Media collaboration with military authorities in wartime Japan, a contentious issue to this day, went far beyond trumpeting “victories”--real or otherwise--on the battlefield, a trove of recently discovered documents shows.

Records found in the corporate history materials archive of The Asahi Shimbun Co.’s Tokyo Head Office show that the newspaper company was complicit in helping to speed up the production of warplanes by making special photographic dry plates for the aircraft manufacturing process.

The photographic dry plates were produced in the basement of Asahi’s Chubu general bureau, now the Nagoya Head Office, in 1944 and 1945. 

The documents offer an important insight into relations between military authorities and the media, an expert said.

In its “The newspaper and the war” series that ran from 2007 through 2008, The Asahi Shimbun acknowledged that it very likely produced photographic dry plates to help speed up part of the process for making military aircraft.

However, it had no firm evidence to corroborate the statement other than personal records and verbal accounts passed down by some of the individuals involved.

It emerged that blueprints for the warplanes were transferred onto large plywood boards coated with emulsion that were used during Asahi’s printing process.

Seventeen items were discovered in an unsorted state in the Tokyo archives of The Asahi Shimbun’s Corporate History Editorial Center.

The materials were left by the individual who headed the company’s general affairs division during World War II and the immediate postwar period.

The editorial center found the documents after it received an inquiry from a reporter about them and mounted a hunt for the records.

One document drafted in 1944 to be sent to the munitions and finance ministries states that The Asahi Shimbun produced special photographic dry plates at its Nagoya Head Office, called the Chubu general bureau at the time.

It says the newspaper had provided the products to aircraft manufacturers since the spring of that year at the “earnest request” of the military authorities. Another document was found to contain details of production.

It also emerged that a new plant was established in Musashino, western Tokyo, for the same purpose. A statement in another document said a new company was set up in 1945 to expand production.

“Koku Kagaku Kogyo KK” (Aeronautical chemical industries KK), as the entity was called, was founded jointly by five major aircraft manufacturers, along with The Asahi Shimbun.

Three of them--The Asahi Shimbun, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Nakajima Aircraft Co.--were the primary investors in the new company, each with a stake of 215,000 yen in the capital stock of 1 million yen, according to the document.

“The newfound materials have confirmed The Asahi Shimbun initially made the products alone until the production process was taken over, midway, by Koku Kagaku Kogyo,” noted Yoshimasa Shibata, professor emeritus of history with Daito Bunka University, who is well-versed in the wartime activities of Japanese businesses.

“It has, basically speaking, been observed in many countries that news organizations collaborate with the state to a certain extent during wartime,” said Teruo Ariyama, an expert in the history of news media. “Even in wartime, however, media outlets should play their primary role, which is about covering news as an entity that is different from the state.”

The former professor with Tokyo Keizai University continued, “The materials are significant for in-depth discussions on the role of journalism.”

EARLIER REPORT CORROBORATED

The Asahi Shimbun serialized “The newspaper and the war” in its evening edition, or its morning edition in some areas, for a year from April 2007.

The series was a form of introspection, based on research and interviews, into how The Asahi Shimbun comported itself as Japan plunged headlong from the Manchurian (Mukden) Incident of 1931 to all-out entry into World War II.

In a subseries titled “The Gokoku No. 4476 plant,” the Asahi said the basement of the Nagoya Head Office likely housed a plant associated with the production of warplanes. That statement was based on accounts given, and records kept, by individuals who were familiar with the period.

The subseries said the plant produced special dry plates that used large plywood boards that measured 91 centimeters by 182 cm and depicted warplane drawings transferred onto them.

It also said the project was aimed at improving the speed and efficiency of warplane manufacturing and that the military authorities directly requested The Asahi Shimbun to cooperate by using its patented “metal photographic dry plate” technologies for making newspapers. It turned out there was another plant in Tokyo besides the one in Nagoya.

In November 1945, following Japan’s defeat, The Asahi Shimbun published a declaration titled “We will stand with the people” to acknowledge its own wartime responsibility and express remorse for failing to fulfill its role as a newspaper in telling the public the truth and strictly criticizing the government in the face of restrictions on press freedom.