The Suppression of Tatsuzō Ishikawa's Ikiteiru-heitai: Censorship in the 1930s

Abstract

In 1938 Tatsuzō Ishikawa went to Nanjing as a correspondent of the Chūou-kōron-sha Publishing Company to cover the Japanese army's occupation of the city by having interviews with the soldiers of the 33rd infantry regiment of the 16th division in Kyoto. Just before he arrived in Nanjing, mass murder and rape were committed there by the Japanese troops in the midst of the fierce battle. The incident is later called the Nanjing Massacre. Back in Japan Ishikawa described what happened there in Ikiteiru-heitai. The novel was soon banned and he was arrested under the Newspaper Law for the violation of public order. This paper will focus on the suppression of Ikiteiru-heitai to have an overview of censorship in the late 1930s when the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted.