Newspaper For Japanese Women

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 270, 11 August 1938, Page 5

Newspaper For Japanese Women

Forum In Which Educated Women Discuss Problems Of Daily Life

interesting experiment in Japan, where woman s place is still overwhelmingly in the home, a newspaper edited by a woman for women readers has now successfully reached'its fifth year of publication.

“T-TATEI SHIMBUN” (literally. “The v Family Newspaper”) started as a daily, and it .is now published every fifth day, states a writer in “The Christian Science Monitor.” With a growing circulation which; has passed the 10.000-mark and with an increasing volume of advertising, the newspaper has placed itself on a sound financial basis. It is a publication of -eight pages, well illustrated with photographs. pictures, and cartoons. Leading women in various fields regularly contribute articles.

Wheii the editor of the “Kate! Shimbun,” Mrs. T. Niizuma, first conceived the idea of a women’s newspaper, she tried to appeal to the tastes and interests of the “average” Japanese woman. She felt that in order to awaken this average woman to breader political, social, and intellectual interests, she would have to make some concessions to the prevalent sensationalism of the Japanese Press. Exciting stories of courageous maids or wives driving away intruding burglars, of triangular love affairs, and double suicides were featured, and sober discussions of such questions as women’s suffrage, family relations, unemployment, slipped in more or less as contraband, somewhere between the courageous maids and the triangular tangles. But this policy was not a success. Mrs. Niizuma soon realised that it w as useless to compete in sensationalism wi.h the large daily newspapers, with their larger staffs and superior facilities for quick reporting. So she changed the policy- and character of her newspaper, shifted from a daily to a five-day basis«of publication, and made out of' the newspaper something of a torurn in which the more educated women could find discussion of the questions which interest them and confront them in daily life.

Typical of the trend of the newspaper is a recent issue which put on the front page an article by Miss Tsuneko Akamtasu. a trade-union worker, urging equal pay for men and women engaged in the same work. Miss Akamatsu pointed out that now women often receive only lml f or two-thirds of the wages of men in ‘lie same trade. She argued that, if this should continue, women would oust.men from employment, and appealed to men to cooperate witli women in putting a stop to this discrepancy.

An editorial on the same page was a plea for better treatment of the families of men who have been arrested for alleged anti-war thoughts and activities. Tlie editorial stressed the point that arrest should not be considered synonymous with conviction, recalled the Teikoku Rayon case, where many defendan’s were found not guilty after suffering a good deal of hardship and ill-treatment in prison, and recommended a kinder attitude toward families •which are suffering great distress, since the chier earner is in prison. Other items on the front page were a brief summary of outstanding news

items and a question-and-answer expose of the National Mobilisation Act. The second page contained a discussion ~f the vice problem in Tokio and means which are taken to deal with it. Other pages were given over to such specialised subjects as houeskeeping and other women’s interest and literature; and there was a children’s page where one found stories on history, geography, and natural science in simple language. The entire publication made the impression of a liberal newspaper with broad interests, cleverly edited, and steering carefully amid the reefs of wartime censorship and psychology.