and-tumble handling by the gentlemen of the Tokio Press. Jokes that were told at Cabinet meetings; the tastes of Cabinet Ministers in everything from food to fishing: the Bacchanalian exploits of one Minister, and the unsuccessful matrimonial proposal of another; these are the stock in trade of Japanese newspapers. ATTACK GOVERNMENT. “ The ■ surest way for a Japanese newspaper to become popular,” a Japanese official - once remarked to me with a trace of irritation, “is to attack the Government.” By “ Government ” he meant the Cabinet and its individual members. , The position of the Imperial Family in Japan is raised far above any criticism. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, no Govermfient policy or measure may ever be criticised, although the Press is granted wide latitude m exposing and denouncing cases of maladministration and delects of execution. Another conspicuous contrast between the Soviet and the Japanese Press lies in the fact that the former is constantly and zealously trying to instill into its readers certain habits of thought and conduct. It is eternally sponsoring nation-wide drives and campaigns with the most varied aims and objectives. It is constantly trying to spur on the people to some new achievement, to persuade factory labourers to work harder, peasants to adopt more scientific methods of farming, young Communists to practise jumping from parachutes, illiterates to learn to read and write. This crusading, propagandist, missionary spirit is almost completely absent in the typical Japanese newspaper. It endeavours not to convert or to edify its readers, but to entertain them. Consequently the “ stunts ” that are sternly barred from the austere, realm of Soviet journalism are dear to the heart of the Japanese editor. His favourite reporter is the man who will go into the danger zone in Manchukuo or approach a volcano in eruption in oeder to get striking pictures and vivid descriptive copy. Important congresses are reported at voluminous length in Russia. And, as speeches on such occasions are apt to be numerous and lengthy and space is limited, ns the supply of paper is chronically behind the demand, one not .infrequently finds the Soviet Press iiWUZ faC behind ib§ of events

and publishing on the 20th a speech 'ru " aS delivered 0,1 the 15th. • t 6 'J' a f >anese newspaper seldom goes m for this type of veroatim chronicling. It aims rather at presenting a large quantity of brief items, liberally interspersed with pictures. As might he expected, the “ human interest ” stones that aro considered beneath the dignity of Soviet journalism are a conspicuous feature of the Japanese Press. »o, if one looks into the mirrors represented by the Soviet and Japanese Press, one recognises the reflections of many features of Russian and Japanese me.. Jn the Soviet Press one sees the beginnings of a regimented, collectivist society, where much is sacrificed oh the altar of _ industrialisation and freedom of criticism is regarded as one of the luxuries that must be denied for the sake of building up a Socialist order. I uruing to the Japanese mirror, one sees the outlines of a country' that has preserved an unusual synthesis of old and new, that has its medieval palace and ramparts and moat in Tokio faced by modern banks and office buildings, that has preserved a strong hard core ot traditional nationalism with an overlay of borrowed and adapted things, from ice cream parlours and ■phonograph records to half-assimilated Western ideas of Liberalism, Fascism, and Communism.