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Negotiating censorship in modern Japan
Rachael Hutchinson
Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years, from the time of the late Tokugawa period to the present. Administrative regimes have ranged from the feudal bakufu of the Tokugawa era (1603â1867), through the imperial institutions of the Meiji (1868â1912), TaishĆ (1912â26) and early ShĆwa periods, transitioning to military rule in the 1930s, followed by the Allied Occupation (1945â52) and reversion to a demilitarized Japanese government. Each system of rule possessed its own censorship laws and regulations, as well as methods of enforcement. But what has remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process of negotiation between censor and artist that may be seen in all the cultural media of modern society, including popular songs, dramatic performance, journalism, literature, fine arts and film. The purpose of this volume is to focus more closely on that process of negotiation, in order to cast light on the human subjectivity inherent in any censorship system, and to better understand the dynamics of censorship and power as they play out in real-world case studies.
While there are many models to work with in understanding censorship, we may loosely define censorship as an act of suppression, deletion, omission or revision performed upon an artistic work or medium by the artist or an external body, which limits the work's publication or dissemination to some extent. The enactment and enforcement of censorship is often seen in negative terms as a suppression of âfree speechâ or of the artist's creative expression. Censorship regulations from âaboveâ may apply to a single speech act or to a whole medium, while self-censorship from âbelowâ may be motivated by positive or negative factors â to gain reward or to avoid punishment, for example. In what MiklĂłs Haraszti (1987) calls the âclassicalâ model of censorship, one may see the process from the perspective of the state's exercise of power in putting forward one main discourse which must be protected from corrupting influences, answered by the artist's compliance with or resistance to that discourse (perhaps in the act of creating a âcounter-discursiveâ utterance from the margins). But, as Haraszti explains, to think of state censorship only in terms of suppression, silencing or changing the artist's voice is to recognize power only in one sector of society, making that power completely negative in aspect and its application homogeneous and objective. One could argue that censorship is common to every society, being a struggle between the expressive statement and its suppression. But Haraszti reveals this oppositional dichotomy of state versus artist, struggling over artistic freedom, as no more than a ârumorâ, because we must take into account the fact that very often both the state and the artist are complicit in one another's enterprise.
Most research on Japanese censorship to date â including the work of Richard Mitchell, Jay Rubin, Gregory Kasza, and most recently Tomi Suzuki and her colleagues â has taken the classical approach, focusing on top-down suppression and surveillance as well as regulations, laws and methods of enforcement. However, it is interesting to note that most scholars also acknowledge a certain degree of subjectivity inherent in the censorship systems of imperial, wartime and Occupation Japan. Kasza goes so far as to say that the most important legacy of Meiji policy was âthe wide discretion granted to administrators in making and implementing the lawâ (1988: 7). In this volume, we focus more closely on that subjectivity and discretion to see the censorship process in more holistic and human terms.
In contrast to the classical model, an alternative way to approach censorship is through the choices that must be made by people at every stage of the censorship process, in the three main spheres of artist, state and audience. On the part of the artist, Nagai KafĆ« (1879â1959) pointed out that writing itself is a matter of careful selection and editing. The artist must choose at every stage of the work what to include and what to leave out (Nagai 1920). But at what point does âselection and editingâ become âself-censorshipâ? Much depends on the artist's expectation of how the work will be received, which in turn may depend on knowledge of state regulations and demands of the target audience. On the part of the state, the choice must be made as to which materials to censor and how to apply that censorship. Is it possible to police the output of every part of the media, and when does this become too large a task to manage in terms of employee numbers and work hours? Finally, for the audience, Henry David Thoreau (1817â62) claimed that it is the responsibility of every person to keep their own mind clear of polluting influences, by carefully choosing to view only those materials which will educate the mind and enlighten the soul (Thoreau 1997 [1854]). But how are audiences to make informed choices? At what age can audiences decide for themselves what to listen to, read or watch? For those deemed too young to make choices for themselves, is it the right of parents, guardians, schools, the church or the state to govern and police their media consumption? As this brief selection of questions makes clear, the artist, state and audience face the issue of choice at all stages of the censorship process.
Complicating the matter, these choices are further informed by the advice and suggestions of various regulatory entities, often seen as âmiddlemenâ in the process: independent ratings boards and pressure groups, publishers, editors, and heads of film studios and radio stations. Cultural critics, politicians and journalists all add to the public discourse on censorship, opining on what should and should not be available for consumption. The questions of who has the right to censor a work, and whether it is the responsibility of the artist, the state, the audience, or someone else to consider such matters, lie at the heart of the censorship process, with rights and responsibilities providing the site of contention for dissident artists, underage consumers, pundits and government committees alike. The essays in this volume highlight the complexities of the censorship process by investigating the responsibilities and choices of all four groups â artists, censors, audience and ideologues â in a range of case studies from the Japanese arts.
Historically, censorship in Japan has been marked by both complicity and complexity, with formal imperial or governmental edicts accompanied in equal measure by extralegal and informal methods of censorship. Despite the many changes in rule, it is clear from a brief chronological overview that top-down censorship regulations have been continuously balanced by systems of negotiation. Although the legacy of the Tokugawa administration has most often been analyzed in terms of suppression and control (see for example Mitchell 1983: 3â12; Suzuki et al. 2012: 8â9), I will focus here on those aspects of the feudal censorship system which laid the basis for negotiation and subjectivity in subsequent periods.
When commercial publishing started in the Tokugawa period, the first official censorship regulations were passed against Christian books, particularly Chinese translations of works by European missionaries. Official edicts passed in 1657 and 1673 defined categories of objectionable material, but the popularity and prevalence of erotic books in the marketplace suggest that these edicts were ineffective. In 1721 and 1722, however, the bakufu of shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684â1751) required all new books to be inspected before reaching the marketplace, and to bear a stamp showing the true names of both author and publisher for the first time. While authors could get around these rules by disseminating work underground or by keeping their work in manuscript form (Kornicki 1998), printed material was to be regulated by a new system. The 1721 edict ordered publishers to form guilds, while the 1722 edict required those guilds to take responsibility for inspecting books and enforcing the regulations. Faced with the brunt of financial losses if objectionable material was released on the marketplace, the publishersâ guilds soon worked out that loss could be avoided with a pre-publication system of censorship rather than waiting for post-publication inspection. By placing responsibility for censorship on the publishing guilds, the bakufu had fostered a system of pre-publication self-censorship â a system that would reappear often in Japan's history.
Censorship on ideological grounds was also common in the Edo period, repeated in successive eras as each ruling ideology naturally sought to suppress opposition. Laws attempting to foster political and ideological homogeneity were passed in 1790, in the Kansei Reforms of Matsudaira Sadanobu (1759â1829). The Prohibition of Heterodoxy edict reinforced earlier laws and put new bans in place to control political satires and scandals. Punishments could be harsh, including prison, fines or being placed in manacles for a number of days. The next major edicts of 1823 and 1842 aimed to slow the spread of Western ideas, controlling works of science, astronomy and âDutch learningâ as well as Western medicine.
An interesting result of the 1842 laws was the dissolution of the publishers' guilds, to be replaced by a bakufu institution requiring all new books to undergo the same standard practice of pre-publication censorship. However, the sheer volume of work involved in such an enterprise proved overwhelming, leading to many categories of undesirable books being considered exempt for practical purposes. In this case we see the physical limitations that can be placed on a bureaucracy by overly stringent or ambitious regulations. The relationship between artist, censor and state in the Tokugawa period thus emerges not as a simple âtop-downâ equation but as a refection of the human side of the censorship process as a whole. Three main features of the system may be seen as continuous with the eras to come: the state's use of a middleman as censor, fostering an atmosphere of self-censorship; shifts in censorship policy on ideological grounds; and the limitations of policy subject to logistical restraints.
Censorship of the Meiji period is often represented as the ultimate in top-down state suppression and control, with Mitchell (1983) and Kasza (1988) in particular painting the Meiji years as the source of all that was severe and grim in the institutional running of imperial Japan. In the first year of the new regime, books could only be published with government permission. New media such as newspapers and magazines came under tight supervision and many were banned, especially those critical of the new government. Certainly, from the perspective of state suppression, Meiji censorship seems far more powerful and effective than the Tokugawa system. However, looking at censorship as a complex and dynamic process, many elements are seen to be continuous with both the earlier Tokugawa system and later periods. For example, the 1869 regulations required two copies of all books and periodicals to be presented for post-publication censorship. Having already expended a great deal of effort, time and money to produce the materials, publishers and authors faced huge losses if the product failed inspection, leading to stricter in-house rules regarding what should be published and what should not. Editors and publishers thus safeguarded the fortunes of the publishing house in a similar way to the guilds of the Tokugawa period, while authors could also take it upon themselves to edit their own material in the hope of a favorable result.
From 1875 censorship became the responsibility of the Home Ministry, which passed strict libel and press regulations. Editors were now held criminally responsible for the content of what they printed and for any troubles arising in public order as a result of what they printed. Bans of sale could be applied to new and old books, meaning that a system of re-inspecting old works had to be instituted. This kind of retrospective censorship would be a major feature of censorship in wartime as well as the Occupation. Laws were strictly enforced, to the extent that some newspapers began to use âprison editorsâ, where people already imprisoned would append their names to editorials and bear the blame for the content while the real day-to-day running of the paper was carried out by someone else. In answer to this tactic, the government could implement indefinite suspension of publication from the 1880s, when censorship laws were tightened yet again. The 1883 Press Regulations, expanded and promulgated by imperial decree as the Press and Publication Regulations of 1887, strengthened the power of the Home Ministry and brought back pre-publication censorship. The Home Ministry was empowered to charge anyone for activities that âdisturbed the peaceâ, including political meetings as well as publications. With the new constitution of 1890 came the inclusion of Article 29, stating that âJapanese subjects shall, within the limits of the law, enjoy the liberty of speech, writing, publication, public meetings and associationâ (Rubin 1984: 6). The emphasis that Rubin adds to the phrasing highlights the practical application of the Home Ministry's regulations, which were open to no appeal and which would be enforced by the Home Ministry's own Police Bureau Censorship Division (see Rubin 1984: 15â27).
Extralegal methods of censorship evolved further through the years of imperial rule: the Home Ministry could issue pre-publication embargoes to certain publishers, letting them know in advance what subjects were likely to be banned; similarly, publishers could be let off with a warning, post-publication, to avoid publishing such dangerous material in the future. Some works were allowed to be published contingent on deletions of passages or the insertion of fuseji, Xs and Os that substituted for characters on the printed page. Fuseji were inserted not by the authors or the police, but by the publishers and editors. In emphasizing the continuity between Tokugawa and Meiji extralegal methods of censorship negotiation, Rubin (1984: 28â9) provides an alternative perspective to the suppressive state model in the imperial years.
This kind of cooperation between publishers and censors may be called âcomplicityâ in Haraszti's model, but may also be seen as a practical approach to working within the boundaries of censorship regulation. Such practical complicity is clear in Rachel Payne's essay on early Meiji kabuki censorship, in which both state reformers and kabuki artists of the 1870s and 1880s are shown to be heavily interdependent, with a very fine line between the private realm, where reform was encouraged through individual relationships, and the public realm, where strict regulations were printed and patronage was offered by the state. Payne reminds us that artists can sometimes agree with censorship reforms and regulations, often benefiting from state scholarships, prizes and rewards even under a totalitarian government.
Just as Meiji censorship needed to deal with a burgeoning press, censorship in the TaishĆ period (1912â26) had to address the new media of film. The Motion Picture Exhibition Regulations of 1917 required pre-screening of films for the censors, licensing of all benshi narrators and a system of ratings to indicate appropriate age ranges for the audience. This law applied only to Tokyo, the first national law being the 1925 Motion Picture Film Inspection Regulations, issued by the Home Ministry. Now each film had to be stamped by the censor before exhibition, on the criteria that it not be âharmfulâ to the public. The broad criteria generally applied to violence, sexuality or criticism of the imperial system, although left-leaning works came under great scrutiny at this time (Anderson and Richie 1982: 69). The Proletarian Film League in particular attracted a great deal of attention, and was finally closed down in 1925 under the Peace Preservation Law. This law, banning any kind of speech act that advocated abolishing private property or doing away with the imperial system, was primarily directed against Socialists and Communists, although publications of all kinds came under greater scrutiny. One of the most serious crimes was to publish criticism of the kokutai or ânation stateâ, officially established in law for the first time (Mitchell 1983: 190â7). The Justice Ministry created a Thought Section in 1926 to deal with subversive ideology, and âthought guidanceâ took a dual approach to the problem, clarifying the meaning of kokutai on the one hand while condemning leftist ideology on the other (Mitchell 1976: 150). The role of the Education Ministry became more important in these years, inculcating a love for the emperor and family nation-state.
Although imprisonment, interrogation and even torture were employed to encourage ideological offenders to recant, Jonathan Abel demonstrates that proletarian literature, as well as erotic literature, flourished under the heavy censorship of interwar Japan. Abel shows how writers, publishers and editors manipulated censorship through personal relationships and other strategies, making money and cultivating marginal genres in the process. Through the career of Umehara Hokumei (1901â46), Abel explores the potential for both complicity and subversion in the act of publication in mainstream discourse. The question of how to be both radical and involved in the mainstream highlights the paradoxical relationship between radicalism and complicity, and the balancing act needed by the artist to negotiate boundaries successfully.
The ShĆwa period (1926â89) began with a massive publishing boom, which quickly showed the limitations of the TaishĆ censorship system. Strained to the limits of work hours, the Police Bureau Censorship Division of the Home Ministry was forced to end its informal consultations with individual publishers and editors (Rubin 1984: 247â8). from the 1930s, war with China demanded a stronger program of positive propaganda, to be carried out by the Cabinet Information Committee founded in 1936. The need for propaganda and the significance placed upon it may be seen in the upgrading of this Committee to Division in 1937 (when the Nanking massacre demanded increased information control) and to Bureau in 1940 (when news reports of the failing war demanded increasingly strict regulation). By 1940, the new Bureau was in direct competition with the Home Ministry's Police Bureau for authority over censorship...
