The role of English media in modern Japan: Through the history of English-language newspapers issued by Zumoto Motosada

Abstract

Sadao Umesao(1920-), who is one of the most famous anthropologists in Japan, compares Japanese civilization to a 'black hole' or a 'receiving set'. Known as a godfather of the 'information society', he explains that Japan have eagerly assimilated various cultures from outside but has only nominally presented her own cultures to other countries. His idea about civilization is often applied to the attitudes of Japanese people to foreign languages, especially English. In other words, some people regard the lack of intensive utterance in English as a crucial reason why many Japanese have not been good at speaking and writing in English in spite of tenacious studies and why the presences of Japanese media in the world has been very low. From one's ability of English to national policy on foreign language education, this attitude as a 'receiver' is the target to be criticized. On the other hand, now a lot of nations including Japan suppose that 'public diplomacy' is one of the most important issues, viewed in 'Soft Power' (Nye 2004). Therefore they are coming to pay more and more attentions to English media as means of projecting it. That is because that English would be the most effective one being a global language. Politicians are eager to develop strategies and scholars are trying to clarify its theories academically. In any case, in order to prospect for how English media to be in Japan, a historical approach sounds effective. The history of English media in a 'receiving set' Japan may show us many implications, how it has functioned in Japanese society for instance. Hence, for the purpose of discussing the role of English media especially in modern Japan, this study tries to describe the history of English-language papers issued by Zumoto Motosada(1863-1943). Zumoto was a proprietor and director of 'the Japan Times', which was the first Englishlanguage newspaper in Japan to be edited and managed by Japanese people, founded in 1897. He studied at Sapporo agricultural college with Inazo Itobe and Shigetaka Shiga, and then decided to be an English writer because he supposed that Japan's effort to become one of the world's leading Powers was handicapped by the fact that Japanese is a language which is abstruse to the Westerners. In addition, he had also published many English-language papers for students. The unique point to consider about Zumoto is that his activities imply that Englishlanguage newspapers in Modern Japan have functioned not only as a means of propaganda to the West but also of education for non-native English speakers including Japanese. This paper focuses on Zumoto's motivation to publish them and examines his contribution to Japanese society.