The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-04-24

IJjfs acceptance of the challenge of {
| Chicago newspaper TO beat its selec
ton of a Chicago girl as the mos
beautiful woman in the world. Thi:
beauty contest created great excite.
ment in Japan. and proved to be a cir
culation -getter for the Jill. The comic
weeklies took it up, and Toxic Puck
published a cartoon of the winner OF
the first prize dreaming of the Amer
lean millionaire who would see her pic
ture in Chicago and cross the Pacific
to claim his Acknowledged bride.
| The attention paid to American af-
fairs is illustrated by the enterprise
displayed by a Toxic paper when Con-
gress met last December. Not being
able to secure an advance copy of
President RooseveIt's message to Con-
gress, it succeeded in having an in
telligent synopsis made in the United
States that could be placed upon the
wire as soon as the reading of the mes
sage was III 1OHS4CSSs HIS
synopsis was over thousand words
in length and cost the paper over $500
for transmission.
The national sport of Japan is
wrestling. and the great matches are
held in Toxic twice a year, in January
and May The wrest1ers are paid an
annual salary, and whether their sti
pend is augmented or diminished is de-
termined by the exhibition of prowess
at these two festivals. The wrestlers
are in training for weeks, drinking as
many gallons of beer each day as pos
sible to make them fat. The Toxic
newspapers send special correspondents
to the training quarters, columns of
gossip are printed each day and snap
shots of the heroes in characteristic
attitudes appear from time to time
When a baseball team from Hawaii
came to play series with a Toxic
college nine, the newspapers treated it
with columns Of space, just as Amer
lean dailies play up the post-series
games between the lead
els VI TIE RIVAL 14ldJOI
Mr.. Taft landed in Yokohama at nine
O'Clock in the morning. At four o'clock
in the afternoon the Toxic Hochi was
on the street with halftone pictures of
the distinguished American on his way
down the gang-plank. In the present
political campaign the leading news
papers will send special correspondents
to close districts to follow the candi-
dates on the hustings. During the
late war with Russia nearly every
newspaper in Japan had a man at the
front, and the war news was given to
the people in extras which appeared
with a frequency reminding one of New
York in 1898.
The business end of the newspaper |
also follows closely the pattern of the |
western journalism. The papers are |
circulated for from ten to twenty-five |
cents a month, less than it costs to |
produce them. In Japan, as in Amer |
lea, circulation is losing game and |
profit must come from advertising. The |
rates for advertising here are exceed |
ngIy high in proportion to the general |
standard of living. One of the leading |
newspapers of Toxic charges thirty |
cents line, six lines to the inch. Pa
per is cheaper than in the United |
States and labor costs nothing like as |!
much. The typesetters receive from |
fifteen to fifty cents a day, the fore |
man not more than a dollar. In the |
press room fifty cents a day is consid- |
cred high wages. The editorial help I
ers are better paid, reversing the rule
in the United States where |
he average reporter receives a smaller |
salary than the compositor who puts |
lis copy into type.
The Jill Shimpo, or Times News |
paper, has it's main office in Toxic,
but it publishes a simultaneous edition |
IN Osaka, $50 miles away. The work |
Is done by telephone, the Toxic edition |
being transmitted verbatim over four /
wires leased from the Imperial post
office. 1t is received by shorthand |
writer's, who transcribe the copy by |
details and rush it to the printer in /
Osaka within few minutes after the
proof sheets have reached the Toxic |
editorial rooms. The Jill has a cir
,ulation of 100000 copies. 1t is one of
the representatives of the higher class
If conservative newspapers, its rank
being shared by the Toxic Asahi and
several others. The Hochi is the lead
political views, although not yellow /
Fhe yellow journals" are numerous
III over the Empire and many of them
lave an enormous circulation.
The bitterness of attacks upon po-
itfcal opponents in the sensational
press goes Tar beyond the worst exhi-
'itions of journalistic venom known in
america today. Sixty years ago the
purely political sheets in the United
states may have been as furious as
heir japanese successors of today, but
he filth employed by the lower class
japanese editor has been utterly i'm
possible among English-speaking peo-
lie since long before the newspaper
vas born into the world. OF course
he freedom of the press does not ex-
end so far that an attack could be
made upon the Emperor He is still
egaTded as something more than HUI
nan, as the tangible center of the
rational spirit against which no pa
riot may sin in word, thought or deed l.
The worst thing a Japanese critic can K
of IN To-. To-