History of Censorship in Japan

Description: Far East Asian island nation

Significance: Censorship policies have shifted over the centuries to meet the needs of Japan’s changing government systems and cultural attitudes

Most nations have a long history of censorship, and Japan is no exception. The form and degree of censorship has evolved over the centuries along with governments and culture in general.

When the Tokugawa clan consolidated power in Japan in 1603 and gained control over the emperor, it set up a military dictatorship known as the shogunate. Europeans at this time were not unknown in Japan, having been able to come and go freely since about 1542. One of the fears of the early shogunate was the detrimental effect that foreign influences might have had on the Japanese people. Christianity was seen as the most dangerous of these influences, so the religion was banned in the late 1620s. Although the majority of Japanese people were illiterate, the shogun issued an edict outlawing “books intended to propagate Christianity” in 1630.

By 1640 it was evident that Europeans were interfering with internal Japanese politics by lending their support to various factions vying for power. In order to protect itself and its grip on power, the Tokugawa shogunate took the drastic step of expelling all Europeans from Japan in 1640. This removal was an early and dramatic example of Japanese censorship.

In 1853 US Navy commodore Matthew Perry sailed a squadron of warships into Yedo (Tokyo) Bay and insisted, under threat of force, that the Japanese open the country to trade with the West. This embarrassment of the shogun helped trigger an uprising against him; in 1868 the emperor was restored to full power. Subsequent American and European pressure on Japan contributed to the decision to modernize the country. To supplement economic, political, and military modernization, the traditional religion of Buddhism was suppressed and Buddhist property was confiscated. To replace it, the Japanese government encouraged Shinto, a religion that combined nationalism with a worship of the imperial family. The suppression of Buddhism was another example of early censorship by the Japanese government.

During the modernization period, Japanese leaders promoted education as the key to industrialization. The government faced the problem of reconciling the spirit of free thought necessary to technological advancement with the need to maintain respect for the absolute authority of the emperor. The answer was found in the 1870s and 1880s, when a dual system of education was established. The primary, compulsory school organization focused on indoctrinating Japanese youth with the values of traditional respect and reverence toward the emperor and a nationalism bordering on the fanatic. The secondary, noncompulsory university system was based on the Western ideal of free thinking. To ensure that university students did not question national authority, a system of middle schools was set up to train graduates of the primary schools in national and traditional Japanese values. Thus it was assured that “free” academic thinking would not spill over into the political venue.

Modern Japanese Censorship

One result of the Japanese modernization movement was a period of imperial expansion between 1890 and 1945. In the early twentieth century, Russian and Japanese economic interests in East Asia came into conflict that broke into open war in 1904. The Russo-Japanese War was widely supported in Japan, but a small number of socialists opposed it on the grounds that war was essentially evil and a danger to the working classes. The Japanese socialists published their objections to the war in their Commoner’s Newspaper. In the face of increasing antipathy from the government, the socialists continued their opposition to the war until late January, 1905, when the government officially suppressed their newspaper and ordered the Socialist Party to disband.

Japan’s entry into World War I assured her attainment of great power status. Economically, the war triggered a surge of industrial growth, and a commensurate surge in socialism. After the war, an economic downturn stirred labor unrest, and the socialist movement gained strength. In December of 1920, the socialists whose party had been disbanded in 1905 organized the Japan Socialist Federation. To maintain domestic peace, the Japanese government officially dissolved the Socialist Federation in May 1921, in a move similar to the American suppression.

After Japan’s entry into World War II, the Japanese were subjected to the same type of news censorship that all of the major participants in that war experienced. Newspaper articles, films, and newsreels attempted to engender nationalistic support for the war effort, while casting a poor light on “slackers” and other opponents of the war. Factory workers, school children, and other nonmilitary members of Japanese society were mobilized through propaganda literature, music, plays, and artwork designed to elicit patriotic responses aimed at higher arms production and other tangible support of the war effort.

Early Japanese military successes were reported to the Japanese people in exaggerated terms, and when the war effort began to falter, the government imposed a strict news blackout on reports of military reverses. In several cases, outright Japanese defeats—such as the Battle of Midway and Guadalcanal—were reported as stunning victories or, at worst, highly successful strategic withdrawals. This use of censorship again compares with the practice of American censors suppressing graphic film coverage of actual combat, as well as the suppression of the true casualty rates in battles until well after the fact. This was done so that American public opinion would not be turned away from support of the war as a result of a revulsion to the carnage.

As a consequence of Japan’s defeat in the war, the government was forced to adopt a constitutional democracy with the emperor as figurehead. Included in the constitution was an article which declared that military forces would never again be maintained. In the early 1990s, a school textbook claimed that the “interpretation and application of Article Nine of the Constitution have changed significantly” since the fall of the Soviet Union. Japanese censors demanded that the textbook publisher alter the language of the phrase to indicate that Japan was adhering to the constraints of the article. Censorship of this type seemed to be an attempt to cover the fact that Japan was spending $11.5 billion per year to support its self-defense forces in the 1990s.

In the twenty-first century, concerns grew that the media was being pressured into self-censorship by government scrutiny and that constitutional freedom of information was increasingly being threatened. One incident that directly brought awareness to the issue was the government's response to the disastrous accident at the Fukushima power plant in 2011. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that, in the wake of the disaster, the government had waited to disseminate important information about the extent of the damage and that it had evaded journalists' questions and chided Internet sites for allegedly circulating rumors about the incident. In 2013, the publicly opposed Protection of Specially Designated Secrets Act was passed, officially taking effect in late 2014. Under the new law, whistleblowers faced up to ten years in prison and any journalists who aid them in leaking information could face up to five years. While countries trading information with Japan, such as the United States, supported the measure, critics such as the group Reporters without Borders argued that the law is too loosely defined and lacks effective oversight. In 2019 the number of government agencies subject to the law was reduced from seventy to twenty-eight.

Another area of interest to scholars is Japan's unique censorship of pornography. Although the country's constitution officially guarantees freedom of expression, the criminal code dating back to the early twentieth century includes a provision (Article 175) against obscene material, which has long been interpreted to restrict pornography. Therefore sexually explicit imagery produced in Japan typically blurs, pixelates, or otherwise covers genitalia. Researchers have noted that this censorship is self-regulated by the adult video and comics industries, and is complexly tied to Japanese cultural views on sexuality and morality. A 2004 criminal case against an erotic manga publication reached the Supreme Court of Japan, which ruled in 2007 that Article 175 did not violate the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. In 2013 multiple people involved with an adult material publishing company were arrested and pleaded guilty to charges of obscenity due to insufficient censoring. That case led some free speech advocates to claim that police were becoming more involved in enforcing censorship.

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