2 - The ‘Bankoku Shimbun Affair’: Foreigners, the Press and Extraterritoriality in Early Modern Japan

Summary

In December 1875, the Tokyo press was full of rumours that there would soon be a new Japanese-language newspaper on sale. At the end of the month, there came the not-unexpected announcement that the Nisshin Shinjishi (Reliable Daily News), founded some years previously by a Yokohama journalist, J. R. Black, would cease publication on 31 December. On 6 January 1876, as expected, a new paper, the Bankoku Shimbun (News of the World) went on sale. It was owned, edited and published by the same J. R. Black. Within a month, not only had Black's new venture ceased publication, but it had become an offence for British subjects to publish any Japanese-language newspapers in Japan. The ‘Bankoku Shimbun affair’, as the incident became known, not only marked the end of any significant direct foreign involvement in the press of Japan, but perhaps more important, it was to be a singularly important step forward for the Japanese Government in its campaign to end extraterritoriality in Japan.

The Japanese-language press, a thriving industry by 1876, was of very recent growth. Soon after the opening of the country to foreign residence in 1859, the first foreign newspaper made its appearance. This was the Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, which began publication in the summer of 1861. By November 1861, the owner, editor and publisher, A. W. Hansard, decided that Nagasaki was too much of a backwater, and moved to Yokohama. There he began to publish a new paper, the Japan Herald. It was not long before Hansard had competition, and by 1868, the foreign-language press in Japan had become a well-established part of treaty port life, as it had done earlier in China.

The Shogunate displayed an interest in this new phenomenon from the very beginning. Its officials were set to work compiling translations from all available foreign newspapers, including those published in Japan, and these compilations were usually known as ‘shimbun’ or ‘newspapers’, although they were not newspapers as the West knew them.

The first Japanese-language newspaper proper, according to its founder, Joseph Heco (Hamada Hikozo), was the Kaigai Shimbun (Overseas News), which appeared in 1864. Heco had been a Japanese sailor who was shipwrecked and taken to the United States. There he received a Western education and became an American citizen.