Public Opinion and the Press: Transnational Contexts of Early Media and Communication Studies in Prewar Japan, 1918-1937

As early as prewar Japan, thinkers of various intellectual proveniences had begun discussing the most important topics of contemporary media and communication studies (such as ways to define the social function of the press, journalism and the formation of public opinion). In this article, light is shed on press scholar Ono Hideo, his disciple the sociologist and propaganda researcher Koyama Eizō, Marxist philosopher Tosaka Jun and sociologist and postwar intellectual Shimizu Ikutarō. Besides introducing the different approaches of these four figures, this essay also contextualizes the early discursive space of Japanese media and communication studies within international tendencies in Germany from three perspectives of transnational intellectual history (i.e. adaptations, reciprocities and parallels).