Beyond the Metropolis. Louise Young
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and Tokyo spoke to the strength of local connections to newspaper readers. In the early decades of the Meiji the provincial press had laid strong, deep roots in the community, becoming a fixture in the local cultural matrix and social system. Residents responded to the availability of papers from the center by continuing to support their local press. Those who did buy the metropolitan news tended to do so as a supplement rather than a replacement for their local paper, as we can see from circulation figures for provincial cities in the Japan Newspaper Yearbook.60
As papers adopted the most effective marketing and technological features of their rivals in order to survive, competition with the center meant that a certain amount of the heterogeneity characteristic of the early newspaper industry was eliminated. Yet this did not lead to a uniform provincial market, by any means. Indeed, a brief overview of the local newspaper market in the prefectures of Niigata, Hokkaido (Sapporo), Ishikawa (Kanazawa), and Okayama conveys the variety of reactions to the challenges imposed by successive waves of metropolitan expansion.
Niigata managed to emerge from the fracas with a large number of vibrant local papers supported by different local communities. As an observer noted in 1911, after the first wave of metropolitan expansion, “Things that Echigo [a premodern designation for the region] possesses in abundance include rice, oil, schools, unfinished railroads, snow, and newspapers.”61 Though Niigata prefecture experienced the same shakedown of the newspaper industry that affected other regions, more than two decades later the Japan Newspaper Yearbook still noted the unusually high number of regional papers. Partly this rested on a relatively large prefectural population (almost 2 million), but it also related to strong press traditions in the prefecture’s three leading cities, Niigata (population 139,000), Nagaoka (population 63,000), and Takada (population 31,000). The dispersed nature and large number of papers meant that even the prefecture’s largest presses, the Niigata shinbun and the Niigata mainichi, did not circulate much beyond the prefectural capital in which they were based. Comparative circulation figures for the more remote Sado Island, positioned just off the coast from Niigata city, illustrated the limited reach of the provincial press. In addition to supporting a Sado paper, residents subscribed to six outside papers, the Tokyo asahi (Sado circulation 2,200), the Tokyo nichi nichi (2,000), the Yomiuri (1,300), the Hōchi shinbun (700), the Niigata mainichi (500), and the Niigata shinbun (circulation 300). Thus the four Tokyo papers overwhelmed the nearby Niigata press.62
In Ishikawa, a much less populous prefecture (768,416 residents), cultural institutions, including the press, were concentrated in a single center, in the city of Kanazawa (population 190,000). This strong base meant that the two main local papers, the Hokkoku shinbun and the Hokuriku mainichi maintained a healthy circulation outside Kanazawa itself, even though their rivals from Osaka and Nagoya held the advantage in the region.63
The situation was different again in the northern region of Hokkaido. With more than 3 million in population spread across a broad territorial expanse, Hokkaido supported thirty-eight daily papers. Their ability to survive was enhanced by limitations in the transportation network, which forced the metropolitan press to rely on local papers for distribution. Because of such obstacles, not until 1936 did the region’s leading paper, the Sapporo-based Hokkai taimusu, begin to feel competitive pressure from Tokyo papers such as the Asahi, the Nichi nichi, or the Yomiuri. Size and poor transportation meant that newspaper production was dispersed across seven cities, including Sapporo (population 205,900), Otaru (155,400), Hakodate (211,700), Asahikawa (92,600), and Muroran (68,900). Two papers occupied the dominant position, however, the Hokkai taimusu and Otaru shinbun. Both stood out among the provincial press for their ability to command markets beyond their respective urban bases, boasting high circulations not only throughout Hokkaido, but also to the south, on the main island of Honshū, and to the north, in the colony of Karafuto. The Hokkai taimusu achieved this position by employing the same “regional edition” strategy used to great effect by the Tokyo papers: the press operated eleven local editions and managed sister papers in Hakodate and Asahikawa. Statistics for the port town of Hakodate illustrate the success of this strategy in competing both with other local papers and with Tokyo rivals. The principal local paper, the Hakodate shinbun, with a circulation of 18,000, dominated the market, but the Hakodate taimusu (owned by Hokkai taimusu) came in a close second with 10,000. Next came another Hakodate paper, the Hakodate nichi nichi, with a circulation between eight and nine thousand, followed by four metropolitan papers, the Tokyo asahi (3,000), the Tokyo nichi nichi (2,500), the Yomiuri (2,000), and the Hōchi (1,000).64
The newspaper market in Okayama offered yet another variation in the story of the local press. Proximity to Osaka insured a strong infiltration of Osaka newspapers, but the size of the prefecture (population 1,332,647) gave the provincial press some resources to fight back. Likewise the concentration of the news industry in the capital city of Okayama (population 170,000) facilitated an effective strategy of resistance. Competitive pressure from Osaka in the first decades of the twentieth century intensified local rivalries and forced a series of amalgamations. After the dust settled, the two papers left standing were the San’yō shinpō and the Chūgoku minpō, both political organs that expanded aggressively as a result of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese war fevers.65
Initially, it was competition between the two local papers, rather than the threat from the center, that stimulated a wave of innovation and improvement. In the race for readership that heated up after the Russo-Japanese War, both papers upgraded production with the purchase of high-speed rotary presses and the introduction of advertising and promotional campaigns. In the teens the Chūgoku minpō appealed to readers by sponsoring a series of exhibitions, one on western art and another on education. The San’yō shinpō in turn funded a tennis competition and a sumo match, with the results prominently featured in the paper. The Chūgoku minpō answered this with a track and field competition. These efforts helped both papers to maintain healthy circulations of 15,000 in the late 1920s.66
In expanding their operations into the field of public entertainment and in sponsoring various events, the Okayama papers joined with broader trends in the news industry that sought to enlarge readership through new marketing strategies. By the end of the Meiji period, newspaper readers throughout the country were accustomed to seeing newspapers sponsor fund-raising drives for victims of disaster or distress, contests and lotteries and concerts, exhibits, lectures, and sporting events.67 The ingenuity of the Okayama press in inventing new forums for reader involvement captured the attention of the Osaka news media, where they became known as a source of new marketing ideas picked up by the big Osaka dailies. The Okayama story thus offers an example of provincial innovation and metropolitan imitation, showing how the process of cultural diffusion could move in both directions.
By the early 1930s, however, pressure from Osaka rivals had grown too great; the two local papers merged in 1936 under the new banner Gōdō shinbun. This left Okayama with one major regional newspaper, albeit of greatly strengthened capacity. The Gōdō shinbun overwhelmingly dominated the prefectural market and soon made inroads in surrounding regions as well, circulating in Hiroshima prefecture, the island of Shikoku, Hyōgo prefecture, and parts of the San’in region. In terms of circulation within the prefecture, in 1938 Gōdō held its own against the Osaka papers. Its circulation of 80,000 dwarfed the Osaka asahi at 35,000, the Osaka mainichi at 25,000, and a few odd sales by Tokyo papers.68
Although histories of the newspaper industry have focused almost exclusively on the large metropolitan papers, the story of the provincial press offers insights that complicate the standard account of the relationship of the press to cultural change. The Tokyo and Osaka case studies have told the story of modernization in terms of centralization, standardization, and cultural diffusion of the metropolitan model; they have stressed the insuperable advantages of scale and capital investment. Yet the metropolitan press is only one piece of the story. As in the proverb of the blind men examining the elephant, there are hazards to making generalizations based on partial data. Even these four accounts reveal enormous variation in the development of a modern newspaper industry. Expanding connections between local, national, and international media markets over the course of the early twentieth century meant increasing competition for local papers, which led to standardization of the newspaper form through common innovations in technology, marketing, management, and organization. At the same time,