The modern Japanese emperor system have been regarded as a structure that was maintained by government policy in the earlier studies.Consequently, these studies underestimate the mass media's function in the emperor system and ignore the mass media's autonomy in the face of the government's attempts to rule people through the 'kokutai ideology' that regards the emperor as a god.
　Howaver,in reality the prewar mass media's report of the imperial family had a great influence on the populace's views of them.The content of this report was highly secular, with pictures and articles reporting the friendly figures of the imperial household and their private lives,and was opposed to the government's attempt to rule people through the 'kokutai ideology'.
　The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the ways in which the modern Japanese mass media, in the process of its own commercialization and Japan's modernization, counteracted the government's attempt to build an absolute monarchy.I also seek to revalue the peculiar function of the mass media in the prewar emperor system by presenting research on the process whereby the mass media created the 'popular emperor system' by reporting secular information on the imperial family in response to popular need.

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