JOURNALISM IN JAPAN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2492, 30 June 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

JOURNALISM IN JAPAN.

The "Court Circular" states that the now press law has just boon promulgated in Japan, where, however, it is not to become permanent until after an experimental period of nix months : " The new law requires that the editor, the manager, and tho printer shall state their full names and ages on making written application for faithority to publish a journal. The applicants must not lit) less than twenty years of ago, Japanese subjects, and persons who have never been deprived of their civil rights. The editor cannot also bo the manager of the same newspaper, and each of them lias ro deposit as caution-money a sum between A.'l.iO and §1,000, unless the paper be exclusively devoted to science, art ur commerce. Every reply to an article in the paper must bn inserted in extenxu in tho samo type as the article which called it forth, and at the head of the same column-always provided that if the reply occupies twice as much space as the article, the manager is entitled to charge for the excessive matter as tin advertisement. There is to be no exception in this rule except when the reply is of the character of an attack, or if it is anonymous, No newspaper is to argue in support of the breach of a law, even if the law is considered a had one. No official document can be published, nor any allusion to it permitted, without the authority of the Department which it concerns. The Minister is to have the right to suspend, prohibit or confiscate every newspaper, the tone of which seems to liiin injurious to the public peace or to existing customs, however •open those customs in themselves may be to criticism. Kvery infraction of these rules is to be punished by severe penalties, although less severe than those which were- in force before the passing of this law."