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One of the most important changes in Japanese life since defeat is hidden in the flimsy, two- page, ideograph-crowded newspapers now being published. In the past few months Japanese journalists have succeeded in converting their newspapers from pillars of the old order into spearheads of the movement for the country's democratic renovation. The most dramatic story is that of the Yomiuri-Hochi, which was the worst of Tokyo's three principal papers, larding rabid militarism with vulgar sensationalism. Its owner, Matsutaro Shoriki, a former police official, had started the paper with the help of a group of aggression minded industrialists, including Chikuhei Nakajima, the airplane tycoon. Shoriki's yellow journalism, combined with the scandalously low wages he paid his newsmen and printers, brought him rich profits, and his fervent support of aggression won him a seat in the House of Peers and a position as Cabinet adviser.

In 1943, with the war against Japan intensifying in the Pacific, Dr. L.F. Fisser of the National Defense Research Committee designed a tiny incendiary bomb for the use of the U.S. Army Air Force. The two-ounce bomb was to be dropped on Japan affixed to free-tailed bats, of which there happened to be an ample supply in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. The bat bombs were to be chilled to hibernating temperature in ice-cube trays, packed 180 to a box and sprung free at a thousand feet above the ground, where they would thaw and, in great hunger, swoop down on the wood and paper homes of Tokyo. Something may be insane, but it is only crackpot when it doesn't work. Another plan to bring the total warfare concept to the Japanese capital was conceived by General Curtis LeMay.

This article focuses on political developments around the world as of March 4, 1939. Alarmed by the impact of the anti-Japanese boycott, leading Japanese business men in the United States held a private conclave recently to discuss counter-measures. To accompany an article on the naval maneuvers Time recently published a map showing the line-up in the Caribbean. French papers are telling the story of an Italian sculptor who carved a Venus and buried it in a field.

As the hour of occupation approaches, Japanese propaganda has taken on a curiously changed note. For the first time, the Japanese press and radio frankly admitted defeat and advised the Japanese people to forget past animosities and concentrate on reconstruction. Admitting the disastrous consequences of one-party rule, other papers urge the people to take a more active part in politics. This almost servile note in Japan's reaction to defeat is in many respects more disquieting than the defiance of the first few days after surrender. The change came too suddenly and too uniformly to be regarded as even partially sincere.

The article presents information on various developments related to publishers and publishing. G. P. Putnam's Sons have published the "Journal of Social Science," for June, containing the papers read at the General Meeting of the American Association at Saratoga last year, with the customary synopsis of proceedings and the program of the meeting appointed at the same place for September 6-10, 1887. The Scottish Geographical Magazine for July opens with an article on Japan by Russell Robertson, British Consul at Yokohama, and for twenty-five years a resident of the islands. It is packed closely with geographical and industrial facts, and fairly bristles with statistics.

This article focuses on the book "America to Japan: A Symposium of Papers by Representative Citizens of the United States on the Relations Between Japan and America and on the Comment Interests of the Two Countries," edited by Lindsay Russell. The symposium of papers by Japanese writers of distinction, entitled "Japan to America", the present volume is a response. To insure the future development of Japan, it is imperative that she preserve and strengthen her friendship with both the great English-speaking peoples, and gradually substitute their representative institutions for her present imperialism.

The world economy has recently exhibited many contradictory phenomena, but perhaps none more extraordinary than Japan's rapid trade expansion during the past two years. While some other countries have regained a small fraction of their pre-depression trade, Japan has already reached a point within striking distance of its 1929 total. The moment for this trade drive, which began while Japan was slashing its way through "scraps of paper" such as the Nine Power Treaty and the anti-war pact, could have been better timed. The increases in Japan's trade during the past two years make a substantial showing. Total Japanese trade advanced from 2,383,000,000 yen in 1931 to 3,778,000,000 in 1933, as compared to the 4,365,000,000 in 1929.

The counter-revolution which took place in Vladivostok on the 26th and 27th of May must be considered a new step in the development of Japan's program of imperialistic expansion in Siberia. The accounts of the coup presented by various Siberian papers arid news agencies bring out very clearly the fact that it owed its success to Japanese intervention. In order to understand what happened in Vladivostok it is necessary to review briefly the events of the last few months in Siberia. After the fall of Kolchak in the winter of 1919-1920 the eastern frontier of Soviet Russia was advanced to Lake Baikal.

Little news has come out of India during the past two months. Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru is silent behind prison walls and if the people continue to demonstrate on the streets, papers have not reported it. But silence does not necessarily imply submission. India still boils with frustration and unrest. It is the scene of one of the most dismal political failures of the United Nations and Japanese machinations are working to turn that failure into victory for the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." The central figure in the Japanese campaign is Subhas Chandra Bose, beloved by millions of Indians who remember him as a fiery patriot and leftist leader.

This article focuses on the book "The American Japanese Problem. A Study of the Racial Relations of the East and the West," by Sidney L. Gulick. This is an eminently judicious handling of a perplexing question. The threat made ten years ago by disappointed newspaper men, that the snubs they received at the Japanese military headquarters would not be forgotten, has since been made good in persistent news- paper misrepresentation and antagonism. The different national temper of the Japanese, who rely on their home government to present their grievances at the capital in a way that forces respectful attention, has irritated the complacent local politician, accustomed to the more subservient Chinese attitude.

Indeed, the world's first nuclear weapons test was conducted by the United States in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, just twenty-one days before Hiroshima. Twenty-four years later, the author finds himself standing on the campus of the University of Hiroshima with Shoko Itoh, a distinguished Thoreau scholar. Itoh looks up at the Science Department Building, one of the few structures to have survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. From the old campus of the University of Hiroshima just a few kilometers away from the epicenter of the A-bomb.

The Japanese in their negotiations with the Far Eastern Republic expressed their willingness to evacuate Siberia on condition that the Far Eastern Republic guaranteed to stop every sort of communist propaganda and pledged itself not to incite the Koreans and Chinese against Japan, according to the Shanghayskaya Zhisn, a Russian newspaper published in Shanghai. But Japan has definitely refused to evacuate Northern Sakhalin as long as it serves as a military base. According to the paper, during the first period of occupation the Japanese tried to treat the local population "decently."

This article presents information on political conditions of several nations. The doctrines of Anarchy have found many adepts in Germany. In 1848, in France it seemed as if the establishment of the Republic, universal suffrage, an absolute liberty of the press, and the right of meeting would have given satisfaction to the most ardent partisans of social and political reform. Such savage doctrines threaten the very life of a nation; they reveal under the surface of civilization a residuum of potential crime. The peculiar feature of the political situation in Japan is that no party that wishes the least measure of popular success can openly support the Government. Individual Japanese may be found who will go so far as to say that the present Government had better remain in power until the existing parties have received a more thorough political training, but more than this they will not say in its support.

The article presents information about the aid asked by Japan for dealing with Guerrilla warfare and the Hepburn Act of 1906. Frustrated in all efforts to deal with the guerrillas, the Japanese turned their attention to the foreign powers. But here they encountered much more stubborn resistance than would have seemed possible a few months ago. The landing of Japanese marines at Amoy was met by the landing of equally large detachments of British, French, and American bluejackets. Japanese demands on Tientsin and Shanghai were firmly rejected, and the International Settlement at Shanghai was put under temporary martial law. The Hepburn Act in 1906 was an attempt to break up the coal-railroad combination. The original bill forbade a "common carrier" to convey commodities produced by a company owned by the carrier. In that form it would have applied to pipe lines as well as railroads.

This article focuses on various political and social issues around the world. The formal announcement made through the financial agents of Japan in this country, that the Japanese government has decided on a drastic cut in its military and naval outlay, need cause no surprise. Germany has explained that when she let loose her latest Moroccan thunderbolt, she was merely offering advice, but French journalists when discussing German policy with regard to Morocco will continue to use the favorite adjective, brutal. The Kentish hop-growers are having a hard year. A few months ago they were complaining so bitterly on the "dumping," of American hops on the English market that a select committee was appointed to report on the industry. A striking difference may be pointed out between the Roman Catholic Church and the average young person who writes verses for the magazines.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency colonized large parts of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, New York. Japan 2000 is a report prepared by the executive of Richard Rose, RIT President, whose contents caused a furor in Japan but received too little attention in the U.S. The U.S. that has dominated the world, and maybe someone else ought to have a crack at it. But to the Japan 2000 crowd, Americans are moral people, unlike a moral-cum-immoral Japanese, and thus have a right to run the world. Americans perceive themselves as morally responsible for spreading democracy around the world and, furthermore, wring their hands over issues of conscience and individual rights at home.

The article comments on criminal activities in Japan. The plot which was at first reported in some papers, and possibly suspected by the police, to include in its program nothing less than the assassination of the ministers of state and other leading officials and the establishment of a government on a certain important occasion in the coming autumn seems to have resolved itself into a suspicion of the existence of a secret society on communist lines, according to the Japan Weekly Chronicle of June 14.

The Nation has had the rare distinction of being suppressed by the Imperial Japanese metropolitan police. Pursuit of dangerous thoughts is one of the duties of the national police organization. The particular issue of The Nation which was suppressed probably would never have come to the attention of the omnipresent police if the particular article had not been translated into Japanese and published by one of the Tokyo newspapers. Despite all this activity, any suppression of an English language periodical in Japan is beyond the memory of the average sojourner in the country.

The article gives critically appraises the book "Secret Agent of Japan," by Amleto Vespa. Vespa's stories of wholesale looting and plundering can perhaps be matched by tales of the behavior of other armies in other wars. But so far no one has ever set down on paper a more revolting story of Machiavellian cruelty designed to crush the spirit of a great people. As a high, though unwilling, officer in the Japanese secret service, Vespa participated in many of these schemes. Others he witnessed in carrying out his work.

Not all the casualties at the height of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam after 1965 were Vietnamese. As American warplanes screamed low over North Vietnam, the U.S. government and Ambassador to Japan, Edwin O. Reischauer, were dropping heavy payloads on the Japanese press, hoping thereby to change drastically a public opinion that was 90 per cent or more against Washington's war role. Japanese public opinion was hardly affected. But the bombing made the tone of the Japanese press toward Washington considerably milder. Now a 400-page document, entitled "Writing on Stone," and telling what happened from the time of the U.S. escalation against the Japanese press to the recent disclosure of the Pentagon Papers has been published in Japan with a first printing of 100,000 copies.

Reactions of France to the Japanese attack on Shanghai are very significant. During the session of the Council of the League of Nations in Paris in November and December 1931, most of those that closely followed proceedings of the Council had a strong suspicion that there was a secret understanding between France and Japan. Now that the capitulation of the League Council has had the consequences that it was bound to have the attitude of the French press confirms the suspicion that there is a secret Franco Japanese understanding.

The Japanese people felt relieved when a parley for a Korean cease-fire was announced, because their land was the base for the counter-attack on North Korea, and it had been a great grief to them to imagine how many lives were being lost on the battlefield every time they were waked early in the morning by the thundering planes. The announcement caused a sharp decline in stocks in Japan as well as in America, but the feelings of the Japanese were quite different from those of the Americans. The decline in stocks was noted chiefly in textiles and in the heavy industries and chemicals.

This article focuses on the international relations between various countries. The Axis-Japan pact has been called everything from a bluff to the blueprint of a new totalitarian world order. In fact it is a typical Nazi maneuver, and so it combines some elements of both. But Hitler has always used failure as a stepping-stone for new advances, and while it is legitimate to take satisfaction at the stubborn courage which has ended the hope of an autumn invasion of England, wise observers will not discount the importance of Hitler's grandiose substitute scheme. The pact with Japan has been treated, of course, as a resounding diplomatic triumph, and no doubt it will be accepted as such by the bemused masses of Germany and Italy.

This article focuses on the political and economic developments in the U.S. A curious illustration of the indirect but baleful influence of vicious and absurd civil-service system has been recently brought to light in the history of certain experiences that have befallen the Japanese in their intercourse with the U.S. Government. In the midst of this sink of corruption stands the Secretary of the Treasury, not only charged with the custody of the national funds, but charged with the duty of keeping down the price of gold, and even of keeping money easy. In other words, just as Congress, under tariff system, has it in its power to raise or lower the price of nearly all the principal necessaries and luxuries, the Secretary of the Treasury has it in his power to determine in any given week the purchasing power of the paper dollar by raising or lowering the price of gold.

It seems certain that Japan must in its own right be a leading power in East Asia. The Japanese are the most highly educated people in Asia, much better educated than many Western peoples. They are skilled in science and technology, organization and management. Unlike many Asian nations they are remarkably homogeneous in race, religion, language and culture. But on the political and military fronts the story is different. Prime Minister Eisaku Sato has expressed his government's sympathy with U.S. objectives in Vietnam. In the last few years the Japanese leaders have gained the confidence to make it clear, however politely, that they want to make their assessments of what is happening in Asia, and to decide for themselves the role they want to play.

Sixty years of rapid surging forward give way to retrogression, particularly in fields where Western culture has been hitherto most influential. Free thought, free religion, and freedom of scientific research are now to be eradicated. To the rulers of a society based as in Japan's, upon a scandalously corrupt political system, and upon an unfair economic grouping, where restive tenant-farmers, an underpaid urban proletariat, and an unemployed intelligentsia are suffering depression, too close a scrutiny of the foundations is disquieting.

This article focuses on the treaty between the Great Britain and Japan during the World War. This treaty still remains a mere piece of composition on paper, an agreement between two governments of West and East but does not represent the mutual understanding of one race with another. Japan stands in a rather safe place at present, where no immediate serious consequences of the war will be felt. With such a blessing of the situation, Japanese can practice an art of criticism even with an accompaniment of wine and smoke.

The article focuses international relation. Confidential dispatches were received at the U.S. State Department, which are said to confirm the general tone of the forecasts of the German reply to the American note cabled by correspondents from Berlin, Germany. Whether the relaxation of activity by German submarines during the past two weeks represents the normal period of respite, respite from Nepenthe, which succeeds strenuous days. It indicates an intention on the part of Germany to moderate her submarine warfare. Dispatches from China on Monday revealed the fact that in the middle of May, during the crisis between China and Japan, an identical warning had been conveyed to both countries that the United States would not recognize any agreement, which impaired American rights in China or endangered the policy of the open door.

The article presents recent developments in world politics. There has been no further development during the past week in the situation in Romania or other Balkan states. It seems significant, however, that a loan of $25,000,000 has been arranged for Romania in England, and if dispatches from Rome and Athens published in recent papers are to be accepted. Whatever Italy's ultimate decision on the question of peace or war may be, it becomes increasingly evident that decision will be taken by Italy alone, uninfluenced by threats or persuasions of other Germany and Austria. Somewhat sensational dispatches from Chinese government were published on January 27 concerning demands that Japan had made upon China following the Japanese occupation of Kiao-chau.

This article presents information on the events of taking hostage and kidnapping in the world. On November 4, 1979 Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, imprisoning the diplomatic staff. In the eyes of the perpetrators and their sympathizers, the hostage taking in Teheran was a successful tactic, leading directly to the inauguration of the Ronald Reagan team, which swiftly sanctioned arms shipments via Israel, which had already been supplying Iran. another section of the article says that amid the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the press has been full of discussion of whether Japan should apologize for the surprise attack.

Japan was saving face by committing hara-kiri on a grand scale has completely faded as the forces of Nippon have marched from one success to another, not only undefeated but unchecked by any of the Allied powers. A direct gain for Japan is its acquisition of raw materials. Of the many war essentials missing at home, only mercury and copper are unobtainable in the areas now under Japanese control or subject to imminent attack. Oil resources gained may require six months for effective exploitation after the efficient job of destruction done by the Dutch.

The article presents information regarding various developments around the world. Delayed dispatches from Tokyo give for the first time a more or less complete account of the demonstrations for manhood suffrage which resulted in the dissolution of the Japanese Diet on February 26, 1920. The popular agitation over the suffrage debate in the Diet was increased by the fact that 20,000 men were idle on account of a serious strike in the government steel works. Japanese Premier Takashi Hara avoided the issue for the government by dissolving the Diet.

Born in 1839, at Kyoto, Japan of immemorial lineage, Marquis Kimmochi Saionji, was adopted into the equally noble family of Saionji. When the duarchy of throne and camp was shattered by the coup d'état of 1867, Saionji led the Second Imperial Army to victory. He was appointed a provincial Governor, but lacking experience and not liking the details of administration, he soon resigned his office. Then, resolving to devote himself to the investigation of the sources of modern power, he went to Paris, France for a stay of ten years. From 1870 to 1880, he studied especially law and politics.

This article focuses on the Inland sea of Japan. The Inland Sea, at once both Bosphorus and Archipelago, stretches 400 miles from Kobé to Nagasaki. It is so narrow or so islanded that in all that distance steamers are never out of sight of land, and usually hug some shore so closely that they are near enough for distinct vision. At one point the broad water narrows to 600 feet. One can have a full view weather- beaten dark houses with white gables, groves, terraced hills, here tolerant of culture to the very top, and there torn by torrents till they look like the variegated rocks of Dakota Bad Lands.

The article presents information on the book "The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan," by Donald Richie. Donald Richie's work to remind us that beneath the blanket of cold war claptrap, this essayist, film critic, fiction writer, screenwriter and portraitist has built an honest, revealing body of work that spans the entire postwar era. In the 1970s, Richie's writing began to reflect his disappointment in the Japan he saw emerging from the postwar ashes, the consumption-crazy Japan that eventually produced the bubble.

The article comments on legal procedures of Japan. In 1997 Japan's Supreme Court handed down a startling decision after more than three decades of legal warfare over the Education Ministry's censors. Japan has an independent judiciary in name only-- one reason the country cannot, by any careful reckoning, be counted a working democracy. The man who took on the Education Ministry is named Saburo lenaga, historian and author. As historian and author, lenaga has tied the censors up in lawsuits since 1965.

The article presents information about various sociopolitical events in the U.S. and around the world, as of May 19, 1997. Japan's Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto was in Washington recently for a long and apparently amiable chat at the White House. This was not a summit; it more closely resembled a proconsul's visit from the far provinces to report that natives, though restless, are for the time being subdued. U.S. President Bill Clinton's first visit to Mexico as President is slated to begin on May 5, 1997, Cinco de Mayo, a patriotic holiday that celebrates the startling 1862 victory of a handful of Zacapoaxtla Indians over the vaunted troops of Napoleon III.

Presents several editorials which discuss different subjects. "Nakasone's Setting Sun," which discussed domestic politics in Japan; "Art Officialdom," which discussed the government policy and attitude towards the promotion of art in the U.S.; "False Statistic," which discussed importance of numbers in previous appeals made by prisoners on death row.

Focuses on the economic growth of Japan. Contents of the book 'Japan As Number One,' by Ezra Vogel; Japanese corporate world; Ideology and technology.

This article presents the author's brief account on Japan's anti-Korean legal system. According to the author the verdict of Osaka's High Court, on Ron Fujiyoshi will remember the loud and pungent streets of Ikuno Ward, where his journey through the Japanese legal system began. Fujiyoshi is an American missionary on trial for refusing to be fingerprinted; Ikuno Ward is Japan's largest Korean community. And while fingerprinting, mandated by the country's Alien Registration Law, ostensibly applies to all non-Japanese residents equally, it falls most heavily on Koreans. In a portrait Fujiyoshi's would be one face among 800,000 alien residents, the overwhelming majority Korean; it would be one among some 14,000 who have resisted fingerprinting over the past ten years. INSET: Hollow Apology..

Presents several letters to the editor. Information about foreign affairs in the United States; Discussion about the public opinion against Japan; Criticism and understanding of this world by school students.

The article focuses on the book "One Thousand Familiar Phrases in English and Romanized Japanese," by John Liggins. Japanese jugglers who are imported and Japanese embassies that come of their own the newly established communication between Japan and California is bringing into unexpected contact with the ingenious islanders. The author says that it is difficult to carry on a large business with a small capital or, turning the conversation upon Soviet Union; have remarked impressively.

The article presents news briefs on various social and political developments in U.S. Some of the news presented were that two Afro-Americans are on the Atlanta jury that will judge Hiram Evans, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has been indicted for swindling the state on a construction project. The other news is that one fascist group that has been overlooked in most roundups is Pro-America, which operates out of Denver. A speaker at one of its meetings held since Pearl Harbor defended Japan's New Order as a "bulwark against Bolshevism."

The article focuses on the book "The Future of Japan," by William C. Johnstone. The book discusses that although the Japanese government's military position grows more difficult from day to day, official U.S. thinking on how to handle a defeated Japan shows no evidence of progress. Dominant State Department circles seem bent on post-war cooperation with so-called moderate elements among Japan's present rulers, including the imperial court and its institution of a divinely descended emperor. Johnstone is concerned not only with the technical aspects of the policy occupation, disarmament, demobilization, reparations and economic controls-but also with the problem of changing Japans social, political and economic structure.

The article presents information on the political conditions in Japan as of November 30, 1916. According to the author there seems to be no very clear statement of the real reason why Shigenobu Okuma, Japanese Prime Minister, resigned. He pleaded his advanced age but everybody knows that it is not the real reason for his resignation. He seemed to have contemplated only a slight change in the Cabinet, by merely changing the primiership to his logical successor Viscount Kato. The other Ministers presented their resignations at the same time, but they would probably have been retained if Kato had been named Premier.

The Chinese have always been a curious people and they are possessed of some very queer old customs. The managers of the Greatest Show on Earth seem to have chosen the present Soviet Union government to act as their Invisible Property Man. Officially they refuse to believe that there is such a thing as a Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. As far as Washington is concerned, official Soviet Union simply does not exist. There is some trouble, so it appears, about the exact status of a certain country called Manchuria. Japan wants that country and China wants it or has it and the two nations threaten to go to war with each other on account of this distant and mysterious territory.

Presents several letters to the editor on issues related to the United States politics. Reaction to the comment on the manner instead of the matter in an article on New Deal; Inevitability of the Japanese control of the Far Eastern provinces; Decrease in deaths of diabetics because of insulin.

The modern history of Manchuria began when Japan seized Korea from China in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95 and was balked of the Liaotung peninsula in South Manchuria only by the intervention of Russia, France and Germany. Russia thereupon acquired the con- cessions Japan had coveted and at the turn of the century built the `Chinese Eastern Railway and opened the port of Dalny (Dairen). The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 followed and Japan took over the Russian lease of the Liaotung peninsula, including Dairen and all Russian concessions and privileges in South Manchuria as far as Changchun, including the corresponding portion of the South Manchurain Railway, the coal mines and Fushun and various subsidiary enterprises.

The article focuses on the relationships between Japan and the U.S. during 1923. Japanese relations. Viscount Shibusawa, who is now eighty three years old, is Japan's leading merchant, and one of her wisest and most prominent publicists. More than a year has now passed since the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armament. Many considerations render it desirable that the peoples of these two countries should take stock of what has already been accomplished and what remains to be done in achieving the desire of the great majority of the countries on both sides of the Pacific, that the best possible understanding and even the kindliest feelings shall prevail and continue indefinitely.