만주국의 신문통제와 滿洲弘報協會(1936~1940)

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring press control which Manchukuo initiated, and founding out the characteristics that lie within its scheme. In 1936, it set about to control the press by establishing a holding company, Manchuria Kouhou Association. This association bought the stocks of some newspapers, and so owned the greater part, or even the whole of them. The fact that this association had a major stake in them enabled it to intervene in their business, or to control their management. Otherwise, for other press companies, not under the direct control of the association, financial pressures were given, such as the withdrawal of purchase of manuscript and financial assistance for them, and then they found difficulty in keeping themselves without joining the association. Before, on December, 1932, Manchukuo already had founded a government-run news agency, Manchukuo National News Agency, which had placed the transmission of news at home and abroad under state control. It appeared, on the surface, to be the nationalized one, but, in truth, Kwantung army held real power over it. When the association was launched, the news agency soon became a main member of it. Accordingly, coverage of main news concerning national policies was available to nothing but this agency, whose own news only were allowed for the press companies to report in their newspapers. In doing so, government was eager to control and go even further to turn the newspapers into the pro-government organizations in sympathy with national interest. On July, 1937, this association increased its capital by a million yen, and the newspapers were merged in four major cities of Manchukuo. As a result, for the association members, both newspapers in Chinese and Japanese were permitted to issue, while, for nonmembers, only one kind of newspaper in either Chinese or Japanese. In this way, it followed that ‘one newspaper for one province system(一道一紙主義)’ in Colonial Joseon and ‘one newspaper for one prefecture system(1府縣1紙制)’ in Japan were implemented as a rule. It can be said, in this respect, that the state of Manchuria gave a precedent in press control in other areas of Japanese empire, whose political experiment of control was targeted at media control as a whole.