Containing Voices in the Wilderness: Censorship and Religious Dissent in the Japanese Countryside

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Containing Voices in the Wilderness: Censorship and Religious Dissent in the Japanese Countryside1

Abstract: This article considers the relationship between stringent and arbitrary censorship policies and “religious freedom,” something “guaranteed” with significant qualifications by the Meiji Constitution, in pre-World War II Japan. In particular, this paper explores the role of censorship in shaping the contours of acceptable religious practice by focusing on a regional Christian news monthly, the “Gunma Christian World Monthly.” Edited by Kashiwagi Gien, a rural Congregationalist minister, this monthly introduced a diverse range of ideas from socialism to critiques of militarism and imperialism. His espousal of these ideas also made him the focus of local censors. By focusing on two occasions when Kashiwagi’s spirited critiques of the state attracted the attention of local authorities, this article examines the complex and contingent process by which the state and its regional agents used legal means to manage the contours of acceptable belief in pre-World War II Japan. The relationship between Kashiwagi and the local police and prosecutors who attempted to manage and regulate “acceptable” content and by extension, acceptable religious opinion, offers an important and hitherto unexamined site to consider the question of how religious freedom was interpreted by the state, local officials, and religionists.

In September 1909, Kashiwagi Gien, a Japanese Congregational minister of a modest

church about half a day’s journey from Tokyo, stood trial. He was charged with publishing ideas

violating the Press Regulations, a complex set of censorship laws, in an editorial in the Christian

newsletter he edited. Kashiwagi was no stranger to the local authorities, but this was the first and

only time he faced punishment more severe than a fine and stern verbal reprimand, or temporary

suspension of publication, from the local police. On the surface, the editorial that prompted his

trial contained no explicit references to his Christian beliefs, nor did the prefectural prosecutor

identify religious expression as a central issue in the ensuing trial. Nonetheless, during the trial,

his defense rested on the constitution’s protection of religious belief.

For Kashiwagi, what began as private efforts to warn the prefectural governor against

police excess evolved into a confrontation between two competing and nearly mutually exclusive

understandings of the extent of state power and constitutional guarantees for religious belief.

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Kashiwagi’s stubborn insistence that his editorial was immune to the censorship laws because it

was also an expression of his religious belief, directly confronted the state’s insistence that it

alone served as final arbiter of what opinions fell within (or without) the parameters of the

responsibilities and obligations of imperial subjects to not threaten public peace and morals. It

also brought into relief the delicate balancing act by which the state and its local agents

attempted to diffuse and neutralize criticism through the deployment of the complex censorship

and libel laws in order to avoid more fundamental questioning of the foundation of the state’s

ideological legitimacy.

This article examines the complex and contingent process by which the state and its

regional agents used legal means to manage the contours of acceptable religious belief in pre-

World War II Japan. It does so by examining two separate conflicts between Kashiwagi and the

local police and prosecutor—the local representatives of the integrated and extensive censorship

apparatus—over the minister’s criticisms of what he considered state excess and immoral

behavior. As the minister of a modest rural congregation, Kashiwagi seems an unlikely focus for

a study of the intersection of the promise of religious freedom and the uneven application of

censorship. Unlike his co-denominationalists in Tokyo who preached before congregations that

numbered several hundred and who traveled abroad and gained international reputations,

Kashiwagi seems a marginal figure. He rarely left Annaka, the town in Gunma Prefecture about

a half a day’s journey from Tokyo where his church was located, and traveled abroad only once,

to Korea and Manchuria in 1925. The publication he edited, the Jōmō kyōkai geppō (Gunma

Christian world monthly), had a limited circulation of 600 copies per issue. But it is precisely his

marginal status that makes the state’s constant interest in his activities so compelling.

Kashiwagi’s uneasy relationship with the local representatives of the censorship apparatus

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provides an ideal window into the question of how the state’s discomfort with the freedom of

religious expression it had ostensibly granted was practically manifested through its legal efforts

to determine and insist on limits to this freedom.

In early twentieth century Japan, the state employed a complex set of legal measures to

prescribe how loyal imperial subjects should not only behave, but also think. Simultaneously,

Japanese Christians used print media to articulate a diverse set of alternative visions for their

nation. Presented under the protections ostensibly granted by the Meiji Constitution, these ideas

ranged from a notion of a colonial empire guided by Christian principles to an image of a small

country dedicated to caring for the needs of the least. While the former resonated, at least until

the 1930s, with the dominant discourses that legitimized state actions at home and in the

colonies, the latter possessed the potential to undermine the state’s carefully crafted explanation

of how imperial subjects were meant to relate to the state and emperor. Far from being absolute

or universally acknowledged, however, the definition of normative subject behavior required a

lengthy process of education, inculcation, as well as the gradual dismissal and elimination of

contrary ideas, before it could become naturalized and assumed.

The Japanese empire’s extensive use of censorship and libel laws to corral ideas

considered subversive or potentially “injurious to public morals” has created the perception that

public expression, particularly in print, was considerably hampered throughout the early

twentieth century. This was certainly true by the 1930s, when the passage of increasingly

restrictive wartime legislation foreclosed the possibility of voicing even the most mundane

criticisms of the state, the emperor, and ideas considered fundamental to national unity.2 But this

picture of, on the one hand, a state capable of monitoring and eliminating all subversive voices

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and, on the other, imperial subjects cowed into a beleaguered silence by the state’s limitless

reach does not ring wholly true for most of the early twentieth century.

This is not to say that censorship did not significantly interfere with the efforts of a

diverse group of people who attempted to publicize and circulate ideas considered subversive or

obscene.3 But it is important not to confuse the passage of censorship laws with the state’s ability

to thoroughly enact them. Indeed, the astonishing frequency with which critics, dissenters, and

even purveyors of obscene material successfully circumvented the elaborate censorship

apparatus exposes the limits of state censorship in Meiji Japan. The state overwhelmingly relied

on the self-censorship of publishers, who would forfeit the entire run of an offending issue and

thus risk financial ruin if they pushed the boundaries of acceptable content, rather than

aggressively prosecute offenders.4 Nonetheless, the uneven and arbitrary process by which

censorship was applied inadvertently opened up space for the expression of dissent, however

limited. In other words, just as surprising as the extent of censorship in pre-World War II Japan

is the range of opinions that men and women managed to present without running afoul of the

law. But the state always reserved the right to intervene and silence objectionable opinion,

making examples of certain authors and publications by selectively targeting them “in order to

keep the publishing world’s thermostat set at the proper temperature.”5 When the objectionable

ideas were framed in terms of religious belief, censors were faced with a delicate decision, for

choosing to take legal action against such ideas brought into relief the limits of the freedoms

granted by the Meiji constitution, and exposed the fundamental challenge faced by the state in its

efforts to project an image of tolerant governance while actively promoting an exacting

definition of national unity.

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At the same time, even limited protection of both religious expression and the press were

considered crucial markers of a modern (western) state’s relationship with its citizens or subjects.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the newly formed Japanese state had identified both

religious belief and published opinion as troublesome necessities in order for Japan to appear

sufficiently modern and civilized to western powers, and thus an equal in a hierarchical world

order. As such, the state acquiesced to the necessity of at least gesturing towards granting certain

freedoms, but underwent considerable effort to prevent these freedoms from serving as credible

challenges to a strict notion of national unity it considered crucial for Japan’s survival in this new

global context.

I. The Constitution, Law, and Christians as Contested Imperial Subjects

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Christianity had been a legal religion in Japan for

several decades. First introduced by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century,

Christianity—or specifically Roman Catholicism—enjoyed a brief period of popularity until it

was strictly forbidden by the Tokugawa shogunate, the feudal government that ruled Japan from

1603 to 1868.6 After Japan was forced into diplomatic and commercial relations by the United

States and other western imperial powers in the mid-nineteenth century, the continued ban on

Christianity served as a central point of contention in the new modern Japanese government’s

efforts to revise the terms of the unequal treaties it had been forced to sign with these powers.

Finally in 1873, the government begrudgingly rescinded its longstanding proscription against

Christian conversion, allowing foreign missionaries, who had already arrived a few years earlier,

to legally work.7

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For the new state formed with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the

move to legalize Christian belief was undertaken as a political maneuver, and it did not

necessarily reflect a new enthusiasm for this religion. The challenge the new state faced was the

delicate task of constructing the structures of a modern nation-state sufficient to gain acceptance

abroad, while at the same time inculcating among the Japanese population—newly constituted

into an ostensible unified group of imperial subjects—a definition of loyalty to the state and

emperor that superseded all other allegiances. Within this context, allowing Christian conversion

opened up a whole series of debates concerning the very category of religion, and its rightful

place in the newly established modern nation-state.8

In 1889, the Japanese government promulgated a new constitution in the name of the

Meiji emperor. Carefully crafted over the previous years to reflect “western” notions of modern

governance without devolving substantive authority to the people, the constitution placed

sovereignty in the emperor and prescribed loyalty and obligation to the emperor and nation as the

foremost responsibility of imperial subjects. The constitution did include provision for “religious

freedom” to conform with western expectations of modern governance, but the language used in

the constitution limited this freedom to those beliefs and practices that did not interfere with the

obligations imperial subjects owed their sovereign. As the provision insisted, “Japanese subjects

shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order, and not antagonistic to their duties as

subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief.”9 The deliberately vague language of this provision

thus simultaneously promised adherents of different religions the possibility of practicing their

faiths unhindered while granting the state the ultimate prerogative to judge whether or not such

practices conformed to the expectations placed on subjects.

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The vagueness of this constitutional provision, furthermore, gave rise to vigorous public

debates among members of different religions and their critics concerning the clause’s more

practical implications. Members of a diverse array of religions participated in these debates, but

Christians came to bear the brunt of suspicions cast on religious belief, broadly defined, being a

likely threat to national unity. The exact limits of religious freedom were further tested with the

Imperial Rescript on Education, a brief document dictating the role of education for developing

suitable subjects for the nation as well as the characteristics of ideal imperial subjects, was

distributed to schools in 1890. Inoue Tetsujirō, the chair of philosophy at the Imperial University

in Tokyo and the author of the state-commissioned commentary on this Imperial Rescript,

provoked a lengthy and heated debate centered on whether or not Japanese Christians could ever

be trusted to fulfill their duties as imperial subjects. Central to Inoue’s charge was the claim that

even if Christians performed every ritual associated with displays of loyalty to perfection, as

long as they harbored belief in a foreign god, they could never truly be trusted, and would

endanger the absolute unity demanded of imperial subjects to ensure national survival in the

midst of global imperialism. Despite the efforts of Christian interlocutors to put these charges to

rest, Inoue’s forceful accusations seemed to suggest that Christian beliefs and practices were

incompatible with the behavior demanded of all Japanese, regardless of the promise of religious

freedom ostensibly granted by the constitution.10

In addition to the Constitution, the Press and Publication Regulations, passed

immediately after the beginning of the Meiji period (1868-1912), further defined the contours of

acceptable opinion. The scope of potentially unacceptable opinion was wide-ranging, and could

include everything from remarks critical of the government to defending the actions of those

charged with crime. Violating the onerous Press Regulations and Libel Law could lead to

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suspension of the paper, fines levied on the publisher and editor, and in the most extreme case,

imprisonment of the publisher or editor.11 Much like the similarly vague constitutional article

promising religious freedom, however, these regulations failed to delineate precisely what types

of opinions or content would be found in violation, relegating that prerogative to the local police

and prosecutors, and Home Ministry, who constituted the different branches of the elaborate

censorship apparatus.

Against this fractious backdrop, Japan’s growing group of Protestants sought to define

their beliefs and practices. Despite early efforts to form an ecumenical church—attempted to

demonstrate their ability to overcome the doctrinal and ecclesiastical fissures that had divided

western Protestantism—disagreements over these exact issues, among other concerns,

reproduced the denominations represented by the leading mission organizations in Japan.

However, by the 1890s, many Japanese Christians began questioning ongoing efforts by

missionaries to maintain a hold on ecclesiastical authority. They also studied and adapted a

diverse range of theologies and ministerial practices, often arguing that they were the better

judges of what suited the future of Japanese Christianity, and by extension, what they hoped

would be a Japan transformed through Christianity. The resulting range of theological positions,

each with its own social and political implications, further divided Japanese Christians. Some,

particularly those influenced by German liberal theology and Biblical criticism, embraced a

“nationalist” Christianity they believed would transform Japan while also complementing

Japan’s new expansionist policies. Others, including Kashiwagi, argued that their Christian belief

compelled them to forcefully voice their dissent when they believed that the state’s actions

violated their definition of God’s law.

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As the work of Fred Notehelfer, Irwin Scheiner and others has demonstrated, while the

number of Christian converts remained modest even at the peak of Japanese interest in and

enthusiasm for all things “western” in the 1880s, they nonetheless commanded a considerable

amount of public influence and interest far greater than their numbers would suggest. One reason

was the fascination, ambivalence, and outright suspicion that continued to be directed towards

Christianity itself. But the significance of Christianity was not purely through negative

associations. Schools founded by missionaries served as the earliest sites of exposure to

Christianity, and since these schools served as the principal post-secondary schools in Japan into

the twentieth century, even those students who did not ultimately convert nonetheless had

classmates and friends who did, and were themselves exposed to Christian teaching during the

course of their education.12 Thus, a disproportionate number of Christian converts were both

themselves mostly of an elite and well-educated class and also associated with elite intellectuals,

businessmen, and politicians.

The extent of Christian influence, even prominence, within elite intellectual circles was

further reinforced by the range and importance of Christian publications. Each major

denomination published weekly newspapers that often featured leading public intellectuals, and

despite ideological differences, even appeared in the non-circulating library of the Heiminsha, a

leading socialist organization during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Additionally, several

noted Christian journals such as Shinjin (The New Man), affiliated with the prominent Hongō

Church whose membership was dominated by Tokyo University students, and Rikugō zasshi

(Cosmos), featured content contributed by leading intellectuals and public figures, including

even those like Inoue Tetsujirō who frequently denounced Christianity as antithetical to national

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unity. Their readership was often national, even international, and these journals were obligatory

reading for any well-informed intellectual, Christian or otherwise.13

The story of Japanese Christians’ encounters with the state, at least until the 1930s, was

thus characterized by discomfort and unease only occasionally interrupted by moments of police

action, rather than outright suppression and censure. This is partly because much of Christian

expression rarely contradicted the state’s definitions of loyalty and national unity, the two critical

categories whose defense and reinforcement was the censors’ primary responsibility. So when

the state and its agents did act, the circumstances and specific charges—as well as hidden

implications—demand closer attention, as do the figures that drew the attention of the censorship

apparatus.

II. A Rural Minister and Exploring the Boundaries of Religious Freedom

In the shadow of the publicly provocative ministers in Tokyo and the publications they oversaw,

Kashiwagi Gien devoted much of his career to debating how Christian belief fundamentally

reordered the relationship between the state, emperor, and subjects. Kashiwagi may have lived

and worked at the margins of the metropole, but his intellectual and religious influences and

mentors as well as his closest confidants included the most prominent and influential figures of

Japanese Protestantism. Despite its location, his church held special significance: as the first

Congregationalist church in the Kantō region—which included Tokyo—and the first to be

founded entirely through the financial support of converts, the Annaka church was a historically

significant congregation within its denomination and for Japanese Protestantism more broadly. In

short, the limited print run notwithstanding, his publication offered a crucial alternative voice to

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the main denominational weeklies because of both his own status as well as the status of the

church he served.

The Jōmō kyōkai geppō primarily contained summaries of the activities of each

Congregational church in the region, including average church attendance, sermon titles, and

other special events organized by each congregation. It was also through this modest monthly

newsletter, however, that Kashiwagi courted controversy through his opinionated editorials and

commentary and provoked the displeasure of the local censorship apparatus. For their efforts,

Kashiwagi and his regular contributors attracted frequent attention from the local police and

prosecutor’s office. Satisfying the Press Regulations’ demands, including submitting copies of

each issue to the local police, prosecutor, and Home Ministry, became a regular part of his

monthly routine. At times, simply receiving the geppō was perceived as potentially subversive: a

church member who had been conscripted into the Army cancelled his subscription upon orders

from his superiors because they objected to its contents.14

Kashiwagi was not always successful in avoiding official sanctions; he was first fined in

1900, only two years after he began publishing the geppō.15 While Kashiwagi generally managed

to avoid the more draconian consequences of publicly criticizing the state or the ideas which

legitimized it, he was no stranger to the constant attention of the local members of the censorship

apparatus. Local constables, and occasionally even the local prosecutor, visited Kashiwagi to

warn him against commenting on certain contemporary issues and events. According to his

diary, Kashiwagi also suspected that the local police regularly placed him under surveillance,

even going so far as to attend Sunday services at his church.16

This attention, particularly given the small print run and mostly regionally specific

coverage of this publication, may simply suggest that the pre-World War II censorship laws left

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no stone unturned. But the unique characteristics of this otherwise modest regional monthly

demonstrate the degree to which a publication such as this could serve as a potent vehicle for

dissent and critique uncomfortable for the state. First, through its pages, Kashiwagi attempted to

foster in his audience an awareness of domestic, imperial, and global events, and challenged his

readers to consider their own experiences in a broader context. Through Kashiwagi’s editorial

eye, readers were introduced to the works of important and controversial writers such as Kōtoku

Shūsui, arguably the most notorious socialist-turned-anarchist who was executed in 1911 for his

presumed role in a plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor. During the Russo-Japanese War when

socialists emerged as a potent voice opposing war, he went so far as to urge his readers to

subscribe to the socialist newspaper, the Heimin shinbun (Commoner News), and even

advertised its subscription information.17 Kashiwagi also featured the writings of prominent

Christians and ministers of much larger congregations, and reports from former church members

who had emigrated to a variety of locations abroad.18 Other local ministers and church members

also contributed their ideas and commentaries on local, national, and global events, thus making

the Jōmō kyōkai geppō an important nexus of ideas that intimately linked its rural Christian

audience to the world around them.

Second, the Jōmō kyōkai geppō attracted the attention of both influential public

intellectuals and theorists and, more problematically, political dissidents and severe critics of the

state. For example, the same socialists who Kashiwagi had praised likewise identified him as a

sympathetic figure, featuring him in the Heimin shinbun.19 The likes of Yoshino Sakuzō, a

leading political theorist, not only subscribed to it, but also became an important supporter who

frequently corresponded with Kashiwagi about his editorials and even occasionally visited him.20

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Despite the local censors’ constant attention and interference, Kashiwagi rarely faced

formal sanctions. Given his notoriety with the local police and prosecutor’s office, and the

prominence of some of his contributors, this was certainly not because he and his ideas were

considered inconsequential. So when the state did charge and try Kashiwagi for violating the

Press Regulations, what was so threatening about his words that provoked a harsh response when

even his endorsement of socialists and their embattled publication did not?

III. Local Confrontations: A Minister on Trial

In the early hours of July 17, 1909, thirty-eight of Annaka’s most powerful and influential

men—including the town mayor, members of the town assembly, the local postmaster, and heads

of the electrical plant and bank—were arrested by the Annaka police under the orders of the

prefectural prosecutor. The “Annaka incident,” as this scandal was soon called by local residents,

provoked considerable protest and outrage in the town for the police’s brazen treatment of the

local elite, the confused and suspicious circumstances surrounding the arrests, and the implicit

hint of election scandal that while obscured, appeared to lie at the root of the drama.21

News of the arrests reached Annaka on July 19th, when the local daily, the Jōmō shinbun

(Gunma News), published a lengthy article detailing the events leading up to the arrests and a list

of all those charged. Despite the neutral and dispassionate tone of the Jōmō shinbun report, the

actual details it relayed described a troubling and alarming sequence of events. According to the

report, this distinguished group had gathered the previous night at a local restaurant for a dinner

honoring a local political candidate running in the upcoming election. Curiously, they had

received an anonymous invitation to attend this banquet. When they arrived, they were each

directed to pay a fifty sen entry fee; the article noted in passing that the dinner they were served

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would have cost considerably more, at least three yen, or six times the entry fee, per person.

However, the article continued, a sign clearly denoting the entrance fee had been placed at the

restaurant entrance. At this banquet, under the direction of the town’s mayor, Kanai Shinzō, the

group agreed to endorse the Seiyūkai (Friends of Constitutional Government Party) candidate,

Tsuruhara Teikichi, and they all left by 11 p.m. The police prepared to make their arrests even

before the group had gathered. The possibility that these arrests had been somehow orchestrated

or provoked was suggested by the fact that the chief of the prefectural peace preservation police

had ordered his men to Annaka even before the banquet had started. By 3 a.m. the mayor and

two town assemblymen had been taken to the local police station for questioning; they were soon

joined by the other attendees as well as the restaurant proprietors and employees.22

Ultimately these men were charged with and convicted of violating the Election Law.23

Initially, according to Kashiwagi, the police claimed that the men were arrested for leaving the

restaurant without paying for the full cost of their dinner. But in fact, they were likely charged

with accepting a bribe in return for endorsing the candidate—no doubt the discrepancy between

the entrance fee and the actual cost of the dinner mentioned in the news report was considered a

bribe. The men, who were transferred from Annaka to first Takasaki, then Maebashi prisons,

underwent rigorous interrogations and were held for some time before charges were filed.24

Troubled by the suspicious circumstances surrounding the arrests as well as the harsh

treatment the men endured. Kashiwagi penned a private letter to the prefectural governor

denouncing the conduct of the police and pleading leniency for the arrested men. In other words,

he questioned the prefectural authority’s prerogative to implement justice and assess criminality,

insisting that it recognize a higher order of justice which demanded kindness and leniency even

towards people who may very well have committed a crime as defined by the state’s laws.

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On the 24th, less than a week after the arrests had taken place, Kashiwagi was ordered to

appear at the local police station. Far from being moved by Kashiwagi’s exhortations, the

prefectural governor had turned over his letter to the police. At the station Kashiwagi was

questioned by the police, who even insinuated that he was somehow involved with the group that

had been arrested. They also threatened to charge him with libel: while Kashiwagi had addressed

the governor through a private communication and had not yet publicly criticized how the

incident had been handled by the authorities, according to the expansive libel laws, his letter

could be considered a criminal act because the very act of criticizing a public official—even if

such criticisms were accurate—was considered libel.25 Significantly, the police tempered their

threats by also “attempt[ing] to earnestly explain the police’s actions.”26 In other words, rather

than simply charging Kashiwagi with a crime, the police attempted to use other forms of

persuasion—even appealing to Kashiwagi’s sympathy—to dissuade this opinionated minister

from provoking an even bigger incident.

Far from convincing Kashiwagi to accept their version of events, this interaction

prompted him to not only relay his own dealings with the governor and police publicly, but to

also issue a lengthy assessment of what he considered the true crux of the “Annaka incident.”

Kashiwagi wrote a lengthy article for the August issue of the geppō, disclosing the manner in

which the arrested officials and businessmen had been treated.27 More significantly, he used this

opportunity to criticize the Japanese legal system. The crux of his criticism, which he also

evoked as fundamental to his defense at the subsequent trial, centered upon the relationship

between the law and what he presented as the universal rights of Japanese subjects.

I am sure it is fine if the executor of the law summarily executes the law regardless of

what the people think, but those who are in a position to govern the people are obligated

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to pay particular attention to the feelings of the common people. Furthermore, for those

with even a little pluck, if they were to [become aware of] England where there is a love

of freedom and respect for rights, the people would all be stirred up…Are the English a

willful people who do not fear the authorities, or are the Japanese subservient? ...In other

words, it is certainly possibly that there is nothing noteworthy about the Annaka incident

from a legal perspective, but from the perspective of freedom, rights, and the laws of

humanity, it is certainly worth considering.28

Kashiwagi objected to the conduct of the police and the law’s considerable reach by considering

the police’s activities in the context of freedom and an ideal notion of rights. Furthermore, by

evoking the example of British law—and the relationship between British law and the crown’s

subjects—Kashiwagi imposed an accounting of the Annaka incident that rendered it far more

consequential than its parochial context might suggest. Unconcerned with the nature of the

alleged charges, Kashiwagi instead insisted that the intrusive and relentless actions of the police

prevented the people from trusting them, which fundamentally undermined the basis for a

national polity produced through the loyalty (“trust”) the people directed towards the emperor

and his agents, the police.29 Buried in his musings about the extent of universal rights and the

degree to which the Japanese state should consider the “feelings of the common people,” was

questioning of the normative foundation of the law. Having thus penned his objections to the

legal system, and implicitly questioned the legitimacy of the arrests, Kashiwagi sent the issue off

to his printers and awaited its distribution on August 15th.30

The following day, the Gunma police made quite clear that Kashiwagi’s public musings

on what he considered the police’s violation of the spirit of universal rights were an unacceptable

challenge to the local authority’s prerogative to execute the law. They acted with lightning speed

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to round up Kashiwagi and all parties associated with the geppō, including Okabe Kunohachi,

the publisher of record who also served as minister of the church in nearby Haraichi, and the

printer.31

Kashiwagi and Okabe were indicted and tried in the prefectural court in Takasaki in

September. The initial trial, and the subsequent appeal, highlight the uncomfortable tension

created by the state’s efforts to legally define the boundaries of acceptable opinion and

Kashiwagi’s equally determined effort to assert alternative boundaries rooted in transcendent

principles. At the center of this contest, however, religious expression played a crucial role, both

in Kashiwagi’s insistence that his political critique was also religious expression, and the

prefectural prosecutor’s labored efforts to entirely circumvent religion as a factor in the trial.

Kashiwagi was charged with violating Article 21 of the Press Regulations that forbade

publishing opinions excusing violations of the criminal code or actively supporting convicted

criminals. Okabe was charged with violating Article 11 of the Press Regulations because of the

specific timing of the geppō’s distribution: by distributing the geppō on a Sunday, the police

charged, Okabe had circumvented the censorship regulations that required immediate submission

of all publications to the local police, prosecutor, and Home Ministry in Tokyo for review.

Convicted at the initial trial, Kashiwagi and Okabe appealed, transforming this rather bizarre

incident into a very public and visible challenge to the state by two otherwise modest and

unassuming ministers.32

In Kashiwagi’s recounting of his trial in the Jōmō kyōkai geppō, he quoted extensively

from accounts in the local newspapers that described the appeals court proceedings in great

detail. The papers meticulously described Kashiwagi’s demeanor and appearance—that he wore

a suit, his hair and moustache were speckled with gray, his glasses on his round face gave him a

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humble appearance—and noted the disproportionately large number of Christians who had

traveled from throughout the prefecture to observe the proceedings. Although the crime for

which Kashiwagi was being tried was unrelated—at least superficially—to his role as a Christian

minister, these newspapers paid special attention to this fact. In other words, these reports

implied that Kashiwagi’s role as a Christian minister was not incidental, but central to the fact

that he had been charged with this crime. And the public trial of a Christian minister, particularly

for allegedly sympathizing with convicted criminals, made for a provocative public local

scandal.

Kashiwagi had given the court plenty of material to which to object: criticizing the police

and the governor, unfavorably comparing Japan’s legal system to that of Britain, and urging

consideration for the men who had been arrested. By publicly disclosing the nature of his letter

to the governor, Kashiwagi was also subject to being charged with libel, as the police had

initially insinuated. So it is curious that the issue that the prosecutor emphasized in this second

court proceeding was Kashiwagi’s supposed defense of the arrested men. The prosecutor perhaps

decided that his case was more convincing if he framed Kashiwagi’s criminal act as a public

defense of criminals rather than a private plea—however ill-advised—to a public official. In

court, however, Kashiwagi attempted to dictate the actual issue at hand, which was not, as the

prosecutor insisted, his defense of the arrested men. Instead, he declared,

I [did this] out of a higher motive [than to defend these men]. In other words, because the

prefectural officials are hostile to the people and show an utter disregard for their rights, I

decided that it was my responsibility as a man of faith to bring [the police’s conduct] to

the public’s attention so that [the authorities] would realize [their wrongdoing]….In

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regards to [what I consider] the necessity to write [this piece] critical of the authorities’

actions, I did this fully mindful of the law.33

Testifying before the court and a full audience, Kashiwagi asserted his ethical obligation as a

Christian and pastor: to expose wrongdoing and misconduct and call the offenders to repentance.

While the prefectural authorities attempted to associate him with the original group of men

arrested, thus making him complicit in secular criminal conduct, Kashiwagi used his trial to

instead accuse the authorities of moral misconduct. No longer concerned with the original

confusing and obfuscated charges that had instigated his own scandal, Kashiwagi imposed a

superior ethical code onto the police, all the while insisting that he was obligated to do so out of

his religious convictions. Furthermore, the basis of his criticisms expanded on what these

convictions included: a defense of “the people” against the brazen conduct of a state that

considered the interests and rights of the people irrelevant and suspicious. By formally appealing

his original conviction he also stubbornly reasserted his claim that his act of publicly criticizing

those in authority should be protected by law.

Not surprisingly, the local prosecutor painted a radically different picture of Kashiwagi’s

actions. Dismissing Kashiwagi’s claim outright, the prosecutor simply stated,

This case is based on the simple fact of whether or not in the article, the defendant wrote

something that can be clearly interpreted as a defense of criminals. The purpose of the

author is irrelevant; all that matters is whether or not the author wrote something

defending criminals. If he did this intentionally, this constitutes proof of a criminal act.34

According to the prosecutor’s statement Kashiwagi’s intent had no legal bearing on the case. Far

from being convinced of Kashiwagi’s moral justification for his actions, the prosecutor accused

him of being in danger of violating Article 41 of the Criminal Code: making statements injurious

20

to public peace and order. While denying that religious belief had any bearing on the substance

of this case, the prosecutor declared, ironically, that the only reason he was not adding this

charge was out of consideration for Kashiwagi’s profession and character.35

Kashiwagi’s lawyers—who, as the newspaper reports noted, were also Christians—

likewise argued that Kashiwagi had a legal right to profess his beliefs in the geppō. For instance,

one lawyer insisted,

There are few things more dangerous than law that does not consider morality.

Furthermore, religion is something that insists on the authority of the individual. The

police use the authority of an organization as a shield to interrogate individuals, and the

police’s reckless suppression of individuality ignores the spirit of the constitution.36

This defense, while superficially framing the case in terms of the spirit of the constitution, also

implied that Kashiwagi’s criticism of the local authorities contained two critical components:

first, that his critique was an expression of his religious convictions because he was asserting the

“authority of the individual,” and second, that religious expression should be protected under the

constitution. This second point—asserting that airing his religious-beliefs-turned-political-

critique in so contentious and public a manner was something protected by the constitution—

launched a substantial challenge to the state’s considerably circumscribed interpretation of the

concept of “religious freedom.” This was a legal defense turned offense, the transformation of a

prefectural court into the site of a presumptuous attack upon the very definition of what

constituted religious belief and the extent of constitutional protection and conversely, the limits

of state interference.

Kashiwagi and his defense team’s impassioned appeal to the spirit of the constitutional

guarantee of religious freedom as the basis for criticizing the state was soundly defeated. The

21

court upheld the earlier decision, ultimately fining Kashiwagi seventy yen for his crime. His

congregation gathered donations so that he could pay the fine and avoid imprisonment, the

alternative penalty.

This trial certainly had no direct bearing on events or people in Tokyo, and thus no doubt

might appear to be a rather parochial affair with little wide-ranging consequence, even though

the original arrests and Kashiwagi’s subsequent trial galvanized the local residents. But through

this very public trial, Kashiwagi declared that this localized confrontation served as a critical

opportunity through which to challenge the state’s increasing encroachment into the lives of its

subjects. Regardless of the actual contemporary reverberations of this incident, the claims

Kashiwagi made during the course of the trial suggest the potential weaknesses in the complex

and sophisticated legal framework established by the state to encourage, nurture, and at times

coerce a distinct and narrow understanding of rights and obligations of imperial subjects, and the

extent of ideas harmful to public peace and order. Likewise, Kashiwagi’s inevitable conviction

revealed the state’s refusal to give hearing to his insistence that as a Christian and minister, he

was obligated to uphold truth. The judge’s ruling demonstrated that such an idea was irrelevant,

inconsequential, and possibly even illegal as far as the state and its regional representatives were

concerned. The prefectural judiciary’s attempt to contain Kashiwagi’s presumptuous behavior by

bringing him and his “co-conspirators” to trial was countered by Kashiwagi’s stubborn insistence

on an active defense. He offered his congregants and other Christians in Gunma an example of

what he believed constituted obedience to God, despite the possible consequences. Furthermore,

at the time of the Annaka incident, Kashiwagi seemed to consider the courts as a legitimate and

fruitful arena in which to assert what he considered the appropriate boundaries for the state’s

22

actions. The outcome of the trial, on the other hand, demonstrated the shrinking limits of such

challenges to the state’s powers.

In 1909, the Japanese empire was still in its infancy. While it had gained the island of

Taiwan from China as part of a war indemnity following its victory in the First Sino-Japanese

War (1894-1895), its efforts to demonstrate parity with western imperial powers were far from

complete. Furthermore, at home, the 1910s were marked by political confusion. Elected

politicians began to successfully challenge their more established counterparts who were

appointed, not elected, to the Imperial Diet. Political theorists such as Yoshino Sakuzō presented

widely acclaimed challenges to the existing system of government that had privileged

unquestioning unity over popular participation in politics.37 While embattled and the constant

object of government suppression, socialists and other leftists still managed to circulate

increasingly radical ideas that rejected the legitimacy of the current government’s authority as

well as the social and economic status quo that seemed to protect their position. In this climate,

the government adjusted its censorship strategy. While the censors applied their criteria

selectively, and even arbitrarily, the cases that resulted in court trials particularly involved what

they considered to be harmful ideas, specifically ideas that publicized socialist or communist

critiques of the state or those which questioned the foundations of imperial rule.38 The Imperial

Diet even tried to pass new legislation to specifically curtail leftist ideas in 1922. While this

effort failed, it revealed renewed concern that the recent enthusiasm for participatory politics and

the more intense influence of communism following the Russian Revolution threatened the

government’s ability to impose its definitions of national loyalty and unity.39

Against this backdrop, the unforeseeable tragedy of a catastrophic earthquake in

September 1923 prompted a crisis, not only due to the heavy death toll and material damage, but

23

also due to acts of mass violence in the chaotic aftermath. In response to these extraordinary

circumstances, censorship became noticeably aggressive with a sharp increase in prosecutions as

the state strained its resources to control the circulation of news reports, analyses, and

interpretations of the events following the earthquake. In the preceding decade, Kashiwagi’s

disillusionment with the state had only grown: the notorious 1910 trial of leftist radicals charged

with an assassination attempt of the emperor and the subsequent execution of twelve of those

convicted, Japan’s colonization of Korea, and his own denomination’s establishment of a

mission there that accepted substantial financial support from the colonial government drew his

ire and further critiques. He now responded to this latest national crisis with a series of editorials

through which he denounced the violent aftermath of the earthquake as the inevitable

consequence of the same ideology that had justified Japan’s territorial expansion. Written during

arguably the most restrictive censorship period before the 1930s, these editorials nonetheless

serve as a stark counterpoint to the editorial that led to his prosecution in 1909.

IV. Successfully Denouncing the State in the Aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake

The Great Kantō Earthquake that struck on September 1, 1923 devastated Tokyo, Yokohama,

and surrounding areas, leveling most structures to piles of rubble and causing the deaths of over

100,000 residents. In the weeks that followed, troubling news reports gradually emerged that a

number of political dissidents and possibly thousands of Korean residents—migrants from

Japan’s principal colony—had been attacked and murdered, often with the tacit consent of the

authorities. In the previous years, in addition to championing Japan’s socialists, Kashiwagi also

roundly criticized both Japan’s colonization of Korea and his own denomination’s missionary

efforts in colonial Korea. As he slowly pieced together how these two groups, considered

24

politically and morally intransigent by the state, became the objects of violence, Kashiwagi again

was compelled to respond. The uneven process by which he uncovered these state-sanctioned

crimes and finally succeeded in publishing a compelling condemnation of them is significant, not

only for the views he expressed, but for the insights it offers into what (and what did not)

constitute harmful ideas in a time of acute government scrutiny of ideas critical of the state.

The complete devastation that the earthquake had wreaked severely hampered

Kashiwagi’s access to information, and it was only through a slow and deliberate effort that he

was able to piece together troubling evidence that the state had tacitly condoned acts of violence

in the earthquake’s aftermath. On 3 September, Kashiwagi traveled to Karuizawa, a resort town

to the northwest in neighboring Nagano Prefecture, to attend a regional denominational

conference. The train, considerably delayed, was crowded with refugees fleeing from the

disaster. Kashiwagi overheard these refugees tell of “arsons and bombings by Koreans and the

invasion of mobs.”40

In the following days, and after he returned to Annaka, he began to hear very different

rumors, this time that vigilante mobs had systematically sought out and attacked Koreans. He

was even more troubled that some of his own acquaintances seemed to accept claims that

Koreans and socialists were plotting to overthrow the government.41 Reports began to trickle in

of vigilante mobs attacking and killing Koreans not only in Tokyo, but also in adjacent areas

such as neighboring Saitama prefecture, and even in Gunma itself. Even as he visited friends and

neighbors to gather more information about the attacks on Koreans, he received a visit from the

local prosecutor. Preempting Kashiwagi’s intention to publicly condemn these acts of mob

violence, the prosecutor warned Kashiwagi not to mention the attacks that had happened in

Gunma or the massacres in Tokyo.42 The following day, he was summoned to the police station

25

by the local police constable, who repeated the prosecutor’s warning that he was not to write

anything about the massacre of Koreans.43 It has been argued that the police not only turned a

blind eye to these mobs, but also may even have started some of the rumors and urged on the

mobs, and then aggressively used the Press Regulations to prevent those like Kashiwagi from

exposing the state’s complicity, or circulating ideas it considered harmful to national cohesion

and unity.44

During the following month, warned against writing publicly about the Korean massacre

by the local police, Kashiwagi nonetheless continued to gather information. He learned from one

of his friends that the socialist Ōsugi Sakae, his partner and noted feminist Itō Noe, and his six-

year old nephew, had been rounded up following the earthquake and then murdered while in the

custody of the military police.45 What particularly distressed his friend, in addition to the actual

assassinations, was news that many individuals (including a member of the city assembly of

Takasaki) were calling for the dismissal of all charges against the police who had been charged

with the murders, with some even calling for them to be declared national heroes for ridding the

country of these radicals.46

Unlike the 1909 incident, in 1923, Kashiwagi was repeatedly warned by police and the

local prosecutor against publicly commenting on either the Korean massacre or the murder of

political radicals. However, he felt compelled to address the violence directed at these two

groups. In the resulting editorials, particularly a lengthy declaration titled “Korosu nakare” (Thou

shalt not kill), Kashiwagi reframed these acts of violence in an imperial context, condemning the

post-earthquake violence as a deplorable symptom of the jingoistic atmosphere fostered by the

Japanese empire’s expansionist policies. He was taking considerable risks by blatantly ignoring

the warnings of the local police and prosecutor. And indeed, the publication of this piece

26

appeared to be in jeopardy. On the night before the issue was to be distributed, Kashiwagi was

visited by the local policeman who informed Kashiwagi that his monthly might be suspended for

violating the Press Regulations and asked him to not distribute the issue, just in case. Much to his

annoyance, Kashiwagi received no further word from the authorities, however, and the issue was

distributed a few days later without incident.47 A close examination of the tone and contents of

this editorial, however, demonstrate that the local policeman’s concern was not without merit,

and it is indeed remarkable that this issue passed the scrutiny of the censors.

Kashiwagi warned that the spree of vigilante violence portended a dark and troubling

future for Japan.48 The senseless violence in the aftermath of the earthquake, which echoed to

Kashiwagi the brutality of the Japanese suppression of Korean independence protests on the

Korean peninsula—known as the March First movement—only four years earlier, was

deplorable and lamentable precisely because it violated a fundamental aspect of God’s law. He

reserved his most incendiary language for his fellow Christians who, he argued, were charged

with upholding God’s law, for their seemingly passive acceptance of the state’s coercive tactics

and willing suppression of those deemed subversive or undesirable. As far as he was concerned,

“thou shalt not kill” was an absolute, precise, and unambiguous command: “‘Thou shalt not kill’

means thou shalt not kill, and is clear as fire; there should be no cause for doubt. There are no

conditions, only ‘thou shalt not kill.’ There should be no reason to [consider any other

interpretation] than that this is a divine command absolutely forbidding the killing of others.”49

Despite the clarity of this simple command, Kashiwagi lamented, Christians had eagerly sought

various conditions and qualifications, attempting to marshal spiritual justification for different

types of murder. Thus, he continued, “Some now claim that killing in the name of religion was

unacceptable while killing in the name of the nation was, even for Christians.” 50

27

While Kashiwagi rejected all killing—including self-defense and legalized executions—

he particularly condemned war as a form of mass murder. Rather than maintaining peace, he

countered, “Military buildup always leads to an arms race, and in order to convince a nation’s

subjects that such military buildup is necessary, [the government] points to imaginary enemies

and must then claim that an invasion is imminent….Military buildup necessarily leads to war.”51

In other words, Kashiwagi identified a circular logic linking militarism, territorial expansion, and

wartime economic interests that made each seem inevitable.

Kashiwagi also unleashed a tirade against state-sponsored violence—both by its own

representatives and by vigilante mobs—as a far greater threat to the nation than socialism or

even anarchism.52 He even went as far as to claim that anarchy could potentially be non-violent,

while the state’s actions left no room for peaceful discussion and debate. No matter how

subversive, he insisted, no idea should be countered with violence, for it was the state’s

obligation to expose the illogic or harm of an ideology through offering a superior ideology.53

The silencing of dissent through murder and the scapegoating of defenseless Korean laborers,

Kashiwagi inveighed, exposed a state-sanctioned moral indifference that imperiled Japan’s

future to become a civilized and conscientious nation.

This moral indifference was not an accident or some kind of essential cultural trait,

Kashiwagi continued, but was instead carefully and systematically nurtured by the state through

national education policies and universal conscription. Through the poisonous effects of military

indoctrination, intolerance bred by national compulsory education, and fanned by the general

atmosphere of militarism, the Japanese people were being shaped into an intolerant jingoistic

nation without conscience or empathy for others.54 Kashiwagi lamented the deplorable moral

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condition of the Japanese people, citing the recently reported words of the perpetrators intended

to justify their actions:

Defendants of the recent massacre say, ‘I didn’t kill them for me, but I did it for the

nation,’ or, ‘I did it thinking of the world so really you should be praising me,’ or among

those who were rounded up [there are those who] say because the deed was done while

they were caught up in the chaos [in the earthquake’s aftermath] they should be given the

benefit of the doubt, and admit that perhaps they shouldn’t have done something like this.

But no one seems to be moved by their own moral conscience to truly repent for having

taken the lives of innocent people. Japanese people do not appreciate the preciousness of

human life, but this must be considered a great defect of national education, of the

national character.55

Kashiwagi refused to accept these excuses for, he insisted, the perpetrators had violated God’s

law and were thus culpable even if the state refused to apply the law to their actions. The

solution, Kashiwagi strenuously argued, was a new society-wide resolve and determination to

reject war as a solution to national problems. And in this, Christians should play a central role;

after all, he reasoned, they were governed by the teaching, “thou shalt not kill.”56

V. The Limits of Religious Expression

For a Japanese state still anxious about its position in the global order and nervous about the

acquiescence of its subjects, religious belief represented a site requiring constant attention and

control. Allowing for religious freedom, however, marked Japan as a civilized nation, and as

long as religious adherents consented to behaving as appropriately moderate imperial subjects

whose religious belief was expressed in support of, and subordinate to, the state’s interests, there

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was no problem. But the problem with Christianity—something Inoue Tetsujirō had identified

during the Imperial Rescript debates—was its presumptuous insistence on a superior authority to

which Christians were bound. While not all Japanese Christians agreed with this theological

position—in fact, some of the most prominent ministers embraced a more liberal theology that

considered such a position arcane—those who did threatened to expose the pretense of national

unity that was meant to be Japan’s greatest resource in its competition for imperial equality and

acknowledgment.

In this context, Kashiwagi and the state fundamentally disagreed on the definition of

religious expression, as well as the extent of constitutional freedoms. While Kashiwagi based

both his 1909 objection of police excess and his 1923 condemnation of state-sanctioned violence

on his Christian belief and conviction that he was obligated to defend his interpretation of God’s

law, the state rejected his presumptuous claim that his dissent was constitutionally protected

because of its religious basis. By refusing to engage with Kashiwagi according to his terms, the

state arrogated to itself the prerogative of defining what was legitimate religious expression and

by extension, what could be protected as such by law. The prefectural court refused to

acknowledge Kashiwagi’s critique of local police conduct as a form of religious expression,

demonstrating it was indeed subject to the Press Regulations, and thus rendering the critique

impotent by virtue of its illegality.

At the same time, the state—or more specifically, its local representatives—used

censorship laws selectively. In part, this was because the sheer volume of publications produced

on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis made close scrutiny of all publications impractical. There

were usual suspects who faced the greatest attention of the censors, but even they (among which

Kashiwagi might be included) could not always predict how their publications would fare. Just

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like Kashiwagi discovered upon publishing an editorial featuring content that disregarded

explicit instructions from local authorities, the state occasionally allowed the publication of ideas

that seemed to fall well within the parameters of ideas considered harmful to the state and

national cohesion. This was despite the fact that Kashiwagi published this editorial amidst the

strictest scrutiny of published materials before the 1930s, and the editorial focused on the two

subjects explicitly targeted by the censors.

The unpredictability produced by the inconsistent application of the Press and Publication

Regulations no doubt created space for the expression of dissent, but it also prompted many

authors and publishers to exercise greater self-censoring and self-surveillance, thus making the

censorship system far more effective than what the state could achieve on its own.57 But more

significantly, by employing erratic and inconsistent enforcement, the state asserted its

prerogative as the ultimate arbiter of what constituted acceptable thought and belief. Not only

when it asserted its right to find published opinion harmful and thus illegal, but also when it

allowed the publication of ideas that might be perceived harmful, the state diminished the

incendiary potential of critiques of the state. Within a regime that limited what ideas could be

expressed, the very act of allowing a publication to reach its audience—after revealing that a

particular issue was under consideration for suspension—detracted from an author’s claims that

publishing a particular idea constituted an act of dissent.

In the case of Kashiwagi, it is ultimately impossible to accurately prove why such an

extreme discrepancy exists in how he was treated by the local censorship apparatus between the

1909 and 1923 incidents. What his experiences suggest, however, is that despite his efforts to

challenge conventional definitions of constitutionally protected religious freedom and the

obligations a minister owed not only his congregation, but also his nation, the state maintained a

31

monopoly on who defined, legislated, and arbitrated the limits of religious expression. This was

not due to a general disregard for the relevance of religion, but in fact resulted from a realization

that religious thought possessed the potential to forcefully challenge state authority. Thus, in

addition to attempting to undermine it through philosophical, ideological, or intellectual means,

the state also attempted to inoculate its effects by making it irrelevant in the public realm.

1 I would like to thank Akutsu Satoru of the Gunma Prefectural Archives, and Jesse Spohnholz,

Todd Butler, Lawrence Hatter, and Joel Tishken of Washington State University, Trent Maxey,

as well as the editors of Church History and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable

suggestions and comments.

2 On this later phase of censorship and other laws, such as the expansive Peace Preservation Law,

passed to impose more rigid constraints on the range of acceptable opinion, see Max M. Ward,

“The Problem of ‘Thought’: Crisis, National Essence, and the Interwar Japanese State” (Ph.D.

diss., New York University, 2011); John E. Abel, Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in

Transwar Japan (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); and Richard

H. Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

3 Pornographic material was not the only material considered obscene; occasionally ideas

considered politically subversive were also labeled obscene by the judiciary. See William

Marotti, “The Occupation, the New Emperor System, and the Figure of Japan,” in Money,

Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Duke University Press, 2013).

4 Mitchell, 96-99. 5 Mitchell, 245.

32

6 On this earlier phase of Christianity, and its subsequent abolition and persecution, see George

Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1973); Nam-lin Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan:

Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia

Center, 2007); and Kiri Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in Japan (New York: Routledge,

2009).

7 Trent Maxey, Defining the “Greatest Problem”: Religion and State in Meiji Japan

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming).

8 On the key government debates on the place of religion in the early years of the Meiji period,

see Maxey, Defining the “Greatest Problem”.

9 DeBary et al., ed, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. II (New York: Columbia University

Press, 2005), 747.

10 Emily Anderson, “Christianity in the Japanese Empire: Nationalism, Conscience, and Faith in

Meiji and Taisho Japan” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2010), 52-59.

11 Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1984), 16, 21.

12 Fred G. Notehelfer, American Samurai: Captain L.L. Janes and Japan (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1985); Irwin Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protest in

Meiji Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970).

13 For example, the Heiminsha, the publisher of the short-lived but important socialist weekly

Heimin shinbun (Commoner news), subscribed to Rikugō zasshi, Shinjin, and denominational

papers such as Kirisutokyō sekai (Christian world) and Fukuin shinpō (Gospel News), as well as

Kashiwagi’s Jōmō kyōkai geppō, and made each available in the non-circulating library it

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operated at its headquarters in Tokyo (Heimin shinbun, 22 November 1903, 7; 25 September

1904, 7).

14 25 March 1913, Kashiwagi Gien nikki (Diary of Kashiwagi Gien), eds. Iinuma Jirō and Katano

Masako (Ōtsu: Kōrosha, 1998), 138-139.

15 4 June 1900, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 20.

16 13 September 1910, 5 October 1910, 8 October 1910, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 79, 82.

17 “Zatsuroku: Hisenshugisha,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (March 1904): 11; “Shakaishugi kenkyū no

hitsuyō,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (September 1904): 3.

18 Itani Ryūichi, Hisen no shisō: Dochaku Kirisutosha Kashiwagi Gien (Anti-war thought:

Indigenous Christian Kashiwagi Gien) (Tokyo: Kinokuniya shinsho, 1967), 108. In a letter to

Kashiwagi, Matsui Shichirō, a former church member who was living in San Francisco at the

time, confided to Kashiwagi that he was dissatisfied with the churches in America and relied for

his spiritual growth on the geppō. Matsui Shichirō to Kashiwagi Gien, 15 January 1913, C-2-

449, Kashiwagi Gien Papers, Institute for the Study of Humanities and Social Sciences, Doshisha

University, Kyoto.

19 “Gunma yori,” Heimin shinbun (9 October 1904): 5.

20 31 March 1919, 21 July 1919, Kashiwagi Gien nikki hoi (Supplement to Diary of Kashiwagi

Gien), ed. Katano Masako (Ōtsu: Kōrosha, 2001), 111, 143.

21 “Annaka chō daijiken: Seiyūha gawa no senkyo ihan, kōuinsha no sōsū sanju-hachi mei,”

Jōmō shinbun (19 July 1909): 3.

22 “Annaka chō daijiken: Seiyūha gawa no senkyo ihan, kōuinsha no sōsū sanju-hachi mei,”

Jōmō shinbun (19 July 1909): 3.

23 “Annaka jiken tsuku yūzai,” Jōmō shinbun (27 July 1909): 2.

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24 “Annaka jiken,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (August 1909): 4-5.

25 Mitchell, 49-50.

26 “Honsha hikoku jiken to keika,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (October 1909): 5.

27 Honsha hikoku jiken to keika,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (October 1909): 5.

28 “Annaka jiken,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (August 1909): 4-5.

29 “Annaka jiken,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (August 1909): 5.


31 “Honsha hikoku jiken to keika,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (October 1909): 5. Many periodicals that

tended to publish opinions that could potentially be found to violate the ambiguous and extensive

censorship laws listed a “prison editor” in the place of the regular editor. See Mitchell, 55.






37 See for example Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley

and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992); Jung-Sun N. Han, Imperial Path to

Democracy: Yoshino Sakuzo and a New Liberal Order in East Asia, 1905-1937 (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013).

38 Mitchell, 181-186.

39 Mitchell, 191-192. 40 3 September 1923, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 305.

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41 6 September 1923, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 305. Rumors of rioting by Koreans as well as the

poisoning of wells and arson, began circulating almost immediately after the earthquake.

Vigilante mobs began organizing almost immediately as well. For more on the massacre of

Koreans following the earthquake, see Michael Weiner, “Myth and Reality: The Great Kanto

Earthquake,” in The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan 1910-1923 (Atlantic Highlands,

N.J.: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989), 164-200.

42 6 September 1923, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 305.


44 Officially the Home Ministry issued an order warning newspapers and periodicals against

spreading rumors of Korean mobs rioting. This order was contradicted by the government itself

issuing reports of Koreans rioting in the absence of law following the earthquake. See Mitchell,

193-194.


46 28 October 1923, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 309.

47 19 December and 21 December 1923, Kashiwagi Gien nikki, 313.

48 The estimate of the actual number of victims of the post-earthquake violence remains

controversial and varies drastically depending on the tabulator. Official state estimates claimed

only 231 Koreans were killed. Other sources estimated that the number of Korean victims was as

high as 6000. Yoshino Sakuzō conducted his own investigation and came up with a number of

2600 Koreans dead in the Kantō region. More recently one scholar has argued that the total was

20 times as many. Michael Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, 181-182.

49 Kashiwagi Gien, “Korosu nakare,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (December 1923): 2.


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51 Kashiwagi Gien, “Korosu nakare,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (December 1923), 2.

52 Kashiwagi Gien, “Gūzō hakai: Amakasu Masahiko ron,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (November

1923): 2.

53 Kashiwagi Gien, “Gūzō hakai: Amakasu Masahiko ron,” Jōmō kyōkai geppō (November

1923): 3.




57 Gregory J. Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945 (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 34.

Containing Voices in the Wilderness: Censorship and Religious Dissent in the Japanese Countryside

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