移民新聞の盛衰と同化に関する一考察 : 『羅府新報』の場合

抄録

The purpose of this investigation was to test the observation by Jano-witz (1967) that since assimilation was an ultimate goal, the success of the immigrant press could in some part be measured by its ability to destroy itself, and to see if this observation held up for the Japanese minority. The japanese minorities aer a unique ethnic group in the immigrant history of the United States. They are the only group in American history. that has experienced an internment and as their income and educational levels indicate, they are one of the most successful ethnic groups. Thus, the researcher was concerned whether the above hypothesis could be supported by the newspapers of this particluar group. This is the second of two studies conducted by the researcher on the immigrant press. The first one on a Japanese newspaper in Utah gave support to the hypothesis. This is a report of the second study centering on a Japanese daily in the Los Angeles area, the Rafu Shimpo, which is the largest Japanese newspaper in the United States and is increasing its circulation to a great degree. The decline in the immigrant press was measured by the decline in frequency of publication as well as the decline in circulation. The results of this study of the Rafu Shimpo indicate that while the frequency of publication (daily) has remained constant, the increase in circulation has not kept pace with the population increase among the Japanese minority in the Los Angeles area, suggesting the paper's role in the process of assimilation. This leads the investigator to the conclusion that the hypothesis is not rejected by the data obtained in this study. The increase in circulation of the Rafu Shimpo is due, assumably, to the fact that the new segment of the population who read Japanese is increasing, and not that the people of Japanese ancestry in the Los Angeles area are not assimilating into the mainstream of American society. Of the Japanese newspapers in the United States the Rafu Shimpo has the largest circulation and the Utah Nippo, the newspaper investigated in the first study, has the smallest. Since the hypothesis is not rejected by research on these two extremes, it is reasonable to assume that the hypothesis would be supported by research on any newspaper on the continuum between these two.