End of the War

For Tokyo's oldest and biggest English-language daily, World War II officially ended last week. In 1942, the Japan Times was ordered by Tojo's bullyboys to change its title, substitute Nippon--the name by which Japanese know their country--for its Western-style Japan. Last week, after 14 years as the Nippon Times, the paper took its old name back to signify a "rededication to the high principles and purposes of the free press."

By either name, the Times (slogan: "All the News Without Fear or Favor") is a shining postwar example for the free press in a country which, with 143 dailies, gets a heavy diet of sob stories and sensationalism. The eight-page Japan Times conscientiously buries trivia, tries painstakingly to cover the news in depth.

Diplomatic Rewrite. Japanese government officials rely on the Japan Times for significant international news; the dispatches from foreign embassies are often rewrites from the Japan Times. With five wire services and a battery of U.S. columnists, from Lippmann to Leonard Lyons, the paper also appeals to internationally minded Japanese citizens, who account for half its 78,935 circulation. The Times's temperate editorial policy is often an effective answer to the xenophobic views of other Japanese newspapers.

Founded 59 years ago with the aim of interpreting the awakened nation's "views, sentiments and aspirations to the outside world," the Japan Times was the country's first English-language daily to be started by a Japanese, Motosada Zumoto, secretary to famed Prince Ito. It is still the only independent among the nation's four English-language dailies. The Japan Times before the war had powerful backing from the Mitsubishi and Mitsui trusts and government-linked financial houses. During the war, the Times was subsidized by the Japanese Foreign Office, which used the paper as a propaganda medium.

Divorce with Dividends. Though it survived the war, unlike 50% of Japan's 132 dailies, General MacArthur soon divorced the paper from government control, ordered all Times stock to be sold to its employees. The Times seldom massacres its chosen language, thanks to crack translators. Most of its memorable faux pas have been perpetrated by foreign-born journalists who know little of Japanese customs. Readers still chuckle over a story written for the Times by an American woman who dined unwittingly at Tokyo's most notorious whorehouse, burbled at artless length in the paper about the "attractive girls."

Staunch Friend. The Times's high regard for Western journalistic methods is to a large extent the legacy of Kiyoshi Togasaki, a San Francisco-born newsman (University of California, '20) who ran the paper for 14 years until his retirement from active management last January. He was succeeded as president by Shintaro Fukushima, 49, a tough onetime diplomat. Fukushima is one of the West's staunchest supporters in Japan. Says he: "The only way Japan can live is in the sphere of the free world. We'll continue to say that in our editorials."

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