My Peace Study

2026-06-01

The People Who Wanted to Keep Publishing Magazines Even in Wartime

The force of Tsuchiya Bunmei; those who kept their promise, those who could not, and those who carried it on.

Keeping a magazine in print during the war was a nearly impossible feat.

In July 1938 paper rationing for newspapers and magazines began, and by the end of 1942 the supply was down by forty percent. No paper was allotted, so no magazine could be printed. Or else acceptance as third-class mail (the system that let officially approved periodicals be shipped at a discount) was suspended, so that even a magazine that got printed could not be sent.

In 1944, as if to finish them off, the "Consolidation of Publishing Enterprises" merged and abolished magazines. Magazines with similar content were lumped together, and any magazine that could not contribute to the execution of national policy was shut down. Just before the defeat, printing plants burned in the air raids, and it was perfectly ordinary for a magazine to fold without even being able to say goodbye to its readers.

Even so, there were people who tried to put out a magazine. Swords, tennis, tanka, shogi — in completely unrelated fields there were people struggling harder than you would ever imagine.

Table of contents

The ones who could not go on, and the man who declared that tennis is eternal

How did the magazines disappear?

Kurihara Hikosaburo, in the March 1945 issue of *The Japanese Sword and Japanese Taste*, told his readers that the air raids had brought "a great fire in which the printing plant was destroyed", that staff were short because "some were conscripted and some evacuated", that "acceptance as third-class mail has repeatedly been suspended", and that the magazine would go on "indefinite hiatus with this issue".

『The Japanese Sword and Japanese Taste (Nihonto oyobi Nihon Shumi) 10(3) (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1530921/)』

The editor of *Villages and Agricultural Policy*, published by the Agricultural Promotion Association under the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, called out to readers in February 1945: "Through the repeated air raids headquarters is unharmed. Swearing to fight on, we pray for your own good fight." By March he was reporting, "Headquarters too has finally burned to the ground in the air raid before dawn on April 14. We too shall rise from the scorched earth and set out toward a new goal." The April raid appears in the March issue because of the delivery delays. In the April issue he wrote something that, read a certain way, could be taken as criticism of the government — "Those who give orders from safe places, those who turn their faces from harsh reality, the obstructers: let them be the ones struck by enemy shells and burned away. Cleanse the fatherland. Comrades in increasing food production, defeat is ugly. Let us raise our heads straight and advance" — and encouraged his readers. That was the last issue; the magazine folded.

The Agricultural Promotion Association was run inside the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, and even so it could not say farewell to its readers.

『Villages and Agricultural Policy (Mura to Nosei) (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1867244)』

*Japanese Tennis* folded with its December 1943 issue.

Its publisher, Harishige Keiki, was a member of the Tengu Club and a close friend of the bankara Oshikawa Shunro. He was of course a bankara himself. Bankara were the dangerous types of the Meiji era — people whose patriotism ran so hot that they would, on occasion, pick a fight with the state itself.

On folding the magazine, Harishige wrote that "with the China Incident, and then the Greater East Asia War, this is no time for tennis" — and then,

— an unstoppable torrent of praise for tennis; and on top of that he wrote again and again that though *Japanese Tennis* might perish, Japanese tennis never would.

Inwardly, I suspect, Harishige had not accepted the closing of his magazine at all. Incidentally, Oshikawa Shunro too had once hurled abuse at Nitobe Inazo over the "baseball is harmful" debate and quit his magazine company. If the men of the Tengu Club had still been alive, Harishige Keiki might well have blown his top far more openly.

『Japanese Tennis (Nihon Teikyu) (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1518082/)』

There is also a rare case of a suspension being retracted. That is *Clinical Dentistry*.

*Clinical Dentistry* was launched by the dental supply house Morita Dental Supply in response to demand from the trade, and at first it was distributed free of charge. The editor in charge was a young dentist, Nara Ryunosuke; the business side was handled by Tsuge Toshio, a graduate in economics; and Hasegawa Toshio and Morita Jiro of Morita Dental Supply were also involved in putting it out. At first it was taken for little more than a shop's advertising bulletin, but after two or three issues the dental academic world came to regard it as a scholarly journal. When it ran afoul of the censors, Tsuge would go down and get beaten by the Special Higher Police. Looking back on those years later, Tsuge said it was "a happy time, singing the praises of youth, in a field I liked to begin with, feeling like an extension of student life".

The magazine announced in its July 1943 issue that it would suspend publication with the September issue. "The present form of war, a total national war of the most extreme severity, is with every passing moment" ceasing to permit periodicals of this kind. In that case, the reasoning went, better to suspend voluntarily than to wait for the authorities to order it. But the September issue carried a "notice of continued publication". Through the efforts of people in the trade, the magazine could go on.

This too did not last long. In March 1944, under the "Consolidation of Publishing Enterprises", *Clinical Dentistry* was merged into *Dental Gazette*.

『Clinical Dentistry (Rinsho Shika) (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1866464)』

Tsuchiya Bunmei VS America

The man who hung on and on, trying somehow to keep his magazine alive, was Tsuchiya Bunmei.

The shipping of the December 1944 issue of *Araragi* was delayed and delayed; it reached readers in March 1945. With that issue *Araragi* was driven into what amounted to suspension. Inquiries came in from the members, but Tsuchiya, the publisher, running around trying to keep the magazine alive somehow, had no "leeway to reply". After the defeat he was at last able to put out *Araragi*, and gave his readers a "collected report" on what had happened during the war.

He opens with: "From about the October issue of last year, owing to the circumstances of the printing plant, delay piled upon delay, and it was only in March that the December issue was barely completed; the circumstances there, I think, need no explaining and will be understood by you all" — from which you can see that in those days the difficulty of putting out a magazine was common knowledge.

During the war Tsuchiya tried somehow to keep publishing *Araragi*, but it was one piece of bad luck after another.

Print, burn, print, burn — by now it looks like America VS Tsuchiya Bunmei. An ordinary human being would have given up the moment the Tokyo printer burned. But Tsuchiya is a man who lived to 101. His stamina and his stickiness are overwhelming.

Readers, however, are harsh. Members irritated by the long silence since the December issue sent Tsuchiya "stern letters demanding an account of his irresponsibility". It was to those members that he explained, "the circumstances of the suspension were precisely as above".

At the end Tsuchiya writes that he "does not intend to pin the responsibility on the ravages of war alone" — but by any normal reckoning the war was the cause. Calm down, Tsuchiya.

『Araragi (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2385774)』

The man who made his final issue a deluxe edition

*Shogi Monthly Report* traces back to *Fuun Tenchi Shinpo* ("Wind and Cloud, Heaven and Earth News"), published for shogi fans in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. It was founded in March 1922: once a month, on a single flimsy sheet, it carried notices and results of shogi tournaments with tsume-shogi problems in the margins, and was distributed free. The next year it spread beyond the prefecture, coming out twice a month at six sen a copy, carrying game commentary and essays as well, and going out to shogi halls and famous players all over the country.

In time *Fuun Tenchi Shinpo* grew into *Shogi Monthly Report*, "a shogi magazine by purely amateur hands". It had a deep readership and it launched many reprinted tsume-shogi composers into the world, a marvelous magazine…… is what I have written, but I have no interest whatsoever in tsume-shogi. Still, this magazine is so extraordinarily tenacious and so far too cool that I want to introduce it.

The reader Kamei-sei, receiving the April 1943 issue, had expected the magazine to get thinner, but "it was so thin I was a little disheartened". He gave credit for the "use of small type" and the packed layout, and for the effort to make the contents substantial, but he complained that for a tsume-shogi magazine there was not a single tsume-shogi problem in it. To this the editor, Abe Kichizo, explained that he had originally intended to "take a rest", but "forcing it through, after working all night, I put it out, better than resting".

Abe was a man of guts, and he kept up the effort to keep the magazine alive — "the typesetting pattern has been changed and the column width widened to increase capacity" and so on — snorting that he would "repay the readers' goodwill though he had to overcome every difficulty". But the readers and his associates had already sensed how bad things were, and proposals came pouring in: "Our magazine needs no cover any more. It needs no binding. It doesn't need diagrams for the commentary either" — so please, "even in newspaper format, escape that terrible storm called suspension".

In the January 1944 issue a reader offered thanks — "in the storm of consolidation (of enterprises and magazines) the Monthly Report goes on publishing serenely. One can imagine the company's toil" — and encouragement: "the year Showa 19 has dawned, and this is the year we will surely strike America and Britain. Shogi people are strong." But Abe was looking at reality, and printed the following little sketch:

A certain dialogue

Reader: "The publishing world is finally going over to the new order; what will become of the Monthly Report?"

Reporter: "As you know, there is the reduction in the (paper) ration allotment. There is the labor shortage. And there is the deficit that comes of a small print run. Unless we break through these three bottlenecks, continued publication has become impossible."

Reader: "I suppose so."

Reporter: "If it is for the sake of national policy, then folding cannot be helped, but to bring down the curtain on twenty years of history is truly a shame, so I am thinking I would like to keep it going somehow in a different format, even in name only."

Reader: "Then how about this. The simplest method would be to suspend, freely and often, whenever things are difficult from now on."

Reporter: "The readers would not stand for it. They would say give us our subscription money back, or something."

Reader: "Such people cannot be helped, so you have them quit. It has to be this way, and the ones who go on subscribing without complaining even so are the ones who remain as true supporters."

Reporter: "If there were a hundred such people I am confident we could manage, but how many will there in fact be?"

The way it is cut off at "how many will there in fact be?" carries an implication I cannot quite put into words.

And in the next month's issue Abe writes, "It is no more than that what was bound to come has at last come, but my dejection is greater than anyone's." The magazine folded, just like that.

But he does not fall for nothing. Paper rations had been cut under the paper controls, but he had been quietly hoarding paper. Since this was the end, Abe had been preparing "for more than two months" to make a deluxe edition with extra pages as a parting gift to his readers. From the state's point of view it must have been a case of: we are telling you to use less paper, what on earth do you think you are doing.

But although he contacted contributors and associates, many of them could not be located because of the war. There were no replies, and he "spent the days emptily in an unexpected loneliness". Hoard as he had, the paper was not sufficient either. What he could do now was limited, but with a "great burst of generosity ignoring all calculation" Abe sent out into the world a deluxe extra-large final issue with an increased page count.

As a "Farewell Special" he added *Shogi Sen* by "Ohashi Soyo", edited by Maeda Sankei. I do not really know what *Shogi Sen* is, and I have seen it described as poor in quality as tsume-shogi, but surely the tsume-shogi lovers of the day were delighted?

Many were shaken by the news of the closure and pleaded for the magazine to continue.

Naito Takeo said, "Something on the level of the old Tenchi Shinpo would be quite enough. Even a single sheet of newsprint — could it not be put out?" Kuwana Shozo proposed, "how would it be to issue a coterie magazine every other month or so, with the costs borne by contributions from supporters; unworthy though I am I shall lend my support, and I beg you to give it your consideration, by all means." Kondo Yasuteru pleaded for continuation with detailed specifications: "as a non-commercial item, that is, on a foundation-like basis, strictly for fellow enthusiasts, at least the tsume-shogi alone, up to part three or so, at whatever interval of two or three months is feasible, I should like to ask that it be continued as a pamphlet. However, in that case I earnestly hope that the name be changed as appropriate and that the answers to the previous problems be carried in the first issue (I mean at about fifty sen or one yen a copy, so as to cause you no loss)."

Miyamoto Yumihiko rallied Abe and the readers: "The Monthly Report has ended, but the president of the shogi company is alive and well, so the intangible magazine, the Monthly Report, still runs on unbroken even now. Something will come of it."

Sadly, Abe was caught in an air raid while staying in Tokyo and left this world. This is the sort of thing that happens when you wage war. I know nothing about shogi and am judging purely from the short pieces in *Shogi Monthly Report*, but I think this man Abe was a kind of extraordinary character. Abe, while saying, "our printing plant is in the black in the months when we skip the Monthly Report, you know", went on publishing *Shogi Monthly Report* for twenty-three long years.

『Shogi Monthly Report (Shogi Geppo) (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1867283)』

The will gets connected onward

Through the defeat, some magazines stayed gone and some came back.

The government-made *Villages and Agricultural Policy* did not survive. There was no will in it.

Tsuchiya Bunmei's *Araragi* went on, as a matter of course.

*The Japanese Sword and Japanese Taste* folded, and by GHQ's order the making of Japanese swords was banned as well. The sound of the forge fell silent. But Kurihara did not give up. Back in his home province he devoted himself to reviving the Japanese sword. In 1952 the San Francisco Peace Treaty was concluded, and Kurihara secured permission to make 300 commemorative peace-treaty blades. The magazine did not come back, but the sound of the forge began to ring out again.

Harishige Keiki of *Japanese Tennis*, in Yonezawa, the home town he had evacuated to, gathered people involved in baseball, tennis, skiing and the rest in September, right after the defeat, and formed a "Sports Federation". But the playing fields and tennis courts had become bean fields and vegetable plots, gone to ruin and unusable, and with the food shortage the citizens had no energy to spare for enjoying sports. The federation vanished after a little over a year. That is rushing things by any standard.

Still, just as he had insisted, tennis did not vanish. Harishige went on working after the war as an advisor to the Japan Tennis Association and an elder statesman of the tennis world, and lived a boisterous life with people and drink gathering around him until he died.

Abe of *Shogi Monthly Report* was gone, and Miyamoto Yumihiko's wish seemed to have come to nothing — but the readers of *Shogi Monthly Report* were alive.

Tsuruta Moroe, who had been sending letters to *Shogi Monthly Report* from Mongolia, somehow made it back to Japan, returned to his post in the Aichi prefectural police, and while working there founded *Shinki Kaiho*. The first issue was a single sheet of cheap straw paper, mimeographed on both sides — exactly the return of *Fuun Tenchi Shinpo*. That magazine grew, and became *Tsume Shogi Paradise*, which continues to this day.

Kamei Shozo, the *Shogi Monthly Report* reader known as Kamei-sei, had set out to devote his whole life to compiling a history of the game and had collected a huge mass of materials, but he died from a complication of an appendix operation. Kamei's friends feared the materials would be scattered, but they were taken over by Matsui Sekizan — another *Shogi Monthly Report* reader. The readers made their mark in the world of tsume-shogi. Truly "the intangible magazine, the Monthly Report, still runs on unbroken even now", and truly "something will come of it".

After the war Nara of *Clinical Dentistry* opened a practice back home in Akita, and Morita Jiro and Hasegawa Toshio made their careers at Morita Dental Supply. Tsuge was sounded out about taking over *Clinical Dentistry*. He could not forget the days of his youth, and his wife encouraged him too — "you like adventure, so wouldn't it be fun to try doing it on your own? Even if you have to pull a handcart I'll come along. From today you're the lord of your own castle, so give it your best" — and so he took the job. The first issue of the revived *Clinical Dentistry* was also printed on straw paper.

A long time passed, and in 1981, as a commemorative project of Morita Corporation, a facsimile edition of the prewar *Clinical Dentistry* was produced. Morita, Nara, Tsuge and Hasegawa gathered for the first time in ages and, calling it an editorial meeting, talked over old times. On the last day of the editorial meeting they took a walk at Joruri-ji temple. Nara said, "We've all gotten old. Let's take a proper photograph," so they took a photograph.

In March of the following year Nara passed away. Hasegawa placed the facsimile edition of *Clinical Dentistry* before his spirit and read a eulogy of mourning.