[lbo-talk] JCP as a Profitable Publishing Powerhouse

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Apr 24 00:01:14 PDT 2004


Brad wrote:


>an INDEPENDENT, ORGANIZED left party with fairly extensive
>influence, not implicated in maintenance of the ruling regime (I'd
>agree with Perelman's characterization of the JCP as 'left
>social-democratic', but that is beside the point being made here).

***** Publications

The JCP recognizes the power of propaganda and at the same time, surprisingly, is able to make a nice living from it. The party maintains a truly profitable big-business publishing empire, leading some to refer facetiously to the JCP as "The Yoyogi Newspaper Publishing Company, Limited" (Yoyogi being the Tokyo district of the JCP's headquarters). This publishing business practically maintains the party by providing it with operating funds and makes it possible for the JCP to be independent of special interest groups.

The most important party publication -- its financial lifeline as well as a measure of its success in Japanese society -- is the party organ Akahata (Red Flag), which comes out in a daily edition (and has since October 1945) and weekly Sunday edition (since March 1959). Three times a month, the party organ also produces Akahata Shashin Nyusu, an illustrated wall newspaper for propaganda and advertising purposes, as well as a monthly reduced-size bound edition for libraries and a monthly in Braille. Akahata maintains permanent correspondents in Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, Mexico City, Manila, and New Delhi. As of 1999, there were correspondents in twelve countries, including China for the first time in thirty years. In Japan, Akahata employs some 13,000 correspondents, as well as more than 50,000 unpaid delivery workers.

Combined circulation figures of the daily and Sunday editions of Akahata are used by the party as both a measure of its success and a perennial goal. For some years now, the party's goal has been to achieve an Akahata readership of four million. The figure reported at the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1980 was over 3.5 million, the highest number ever claimed by party authorities. Since then, the circulation has declined by more than one million (or a third) to just over 2.3 million, although there are artificial increases before each party congress when members try to sign up as many relatives, neighbors, coworkers, and friends as they can. Nonetheless, Akahata easily surpasses the circulation of party newspapers of other nonruling Communist parties. In fact, Miyamoto bragged that his colleagues in the French and Italian Communist parties were astounded when they learned about Akahata's readership of three million.

In addition to Akahata, the party publishes Zen'ei, an authoritative theoretical monthly (since February 1946); magazines for women, students, and elementary- and intermediate-level party members; an illustrated semi-monthly for potential party members; organs of the party's youth, women's, and students' affiliates; a children's weekly; monthlies for cadres in the labor union movement and for young workers; an economic theory monthly; and the organ of the Democratic Literary League, Minshu Bungaku. The circulation of these periodicals ranges from 4,000 to 250,000, and total circulation figures, excluding Akahata, are about a million copies. At the height of its publishing activity in the mid-1980s, the party also put out several other journals, among them Bunka Hyoron, a general cultural monthly; Sekai Seiji, a biweekly on international affairs; Kurashi to Seiji, a monthly report on parliamentary affairs that was revived in December 1998 after the party's electoral successes under the new title Gikai to Jichitai (The Diet and Local Government).

The Central Committee Publishing Bureau also puts out millions of pamphlets, especially during elections, as well as a wide range of books. To publicize the work of the party abroad, the JCP established a subsidiary company, the Japan Press Service, that since November 1956 has continuously put out the Japan Press Weekly, a 20-40 page press release that routinely provides material in English from Akahata and other party publications; and a number of books (works by Miyamoto, Fuwa, and others, as well as proceedings of party congresses and other important party documents) in English and other European languages. Since 1993, the Japan Press Service also publishes a monthly 4-8 page newsletter entitled Dateline Tokyo: for people-to-people exchange, and since 1998, the JPS Daily News Service, which is also available in an email version. In addition, the JCP headquarters issues from time to time the Bulletin: Information for Abroad (in English, Spanish, and other languages) containing translations of important party documents, statements, editorials, speeches, and the like.

(Peter Berton, "The Japanese Communist Party and Its Transformations," JPRI Working Paper No. 67, May 2000, <http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp67.html> ***** -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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