Marc Miyake
0. Introduction
The age of the Japanese language press in Hawai'i is over. The last surviving Japanese-language paper, the Hawaii Hochi ('Hawaii News'), is but a shadow of its former self. Its long-time competitor, the Nippu Jiji ('Current Events of Japan and Hawai'i') ceased publication in 1985. Shiramizu (1990: 51) calls the period from "1970 to present [1990]" the "reduction, conversion period" for the Japanese language press in Hawai'i....
2. Prologue: Origins of the Hawaii Hochi
The Hochi was hardly the first Japanese paper on Hawaiian soil. Japanese language newspapers were being published in Hawai'i as early as 1892 (Ogawa 1978: 145; Tamura 1994: 72). Ten other Japanese language publications appeared before the turn of the century, and eighty-six more appeared before 1941 (Tamura 1994: 72). Most of these publications were short-lived, but the market for them was nevertheless quite active and competitive prior to World War II. According to Tamura (1994: 72), "the two largest Japanese language dailies [the Nippu Jiji and Hawaii Hochi] rivaled their English language counterparts [the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin] in circulation figures". This is not surprising, given the fact that 42.7% of the population of Hawai'i was of Japanese origin in 1920 (Lind 1967: 28; quoted in Tamura 1994: 58).
The Hochi first appeared in 1912, during what Shiramizu (1990: 50) called the "growth period" of the Japanese ethnic press in Hawai'i. Its founder, Makino Kinzaburo, had just been released from jail. He had been one of the "Big Four" strike leaders who had been arrested as a conspirator following the Oahu Sugar Strike of 1909. Makino was no ordinary Issei from a country prefecture. Born in Yokohama to an Englishman and a Japanese woman, Makino grew up bilingual in an Westernized urban environment. Shiramizu (1986: 11) speculates that Makino's unusual background may underlie his later activism. Since Makino "disliked [the leaders of the Japanese community in Hawai'i] becoming obedient toward the Haole ruling classes and Haole planters", he founded the Hochi to be "a supporter of the Japanese laborer" (Shiramizu 1986: 8). Ogawa (1978: 145) describes the Hochi as "a newspaper which became a source of frank and sometimes overly blunt opinions ... an aggrresive newspaper [which took] the lead on many community issues."
These quotations would lead one to believe that the Hochi spoke with one voice -- a 'local' voice fighting for the Japanese community in Hawai'i. Yet the Hochi had multiple voices from its inception. The 1 September 1913 issue, the first issue on microfilm in Hamilton Library, already has all three voices -- Japanese, American, and local....
Originally written 97.5.14; converted to HTML and revised 02.12.7
[The full text of the article is available at <http://www.amritas.com/hochi.htm>.] ***** -- Yoshie
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