THE OUTSIDE WORLD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 139, 15 June 1939, Page 8

THE OUTSIDE WORLD

INTERPRETING JAPAN

FOREIGN LANGUAGE PAPERS

* Japan is largely known to the outside world through English language '■ publications—newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, translation services—says the Tokio correspondent of the'"Christian Science Monitor." Due to its thousands of difficult hieroglyphs, a ' reading knowledge of Japanese is reserved for a small group of linguistic specialists, mostly scholars, diplomats, , and missionaries. And, as English is widely spoken in the Far East, it is in English that the of Japan's foreign language publications appear. The war has brought about a great increase in the number of these publications. Besides innumerable pamphlets and reprints of speeches, there are at least half a dozen new newspapers and magazines which are : apparently on a permanent basis, at least for the duration of the war.* The first of these to make its appearance was the "Herald of Asia," edited by the veteran Japanese publicist, Motosada Zumoto, who was at one time secretary to the famous statesman of the Meiji Era, Prince Hirobumi Ito. Mr. Zumoto's genial personality and excellent command of English have given him a wide cricle of friends and acquaintances among foreigners in Tokio; and his magazine, which appears every ten days, is an accurate mirror of his personal views. He is a Japanese nationalist, who likes to see Japan get what it wants, but with a minimum of hard feeling aroused among other nations in the process. A regular and useful feature of the "Herald of Asia" is its translations from newspapers and periodicals. WRITTEN BY OCCIDENTALS. A new journalistic venture of a different type is "Japan News-Week," which recently published its first issue in Tokio. With an American editor and a British associate editor "Japan News-Week" assumes the role of a journal, written entirely by Occidentals for the purpose of describing and interpreting Japan. "Japan News-Week," in its first issues, goes in rather heavily for feature articles on subjects as varied as missionary activity and Japanese-Ameri-can trade, besides giving a general resume of the developments of the week. Another new publication is the "Japan Times Weekly," which gives the "Japan Times," a Japanese-owned afternoon English language newspaper, the same kind of weekly summary of its contents that the American-owned "Japan Advertiser" and the Britishowned "Japan Chronicle" already publish. The "Japan Weekly Times' also publishes original letters by foreign contributors, such as H. G. W. Woodhead, veteran editor of Shanghai, who recently presented a British viewpoint on the thorny subject of Anglo-Japan-ese relations. THE PRIZE IN EXTREMES. Another publication bears the device "Latest China Intelligence Service," published by an organisation which modestly calls itself the International Authentic Information Bureau. A glance through its mimeographed pages reveals little information about China, a good many items about Japan, and Japanese plans for development in China, and a melodramatic, unconsciously amusing denunciation of Chiang Kai-shek. Probably the prize for overdone propaganda on either side should go to a pamphlet entitled "Japanese Spirit in Full Bloom," published by the South Manchuria Railway. In a war where notoriously few prisoners have been taken by either side phciographs which must have been very specially posed for the occasion show Chinese prisoners receiving cider, caramels, and first-aid treatment from their "generous captors." Another high point of artless propaganda was touched in a picture showing Japanese wounded soldiers walking in order to give Chinese women an opportunity to ride in carts, accompanied by the indignant caption: "Ladies first. Wounded Japanese soldiers walk, giving place to old Chinese women. Yet some Chinese journals call the Japanese 'savages with machine-guns.'" It would be unfair to confuse these cruder efforts in the propaganda field (in which the Japanese habitually and not without reason, confess themselves !to be inept) with the more serious permanent pub 1-' cations which have ■ been mentioned, all of which contain a certain amount of useful information. In any event, main Japanese i developments and_ the Japanese view- : point may be said to be receiving ' abundant publicity.