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Paper short abstract

The Shengjing Shibao was one of the main Japanese-owned newspapers in modern China. Its relations with different authorities highlight the incoherent character of press management, which reflected the lack of a unified foreign policy in imperial Japan.

Paper long abstract

After Russia’s defeat in the 1904–05 war with Japan, fostering a friendly press industry was one of the policies that Japanese authorities pursued in Northeast China to cultivate the national interest there. Japanese influence grew by means of subsidies and effective market strategies. By the late 1920s, however, the rise of Chinese nationalism became a serious challenge to Japan’s dominant position in that field. Following the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident in 1931, anti-Japanese voices were finally silenced under military occupation.

So far, scholars have investigated mainly how the press system functioned under control of the imperial army in the 1930s. This paper, instead, discusses press management in the years before the Incident, when readers still had a choice among competing newspapers. The primary focus is on the Shengjing Shibao, the largest Chinese-language daily circulating in the region. Archive documents show that Japanese diplomats acknowledged this newspaper company as a valuable resource for collecting intelligence and promoting a positive image of Japan. Previous studies centred on discourse analysis have emphasised the role of the Shengjing Shibao as a tool of imperialist aggression. The interplay between company executives and Japanese authorities, however, has received relatively little attention.

This paper argues that guidance from the Foreign Ministry was rather loose through most of the period considered, despite continuous funding. Furthermore, there was a lack of coordination between the general consulate in Fengtian and Japanese authorities based in Dairen-Ryojun, namely the government of the Kwantung Territory, the Kwantung Army and the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu). Although the latter became the majority stockholder of the Shengjing Shibao in 1925, under the influence of consul-general Yoshida Shigeru the newspaper adopted a tone that caused trouble to Mantetsu. As each imperial agency had its own press operations, they would often act independently and even conflict at times. Press management is therefore representative of the “four-headed politics” that Japan carried out in Manchuria as a reflection of its polycentric institutional system. The paper makes this point through additional examples that clarify the position of the Shengjing Shibao within the regional press network.

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Paper short abstract

Japanese Chambers of Commerce are overlooked political actors in modern and contemporary history. Their publications from the 1910s to1930s related or directed to China mixed commercial intelligence with policy advocacy, reflecting diverse interests and complex engagement with imperial policy.

Paper long abstract

Japanese business associations throughout modern and contemporary history are often overlooked actors, especially regarding their political dimension. Aside from acting as pressure groups representing business interests, they also produced a wide range of publications, some internally for the companies represented, some for the entirety of the chambers of commerce as a network, some in collusion with the institutions of the Japanese Empire, and some in engagement with local counterparts or targeting local public opinion. As Sunaga Noritake has pointed out in his work on the economic information networks of the Japanese Chambers of Commerce in Asia, previous research has focused on routes of information facilitated by government institutions, underestimating “private actor routes”. This was also the case for China.

The paper will introduce various publications by the Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya Chambers of Commerce from the 1910s to the 1930s related or directed to China. On the surface, such publications all seem to have served exclusively the purpose of facilitating access to the Chinese market for the companies organized in those Chambers. The analysis, however, reveals an intricately complex relation with the policies of the Japanese Empire, ranging from complete affirmation and even criticism of a “too soft” stance towards “anti-Japanese” tendencies (since the “Twenty-One Demands” of 1915 and the May 4th Movement of 1919) to appeals for a more moderate approach and for more collaboration. Within the publications, “China hands” tried to assert their expertise and utilized the connections with Chinese counterparts. As Kubota Yūji has demonstrated in his work on loans to the Chinese Republic in the 1910s and 1920s, the approach by various Chambers, for instance by the Tokyo and of Osaka Chambers, could differ and lead to parallel lobbying attempts for opposite policies towards China. It will be argued that these publications were part of information gathering and sharing as well as of policy advocacy by the Japanese business world. Over time they increased in sophistication partially driven by the expansion of research bureaus within the Chambers.

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Paper short abstract

The journal Liberation of East Asia (1939-1942) served as wartime propaganda advocating Sino-Japanese cooperation while incorporating the Wang Jingwei regime to legitimize Japan's continental expansion, revealing how intellectuals constructed Pan-Asian discourse.

Paper long abstract

Liberation of East Asia (Tōa Kaihō) was a Tokyo-based journal published from August 1939 to June 1942 by Yaegashi Hiroshi, with poet Kusano Shinpei as chief editor in the first year. This study examines its publication background and ideological characteristics.

After serving as a war correspondent in 1937, Yaegashi anticipated the prolonged Sino-Japanese War and established the Japan Youth Diplomacy Association. In 1939, he launched Liberation of East Asia, whose inaugural editorial rejected liberal accusations of Japanese imperialism, instead promoting a genuine "Sino-Japanese cooperative body." Scholars like Ozaki Hotsuki have positioned the journal within intellectual responses to Konoe Fumimaro's "Three Principles" and emerging Greater East Asia discourse.

The journal ceased publication due to two factors: the January 1941 Cabinet decision placing all "Kōa" (Asia-development) movements under state control, and wartime paper rationing. While initially recognized for regional studies envisioning new Sino-Japanese relations, it faced conservative criticism for leftist tendencies and supporting troop withdrawal arguments.

Limited deviations from government propaganda included: critical commentary on domestic policies and press freedom; translations of Chinese authors (Wei Jinzhi, Yu Pingbo, Shen Congwen, Bing Xin—not necessarily puppet regime writers) by scholar Masuda Wataru; and publication of troop withdrawal arguments by Nanjing government officials—a feature rarely seen in other contemporary journals.

However, these deviations were marginal and never challenged the fundamental wartime collaboration framework. The May 1942 issue's praise of the Yokusan election（翼賛選挙）and repeated use of "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" terminology reveal that the journal's apparent intellectual complexity ultimately served, rather than subverted, the regime's propaganda objectives.

Liberation of East Asia thus occupied a complex position: while exhibiting limited deviations from crude propaganda, it remained firmly within state-sanctioned ideological boundaries. It represents how contemporary intellectuals attempted constructing frameworks for Sino-Japanese relations through "cooperation" and "liberation" rhetoric while ultimately advancing wartime propaganda goals.

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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' curiously passive communications response to the Ji’nan Incident (1928). It argues that the Ministry’s ostensible inaction during the incident actually reflects its growing understanding of propaganda and public diplomacy messaging.

Paper long abstract

This paper analyses the public diplomacy and propaganda measures taken by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the face of the ‘Ji’nan Incident’ (May 1928). Although this incident has already been the object of wide-ranging scholarship, the paper brings an original approach to its analysis by focusing on an understudied communications department within the Ministry, the ‘Department of Information’ (Gaimushō Jōhōbu, est. 1921). The measures taken by this Department, as well as the ways it stayed curiously passive during the Incident, are furthermore viewed in the paper through the lens of the media studies theory of ‘mediatization’, bringing new insights to the Ministry’s response.

During the second leg of its ‘Northern Expedition’ (1928), the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-Shek came into conflict with the Japanese Army in the city of Ji’nan. The Japanese Tanaka Gi’ichi Cabinet had sent Japanese troops to the Shandong Peninsula in order to ‘protect Japanese interests’ in the region. Both armies blamed each other for having incited the fighting, and the Ji’nan Incident became the object of significant international propaganda pushes by both sides.

Within the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Information had steadily been increasing its output of public diplomacy and propaganda messaging throughout the 1920s. However, its actions during the Ji’nan Incident were comparatively passive. By contrast, the Japanese military did take a strongly proactive propaganda approach to spreading the narrative that the National Revolutionary Army had caused the fighting to erupt.

Viewing the Department’s measures through the lens of mediatization theory, however, this paper argues that the Ministry’s inaction was no mere idleness, and instead demonstrated a deepening understanding of effective propaganda methods. The Department’s officials smartly forewent a heavy-handed propaganda response and instead allowed the China-facing Tōhō News Agency, which was Ministry-controlled, to manage the news messaging around the incident. The Department’s restraint in this instance was made possible by its investments into Tōhō in the previous years, and by its growing consciousness of the fact that, under certain conditions, proactive propaganda can hurt rather than help public diplomacy messaging.