Japan’s Wartime Censorship, 1941

From Japan, 1941: Countdown to Infamy, by Eri Hotta (Vintage, 2013), pp. 286-287: On January 11, 1941, the government issued, as a supplement to the National Mobilization Law, a set of regulations concerning newspapers and other media. Sensitive matters of military, diplomatic, and fiscal policies could no longer be officially written or spoken about, and there were detailed instructions regarding the coverage of resource shortages, weather forecasts (because of their potential strategic sensitivity), family problems (such as adultery committed by wives of soldiers fighting in China), and many other social topics that might obstruct successful mobilization on the home front. Though these rules certainly restricted newspaper reporting, freedom of the press in Japan was, and had been, nonexistent for some time. As noted earlier, from the Manchurian Incident onward, major newspapers had been especially blatant in their support of state policies, appealing to patriotic fervor to compete…