Abstract
On the occasion of the centenary of broadcasting in Japan, this series examines its history from multiple perspectives, drawing on newly discovered historical sources. This first installment focuses on the pre-war debate over radio taxation and levy on the broadcaster.
Before World War II, radio was regarded as a luxury item for a limited circle of the wealthy, which prompted moves to impose a tax on listeners. Among these, a radio taxation debate arose in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1925, during which Incorporated Association Tokyo Broadcasting Station, the predecessor of Japan Broadcasting Corporation, launched a campaign against the taxation in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and newspaper companies in Tokyo. They emphasized radio’s public nature, including its use for education. Bolstered by the growing movement, the radio taxation proposal of Ibaraki Prefecture was rejected at the prefectural assembly, and the dispute was temporarily resolved.
However, amid worsening local finances following the Showa Depression, prefectures resumed efforts to tax radio listeners, and Hokkaido became the first prefecture to enact a radio taxation bill in 1931. Although the Japan Broadcasting Corporation and the Ministry of Communications attempted to block the tax again, there was neither cooperation with newspapers partly due to competition for news reporting nor any debate aimed at mobilizing public opinion. Pressed to take action, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation avoided taxation by accepting a proposal by the Ministry of Home Affairs to pay approximately one-twelfth of its reception fee revenue as a levy to each prefecture from FY1932. Subsequently, the levy increased in proportion to reception fee revenue and remained in place for more than a decade, until the end of the war.
In the pre-war period, the introduction of the levy reflected the ambiguous status of the reception fee in the broadcasting system and the absence of explicit constraints on its use. Furthermore, the resolution process represented an attempt to settle the matter swiftly without thorough discussion on the public nature of broadcasting and the principles of its funding.
