BANNED IN JAPAN

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20911, 16 September 1939, Page 4

BANNED IN JAPAN

HARDY AND GISSINQ “DANGEROUS THOUGHTS” Thomas Hardy, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, James Joyce, and George Gissing are among the latest victims of the policy of intensified thought control which is being applied in the universities of Japan (says the Tokio correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor). A provisional text book inquiry commission, headed by Count Hirotaro Hayashi, has adopted the policy of even sbgbtlv/yjrTilic ts with what are ileouio us ly called “national policies.” Hitherto the selection of text books had been comparatively free. The professors in the various departments made their selections and obtained permits from the Minister of Education. Now, however, the commission has placed its ban on all books which fall into the following categories:— 1. Books with liberalistic tendencies. 2. Books offending public morals (including love stories). 3. Books describing excessive cruelty. 4. Books by authors who have at one time or another abused Japan. John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty,” Bertrand Russell’s “Roads to Freedom,” George Gissing’s “The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft,” essays by Aldous Huxley, and novels by Thomas Hardy and James Joyce have been barred, the last-named as too erotic. Publishers Dismayed Publishers of foreign books are especially dismayed by the prohibition of the works of Hardy, as these have been popular and have been published in fairly large editions. They could derive little consolation from the uncompromising views attributed to O. Oka, chief of the editing section of the Archives Bureau of the Ministry of Education, by the newspaper Moyako: “All books that conflict with the accepted concept of the State have been placed under the ban. Because, of the emergency period the selection of text books will be supervised more strictly. The book dealers seem to have felt the severest blow from the ban on Thomas Hardy, as so many of his works have been in use; but public morals must be guarded. The commission has studied works that have been in use for the last 10 years. Hereafter all works that are incompatable with the national policy will be forbidden as soon as they are discovered.” Restrictions on the books which may be read by students are only one of the forms of suppression to which academic life in Japan is now subject. University professors have figured prominently on the list of individuals arrested for alleged subversive ideals and activities. Many books written by professors have been forbidden, and it is reported that some universities are now consulting the police before making new appointments to vacant chairs. War Psychology Everywhere Up to the outbreak of the present war Japan has stood somewhere between the 100 per cent dictatorships and the democracies in its administrative practices. War psychology everywhere, even in democratic countries, makes for intolerance and repression; and the Japanese trend towards stricter thought control has also been advanced by the close political relations which have grown up between Japan and the Fascist Powers, Germany and Italy. Amusingly enougn. a Japanese edition of Adolf inner's autobiography, “Mein Karnpi,” has been an object of attention at the hands of the Japanese censors. The German Embassy here, according to a report in the newspaper Chugai Sliogyo, took the initiative in suggesting that certain passages in "Mein Kanipf” expressing racial theories which might offend Japanese feeling might be deleted in the interest of German - Japanese friendship, especially as I lie book was written before the signature of the Japanese-German Pact against the Communist International. The Embassy was smilingly assured that the questionable passages had already been eliminated by the Japanese censor*.