Free Press Gone Wrong

"Violence is not only that of pistols and fists; that of the pen is more dangerous." --Japan's Premier Nobusuke Kishi

Against the screeches of Japan's rioters last week came an imploring chorus that sounded almost like the voice of reason.

As paid demonstrators shed blood to keep Dwight Eisenhower out of Japan, seven of Tokyo's most influential daily newspapers jointly denounced such goings-on. "We cannot condone violence," cried Tokyo's Asahi Shinbun (circ. 5,000,000). "Impermissible under any circumstances," echoed Yomiuri (3,500,000).

Such sentiments were admirable--except for one thing. As much as any other agency, the Japanese press was responsible for the very violence that it now, all so suddenly, came to condemn.

For months, Japan's newspapers willfully and methodically laid the groundwork for crisis with a steady vilification of Premier Nobusuke Kishi and raucous demands that President Eisenhower stay away from Japan. Last May, after Kishi pushed the new U.S. security treaty through Parliament, Asahi called the action "a dictatorship of the majority," provocatively suggested that violence was the only appropriate response. As the street mobs took the cue, increasingly virulent headlines demanded Kishi's resignation, concocted highly imaginative crises: PARTY LEADERS DESERT KISHI, and NATION'S DIET SYSTEM IS STANDING AT CROSS ROADS OF LIFE OR DEATH.

Any Government. Such rabble-rousing irresponsibility is neither a studied reflection of the national will nor a momentary lapse from reason: it is the very nature of the Japanese press. With one minor exception--the Communist Party's daily Akahata (circ. 53,000)--the country's 186 dailies stand for nothing at all. But they are united against the government. It just so happens that the Conservatives have been in power since the end of 1948, but with fine impartiality, the press has flayed all of Premier Kishi's predecessors as savagely as Kishi. Says one leading Tokyo editor: "We would similarly attack any government, including a Socialist one; it is the duty of the press to be anti-government."

Ironically, the Japanese press is largely owned by wealthy conservatives such as Mainichi's Chikao Honda, Yomiuri's Matsutaro Shoriki, and Asahi's Nagataka Murayama, who secretly sympathize with Kishi and the Conservative cause. But they are journalistic eunuchs, interested mainly in profit, who have literally surrendered their papers to the hundreds of young liberal "intellectuals" in Japanese newsrooms. Espousing no cause but that of full-throated antagonism to the party in power, these leftists not only incite to riot but often themselves join the rioters. Last week, when a part of the mob broke off to charge police guarding the Diet building, the sortie was led by a phalanx of screaming, pole-waving newsmen.

The People Listened. Under the constitution pressed through by Occupation Commander Douglas MacArthur at the end of World War II, the Japanese were guaranteed freedom of the press. But to the Japanese press, freedom soon became a mandate to inveigh against all authority. Says Takeshi Susuki, managing editor of Chubu Nippon: "The function of the press in Japan has always been, and remains, to fight against feudalism."

In that climate grew the seeds of violence. Japan's youth, floundering in aimless quest of a cause, rallied to the negative exhortations of the press, with the alluring open invitations to throw stones at authority. The ceaseless voice of opposition to the government laid strong hold on a people not many years out from under the heels of their own police.

Even last week's call to order was not that at all, but the pious pro forma protestations of a press thoroughly satisfied with its own destructive handiwork. "We are only reflecting public opinion," said one leading editor, disclaiming all responsibility for the bloody rioting. "Kishi is responsible. He can solve it by resigning." All over Japan, the attacks against Kishi went on as before. It was too late for the irresponsible Japanese press to start making responsible noises.

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