Radio Towers

Abstract

Between 1930 and 1943 over 400 public radio receiver installations were erected by Japan’s national broadcaster in public parks around Japan. They were intended to bring radio broadcasting, during this period the voice of the state, to a wider audience and to play a part in Japan’s home-front mobilisation efforts. The majority of installations seem to have been destroyed during or shortly after World War Two but roughly 40 are known to be extant, these have yet to receive systematic attention from either Japanese or foreign academics, they thus offer a fresh focus for research into the relationships between the interwar Japanese state and the listening publics. This paper aims primarily to draw attention to the existence of these little—known objects, it also offers a sketch of the media landscape into which they emerged, and covers two significant contemporary social developments—the growth of coordinated mass sport and exercise, and the ‘year 2600’ celebrations of 1940—which contributed to the spread of radio towers.

KEYWORDS:

• Radio towers
• radio broadcasting
• Japan
• NHK
• interwar period

Introduction

On the 10 November 1940 the Japanese Empire was united in celebrating the 2600th year since its (mythical) foundation, made one in time, space and mind through mass media such as newspapers and radio. Ruoff takes this event as the focus for his book Imperial Japan at its Zenith, and zenith it turned out to be. Less than five years later the Japanese people gathered around their radios to hear their emperor announce defeat and unconditional surrender.¹ Japan was to become occupied territory. By December, former Prime Minister Konoe, who had read the Imperial Rescript at the ‘Year 2600’ celebrations, was dead, having committed suicide.

In the days after the surrender in August 1945, the air around the Tokyo headquarters of NHK (Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation), the state broadcaster, was clogged with black smoke as documents, records and sound recording discs were destroyed and burned.² Dower notes, ‘military officers and civilian bureaucrats throughout the country threw themselves frenetically into the task of destroying their files’ aiming to ‘obscure their wartime deeds’.³ This is relevant here for two reasons; firstly, the ‘radio towers’ discussed here are a product of the interwar years for which records are scarce, secondly, because those that escaped this destructive frenzy remain as reminders of a period that is even now difficult to see, still obscured by the black smoke of those bureaucratic bonfires.

The ‘radio towers’ in question in this paper are probably unfamiliar to most readers (whether Japanese or otherwise), it is best therefore to start with a straightforward description, before looking back over the period in which radio towers appeared, spread, and largely vanished. ‘Radio towers’ (see example in Figure 1) are public radio receivers typically mounted in a 2–3 m tall concrete or wooden ‘tower’ in a public place, often a park.⁴ Ultimately about 450⁵ were erected around Japan between 1930 and the end of the Second World War. The overwhelming majority are now lost, many no doubt destroyed in the Allied bombing which shattered Japan’s urban landscape, but roughly 40 are known to have survived. They are a now rare material reminder of the ephemeral practices of early radio listening, and importantly they are a public resource available to anyone with an interest in interwar Japan’s mass media, or involved in teaching the social history of the period. They are however largely ignored, their history and purpose unknown to the majority of people who encounter them.

FIGURE 1 Radio tower in Komatsubara Park (Kyoto City)

A summary of relevant English-language academic work on radio towers is straightforward; to the author’s knowledge there is a single paper dealing specifically with radio towers,⁶ though their existence is nodded at occasionally in the few works of a more general nature dealing with the period.⁷ In Japanese as well there has been very little systematic academic attention paid to radio towers, though some journalistic,⁸ anecdotal⁹ and popular material¹⁰ does exist. A recent exception is the work of Hitomi Sachiko¹¹ at Kindai University (Osaka) who has produced the first comprehensive, rationalised survey of the known information and extant examples of radio towers.¹² This work is a vital starting point for further scholarship and hopefully will lead to a wider interest in these objects and the history of their creators and users. Our main primary source is the series of Radio Yearbooks issued by NHK between 1931 and 1943,¹³ these offer yearly summaries of NHK’s thinking on a broad variety of matters, list the growing number of radio tower installations, and occasionally contain photographs of examples that are now lost.

Studies of early radio in Japan tend to be drawn, understandably, to one of two ‘attractors’; at one end is the conception and creation of NHK (1924-1926), at the other end the Pacific War (1941-1945); the years in between, those of the slow and rather undramatic process of radio’s maturation and shift from novelty to banality have attracted less attention. The works of Takeyama Akiko, doyenne of early radio studies in Japan, concentrate primarily on the period 1941-1945 and focus in particular on programme content and the period as seen through the records of NHK.¹⁴ The coverage of studies of ‘memory’ also tends naturally to be defined by the ‘memorableness’ of certain events, in this period we have accounts of ‘hearing when the Pacific War started’ with the attack on Pearl Harbour¹⁵ and, at the other end, of ‘hearing when the war was over’ with the Emperor’s radio address of August 1945.¹⁶ The humdrum experience of listening to ‘not particularly memorable’ quotidian radio content has left less of a record than that of momentous events and is difficult to perceive clearly. In general, listeners seem to have recorded the emotional impact of hearing something on the radio rather than the circumstances of the hearing. Niigata farmer Nishiyama Kōichi’s diary records hearing the emperor’s announcement of the surrender on the radio, unfortunately the reception was poor and he was unable to hear well; in the afternoon he worked on fixing a door, it was only after hearing the 5pm radio bulletin he understood clearly what had happened, he notes ‘the household was thrown into the depths of despair’.¹⁷

In an attempt to contribute to understanding early radio listening in Japan and to recovery of the memory of the fascinating and forgotten urban presence of radio towers, this paper offers a short description of the social and media landscape into which they appeared, briefly documents their growth and spread and describes several examples. As it is best to establish exactly what kind of object, in what kind of setting, is under discussion we start by looking at some extant towers. The examples mentioned below are all to be found in the Kyoto City area but are typical of towers found elsewhere.¹⁸

The radio tower shown in Figure 1 is positioned in a corner of this smallish public park located in a suburban area of northwest Kyoto City; it is fairly typical in its design and size; primarily constructed from reinforced concrete with a roughly square plan, flared towards the base, and standing 2.7 m tall. Near the top it has openings in all four faces, behind which the original speakers would have been installed, it is surmounted by a gently curving gable roof. Like the park it stands in, it is fairly run down, encroaching tree roots have already started to undermine the dais on which it stands. On the front face is a plaque inscribed with a four-character idiom along the lines of mens sana in corpore sano (‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’), which might seem a somewhat incongruous message to put on a public radio until one considers the contemporary connection between radio and sport and exercise (see section Sport, Exercise and Radio below). The plaque also tells us when the tower was put in place, indicating that it was erected as part of the commemorative events connected with the ‘Year 2600’ festivities of 1940 (see section Events of 1940 below). As well as the radio tower, this park is also home to two other contemporary features; a fujidana wisteria trellis, providing a covering shade of foliage for the seating below, and a concrete flagpole stand. These three elements often co-occur in these small urban interwar parks. Some radio towers were designed to perform a dual function, housing a radio receiver and acting as support for a flagpole. The example shown in Figure 2 has a semi-circular indentation running the length of its rear face, likely for a flagpole, it embodies the contemporary link between mass, public radio listening and the nation, in this case manifested in the national flag.

FIGURE 2 Murasakinoyanagi Park (Kyoto City) radio tower, embedded in a contemporary seating area at the east end of the park

Erected in 1941, the Murasakinoyanagi Park tower is an example of a more ‘modern’ style and is part of an integrated setting at the eastern end of a long narrow park in the north of Kyoto City. It is the centrepiece of a concrete seating area made up of a raised platform with built-in benches along three sides. These are all decorated with the parallel linear grooved patterns common in the Japanese art deco of this period. The majority of towers were constructed during two brief waves (see Figure 3), the section below (Radio and the Nation) looks at two sets of circumstances that usefully characterise the ‘state-radio-nation’ nexus in these two periods.

FIGURE 3 Number of radio towers constructed in years 1930–1941. Source: Hitomi, 189

‘Radio towers’ are perhaps a footnote¹⁹ in the early history of the mass media in Japan but an interesting and informative one nonetheless. They were erected on the initiative of Japan’s national broadcaster, NHK; the following section offers some brief background to the context of NHK’s creation and its position in the interwar Japanese state.

NHK is Born into an Unsettled Society

NHK came into existence in the period 1924–1926, as the notorious Peace Preservation Law (Chian-iji-hō)—‘one of the chief symbols of police repression’²⁰ in interwar Japan—was passing through the Japanese Diet. The years leading up to both these events had contributed to an atmosphere, if not of panic, then of disquiet in Japan; social problems seemed to herald a breakdown in society, a Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922 (its leaders were soon arrested), in December 1923 an attempt was made on the life of the prince regent (later Emperor Hirohito), and regular demonstrations supporting the expansion of suffrage made popular restiveness visible. The term ‘thought problem’ (shisō mondai) is a key point of reference for this period; the problems that seemed to dog Japanese society, it was believed, emerged from the ‘wrong thoughts’ (often foreign imports such as communism) of certain people and groups within it, the solution therefore was to control the spread of these ‘wrong thoughts’ and, through careful guidance, to ensure the victory of ‘correct thought’; the Peace Preservation Law was used to restrain and restrict public debate, to suppress the former, and radio was a useful new tool for the promotion of the latter. It is also useful to bear in mind Mitchell’s characterisation of the public-private relationship when discussing the era into which broadcasting was born in Japan:

[T]he Meiji-Taisho [1868–1925] state, unlike some Western nations, did not clearly separate the private and public domains. There was never a serious effort to divide matters of private morality and thought from the affairs of the collective body.²¹

A national scale radio broadcaster under private control and insulated from state influence, along American lines, was verging on inconceivable to those charged with its creation. If anything, the potential for the state to reach into the homes of listeners through radio may have seemed an apt and entirely natural embodiment of the unity of ‘the private and public domains’.

NHK was established as a corporate juridical person (shadan hōjin) under the control of the Ministry of Communications (Teishin-sho) in 1926. In the Japan of the recent Peace Preservation Law it was ‘natural’ (tōzen) that NHK should be placed under close state supervision.²² The US-style commercial model having been specifically excluded as being of little benefit to listeners, and a for-profit structure company having been explicitly rejected by newly appointed Communications Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi²³—who stressed the ‘publicness’ (kōekisei) of radio and acted to prevent it becoming a ‘means for profit’ (eiri no shudan)²⁴—it was funded primarily through listener subscriptions. Based on an initial projection of the number of probable subscribers, the cost of a monthly license when regular broadcasts began was set at ¥2 in Tokyo and Nagoya, and ¥1.5 in Osaka. However, as the number of applications for licenses exceeded initial predictions, license fees rapidly fell, to ¥1 in January 1926, then to ¥0.75 in April 1932. By 1935 the cost of a license had fallen to just a quarter of its original price and cost ¥0.5.²⁵ For comparison, at this time a visit to a cinema showing western films in one of Tokyo’s entertainment districts would have cost ¥0.08 (or 8 sen) for children and ¥0.15 for adults.²⁶ While initial expectations were surpassed, it soon became clear that expanding radio listening in Japan beyond committed radio fans would not be entirely straightforward. Japan too felt the effects of the worldwide economic slowdown from 1929.²⁷ However, at the start of the 1930s a variety of circumstances converged in Japan—primarily as a result of changes in its relationships with its neighbours—to make the expansion of radio listening a national priority, radio towers were to be one answer to the question of how to achieve this end.

Radio and the Nation

International events and changes in domestic society in interwar Japan both yielded compelling radio content, and provided the impetus for additional efforts to expand listenership; firstly, the role of exercise and sports broadcasting in the decade or so from 1930, secondly, the commemorative events arranged around the ‘Year 2600’ celebrations in 1940, the symbolic ‘zenith’ of interwar Japanese national feeling. Both provided a focus for content consistent with the Japanese state’s various interrelated domestic and overseas projects.

Unlike the other mass media available during the 1930s (newspapers, magazines, film) citizen’s participation in radio consumption required more than just the few sen²⁸ to enter a cinema or purchase a magazine, the acquisition of a radio receiver was a major decision as receivers were far from cheap, likewise they required regular maintenance and attention, and either batteries or a wired electricity supply, not available to everyone at this time. In 1925 a crystal radio set-up could cost in the region of ¥30 (roughly the starting monthly income for a Tokyo-based male primary school teacher), a set using domestically produced valves might cost ¥1-200 and an imported superheterodyne set anything up to ¥1500.²⁹ A 1932 listener survey³⁰ listed reasons given by people who had ‘discontinued’ (haishi) their NHK contracts; the most common was the somewhat vague ‘Domestic reasons’, but this was followed by ‘Equipment breakdown’.³¹ Over time, prices fluctuated depending on the supply of raw materials, the state of domestic manufacturing and the feasibility of imports. In 1935 the National People’s Receiver³² Model K-1 (3 valve pentode) cost ¥27,³³ less than a crystal set 10 years earlier.³⁴ A December 1940 official gazette lists manufacturer, wholesale and retail prices for 25 types of radio sets; at the cheaper end a 3-valve magnetic set cost ¥26.7, the state-approved Broadcast Station type (hōsō-kyoku-gata) Model 11, ¥30.7 and at the luxury end, a 5-valve dynamic set at ¥105.³⁵ Radio listening thus initially required an active and sustained effort to promote, this was undertaken primarily by NHK but often at the behest of elements in government, it played out in symbiosis with national events and movements such as those described below.

The resulting number of total radio subscriptions—seen by NHK as a barometer of its organisational health—were continually affected not just by the availability and affordability of technology but also by the progress of the national military project; events at the Marco Polo Bridge, which started the Second Sino-Japanese War, in July 1937 were followed by a few months of increased applications for licenses, which then saw a drop as the results of the ‘incident’ percolated through to the real economy and parts for radio receivers, especially vacuum tubes, became scarcer.³⁶ Similarly, at the other end of the period under consideration, June to November 1940 subscriptions averaged 90–100 thousand per month; in December 1940, the month of the attack on Pearl Harbour, this number shot up to 173 thousand, the following month saw NHK gain a further 157 thousand subscribers. At the end of 1941, as the Pacific War started, NHK had 6.5 million subscribers;³⁷ the total population of the home islands of Japan at this time was just under 72 million in roughly 14 million households.³⁸ Thus, while Japan lagged behind other countries in terms of per capita radio sets, household penetration had reached over 40%. The average household in this period consisted of roughly five people, radio broadcasts in the home, were reaching potentially 30 million people. However, public radios such as ‘radio towers’ greatly extended that reach.

Sport, Exercise and Radio

Just as the rapid uptake of television in Japan after the Second World War was associated with the consumption of live sport, baseball and wrestling in particular,³⁹ widespread radio listening was also in part the result of Japanese listeners’ enthusiasm for sport and exercise. This section looks briefly at the increasingly important role of sport (as an appurtenance of the modern state) and exercise during this period, in particular the relationship between radio the national exercise programme known as rajio taisō (radio callisthenics).

Developments in Japan echoed a worldwide change which increasingly saw connections between sporting achievement and ‘the nation’; athletes at the 1908 Olympic Games competed as part of national teams rather than individuals and ‘after 1908 international sporting competitions became a standard of national rank for competing countries’;⁴⁰ the holding of the first FIFA World Cup in 1930 in Uruguay, and the home team’s victory, were vital to the nation’s image. Likewise, Mussolini’s sponsorship of sports in Italy and their dominance at the World Cup of 1934. Japan too was part of this global wave of national sporting effort, making its first significant appearance on the world stage during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games:

Despite the U.S. government’s hands-off stance, other countries injected the [1932] Olympics with political significance, perhaps none more so than Japan. Intent on making a strong showing at the ‘32 Games, Japan sent the largest foreign team, at nearly 130 athletes. The effort was part of a drive by the Japanese government to increase the country’s international standing through victories in international sports.⁴¹

After Germany’s highly politicised hosting of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Tokyo was to host the 1940 Summer Olympics—in what surely would have been an unrestrained celebration of national importance—but the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 led to the Japanese government forfeiting the right to hold the games.⁴²

On the domestic front, Japan took baseball to its heart; live commentary on the ‘Six University League’⁴³ matches was a regular radio highlight, the national schools baseball championship (established in 1915 and sponsored by the Asahi newspaper) was broadcast live by NHK from 1927.⁴⁴ In 1933 NHK broadcast live baseball commentary on over 100 days, in 1935, the pre-war peak for sports broadcasts (mainly baseball, sumo and swimming), there were about 220 programmes.⁴⁵ Listeners seem to have gathered at public radios to listen to these events in large numbers; in 1933 and 1934 NHK set up a large scoreboard next to the Maruyama Park (Kyoto) radio tower to help listeners follow the games.⁴⁶ For those without a radio set at home, the local cafe or radio store might be another place where they could follow live matches; ahead of the second match in the Keio-Waseda varsity series in 1938 one radio shop owner looked forward to the crowd his gaitō rajio⁴⁷ would attract, making the point that listening as a group in a shared place, such as the street in front of his store, might be preferable to listening at home for some listeners, allowing them to really ‘get in the mood’ (ki ga deru).⁴⁸

The morning radio callisthenics (rajio taisō) warm-up programme (a now characteristically Japanese activity) was originally conceived as one of many events celebrating the accession of Emperor Hirohito in Autumn 1928. The programme was first broadcast on 11 February 1929 to coincide with that year’s National Foundation Day (Kigen-setsu). The simple and not overly strenuous exercises—an instructor providing directions over rhythmical music—proved popular with radio listeners and by the time of the LA Olympics in 1932, nationwide participation⁴⁹ in the annual month-long summer ‘Radio Callisthenics Meet’, was, over the course of the month, close to 26 million people, a third of the population of Japan’s home islands.⁵⁰ Policy dealing with rajio taisō was, until 1938, under the control of the Ministry of Education; in 1932 Minister Hatoyama Ichiro suggested that this coordinated countrywide participation created a ‘national moment’ where the ‘people of Japan were united in mind and body’, and linking this to a national festival day made this a patriotic opportunity and a national ritual.⁵¹

Sport had become a focus for national pride, participation in sport and exercise had become a national priority⁵²; pragmatically, as a way to ensure a supply of healthy workers and soldiers, and politically, because of the contemporary concern with the ‘thought problem’ and that an ‘unhealthy body’ could easily be prey to ‘unhealthy thoughts’ (ie. Communism).⁵³ Radio offered opportunities for all to connect with national and international sporting events and to participate locally in simultaneous, coordinated, nation-wide physical activity. Mass coordinated exercise came to play a part in national celebrations like the ‘Year 2600’ events described below; on 12 May 1940 the Sixth Annual Japan Exercise Convention Central Rally (Dai-rokkai Nihon taisō taikai chūo taikai) took place in the grounds of Kashihara Jingū Shrine in Nara, a site of mythical importance in the founding of Japan. The event was broadcast nationally by NHK and the participants in Nara were joined by 29,272 participants at the Kōshien baseball stadium in Osaka, 11,359 from Nagoya, 11,981 from Kokura in Kyūshu and many more at sites across 29 of Japan’s prefectures. Total simultaneous participation may have been in the region of 2 million people.⁵⁴ Evidence for the role of radio towers in this national participation is circumstantial—they were commonly placed overlooking an area in a park suitable for collective exercise, the mens sana in corpore sano plaque mentioned above, the recent revivals focussed on morning rajio taisō groups—but it seems safe to assume that they played a role for those many Japanese without a radio at home.

Events of 1940: Kigen 2600

Few new radio towers were erected during the mid-1930s, the rapid increase seen after 1938 is in part due to the perceived significance of mass participation in the state events marking the 2600th year since the founding of the Imperial line, thus of Japan itself.⁵⁵ The year 1940AD was the year 2600 in the kigen calendar, which counts from the year of the mythical enthronement of Japan’s first emperor, Jimmu, 660BCE. The system had been used somewhat inconsistently in certain official documents since the late c19 but in wartime it took on a new significance. Seniority is important in Japanese society, and this was an opportunity to mark Japan’s international status as a senior nation; the message being that whereas ‘the West’ was merely in its 1940th year, Japan had already existed for a good six centuries longer and should be respected accordingly.

It was well understood that radio was now an important tool for mass mobilisation and the desire to have truly national and unified mass participation in the ‘Year 2600’ events ensured that radio, with its nation-spanning liveness, was bound to have a role. Although events were held throughout the entire year (Hara identifies 12 instances during 1940 that required coordinated, empire-wide participation in bowing towards the imperial palace⁵⁶), the main national event was a week of festivities that started with the Year 2600 Ceremony (kigen 2600-nen shikiten) celebration on 10 November 1940. NHK had a central role as the primary means whereby listeners around the empire could be synchronised with the events taking place in the plaza in front of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

NHK’s programming on the day started at 7.01am with a series of short talks on some historical sites, this was followed a ‘Seasonal Talk’ on ‘sacred trees’ (shinboku). A series of eight records played from 9.00 included a number of marches, including Imperial Navy favourite Umi Yukaba, and songs including ‘Year 2600’ in their titles. Two more similar songs, this time aimed at children, were included in the selection starting at 9.30, along with perhaps more innocent songs entitled Chocolate and The Night-time Carpenter. From 10.00 listeners were treated to two learned talks, the first on the establishment of a new government agency, the Jingi-in (Institute of Divinities), and the second entitled ‘Eternal Year 2600’. The main event was the live broadcast from outside the Imperial Palace that started at 10.40; the arrival of the Emperor and Empress to music was followed by a deep bow (saikeirei) and the singing of the national anthem. A speech by Prime Minister Konoe was followed by the Year 2600 Anthem, a massed banzai led by the PM, another deep bow and the Imperial couple’s departure. The afternoon of the 10th and most of the 11th were taken up with similar broadcasts, bringing together speakers from the Imperial family and government, and participants (including US Ambassador Joseph Grew) in the various celebrations from around the Japanese archipelago and the empire’s overseas territories. The people of the Japanese empire—the ichi-oku (100 million)—were (as Education Minister Hatoyama had desired) ‘united in mind and body’. However, the unprecedented scale of this synchronous participation brought with it unusual problems, the Yomiuri newspaper evening edition of 11 Nov 1940 referred to two particular concerns and offered readers reassurances that the authorities had things under control; firstly, electricity suppliers had, they reported, been instructed to ensure that all areas of Japan, urban and rural, had sufficient electrical power to allow radios to be turned on, secondly, households were reassured that supplies of sake would be available, allowing them to raise a toast at the correct moment.

Figure 4(a) shows another radio tower perceptibly linked to the commemorative events of ‘Year 2600’; the plaque on the rear face (Figure 4(b)) lists the names of the tower’s sewanin (organisers) and gives the date of its construction as kigen 2601, that is, 1941.⁵⁷

FIGURE 4 (a) Radio tower in Hagi-jidō Park, Kyoto. (b) Commemorative plaque naming contributors to its construction and giving its date as kigen 2601 (1941)

NHK and Radio Towers

National monopoly broadcaster NHK’s programming (there was no practical alternative for most listeners), with its liveness and pervasiveness, had allowed these events to take place at this unprecedented national scale. NHK had been formed in 1926 by the merger of three stations which had started operations in the major urban centres, Tokyo (JOAK), Osaka (JOBK) and Nagoya (JOCK), in 1925 and by 1928 enough stations had been established to consider it a genuinely national network. Unlike the press and magazine industries, which had developed privately, a strong and obvious link between the state and NHK was taken as common sense, radio programming was thus to develop a consistency of outlook that was not evident in the press and ‘the political content of radio, still in its infancy as an opinion-forming medium, was almost completely in the hands of the government’.⁵⁸ It carried the voice of the state to the whole populace like no other medium. Writing on the importance of radio for the state in a 1939 article, Miyamoto Yoshio, a senior bureaucrat in the Ministry of Communications, made the relationship clear, describing NHK as acting as a ‘representative organ’ (daikō kikan) of the state.⁵⁹

Over its first few years, particularly because of the weak state of the economy across Japan, audience growth was slow and unsure. As can be seen from Figure 5, the period 1926–1927 was particularly trying, with hardly any increase in listenership. Events, however, improved NHK’s outlook. Japan had effectively been at war in China since September 1931 when the Mukden Incident, a pretext staged by Japanese military personnel, had led to the invasion and occupation of Manchuria, and later the creation of the ‘independent’ state of Manchukuo. This meant that for many people (especially those with family working or fighting overseas) the speed of access to information that radio provided made a license and set essential; while it had taken NHK over six years (83 months) to attract its first million license holders, the second million was reached in under half that time (38 months). Just as the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–1905 had driven cinema audiences⁶⁰ the excitement around Japanese army successes in China drove radio listenership.⁶¹ In the middle of February 1932, against the backdrop of events in Manchuria, NHK reached its first major audience milestone of one million licences, somewhat earlier than expected.⁶² The 1933 Radio Yearbook listed a number of events to mark this momentous occasion, which seemed to indicate that NHK had overcome its earlier difficulties in attracting listeners; one of the schemes listed was the construction of 50 ‘radio towers’ in major cities, these would be used to further promote radio listening and spread awareness of NHK (Figure 6).⁶³

FIGURE 5 Slow growth during early years of NHK

FIGURE 6 Change in number of NHK listening contracts, and total household penetration rates (right axis), 1924–1945

Before it became a national level initiative, the first radio tower had already been erected at Tennōji (Osaka) in August 1930, probably with the specific intention of making available live commentary from the Kōshien high-school baseball championship. NHK’s Osaka station, JOBK, took the lead in establishing radio towers and in 1931 set up two more, in Sarusawa-no-ike Park (Nara), and at Minatogawa Park (Kobe).⁶⁴ Tokyo’s first tower was set up in Sumida Park in September 1932; events to mark its opening included special, and rare, public performances by Yoshiwara geisha and musicians. The Sumida Park tower seems to have been of particular magnificence, 5 m in height and described as ‘a beautiful structure in the western style, designed by city officers to match the park surroundings.’⁶⁵ Over the next few years the number of towers slowly crept up to 60,⁶⁶ but as Japan entered into full scale warfare in China from 1937, radio—as a means of building and maintaining the state-public relationship and support for military adventures overseas—became seen as ever more important.

As the war in China continued, concerns emerged that Japan had failed to make best use of radio broadcasting and that increased efforts to promote radio listening were becoming urgently necessary. Compared to other nations at the end of 1938, take-up in Japan was still relatively low (Figure 7); in many European countries 10–20% of homes already had radios, in the US the figure was over 20%, yet Japan languished at under 5%.⁶⁷ More had to be done to bring radio to as much of the populace as possible. Miyamoto⁶⁸ lamented that while broadcasting in Japan had undertaken as its mission the improvement of Japanese culture and the ‘building of national spirit’, Japan was late in realising the full power of broadcasting. He stressed the urgency of realising the goal of ‘one household, one receiver’,⁶⁹ ensuring a radio set in every home. In retrospect, the scheme, that took place around the same time, to set up more radio towers can be seen as a temporary answer to this concern, providing broader public access to broadcasting without burdening households with the associated costs and responsibilities. By 1942 concerns around the use of radio for national purposes had reached a (perhaps somewhat hysterical) point where it was seen as a matter of national survival; the authors of the 1942 Radio Yearbook write that the fall of France in the summer of 1940 was due to its failure both to prepare its airforce and to make sure its radio broadcasts were used for the good of the state.⁷⁰

FIGURE 7 Low penetration rates for radio (sets per 100 people) in Japan at end 1938. Source: 1940 NHK Radio Yearbook, 6

The total number of listener licences, seen by NHK as the prime indicator of its institutional success, does not necessarily reflect the full real-world reach of radio broadcasts; some of the earliest adopters of radio were the new department stores, shops, cafes and restaurants for whom it was a tool to draw in customers. In addition to these places where a degree of commercial exchange was expected (buy a coffee, listen to the cafe’s radio for half an hour) there were other public places, such as railways stations and schools,⁷¹ where radio was made available, thus also putting broadcasts within the reach of those who could not purchase a receiver, and those who had no money to spend (eg. children and the poor). If we then add to this the penetration into open public spaces embodied by the spread of the ‘radio tower’ we can see that, especially for those Japanese living in urban areas, the sound of radio was potentially omnipresent.

As might be expected, the gradual penetration of radio throughout society led also to noise-related complaints; from the late 1920s letter-writers to the Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers were venting their frustrations. The letter chosen for the Asahi’s ‘Tessō’⁷² column on 23 November 1927 is sympathetic to the necessity of having radios playing in ‘downtown commercial areas’ (shitamachi no shōgyō-chiiki) but expresses annoyance at the continual music from their neighbour’s set.⁷³ Another writer in the summer of 1932, the problem of radio noise having it seems become endemic, suggests that broadcasters could help by making regular announcements reminding listeners to keep the volume as low as possible.⁷⁴ Not everyone though perceived the sounds of radio as a nuisance; one letter to ‘Tessō’ (14 October 1935) suggests that the ‘recently much improved programs’ available on the radio were being wasted as many people could not afford a set, the writer suggests (apparently unaware of the existence of radio towers) that city authorities should cooperate with NHK to install radios in parks, making programming available to a wider audience.⁷⁵ Radio was not the only factor in what seems to have been an increasingly noisy urban environment; a letter-writer in August 1939 looks forward to the increased powers given to local police to crack down on sources of noise; radios, pianos and the drums and wooden chimes favoured by some of the new religions.⁷⁶ By the summer of 1940 the issue of radio nuisance has, for some, taken a more serious turn; the writer, a worker in a ‘military factory’ who needs to be up at 5am (thus bed at 9pm), suggests that, given his neighbour’s loud radio habit and his disrupted sleep, and in the light of ‘the current emergency’, NHK should rethink their schedule and end programming earlier.⁷⁷

Radio Towers

The story of the creation and spread of radio towers is confined largely to the decade between 1932 and 1942, the earlier part of this period is comparatively well-documented, unsurprisingly the latter end, the effective demise of the radio tower, is more or less lost, partly because radio towers seemingly ceased to be noteworthy and partly due to the confusion of war. The widespread destruction of records and documentation that took place in the aftermath of surrender has had the effect of acutely restricting available sources of information; those which have survived have done so primarily it seems because they were published and distributed in large numbers (eg. NHK’s yearbooks). A search of relevant Kyoto City archives for the years between 1930 and 1945 uncovered just two documents connected to Kyoto City’s numerous radio towers.⁷⁸ If Kyoto City, which was left largely unscathed by Allied bombing, yields such limited information, we should not be surprised that records in places that saw sustained bombing yield nothing relevant. Thus, we have little choice but to perceive this period through institutional eyes; our primary source is the bureaucratic view of the NHK radio yearbooks and sadly we currently know little about how listeners used the radio towers, or indeed, if they used them. Newspaper reports do offer occasional glimpses of radio listening but naturally these focus on ‘the newsworthy’ rather than ‘everyday’ usage.

As mentioned previously, the first radio tower was set up in Tennōji, Osaka in 1930 (there are several extant examples left around the Osaka City area but this is now lost), the first few towers and the circumstances of their subsequent spread around the nation were dutifully documented in NHK’s yearbooks, contrastingly the final years of radio tower construction, when it seems they had become commonplace enough not to deserve detailed attention any more, had perhaps become part of the ‘boring’ informational infrastructure, are difficult to grasp from the existing documents; in the 1942 and 1943 NHK yearbooks, radio towers are grouped together with public receivers at railway stations, responsibility for some of the towers having been handed over to regional rail companies. The 1943 yearbook, the final one issued before NHK’s reorganisation after WW2, lists a total of 283⁷⁹ installations, this would seem to indicate a drop from the previous year’s 346⁸⁰ but it is unclear whether the counting method is consistent. Hitomi’s very thorough survey lists 465 ‘establishments’ (setchi)⁸¹ but, apart from the very few which are documented as having been removed, we do not know until when any particular tower might have lasted. It should also be noted that the yearbooks’ lists do not seem to be exhaustive, Hitomi lists 14 extant radio towers which do not appear in the yearbook lists.⁸² The 1943 yearbook hints at the metals shortages that were beginning to mean that the construction of radio receivers was becoming more difficult. By the time the Pacific War entered its third year, requisitioning meant that many of the radios were removed from their towers for their parts and metal content, making many radio towers effectively obsolete even before they were destroyed or removed post-war (Table 1).

TABLE 1 Yearly changes in the number of radio towers in Japan’s regions listed in NHK yearbooks (column headings indicate yearbook year)

Area	1940	1941	1942
Tokyo	13	21	27
Osaka	17	61	80
Nagoya	4	4	74
Hiroshima	6	43	31
Kumamoto	8	38	55
Sendai	4	32	43
Sapporo	8	29	36
Total	60	228	346

In general, based on the evidence of the remaining examples, radio towers can, in terms of their aesthetics, very roughly be divided into two main types; ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. The traditional type (e.g. Figures 1 and 8) can often be very similar in design to the tōrō stone lanterns commonly seen around temple grounds and graveyards. Radio towers often share the square ground plan and the same five-fold structure (see Figure 9) with the radio receiver housed in the ‘pillar’ and speakers in the ‘lantern’.

FIGURE 8 Maruyama Park radio tower, 1932, Kyoto

FIGURE 9 Five-fold structure of tōrō & ‘traditional-style’ radio tower

The ‘modern’ type is rather more diverse design-wise but often echoes art deco modernistic trends of the 1930s (e.g. Figures 2 and 4(a)). It seems as though the traditional type has survived better than the modern, Ichiman⁸³ suggests this may be because of their resemblance to tōrō lanterns and perhaps the assumption that they have some kind of religious association and are thus best treated with respect or at least left alone.

NHK’s initial proposal for its radio tower project included central approval of designs and locations and a plan to select 10 approved designs.⁸⁴ In practice, towers seem to have been designed very locally, some the result of the individual efforts of local notables, they are thus very diverse in terms of construction and shape; alongside the two types above there is also a significant number of extant examples which can only be classified as ‘other’; the many photographs collected by Ichiman Kōhei⁸⁵ give an idea of this diversity. Stylistically, the Hagi-jidō Park radio tower (1941, Figure 4(a)) seems to fall into the ‘other’ category; while sharing a similar geometric-linear design it is somewhat unusual in that it has a definite front and back which do not seem to be related to its position in the park, being located more or less in the centre. While NHK may have had started out with the idea of retaining control over what radio towers looked like, local considerations were given precedence, sometimes radio towers seem to have often been considered one element in a larger design, for instance the Murasakinoyanagi Park seating area (see Figure 2), or the ‘entertainment complex’ (radio tower, stage/bandstand, fountain) found in Funaokayama Park (Kyoto). The actual equipment—receiver, speakers etc—installed within the radio towers seems to have varied considerably, some being provided by NHK and some by local individuals or groups. The yearbooks describe some radio towers as having a ‘switch’ which when pushed turned on the equipment for a certain period of time.⁸⁶ The example shown in Figure 8 has such as switch (actually more of a ‘button’), visible below the plaque. The mode of operation of ‘non-switch’ radio towers is unknown, and how listeners actually used the towers, or indeed if they used them or not, is currently difficult to assess. Even if radios (or radio towers) were left on continuously (which seems unlikely given the fragility of valve sets, the fact that many sets during this period were battery powered, and the occasionally unpredictable nature of wired electricity supplies) there would have been lengthy periods of silence or static noise; while NHK’s broadcasting schedule varied somewhat from station to station, programming was far from continuous. As the first radio towers were being erected a typical day’s listening looked something like the example shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Start times of programmes on 12 August 1930, end times are not indicated. Source: Yomiuri Rajio-ban [Yomiuri Radio Newspaper], 1 (information in square brackets added by author)

Block	Time	Programme
Early morning	0600	Radio Callisthenics (live from Osaka)
	0620	Summer German Language Course, part 20 (live from Osaka)
	0700	English Language Conversation Course, part 8
Mid-morning	0900	Weather
	0910	Prices of daily goods.
		Today’s menu: Abalone sauce
	1030	Housewife’s Summer Course: Women’s Civic Education, part 2
Midday	1200	Time signal
	1205	Vocal recital with wind instruments, Sakurai Kyo and Tokyo Radio Orchestra, Spanish Serenade (B.Glazunov)
	1240	News from Jiji Shinpō-sha [Jiji news agency]. Public Announcements.
	1540	Weather
Evening	1745	Announcements for job-seekers
	1800	Children’s Time (Story: Hotoke no Sakichi-san, from Nagoya.)
	1830	Language Course, ‘Writing’ (part 2)
	1900	News. Administrative Announcements. Hōchi Newspaper.
	1915	Hobbies Lecture: ‘The Appeal of the Highlands’
	2000	Nagauta[-style traditional songs]
	2030	Jiuta[-style traditional songs]
	2100	Drama: ‘Ningen banji kane no yo no naka’ [kabuki recital]
	2140	Time signal. Weather reports

The broadcast day can be separated into early and mid-morning, midday, and evening blocks, with little programming between 1pm and 5.45pm. However, only the start times of items are listed so there may also have been smaller gaps between the programmes in the blocks, it seems unlikely that the instructions for abalone sauce could have filled an hour of airtime. However, without further investigation into everyday media consumption in 1930s Japan it is difficult to say anything about the role of radio towers in public listening with any great certitude.

Radio Towers: A Focus for Further Research

Over the last 15 years or so radio towers have begun to receive renewed attention; several have been renovated and have re-entered service as a focus for morning rajio taisō enthusiasts,⁸⁷ some have also been designated ‘cultural properties’,⁸⁸ which offers them a degree of recognition and improves their chances of survival, it also holds out the possibility that they might become a subject for further systematic academic investigation. Radio towers offer a concrete (literally and figuratively), and publicly available, reminder of a formative period of Japan’s modern history; the 1930s saw the victory of mass consumerism, a gradual closing off of the public sphere as the state and the private were squeezed ever closer, and the penetration of a militaristic ideology into many, if not all, aspects of Japanese citizens’ daily lives. An ideology that was to lead to disaster, occupation, and ultimately to a new constitution and the remodelling of much of Japan’s political and social order.

The radio tower is, as a focus for academic work, almost entirely new ground, it thus offers opportunities to ask a new set of questions and to shift the focus of early radio studies away from institutions such as NHK and the Ministry of Communications towards the daily experiences of ordinary listeners. This will require a shift in attention away from the remaining formally published records toward the personal and informal, the intimate records of those who may have listened, and the unpublished records of relevant organisations such as the local governments and neighbourhood associations that oversaw the parks and plazas where radio towers were erected, and from which they were later removed. If the newspaper letters mentioned above offer a snapshot of public opinion, we might expect the proposal to place a radio tower in a local park to have aroused debate; the researcher’s problem is that these records, if they exist, are scattered across Japan’s hundreds of local government areas. The study of radio towers, as yet in its very early stages, potentially has much to contribute to the understanding of interwar Japanese society in that radio towers were a very material intrusion of the state into the hybrid realm of publicly practised private leisure activities.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Koga-Browes

Scott Koga-Browes, College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto 603-8577, Japan. E-mail: [email protected] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9963-3830

Notes

1 Akiyama, Kimi wa gyokuon hōsō wo kiita ka? Rajio to sensō.

2 Omori, “Sensō to rajio (dai ikkai) kokusakukteki kōka,” 2.

3 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 39.

4 For speakers of Japanese, these are ‘rajio-tō’, however, confusingly, this word may also be used to refer to the large metal towers used to mount broadcasting antennas, also referred to as tettō (steel towers).

5 Figures from Hitomi, “Rajio-to ni tsuite no oboegaki” which summarises and rationalises data from the NHK Radio Yearbooks.

6 With the exception of this author’s other paper, focussing on Kyoto City; see Koga-Browes, “Kyoto City’s.”

7 E.g. Kasza, Mass Media in Japan.

8 E.g. Omori, “Furetai: Kochira nyūsu kenkyū-shitsu”; Katsura, “‘Radio Towers’ Role in Distant Past.”

9 Eg. Yoshii, “Reminiscences of a Historian”; Yoshii, “‘Radio Towers’ Still Remain in Suwayama.”

10 E.g. Ichiman, Rajio-tō Daihyakka (first edition 2014, expanded somewhat in 2017); Matsumoto, Rajio-tō wa Shitte-iru.

11 Japanese names appear surname first throughout.

12 Hitomi, “Rajio-tō ni tsuite.”

13 No Yearbook was published in 1939.

14 Takeyama, “Hōsō-kaishi kara 10-nenkan, ukete no rajio-kan”; Shiryō ga kataru taiheiyō-sensō-ka no hōsō; Taiheiyō-sensō-ka: Sono toki rajio wa; Sensō to Hosō.

15 Cook, Japan at War, 49, 79.

16 Ibid., 418.

17 Tsuchida, Nikki ni yomu, 206.

18 For details of Kyoto’s extant radio towers see Koga-Browes, “Kyoto City’s.”

19 Occasionally literally so, see Kasza, Mass Media in Japan, 252 n3.

20 Mitchell, “Japan’s Peace Preservation Law,” 317.

21 Ibid.,322.

22 NHK, 20seiki, 41.

23 Minister for Communications (Teishin daijin), June 1924–May 1925. Also later PM, December 1931–May 1932. Assassinated 15 May 1932 by naval officers associated with the Ketsumeidan (League of Blood) ‘secret’ society, also responsible for the killing of senior banker Inoue Junnosuke and business leader Dan Takuma earlier in the year.

24 NHK, 20seiki, 26.

25 NHK, 10-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 255.

26 Asahi Shimbun, “Dai-benkyō no eigakan [Cinemas’ big discounts]”, 1 April 1931, 7.

27 Jankowski, All Against All, Ch2.

28 1 yen = 100 sen, 1 sen=10 rin.

29 NHK, 20seiki, 39.

30 NHK, Chōshūsha tōkei yōran, 30.

31 The survey counted 126,115 responses; ‘Domestic reasons’ was cited 32,947 times and ‘Breakdown’ 17,443. After these came ‘Moved House’ (14,000), ‘Cancellation of contract’ (keiyaku kaijo, 13,191) and ‘Economic reasons’ (10,526). The total of respondents who indicated a reason related to program content (‘Dissatisfaction’, ‘Boredom/Weariness’ (kentai), ‘No interest’) was relatively small at 3754.

32 Nashonaru kokumin jushinki.

33 Nashonaru advert, Yomiuri Shimbun 19 December 1935 evening edition, 8.

34 For details of state efforts to create a certification (nintei) system for radio receivers see Yamaguchi, “‘Mimi’ no hyōjunka.”

35 Kanpō [Gazette] 4706, 6 Dec 1940, 201–2.

36 Akiyama, Kimi Wa Gyokuon Hōsō, 141.

37 NHK, 18-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 8–9.

38 1940 National Census. https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/files?page=1&toukei=00200521&tstat=000001036871.

39 Yoshimi, “Japanese Television: Early Development and Research.”

40 McIntire, “National Status.”

41 Keys, “Spreading Peace,” 177.

42 Collins, “Introduction: 1940 Tokyo and Asian Olympics,” 955.

43 Waseda, Keio, Meiji, Rikkyo, Hosei and Tokyo Imperial Universities.

44 Abe, Kiyohara, and Nakajima, “Fascism, Sport and Society,” 9.

45 Sakaue, Supōtsu to Seiji, 75.

46 Kyoto City Archives. Box: Shō 09-0083-007 / Fūchi-chiku [Nature Preservation Areas]

Item No.: 014 / Fūchi-chiku nami meishochinai genjō-henkō no ken kyōka-shimei [Permission for changes of state to place of note / nature preservation area]

Date: 26 Jul 1934.

47 Literally ‘street-corner radio’.

48 Yamaguchi, “‘Kiku shūkan’, sono jōken,” 153.

49 Mass exercise programs as a focus for national sentiment were not uncommon during this period, in particular the Bohemian ‘Sokol’ movement seems to have influenced Japan. Some of the group callisthenics still performed at school sports days are very reminiscent of those of Sokol.

50 NHK, 7-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 56–9.

51 Sakaue, Supōtsu to Seiji, 38.

52 For a survey of the diverse political uses of sport and exercise in 1920s and 1930s Japan, see Manzenreiter, “Sports, Body Control and National Discipline”. Also see Yasar, Electrified Voices, Ch4, 118–21.

53 Sakaue, Supōtsu to Seiji, 36.

54 Sasaki, Taisō no Nihon Kindai, 216–7.

55 See Ruoff, Imperial Japan.

56 Ibid., 57. See Hara, “Senchūki.”

57 The kigen dating system is seldom seen outside prewar government documents. The majority of instances of its use seem to be restricted to this period, with references to kigen 2600 and kigen 2601 apparently outnumbering any others. It is also interesting to note that Kashihara Jingu Shrine (Nara)—a site intimately connected with Japan’s founding myth—still issues commemorative stickers which use kigen dating.

58 High, The Imperial Screen, 20.

59 Miyamoto, “Kokka to Hōsō,” 12.

60 High, The Imperial Screen, 3–5.

61 Robinson, “Broadcasting in Korea,” 365.

62 NHK, 7-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 70.

63 Ibid., 71.

64 Ibid., 240.

65 Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, “Sumida Koen ni Rajio-tō,” 11.

66 NHK, 15-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 277–8.

67 Ibid., 6.

68 Miyamoto, “Kokka to Hōsō.”

69 The states-sponsored ik-ko ichi-jushinki scheme was implemented partly through a three-month long NHK’s campaign to encourage households to each buy a radio, starting in December 1938. Akiyama, Kimi wa Gyokuon Hōsō, 141.

70 NHK, 17-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 4.

71 In 1937 over half of Japan’s primary 25,771 schools had a radio; the highest proportion was in the Tokyo region where 65% of schools had a radio, the lowest Sapporo at just under 40%. NHK, 13-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 218.

72 Literally ‘iron broom’. Seems to be a Japanese hapax legomenon, the name of this column being the sole usage.

73 Asahi Shimbun, Tessō column 23 July 1927, 3.

74 Asahi Shimbun, Tessō column 23 December 1932, 3.

75 Asahi Shimbun, Tessō column 21 October 1935, 3.

76 Asahi Shimbun, Tessō column 4 August 1939, 3.

77 Yomiuri Shimbun, ‘Dokushagan’ [Reader’s Eye] Column, 31 July 1940, 2.

78 See note 28.

79 NHK, 18-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 243–5.

80 The 1942 yearbook overall total, including public receivers in railway stations, is 412.

81 Hitomi, “Rajiō-to ni tsuite no oboegaki,” 187.

82 Ibid., 184.

83 Ichiman, Rajio-tō Daihyakka, 61.

84 NHK, 7-Nen Rajio Nenkan, 660.

85 Ichiman, Rajio-tō Daihyakka. Two largely overlapping editions, 2014 and 2017.

86 Ichiman, Rajio-tō Daihyakka (2014), 30.

87 E.g. Funaokayama Park in Kyoto, Tokushima Central Park in Matsue City etc, see Ichiman, passim.

88 That in Maebashi Central Park (Maebashi City, Gunma) was registered as cultural property number 10-0247 in December 2007. The Nakazaki Park (Akashi City) tower was registered (No. 28-0556) in March 2013.