[Feature: Jiji Shimpo and Japanese Journalism] Roundtable Discussion: Considering the Ideal State of Media through Jiji Shimpo

Although it had not actually been publishing a newspaper, Jiji Shinpo-sha, which had continued to exist for about 70 years by delegating its management to the Sankei Shimbun, voted to dissolve last year and completed its liquidation this year.

"Jiji Shinpo," founded by Yukichi Fukuzawa in 1882, was dissolved once before the war in 1936 and was revived after the war. However, in 1955, it merged with the Tokyo edition of the Sankei Shimbun (temporarily using the title "Sankei Jiji"). Even after the word "Jiji" disappeared from the title, the corporate organization continued to exist for a long time. Today, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect once again on the role Jiji Shinpo played in Japanese newspaper journalism.

First, under the theme of "Jiji Shinpo and I," I would like to ask each of you about your relationship with Jiji Shinpo. Mr. Tsushima, you were a reporter for Sankei for a long time, and furthermore, you served as an auditor during the final processing of Jiji Shinpo-sha. On top of that, your ancestors were involved with Jiji Shinpo, weren't they?

As Mr. Tokura mentioned at the beginning, Jiji Shinpo-sha has now been dissolved. I served as the final auditor of Jiji Shinpo-sha until the final shareholders' meeting this February. Since a company that is not operating cannot maintain trademark rights, the trademark rights for "Jiji Shinpo" and others were transferred to Sangyo Keizai Shimbun (Sankei Shimbun). From now on, they will be utilized in the pages of the "Sankei Shimbun" as a business of the Sankei Shimbun. Another reason for the dissolution is that, due to changes in social conditions, the trend of listed companies—who are shareholders—divesting their policy-holding shares has been accelerating.

I was a reporter for the Sankei Shimbun, but my great-grandfather, Kennosuke Tsushima, was born in the first year of Meiji—to be precise, January of the 4th year of Keio. Around the age of 17, he came to Tokyo from a place called Tokidate Village in Minamitsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture (now Fujisaki Town) and entered Keio University. He studied under Yukichi Fukuzawa for about two years and, after graduation, joined Jiji Shinpo. This was about two or three years after Jiji Shinpo-sha was established.

Later, in 1898, he concurrently served as a secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce in the Okuma Cabinet, but he continued to work as a reporter for Jiji Shinpo. It seems he also served as the Editorial Officer, and his younger brother, Ki Tsushima, also served as the Editorial Officer.

Kennosuke then moved to the "Osaka Mainichi (Daimai)." I hear many reporters moved from Jiji Shinpo to Osaka Mainichi. Then, Kennosuke's third son, Yoshitake Tsushima, became a reporter who served as the economic news manager of the Mainichi Shimbun and the president of Mainichi Eigasha. Because of such connections, I might have been asked to serve as the final auditor.

Actually, before that, I served as the president of a company called Sankei Sogo Printing. Its predecessor, Jiji Printing, was the company that did the final printing for Sankei Jiji and also printed Jiji Shinpo. So, there are actually various connections.

So there are various connections beyond just your ancestors.

Next, Mr. Matsuo, please.

After graduating from the Keio University Faculty of Letters, I joined the Osaka headquarters of the Sankei Shimbun. There is a term "demo-shika reporter" (someone who becomes a reporter because there's nothing else or just because), and I was one of those. I came to Tokyo from Hyogo Prefecture because I admired the city, but due to circumstances, I was told to "come back," so I joined the Sankei Shimbun Osaka headquarters thinking, "I might as well become a reporter." In other words, it felt like my start began from a slight detour.

By "detour," I mean Osaka relative to Tokyo, or Sankei relative to the "Asahi-Mainichi-Yomiuri" trio. It is one step back from the mainstream. I feel that this positioning has been projected onto my subsequent life and my research perspective after retiring from the newspaper company.

During my time at Sankei, I felt somewhat proud that the newspaper I worked for followed the lineage of Jiji Shinpo, but in reality, I knew nothing about it.

I didn't know about the "Osaka Jiji Shinpo" either, but later, I left Sankei to pursue a career as a researcher and wrote a paper using Osaka Jiji as my subject. Seeing that, my former employer, Osaka Sankei, asked me to write a series about the founder, Hisakichi Maeda. I compiled that into a book titled "Hisakichi Maeda: The Osakan Who Built the Sankei Shimbun and Tokyo Tower." This Hisakichi Maeda was also an important figure for Jiji Shinpo, as he was the person who carried out the merger between Jiji and the "Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun" in 1936.

In tracing the lineage of Osaka Jiji Shinpo or Hisakichi Maeda, the keywords I often used for my research were "second-rate" or "the losing side."

I might be scolded for saying "What do you mean by second-rate?", but my understanding of second-rate is that it is not first-rate—meaning it doesn't sell as much—but it possesses dignity. I even use it with an implication like a "sense of freedom."

Fukuzawa himself, in the Meiji society where the government was honored and the people despised, was not on the side of power or a top runner; he was an existence in the private sector, and one could even say he was second-rate. He was a challenger and anti-establishment. I am very attracted to the freedom, light-footedness, or rebellious spirit born from that, and I believe the essence of Jiji Shinpo or Osaka Jiji Shinpo lay, or should have lain, there.

So it's a kind of "pride in being second-rate" in the history of Japanese media. How to evaluate one's "standing" is a very important matter for Jiji Shinpo.

Now, Ms. Odaka, how about you?

I studied in Professor Setsu Kobayashi's constitutional law seminar at the Faculty of Law Department of Law. With a serious desire to protect the freedom of the press that maintains democracy, I joined the secretariat of the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association. I served as the director of the Japan Newspaper Museum for six and a half years starting in the fall of 2017. I retired last summer and have begun activities to connect "education and media" with people from various fields.

The Jiji Shinpo materials held by the Newspaper Museum, excluding the main paper and extras, amount to 890 items, including supplements such as sugoroku games, maps, calligraphic works, and manga, as well as photographs, photo news, promotional flyers, signs, and happi coats. In addition, there are 70 items related to Takuzo Itakura.

While newspapers were becoming political party organs due to the intensification of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, Jiji Shinpo's achievements are significant for establishing the current form of news reporting under the banner of independence and self-reliance, and for promoting the newspaper advertising field by seeking its foundation in economic activities. I became interested after learning that it was the greatest leading organ of public opinion throughout the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras and about the scale of its business, and I also studied in the 17th cohort of the Fukuzawa Bunmeijuku.

In the permanent exhibition renovated in 2019, in addition to the inaugural issue from 1882, we display the Russo-Japanese War extra from 1905 ("Osaka Jiji"), the international scoop on the "Abolition of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Establishment of the Four-Power Treaty" by Masanori Ito and Takeo Goto in 1921, and the Sunday supplement "Jiji Manga" (1922).

Among the five major pre-war newspapers, although the publication of Jiji Shinpo ceased, I have focused on how connections with people from other newspapers have played a role. For example, in the lineage from the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun to Daimai and the Mainichi Shimbun, the tradition of hanging photographs of winning sumo wrestlers and the Music Competition of Japan were inherited. Motoichi Motoyama, who made Daimai a national newspaper, was originally at Jiji Shinpo.

Also, Motoko and Yoshikazu Hani, who founded "Fujin no Tomo" and Jiyu Gakuen, were reporters for the Hochi Shimbun. However, Motoko's younger brother, Masao Matsuoka, was a member of the Keio Rugby Football Club during its founding period and became the chairman of Jiji Shinpo after serving as an editorial advisor for Daimai. In 1907, he published the educational magazine for youth "Seinen no Tomo" together with Yoshikazu.

We also held a 120th-anniversary exhibition for The Japan Times at the Newspaper Museum. That paper was created by Sueji Yamada, a relative of Fukuzawa, and others based on Fukuzawa's advice. We have even received a visit from Tottori University, the hometown of Yamada and his colleagues.

It is indeed interesting to see not just the meaning of Fukuzawa and Jiji Shinpo in the newspaper world, but also how that existence influenced others.

Next, Mr. Ariyama, please.

The reason I focus on Jiji Shinpo is that I believe Fukuzawa and others consciously tried to create a high-end newspaper, a so-called quality paper. I don't know if Fukuzawa or those associated with Keio used the term "quality paper," but it is clear they had that awareness. To use Mr. Matsuo's phrasing from earlier, the second-rate papers were the Asahi and Mainichi (laughs).

The quality papers were "Jiji Shinpo," Kuga Katsunan's newspaper "Nippon," and Tokutomi Soho's "Kokumin Shimbun." These first-rate newspapers had high status and were respected by society.

Moreover, Jiji Shinpo succeeded to a certain extent as a high-end newspaper. It was able to sustain itself as a high-end newspaper at least until the 1930s. That is very rare; "Nippon" was sold off after the Russo-Japanese War.

Alternatively, Soho's Kokumin Shimbun quickly converted after the Russo-Japanese War, saying "from now on, it's the era of quantity," and became a popular, vulgar newspaper. It couldn't be maintained as a high-end newspaper.

Later, when the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun temporarily came under the ownership of Takaaki Kato, it is said to have imitated the British "The Times." But that also failed, and Tokyo Nichi Nichi came under the ownership of the Mainichi Shimbun. Most of them failed.

However, Jiji Shinpo alone was able to maintain itself as a high-end newspaper for a while after that. Why a quality paper like those in Britain did not take root in Japanese society is a question deeply related to the structure of Japanese society, the political system, and political consciousness. Jiji Shinpo is very important in considering that.

To explain the pre-war state of Jiji Shinpo by dividing it into periods, I think it can be broadly categorized into about four periods until it dissolved in 1936 and the title was entrusted to Tokyo Nichi Nichi.

The first is the period from its founding while Fukuzawa was still alive. The important event during this time was, of course, the First Sino-Japanese War. The second period is from after Fukuzawa's death (1901) until after the Russo-Japanese War, around 1905. During this period, Jiji Shinpo was stable managerially and had a very high social reputation.

The third period is from after the Russo-Japanese War to the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923), which roughly corresponds to the Taisho era. This is when society entered a period of so-called "populist tendencies." There, Jiji Shinpo, which had held high prestige until then, became relativized. Meanwhile, Asahi and Mainichi began to expand. Furthermore, during that period, Jiji expanded into Osaka. Osaka Jiji Shinpo was founded in 1905.

The fourth period is after the Great Kanto Earthquake. It suffered a decisive blow from the earthquake and could not compete with the quantitative expansion of Asahi and Mainichi after that. Large-scale sales methods were employed, such as discounts, sales with premiums, or "hibai" (refusal to sell), where sales agents were prevented from selling newspapers other than their own. As a result, Jiji's management continued to deteriorate, leading finally to its dissolution.

I believe Fukuzawa himself intended to create a high-end newspaper. It had a high subscription fee and many pages. Economic information was very substantial, and it carried difficult editorials. In 1890, the subscription fee for Jiji Shinpo was 50 sen. Kokumin Shimbun, Nippon, and Tokyo Nichi Nichi were 30 sen, and Tokyo Asahi was 25 sen—half the price. Moreover, it is said that papers like Tokyo Asahi gave discounts on almost everything. The subscribers were clearly different. This means Jiji was a high-end newspaper that only a specific class read, and people of other classes could not read.

A high-end newspaper is a kind of class media, so it is not something everyone reads; only a specific class reads it. And the core concept of Jiji Shinpo's discourse and reporting was "the people" (kokumin). It's not for me to say again, but Yukichi Fukuzawa's important theme was to create a modern nation-state in Japan. In a broad sense, that meant forming nationalism. In that case, "the people" were not the people as they actually existed, but a kind of ideal. It was the ideal that such people should be the ones to carry Japan; it was not a quantitative existence.

During the same period, Nippon and Kokumin Shimbun also used the concept of "the people." Kokumin Shimbun's title was exactly that, and Nippon said, "We are the ones who stand for nationalism (kokumin-shugi)." "The people" existed as a very important concept, and Fukuzawa was at the center of it.

However, one thing we must consider is that class media and nationalism contain a contradiction. The concept of "the people" includes the meaning of all the people throughout the nation of Japan. Yet, on the other hand, there are classes. During this period, only a specific class discussed the affairs of the state. I believe Fukuzawa also advocated "the people" to a specific class and developed his discourse and reporting for them.

Looking at materials from a small town called Yanagawa in Fukushima Prefecture, around 1900, the newspaper penetration rate was about 20%. Within that, regular subscribers were about 5%, and in a small town of fewer than 10,000 people, there were only 51 such households. This town was very wealthy, an advanced area dealing in silkworms. However, during this period, only 17 households in this town were reading Jiji Shinpo.

Therefore, newspapers were read by people who were economically blessed and had spare time. These 17 households were the virtual social, economic, and cultural leaders of the town of Yanagawa, and the social class reading Jiji Shinpo was likely the class Fukuzawa was aiming for.

However, as we entered the period from the Sino-Japanese War to the Russo-Japanese War, "Yorozu Choho" and "Niroku Shinpo" began writing scandalous things, making the city news section their selling point. The price was cheap; Yorozu Choho cost only 1 sen per copy. Even for a monthly subscription, it was 25 sen. By making city news their selling point, they rapidly expanded their circulation.

However, Jiji Shinpo during this period clearly had its own identity, thinking that their newspaper was different and that the ideal of a newspaper lay on their side. The same was true for Nippon and Kokumin Shimbun at the time. Fukuzawa had already passed away, but Kuga Katsunan called Yorozu Choho a "newspaper merchant." In short, he used it as a term of contempt, meaning they were making a business out of the newspaper.

However, after the Russo-Japanese War, high-end papers were forced to undergo significant upheaval again. This was because populist tendencies began during that period, industrialization and urbanization progressed, and the distinction between readers became blurred. Complaints and dissatisfaction about hardships in life erupted onto the surface of the political stage, providing energy for Niroku Shinpo and Yorozu Choho. Broadly speaking, we entered an era of populist nationalism.

When that happened, newspapers fell into quantitative competition within the reporting race. During this period, "Nippon" became unsustainable. Kuga Katsunan said until the end, "I don't want to publish city news," but that era had long since ended. Kokumin Shimbun was also forced to convert. Moreover, the major challenge after that was universal suffrage, and the concept of "the people" gradually became a quantitative concept.

I believe Jiji Shinpo was also gradually swept up in this. From a management perspective, what must be considered is that at this time, unlike Kokumin Shimbun or Nippon, Jiji Shinpo expanded into Osaka and sought to grow its business.

However, even if political equalization occurred, social equalization had not progressed that far. In Yanagawa, Fukushima, the number of households subscribing to Jiji Shinpo during this period was between 33 and 36. Until the global depression of 1929 decisively affected this town, the leading class of the town subscribed to Jiji Shinpo. So, I think it was still stable, but Jiji Shinpo's expansion into Osaka was a very big gamble.

Then, the Great Kanto Earthquake burned down all of Tokyo, and the newspaper's sales and advertising mechanisms had to be rebuilt. Readers and advertisers had to be acquired anew. Ultimately, it became a quantitative expansion race, and Jiji Shinpo was targeted by the monopoly agreement between Asahi and Mainichi. This was the so-called "hibai" (refusal to sell). Even though Jiji Shinpo had readers, Asahi or Mainichi would be put in its place—a very aggressive competition with no morals at all, and Jiji lost.

However, looking at it from Jiji Shinpo's side, it also means that Jiji Shinpo had become a newspaper that could be replaced by others.

Until then, Jiji Shinpo was qualitatively different from Asahi and Mainichi, so it could not be replaced. The substantiality of the economic columns, the speed of market price reports, the accuracy of foreign news—Asahi and Mainichi could not compete with those. However, after the earthquake, Asahi and Mainichi also began sending correspondents abroad and established rapid reporting systems. When sales competition occurred there, Jiji Shinpo was in a situation where it was bound to lose as capital.

In the town of Yanagawa, not a single reader of Jiji Shinpo remained. The newspaper agency of Mr. Chobe Abe of Abe Kaishundo, who had preserved the materials for this town, took the side of Asahi and completely stopped selling Jiji Shinpo. The reason why it had to be Jiji Shinpo disappeared. When that happened, Jiji Shinpo could no longer be maintained as a high-end newspaper.

After that, there was the National Spiritual Mobilization, which captured the people as something quantitative and homogenized them. The key concept of "the people" also became a hollowed-out, quantitative existence, far from what Fukuzawa had aimed for. When considering the media history of modern Japan, I believe the positioning of the newspaper Jiji Shinpo very intensively reflects the problem of the transition of the concept of "the people" and the changes in society.

I believe your view is that based on Fukuzawa's awareness of the problem of "creating the people," he had the intention of creating a high-end paper, and that Jiji Shinpo was directed at a specific class. What do you think about this point?

My view is slightly different. While Fukuzawa certainly would not compromise on dignity, I don't think he intended to create a "high-end" paper, and I understand that he was trying to aim for the opposite rather than directing it at a specific class.

For example, in the early Meiji era, there was a clear division between "O-shimbun" (large newspapers) for intellectuals that emphasized political discourse, and "Ko-shimbun" (small newspapers) which were tabloids for the common people. Jiji Shinpo aimed for what you might call a "Chu-shimbun" (middle newspaper). I feel it created mechanisms to involve and pull up readers of the small-newspaper type as well.

As one example, when the National Diet was established in 1890, the world was enthusiastic about politics, with the general election and the opening of the Imperial Diet. That year, Fukuzawa of course discussed politics, but on the other hand, he reported very hard on topics completely unrelated to politics. It was almost comical. He would hold popularity polls for sumo or exhibits at exhibitions, solicit theater reviews for Kabuki, or conduct fundraising activities. In any case, he tried hard to relativize politics, saying that politics is not the only thing in the world. Even though publishing political news would have sold much better, he deliberately tried to move away from it.

In addition, Jiji Shinpo was a pioneer in creating a cooking corner and an American joke corner. Regarding the "manga" mentioned by Ms. Odaka, Jiji Shinpo was characterized by its emphasis on manga that was not political satire. My idea is that the characteristic of Jiji Shinpo was the awareness of creating "the people" by involving everyone, not just specific people in the upper layers of society.

That is the idea of creating society through so-called enlightenment. Yukichi Fukuzawa's idea was that unless a broad and healthy society is created, politics will not sit well on top of it.

However, the fact remains that the layer of people reading Jiji Shinpo was not large. On the other hand, Fukuzawa's idea of nationalism was, in a sense, an open nationalism, not the idea that "we alone are the bearers of nationalism." That is certainly true.

In the first place, if we think about why he thought of founding Jiji Shinpo, in 1874, he translated the word "speech" as "enzetsu" and started the Mita Public Speaking Event, and the following year he built the Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall). The question is what the motivation for that was.

I believe it was to spread his enlightenment thought. The Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) could only hold about 200 people. No matter how many speeches he gave in front of 200 people, his ideas would not spread. How could he spread them? I understand that the motivation for founding Jiji Shinpo was to spread printed material through the medium of a newspaper seven or eight years later.

It was about broad enlightenment. Fukuzawa probably didn't use the term "O-shimbun," and in the first place, people at large newspapers didn't really call themselves "O-shimbun."

However, what Fukuzawa was facing at this time was also the final stage of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. At that time, some Freedom and People's Rights newspapers published small newspapers and used large illustrations, manga, graphic novel-like things, and serialized novels. There were very radical ways of enlightenment back then.

In response to that, Fukuzawa said, "No, this is different from what I am thinking." In that sense, Jiji Shinpo was a high-end paper, and while it certainly put effort into manga, I think it is a matter that must be distinguished.

The lineage of such very radical and extreme language in small newspapers was passed down to Niroku Shinpo and Yorozu Choho, but I think his approach was to create their own style of enlightenment, which was different from that.

Fukuzawa was saying that we should engage in high-level discussion for the sake of enlightenment. But since that alone wouldn't attract readers, he created things like manga and cooking, as Mr. Tokura mentioned—in short, what we would call the city news, culture, or entertainment sections in today's newspapers. I think Fukuzawa had the idea that creating the form of what we now call a general interest newspaper would be more effective in drawing in the people as readers.

How does that point compare with other newspapers?

At the Newspaper Museum, we introduce that in the early Meiji era, there were "O-shimbun" like Yubin Hochi and Choya that developed political arguments in a classical Chinese style, and "Ko-shimbun" like Yomiuri and Asahi for the common people. We then convey that after the appearance of Jiji Shinpo, which championed "independence and self-reliance," newspapers moved from being political party organs to news reporting newspapers.

Considering today's speech environment of filter bubbles caused by SNS, I felt it was easy for visitors to understand that he tried to support the management of a medium for "diverse opinions and debates" and "presenting both sides of an argument" through a dual base of subscription fees and advertising revenue, rather than a subscription base only from enthusiastic readers who support the same ideas.

Also, related to Mr. Tokura's talk about "involving everyone," people likely had a desire to know about various social movements and lifestyle information not only from political, economic, and social reporting (journalism) but also from advertising (commercialism), and he was responding to that.

Both in terms of media management and in the sense of conveying a wide range of information, both hard and soft, to the people, I think it can be said that he created the subsequent newspaper business model and role. When I gave exhibition explanations saying that a place for "diverse opinions and debates" is necessary while talking about the information environment of SNS, visitors were convinced.

Fukuzawa was a man of great pride, so I think he intended to show a model, saying, "This is how a newspaper should be done," once he started. In that sense as well, he thought properly about management; because management is stable, public discourse can maintain its dignity. He was quick to present a good cycle for a sustainable newspaper. I think that focus was indeed very groundbreaking.

In the course of touching upon Osaka Jiji Shinpo, the question of whether Jiji Shinpo is "second-rate" came up. Mr. Matsuo, what are your thoughts on that?

I was listening to Mr. Ariyama's remarks thinking, "I see." I use the terms second-rate and first-rate in a slightly inverted way.

Where did I pull these terms second-rate and first-rate from? It was from a commentary in an internal newspaper report called "Gendai Shimbun Hihan" (Critique of Modern Newspapers) by Kajita Ota, a former Asahi Shimbun reporter, during the pre-war Showa period.

According to that, "first-rate" refers to newspapers that sell well and are dominant. In contrast, "second-rate" refers to newspapers that have dignity but do not sell. And "third-rate" refers to scandal newspapers. For example, newspapers of the geisha world; their management is actually good. Second-rate is difficult. However, to put it the other way around, isn't it possible to find dignity, freedom, and pride there that are not found in either first-rate or third-rate?

According to Mr. Ariyama's periodization, Osaka Jiji started from the second period, right? My research also starts from Sutajiro Fukuzawa in the second period.

Mr. Ariyama brought up the word "the people" as a keyword, but there is another word that probably overlaps with it but is different: from around the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake, the word "the masses" appeared, and a "mass society" emerged at the end of the Taisho era. That is where Yukichi Fukuzawa's ideals clashed and suffered. That path seems to overlap with the trajectory of Osaka Jiji Shinpo, which I researched. There are parts where I deliberately express that using the word "second-rate" or the word "the losing side."

However, Osaka Jiji Shinpo did not forget the Fukuzawa spirit either. If it had forgotten it, it wouldn't even be second-rate, so I think its glory and fall are connected to that. Yukichi Fukuzawa was no longer there, but precisely because that spirit remained until the end, I believe there were various struggles.

However, "Jiji Shinpo" dissolved once at the timing of 1936, and then Tokyo Nichi Nichi (Mainichi) took over the title, partly due to the relationship with Shingoro Takaishi and others, but it had virtually ceased publication. One could say that not having experienced the war was a strength of Jiji Shinpo. That is why I think it came to be that after the war, the era of war was wiped away and Jiji Shinpo was revived in a new era.

In that regard, what was Hisakichi Maeda's intention in reviving Jiji Shinpo?

Hisakichi Maeda was probably a thorough rationalist. He put his own interests first and was not the kind of person to willingly take a loss even if he took a detour. Regarding his move to Tokyo before the war for the reconstruction of Jiji, he said he did it reluctantly because he was asked by Ichizo Kobayashi and Shingoro Takaishi, but in reality, I think he had an underlying ambition to plant his flag in Tokyo.

Later, his revival of Jiji after the war also likely had an underlying utilitarian motive of seizing newspaper paper allocations by using Jiji's name value.

However, Hisakichi Maeda was more than just that; he probably had a sense of reverence for Tokyo, the center, or the Keio network. I think his relationship with Takuzo Itakura is very symbolic. In an interview with the Newspaper Association after Itakura's death, Maeda spoke quite ill of him, saying things like, "He's difficult, isn't he?" On the other hand, Itakura also said things like, "He's a merchant, after all. He's got to be someone with some kind of brain."

In reality, however, Maeda treated Itakura as the chief editorial writer of Sankei even after the merger of Jiji in 1955. On the other hand, Itakura realized the sale of the land in Otemachi, which Maeda could not do, by having Shigeru Yoshida mediate.

Even within the currently struggling Fuji Media Holdings, the Sankei Building is the very core of its earnings. It is interesting as history that Takuzo Itakura, who had no business sense at all, built that foundation, and it is also possible to see it as a miraculous realization of mutual understanding or respect.

The post-war Jiji Shinpo has not been researched at all, and there are parts where a common understanding of its stance has not been sufficiently established. I believe that the post-war Jiji Shinpo within the political and discourse space had characteristics with a different meaning than in Fukuzawa's era.

Mr. Tsushima, how do you think the fact that the post-war Jiji Shinpo of Masanori Ito, Takuzo Itakura, and others is positioned as one of the origins of the Sankei Shimbun connects to the current character of the Sankei?

Before moving to the post-war period, the management of Jiji deteriorated rapidly during the Showa Depression starting around 1929. At that time, Ikunoshin Kadono served as chairman; Kadono served as the Acting President of Keio University, the chairman of Kojunsha, and was the person who took over all three of Fukuzawa's enterprises. This person is actually a relative on my mother's side.

The reason Jiji collapsed in that era was that management could not be sustained just by saying serious things. So, of course, they did cartoons and such, but I feel the reason for the collapse was that such tendencies became extreme.

That is why when Hisakichi Maeda revived it after the war, I think he emphasized the opposite aspects quite strongly. Takuzo Itakura's son, Joji Itakura, served as the president of Mitsui Bank. I believe Maeda and Itakura emerged because post-war management could not be sustained without people who thought about management rather than just those who prioritized ideals.

Regarding the Sankei Shimbun, I joined in 1976, and at that time, it was quite a major newspaper. It created the "Seiron" column and at one point had a legal battle over freedom of speech with the Japanese Communist Party. This was a lawsuit brought against them, but in short, it was a newspaper that experimentally tried to create a "Seiron" (sound argument) line and a conservative discourse space, and the current pages are the same.

Maeda probably didn't originally have that ideology, but he created it in a way that the Fukuzawa spirit could not be inherited without creating such a newspaper. I was a reporter for 40 years and maintained the same stance, and I think the current reporters feel the same way; that is the Sankei Shimbun.

So in that sense, I believe the ideas of Fukuzawa, an Enlightenment thinker, have been inherited considerably by the post-war Jiji Shinpo and the Sankei Shimbun.

Mr. Ariyama, how do you view the post-war Jiji Shinpo?

I haven't researched it properly, but there is a major trend of newly emerging newspapers after the war, and that is very difficult to understand. In short, it's the issue of paper rationing and dummy companies. Even the Asahi and others published newspapers through dummies to get paper and then diverted it, so while the actual situation is hard to grasp, there is no doubt there was reflection on the war, leading to the creation of new newspapers. Whether that inherited the pre-war lineage or not is something I'm not quite sure about.

Returning to the pre-war period for a moment, in the 1920s, Jiji Shinpo expanded into various businesses such as publishing, not just newspapers. I believe we should properly evaluate that. Since there are writings by Fukuzawa stating that media must be used differently for different purposes, there is no doubt it was managed based on Fukuzawa's ideas. It is necessary to view Jiji Shinpo not just as a newspaper, but as a publishing business as well.

Tokutomi Soho also ran publishing businesses with the Kokumin Shimbun and Min'yusha. That was based on the idea that one must use various media to enlighten people, and he was conscious of Yukichi Fukuzawa's ideas.

Earlier, we talked about it being an extension of speech, but I think Fukuzawa was a person who would use any means to achieve enlightenment. One was Jiji Shinpo, another was Keio University, and yet another was the social venue Kojunsha. Including Keio University and Kojunsha, he continued to branch out further to spread his ideas to the world. I believe he published the newspaper as one of those means, as a pillar of that effort.

Fukuzawa says in his essays that newspapers are published daily, and through them, intentions are formed. He also says that by publishing opinions summarized in something like a monthly magazine at certain points, it leads to public opinion. In modern terms, that is like a media mix, and Fukuzawa was thinking about that properly. I think that was a very sharp observation for that time.

That's why he published so many books. There are few people who published that many books in that era. He used media as a means to spread his ideas. I think he had the idea from the beginning that he had to create various forms of media.

He recognized well that newspapers are media. I think Fukuzawa understood best the awareness that media is, in short, a vehicle for enlightenment.

Therefore, he was a person with very high sensitivity to how things should be written, whether to include furigana or write in hiragana, with an eye toward how it would be read.

Fukuzawa used the term "Jinmin Kotsu" (People's Communication) in Transition of People's Way of Thinking. In short, in modern terms, it is a kind of communication where one envisions the recipient or reader, acts accordingly, and uses material entities like magazines, newspapers, books, or public speaking and social interaction in a broad sense.

I think the perspective of positioning Jiji Shinpo within that is an important point when considering Jiji Shinpo in modern Japan.

As you said, there are editorials that say a newspaper is something seen by people all over Japan in one day and becomes trash the next. But if you publish it as a book, it will influence people over many years, soak in, and change them. So, he said things to the effect that the work of truly creating a citizenry belongs to publishing.

I heard that Ms. Odaka is also interested in the various projects and themes of Jiji Shinpo.

At the News Park (Japan Newspaper Museum), even during my time as director, there were displays of Jiji Shinpo at every special exhibition. This time, curators Michie Kudo and Yuki Suganaga confirmed them for me, so I will introduce the main ones.

First, manga. The special exhibition was held before I took office, but as mentioned earlier, Jiji Shinpo has the credit of introducing it from the U.S. to Japan as a way to "convey difficult things to many people in an easy-to-understand way."

In a company announcement dated February 6, 1890, the first appearance in Japan of the word "manga" as a translation for "caricature" occurred; it is now the world's "MANGA." Japan's first daily newspaper four-panel comic was "Hyakkanme no Chikaramochi" (July 4 of the same year), which Fukuzawa's nephew, Ippyo Imaizumi, brought back from the U.S. Jiji Shinpo's first original four-panel comic, "Mugen no Undo" (September 27 of the same year), was also introduced on NHK's "Chiko-chan ni Shikarareru!" Later, Rakuten Kitazawa was invited to create the "Jiji Manga" column on January 12, 1902, which became a Sunday supplement in 1921.

Another characteristic is that it contributed early on to growth as a "newspaper advertising" medium. With the talent of Hikojiro Nakamigawa, it is said to have achieved the purification of advertising, especially as a countermeasure against criticism of exaggerated ads. Famous is the "Message to Merchants" on October 16, 1883, which was a visionary appeal for the utility of newspaper advertising as a framework to support a fair and neutral news organization.

The "25th Anniversary Issue" special edition on March 1, 1907, had many of Fukuzawa's disciples who succeeded in the business world placing ads, and it was 224 pages long—the largest in Japanese newspaper history. The original paper is kept in the storage vault, but for the "Meiji 150th Anniversary Exhibition" in 2018, we carefully transported and displayed the actual item.

I wonder how they distributed it.

Looking at the actual item, I feel the same way. Regarding war reporting, in 1936, the year Jiji Shinpo suspended publication, it issued "Jiji Shinpo Photo News" showing the state of the city after the February 26 Incident. "Photo News" was a street medium with a few lines of current events commentary attached to news photos, like today's digital signage. In 2019, the News Park opened a special exhibition called "War and Post-war Bulletin Boards" featuring photo news issued by various papers in the early Showa era. Since it was for the masses, it is also pointed out that it fanned the people's fighting spirit.

The Jiji Shinpo materials go up to 1936, edited by the Domei Tsushin photo department and published by Jiji Shinpo. It conveys the state of the imperial capital under martial law, as well as the story of Charlie Chaplin eating his favorite tempura when he visited Japan.

In disaster reporting, we introduced it as a company whose building was destroyed by fire in the 2023 special exhibition "100 Years Since the Great Kanto Earthquake." On the afternoon of the day after the earthquake, they were distributing thousands of extras printed on hand-presses with the cooperation of Nippon Typewriter Co. From the September 12 issue, they published a four-page newspaper using a newly installed rotary press, carrying essays and satirical cartoons about the damage and reconstruction of the Ansei Edo Earthquake, and they even did their own photoengraving. They continued publishing from within the Keio University buildings in Mita.

During this Great Earthquake, an incident occurred where Captain Masahiko Amakasu of the Tokyo Gendarmerie and others murdered anarchist Sakae Osugi, his wife Noe Ito, and Osugi's nephew. The Metropolitan Police Department followed instructions from the Ministry of War to prevent the leak of the incident, but Jiji Shinpo reported it in the September 25 issue. Regarding the massacre of Koreans, an article on October 23 pointed out that while rumors were rampant, the military and police might have also encouraged them.

Finally, regarding the 2023 special exhibition "Diversity: What Media Changed, What Changed Media." I planned it myself, and a book version is currently in progress; we also introduced the 1885 editorial "On Japanese Womanhood," in which Fukuzawa preached the importance of improving women's status based on equal rights for men and women.

Currently in Japan, DEI declarations by companies and organizations and the selective separate surname system for married couples are topics of discussion, but Fukuzawa proposed creating a new surname by taking parts from both the man's and woman's surnames after marriage. We borrowed the manuscript of "Couples' Created Surname" in Fukuzawa's own handwriting from the Fukuzawa Research Center for display. Out of about 330 exhibits, I think it attracted the most attention.

Fukuzawa also wrote editorials asking men to share the hardships of their wives' pregnancy and childbirth, and for fathers to participate in childcare and education. Having lost his father early, helped his mother with housework, and grown up in a female-dominated family, I think Fukuzawa also understood the meaning of "care labor" that supports society. Jiji Shinpo was also the first newspaper in Japan to create a menu column ("What Shall We Have Today?").

I think Jiji Shinpo was always conscious of what media should be. Also, in terms of discourse, there was the story of the Amakasu Incident, but I think it was a newspaper that took pride in saying what needed to be said at key moments.

What's interesting is that there was an editor-in-chief named Motoaki Ishikawa who succeeded Yukichi Fukuzawa. When he was compiling the Fukuzawa Zenshū (The Collected Works of Fukuzawa) in the Taisho era, he included a note saying, "I have run Jiji Shinpo following the teachings of Fukuzawa Zenshū, and that is why I wrote this editorial during the High Treason Incident," insisting that "I want to include at least this."

I think the interesting thing about Jiji Shinpo is that they had the pride that "this is the one thing we are protecting, this we will not yield," and the awareness that there was a consistent thread. Even in the editorial on the day it ceased publication in 1936, it wrote that rather than selling out and bending the pen they had held until now, they would resolutely break the pen.

Finally, I would like to ask everyone about the "contemporary significance of Jiji Shinpo."

About 15 or 20 years ago, there was a thought within both the Sankei Shimbun and Keio University to revive Jiji Shinpo once more. There was a talk from the then-president of Sankei to "think about what kind of thing we can make," but no matter how we thought about it, the difference between the current Sankei "Seiron" line and the Jiji Shinpo of Fukuzawa's era did not emerge.

In short, even if we try to create some new media in the Fukuzawa style or Jiji Shinpo style, we cannot differentiate it from the Sankei Shimbun we are making now. I take pride in the fact that we, the Sankei Shimbun, are making our pages by inheriting the ideas of Jiji Shinpo.

As for the way of expressing "Fukuzawa said it should be like this," in short, Jiji Shinpo might have already done everything that should be done. Jiji Shinpo was a company that created so many types of media that we, as successors, cannot even think of more. I am very much looking forward to seeing what kind of media the younger generation will create in this age of SNS that surpasses that.

Listening to everyone's stories, I thought that Jiji Shinpo might look quite different when viewed from Osaka.

In the Osaka Jiji Shinpo, for example, there was a woman named Kyoko Shimoyama who was good at undercover reporting in disguise and was called a "disguise reporter"; she was a pioneer among female reporters. Or Hideo Namba, who was the social news editor in the mid-Taisho era, was almost a communist and was a tough character who fled to Moscow during the March 15 Incident in the early Showa era; there are all sorts of people.

I don't know if that can be called the Fukuzawa spirit, but the vessel of Jiji Shinpo had an extraordinary diversity or multi-layered nature. That's why Kyoko Shimoyama, who was called a problematic woman for being sexually loose, was able to do what she did because it was Osaka Jiji. Even if Hideo Namba sided with a union's labor dispute, if he called it social justice, it could be interpreted as the Fukuzawa spirit in various ways. I think there is also an aspect of Jiji Shinpo as such a vessel.

If I were to forcibly connect it to the present, it could probably serve as material for thinking about SNS issues. In the 20th century, the theory of social responsibility of mass media emerged, and from that came a kind of media common sense that freedom of expression is not unlimited. Current newspaper reporters, including myself, have been educated within that.

However, looking at the recent Hyogo gubernatorial election where SNS was rampant, newspapers were criticized for not writing about it, with people asking "Why aren't you writing?" and the common sense of "not writing" itself has become a negative.

Here, if there were an independent and unconventional superstar like Fukuzawa, what would he have written using the vessel of Jiji Shinpo? Thinking about that could serve as a thought experiment in the modern era where the existence of such superstars is not tolerated.

Originally, "shimbun" was a translation of "news," but in Japan, we became unable to distinguish between "shimbun-shi" (the newspaper paper) and "shimbun" (the news). I think, "Since a newspaper is news, it doesn't have to be a newspaper printed on paper." No matter what it's placed on, it's news.

And since newspaper companies produce news, they don't have to supply news by printing it on newspaper paper. That trend has already clearly emerged. Everyone has been confused until now, but newspapers and newspaper paper are different, and they are also different from newspaper companies. I think we are in a situation where what news is is becoming visible in reverse.

However, the important thing then is the problem of how management can be sustained. Until now, news could be produced by obtaining income from subscription fees and advertising fees. Now, if the paper disappears and there is no advertising, it's a very troublesome problem, and that's probably what current newspaper managers and news agency executives are most troubled by.

So I think the important thing is the problem of how to balance management with producing discourse, reporting, and news in a broad sense. As I mentioned earlier, there was a turning point after the Russo-Japanese War. People like Tokutomi Soho converted, and the "Nippon" newspaper died for its ideals. Jiji Shinpo chose a different path, so in thinking about that, Jiji Shinpo still has unexpectedly contemporary significance.

We already know the path Jiji Shinpo took, but I think it is an important material for considering a path. I believe there might have been "buried possibilities" rather than just seeing the past as something that is over.

I participated in a roundtable discussion for the May 2014 special feature "The Present State of Newspapers" in this magazine, and the total circulation of daily newspapers (according to the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association) has gone from 45.4 million copies then to 26.6 million copies ten years later.

What I find serious is the reality that even before "newspapers," people have started getting information from their favorite SNS, moving away from neutral "news," and the role of journalism is being undervalued. Even though it is still news organizations—newspapers, news agencies, and broadcasting stations—that support the information distribution structure of the digital space through the issuance of electronic versions, distribution to online news, and SNS sharing by people, this fact is not known, and they are even ridiculed as "old media."

Earlier, there was talk of Fukuzawa's media mix, and modern news organizations are also engaged in activities in different forms, such as electronic versions including video distribution and podcasts. In that sense, Fukuzawa, who developed businesses and issued publications multi-layeredly while changing expression methods for people of various levels based on Jiji Shinpo, was a person who understood the importance of "communication design." I believe that tradition will be inherited in future newspaper management.

Finally, I will talk about "nobility and dignity." Fukuzawa warned Jiji Shinpo reporters against the "pen of a closet bully" (kage-benkei no fude)—writing things that one cannot say to the person's face. Masanori Ito, who was the editorial director of Jiji Shinpo, took this over when he became the first chairperson of Kyodo News and the first chairperson of the Newspaper Association after retiring as a director. In creating the Code of Editorial Ethics (old version) for the association, he included: "Criticism of a person should be limited to the extent that it can be told directly in front of that person."

This must be a warning for each of us in a discourse space where anonymous slander overflows in an SNS society where all 100 million people have become media. I think it is a time for the media to make an effort to have people think about discourse and nobility.

Also, Keio University established the X Dignity Center last summer, and with support from the Yomiuri Shimbun, activities have begun to explore "how human 'dignity' should be" in the AI era. Here too, I feel the flow of Jiji Shinpo's discourse and business.

As mentioned in the discussion, Yukichi Fukuzawa was always conscious of what a newspaper should be, and that led to various attempts and trial and error within Jiji Shinpo; there were eras when it went well and eras when it failed.

Even during its dormant periods, talk of reviving Jiji Shinpo has come up many times and then vanished, but each time the question was asked, "Then what is a new media that can put up the sign of Jiji Shinpo?" and in the end, it was decided it couldn't be done.

In that sense, Jiji Shinpo remains as a "treasured family sword that is never drawn." People occasionally look at it and discuss how they might draw it, only to put it away again, but each time it allows us to ask "what should media be?" In a sense, as a good teaching material, its value persists by continuing to be an existence that Keio University looks back on from time to time. I felt that it will continue to be such an existence.

Thank you very much for your time today.