The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-04
JOURNALISM IN JAPAN
HOW "WAR EXTRASu POUR
 FORTH
In a Way to Make Park Row Look ohsap-ysIIow sheets Predominant in Toi.io-Booming Calculations.

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 ohesp-YsIIow sheets Predominant
 fn ToIkso-Booming Calculations.
 Few Americans realize to what an ex- tent the daily newspaper has grown in the last decade in little" Japan, with her 40.OeO.ooO people. In Tokio. for in- stance. there are no less than F native daily papers, while the foreign press of the capital and Yokohama is valued at something like 227,OOo yen, a yen being approximately 50 cents in our money. Tokio has it's press club also. called the Japanese Journalists union. where the knights of the fourth estate meet to retail thrilling stories of newspaper daring in eluding the Russian press censor in Manchuria and getting in sensational beat for the Dempo which the Chuo pliers in it's next issue.
 Of course. the rubbing in is done in the most polite fashion. the Dempo ed itor expressing himself something like this: Tt gave most base me very great pleasure. most honorable editor of the divine Chuo, to see that your most august journal deigned honorably to quote from my vile Dempo a mean par agraph this morning" And without the faintest intention of sarcasm, eitherl Of course this self-abasement is mere form-the Japanese could not be other than polite or display the slightest an- noyance if he tried-but in nine cases out of ten the honorable editor of the Dempo is right when he calls his jour- nal vile" and the paragraph base" For Japan is in the grip of yellow peril in journalism, which would send a democratic convention fleeing in pam ic from Chicago to Cape Horn, instead of stopping at St. Louis.
 It is not to be understood, however. that the entire Japanese press is vel low Far from it. There are at least three notable exceptions which would rank high in Journalism in any civil ization. But the majority of papers of Tokio and Yokohama have evolved characters that would do credit to the yellow journal trist of New York, Chi- cago and San Francisco. This section of the Japanese press is young, and is sowing it's wild oats with a zest that would make the most blase of New York yellow journalists green with en- wy.
 To give examples of the domestica- ton of yellow journalism in the island empire Is not so difficult as 1t is in- credible. The Japanese are q most adaptive people. Western ideas appeal te them strongly. and it seems that psychologically they have much in com mon with the Americans. They are quick to see a practical advantage and quicker to apply it. With them, adver- Using, for instance, is carried on with a perfection that makes the westerner marvel, and for the purpose of securing advertising the yellow section has cop fed all the latest stunts of the most approved school for booming circula- tion. The plan of hiding bags of gold in out of the way places and publishing stories in the paper giving clews to the caches, which has been tried so suc- cessfully by the London Mall and sev- eral of the Aerican newspapers has borne it's full fruition in Japan. Their method was to conceal a token and publish in some obscure part of the paper directions how to find 1t, the find- CT of the token to receive a handsome reward of so many yen. At once this created a furore. It seemed as if the kx,ly6 rJ course there was nothing very remark able about that. The same thing hap pened in Boston last year. For a time it divided attention with the question of war. But doubts began to arise about the honesty of the transaction. Most of the papers had taken it up and it seemed that they always allowed q certain fixed time to elapse between the publication of the announcement and the time for commencing the search. When the critical moment came it was generally found that some one of the staff or at least indirectly connected with the paper, got the token
 No sooner had this run it's course than the Chuo resorted to the inevitable lottery, which was held at the end of each month for the benefit of it's sub- scribers, the prizes being 20 yen deben- lures of the Industries bank. The Mi roku, with policy truly American fol- lowed suit with more prizes and of larger value. The Hochi, not to be outdone, then put out the scheme that worked the best of all. It was the old promise of a prize to any one who could discover the typographical error in it's advertising sheet. When 1t be- came known that the ads. of the Hochi would be read carefully by large number of people, it at once jumped irl- to first place as a medium. The mer- chants seeing how the lottery ticket craze brought business to the papers, at once began to advertise that With certain amounts of goods purchased lottery tickets would be given away, and it had all the desired effect that doubling the number of green trading stamps has in this country. For the time Tokio was lottery-mad. Finally the police were forced to interfere, and