June 7, 2011—The War Responsibility of the Mass Media—from To the People of Japan by Naoki Komuro.

…The preceding portion has been omitted.
Even before the war, a “system” of self-censorship had already been established.
Japanese journalism had abandoned “freedom of speech” for economic reasons.
Once matters had reached that point, everything followed in a headlong rush.
It did not take long before the mass media meekly submitted to the dictates of the military.
No—the rule of the “atmosphere” itself is a defining characteristic of Japan.
Where the “atmosphere” goes, Japan goes.
“Self-censorship by editors” came to anticipate and go even further than the military.
Consider, for example, the editorial positions of the major newspapers immediately before the outbreak of war.
Were they not almost entirely arguments in favor of war?
Japan’s major newspapers inherited, in its entirety, the tradition of the “fierce advocacy of war among civilians” that had continued since the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, and through their vehement advocacy of war, they exhorted and spurred on the government and the Diet.
Do not miss the opportunity to go to war—.
Every major newspaper in Japan, as well as NHK, was in this state.
We would like to examine these circumstances by looking particularly at the Asahi Shimbun.
This is because the Asahi Shimbun was Japan’s representative newspaper and was unsurpassed in the quality of its reporting, in its power—including its cooperation with the military in long-distance flight projects involving the Kamikaze-go and the A26 long-range aircraft—and in its influence over the Japanese people.
For that reason, we would like it to appear here as a representative example of the prewar mass media.
A book entitled The Asahi Shimbun’s War Responsibility was once published by Ohta Publishing and attracted considerable attention. Its first edition had been published by Lyon-sha, but for some reason it was withdrawn by the publisher soon afterward.
Reading the articles introduced in that book makes it immediately apparent how the Asahi Shimbun drove the Japanese people toward war before the war.
Wartime slogans such as “We Want Nothing Until Victory” and “We Shall Strike Until We Destroy Them” were also slogans solicited through campaigns jointly organized by the Asahi Shimbun, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and others.
The Asahi Shimbun not only ran these slogans repeatedly in its pages, but also displayed them together with photographs of soldiers on the exterior wall of the Nichigeki Theatre—the site of today’s Yurakucho Marion—and inflamed the people’s will to fight.
Even after the defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, when the Japanese military shifted from the offensive to the defensive, the morning column “Yūdai Mudai,” the equivalent of today’s “Tensei Jingo,” stated in its September 21, 1942 edition that “in one respect, the Greater East Asia War is a battle between a race of rice eaters and a race of bread eaters, and between a race of vegetarians and a race of meat eaters.”
It disparaged bread as being “no match for rice” and advanced the utterly irrational argument that “those who eat meat can exert great strength temporarily, but they lack endurance. Over a long distance, a lion will lose to a giraffe.”
By 1945, when defeat had become increasingly certain, the words “One Hundred Million Special Attackers” appeared in the newspaper almost every day.
The morning edition of June 14, 1945 carried an article headlined, “When the Enemy Comes, Let Us Drive Them Back with ‘One Hundred Million Special Attackers.’”
It stated, “There may still be some among the people who have not yet completely embraced the spirit of the special attack corps,” provided illustrated instructions on how to throw hand grenades and use bamboo spears, and called for the entire nation of one hundred million to fight to the death through guerrilla warfare, declaring, “The elderly and women, too, must prepare for the day that is to come.”
After the war, the Asahi Shimbun shifted responsibility for having advanced these arguments onto military restrictions and public opinion, but that is entirely beside the point.
It was the Asahi Shimbun that had dragged both the military and public opinion along with it.
How belligerent and sensational were the articles written by the Asahi Shimbun?
This becomes readily apparent when they are compared, for example, with the Shinano Mainichi Shimbun editorial of August 11, 1943, which pointed out the futility of air-defense drills, or with the Mainichi Shimbun article in its February 23, 1944 morning edition that denounced the Army, stating, “When the enemy attacks with aircraft, we cannot fight them with bamboo spears.”
From the Manchurian Incident onward, the Asahi Shimbun drove the Japanese people toward the catastrophe of war against the United States.
Every employee, from the company president downward, contributed money to the military, and the company even donated military aircraft.
Going beyond anything compelled by government censorship, it inflamed hostility with the cry of “the demonic American and British beasts.”
According to The History of the Asahi Shimbun Company, the Asahi Shimbun’s circulation continued to increase after the Manchurian Incident, and by the end of the war in 1945, it had recorded a circulation more than twice that of 1931, when the Manchurian Incident broke out.
War reporting was a profitable business.
While the Japanese people suffered in poverty under the wartime slogan “We Want Nothing Until Victory,” the chief editor entertained himself with geisha at exclusive restaurants, even though such entertainment had been prohibited.
Takemoto Hosokawa, who was the chief editor at the time—and a relative of former Prime Minister Hosokawa—wrote this explicitly in his own book, The True Record of the Asahi Shimbun, published by Chuokoron-sha.
It was the Asahi Shimbun that was the Class-A war criminal of the “war of aggression.”