Historical English-language newspapers, magazines and journals first published in Asia.
Collected and published by Brill Publishers, Leiden: Primary Sources Online
Click on the (red) header title to view the Brill website listing.
In Japan’s network of newspapers presenting the national case for expansion and leadership in Asia, the North China Standard (in Chinese, Huabei zheng bao) stands alongside the Japan Times & Mail as a real newspaper, distributing real news written by real journalists. Derided as a propaganda rag when it first began publication in December 1919, the Standard read better, and investigated and reported better quality news to a steadily growing readership in post-WW1 China and Japan. It was also a representative newspaper chosen for terminational conferences and delivered gratis to all delegates.
The North China Standard was founded in December 1919 by John Russell Kennedy (1861-1928), Anglo-Irish master architect of Japan’s modern propaganda programmes. Its most immediate functions, in the wake of propaganda failures at the Paris Conference and the Treaty of Versailles granting Japan continuing rights in Shandong Province, was to argue Japan’s claim to special rights and advisory powers in Chinese affairs, to question the ability of the Chinese to govern China, and to maintain British support for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Throughout the 1920s it served as one of Japan’s representative newspapers at international conferences, delivered gratis to all delegates.
Sticking to Japan’s propaganda mission would have made for a dull read, and the Standard made a slow start under Satoh Kenri, (known as Henry), in 1919. However, the paper improved under the British journalist, John S. Willes in the 1920s. It took the gifted and imaginative Liverpudlian (1888-1956) George Gorman to turn the North China Standard around and make it into a real newspaper. Both Satoh and
Gorman were seasoned publicists in the cause of Japan. However, Gorman’s long experience in this role convinced him that the best way to advance Japan’s cause was through polemic and debate. Under Gorman, the North China Standard served Chinese and foreign readerships intelligently and conscientiously, making this title a valuable primary source for scholars of Japan and China.
Published, except for a wartime break 1941-45, from 1864 to 1950, the North-China Daily News (in Chinese: Zilin Xibao), was the most influential foreign daily in East Asia. It constitutes the key source for the history of Western interests in China for most of China’s so-called ‘century of national humiliation’, ca.1839-1949, and of the transnational history of East Asia.
The North-China Daily News printed about 70% more news than the weekly North-China Herald, supplemented with detailed dispatches from the Outports, and around 40 per cent more textual content and 70 per cent more pictorial and advertising content. But the North-China Daily News was far more than an expanded version of the North-China Herald.
Besides tracking key news developments and commercial news in China and throughout East Asia, the social life of the foreign settlements is richly illustrated, with copious classified ads and Personal and Wanted Notices. The Wednesday Book Pages and the Cinema and entertainment pages are here in full. The Monday and Thursday Woman’s Page is a trove of contemporary fashion and family life. The photographs constitute a virtual Who’s Who of the settler communities. The full-colour illustrated North China Sunday News Magazines show foreign China at its leisure. The Correspondence pages print the often heated concerns of the Daily’s estimated 20,000 repeat readers.
Published here in full colour 300 ppi scans from original issues and grayscale, this collection offers a greatly expanded run of the Daily edition from 1869-1949, extensive and unique holdings of the Sunday Magazine and Special Supplements, a significant collection of the Municipal Gazette, organ of the Shanghai Municipal Council from 1908-1940, and a rich selection of rare books and pamphlets from the imprint of the North-China Daily News and its parent, the North-China Herald.
Finally, for aficionados of “Sapajou”, legendary cartoonist of this legendary newspaper, this collection offers a complete run of the topical cartoons published during his tenure as lead cartoonist at the “Old Lady of the Bund”, 1923-1941.
Sources
Waseda University, British Library, and Private Collection
The Times Supplements consist of a series of full-text searchable, geographically-based issues, originally published between 1910 and 1916, as supplements of The Times. The Supplements cover various aspects of (mainly) Japan, Russia and South America. Dedicated issues to WW1, and one-off special issues were also published.
The Times Supplements, online for the first time, consist of a series of geographically-based supplements, published after Lord Northcliffe bought The Times newspaper in 1908.
Supplements published in the years 1910-1916
– The South American Supplements (42 issues, 732 pages)
– The Russian Supplements (26 issues, 560 pages)
– The Japanese Supplements (6 issues, 176 pages)
– The Spanish Supplement (36 pages) as a one-off
– The Norwegian Supplement (24 pages) as a one-off
– Supplements associated with World War I (4 issues, 96 pages)
– Special Supplements (2 issues, 16 pages)
Lavishly illustrated, each title was tailored to support The Times’ broad editorial position and ongoing Foreign Office priorities. The Japanese Supplements, for example, were aimed at reinforcing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902-22, in the context of growing German influence in Japan. Talented artists and contributors were engaged in filling the supplements, ranging from foreign statesmen to expatriate journalists and publicists, including those hired by the nations concerned.
These supplements would likely have continued beyond 1917, but were affected by acute paper shortages in that year and, in the case of the Russian Supplements, by the 1917 Revolution. The Times also issued some one-off special issues. For more info download the pdf below:
The English-language Japan Chronicle Weekly (1900–1940) is the newspaper of record for Japan’s engagement with modernity and its emergence, through war, political and social upheaval and seismic social change in East Asia, onto the world stage in the first half of the twentieth century. Historians of East Asia have long seen the Japan Chronicle as a uniquely valuable resource. This well-informed, controversial but always readable source of news and opinion on Japan and East Asia offers an intriguing and lively Japanese complement to the North China Herald Online. This collection includes the Kobe Weekly Chronicle (1900-1901), the predecessor of the Japan Chronicle Weekly.
Founded and based in Kobe, a port city that saw enormous expansion during the Chronicle’s lifetime, and edited by representative figures in this treaty port, the Chronicle provides a unique perspective not only on the settler communities in Japan and East Asia but also to the historical development of East Asia as it happened.
This supremely important and uniquely valuable resource, covering the years 1900-1941, is now exclusively available in Brill’s East Asia Archive Online, with the weekly Commercial Supplement.
• Number of titles: 1 (The Japan Chronicle, including the Commercial Supplement).
• Number of pages: approx. 80.000.
• Languages used: English
• MARC record available
• Location of Originals: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London) and the British Library (London)
Mobilizing-East-Asia-1930-1964-
Advisor: Peter O’Connor, Musashino University, Tokyo
Advisory Board: Robert Bickers, University of Bristol and Rana Mitter, University of Oxford
Mobilizing East Asia offers a carefully selected collection of extremely rare, many times even unique English-language newspapers, magazines and pamphlets published inside Asia, following the descent into war in East and South-East Asia from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s.
This exciting collection of newspapers and illustrated magazines, often in colour, is now available online for the first time, exclusively from Brill. The Collection offers access to unique primary source material which can be used to pursue research topics in modern history, Asian studies, politics and war studies.
Features and Benefits:
— English-language newspapers and magazines published in East Asia
– Approx. 100,000 pages of over 1,200 print items
– All content fully searchable
– Reproduced in 300 dpi full colour
– Sourced from extremely rare, often even unique originals
– Brill has the exclusive online rights to this material for years to come
– Represents the most complete holdings available of these sources
– Updates included, at no additional cost
For a detailed list of the contents, please see the links below (online edition)
• The complete Occupied Hongkong holding, December 31 1941 – 17 August 1945
• English-language
• 5000+ pages
• high-quality originals
• full-text-searchable
• not available elsewhere in full-text searchable format – exclusive to Brill
• holdings of the School of African and Asian Studies (SOAS), University of London
A NOTE ON COVERAGE:
This collection begins with volume 30 of The Hongkong News. The first 29 volumes of The Hongkong News in all probability do not exist anymore, or never even existed in the first place. Like other newspapers in other Asian regions, The Hongkong News first functioned as a ‘shell publication’ installed in readiness for the actual imminent Japanese occupation, in September 1941.
Published from Tokyo under Japanese editorship before, during, and after WWII (1932-1970), Contemporary Japan is now seen as a beacon of rationality, especially during the ‘devil’s decade’ of the 1930s. While consistently presenting the Japanese case, Contemporary Japan spoke from the shrinking middle ground of the public sphere. Run by the semi-official Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, Contemporary Japan published informed, critical, long-form journalism by leading Japanese and Western commentators on East Asia. Disillusioned Pan-Asianists compete with anti-Western rhetoric on the road to war against China. Post-war, new voices bemoan the ‘reverse course’ of 1947-1952. This lively Primary Source offers a window into Japan’s most rational and yet most engaged debates of the day. Contemporary Japan ceased publication in 1970 and Brill has secured the entire run from Vol.1 1932 to Vol. 29, 1970, (with considerable gaps from 1954 – 1970, see full list of issues) but limits this first series to the period 1932-1954.
Note: virtually complete for the important years 1932 – 1954 (lacking two volumes: volume 9, no. 3 (1941) and volume 12, no. 1 (1943). Not complete for the years up to 1970. Should currently missing volumes emerge, these will be included at no extra cost to purchasers.
American Japan News-Week was the last independent, foreign-owned English-language newspaper published in Japan. This exclusive holding runs from the first issue in November 1938 to within 6 months of the newspaper’s closure and the arrest of Wills and Argyll by Japanese ‘Special’ ( Tokko) police in early December 1941, the night before Pearl Harbor, on a charge of espionage.
Note: Brill’s run of Japan News-Week Online holds in their entirety all issues published from Volume 1, Issue 1 of November 12 1938 to Volume 3, Issue 27 of 4 June 1941. It is complete but for the last six months June 11 – November 30 1941. Should any of the latter issues emerge, they will be included at no extra cost to purchasers.
Japan Times Weekly and Nippon Times Weekly Online
As flagship pictorial organs of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere The Japan Times Weekly (November 1938 – December 1942) and its successor Nippon Times Weekly, were priceless investments in the expression of Japan’s master narrative (i.a., the victimization of China and Southeast Asia by Western interests) and therefore published in colour at a time of extreme newsprint shortages. As an optional, limited giveaway with the main newspaper Japan (Nippon) Times, these weeklies are now extraordinarily rare. This Primary Source from Brill therefore focuses on the wartime holdings, 1938-1944, of these consecutive titles showcasing Japan’s martial and geopolitical achievements in the all-out war in China and then in the Pacific War. Of the seven years of the wartime holdings, this Primary Source offers almost five years of the total.
Completeness: Of the Japan Times Weekly, this Primary Source runs from the 2nd issue (September 1938) to November 1942, close to the end of the title. The Nippon Times Weekly runs from the first issue of 1st January 1943 to the end of January 1944. Should any further issues emerge after all, these will be added to this PSO at no extra cost to customers. In addition to the Weekly magazine, both the parent newspapers the Japan Times and its 1943 successor the Nippon Times established publishing arms bringing out books and booklets broadcasting the defining mission of the Daily and the Weekly editions. Brill has collected a good holding of these issues, which we will publish with this Primary Source with its own dedicated tab. Also in addition, the material here comes with useful Index issues and extremely rare Supplements, including the Nippon Times Supplement: News and View of Greater East Asia. Some issues of this consecutive title are available elsewhere in scattered form, but none are available in such a full run, and none have been digitised in full-text-searchable format
The Manchuria Collection offers scholars of Japan’s modern history an unparalleled inside view of Japan’s agenda in Manchuria and its plans for domination in Asia. Founded in 1908 in the wake of Japan’s victory in the war against Russia, the Manchuria Daily News set up in Dalian (Darien) at the headquarters of the South Manchuria Railway Company (Minami Manshū Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha) (SMR).
Lavishly funded from Tokyo, and with the full resources of the SMR Research Department behind them, the Manchuria Daily News and the associated titles offered here constitute a formidable record of Japanese policy on Manchuria and the Manchoukuo project. From 1908-1940 this compact, feisty daily and its associated titles responded to the exigencies of the day, taking requests from a variety of official and often competing propaganda bureaux. In the Manchuria Daily News and in these associated publications, the SMR presented a powerful case for the Japanese leadership of Asia, after 1932 using Manchoukuo as a showcase for Japan’s technological, cultural and political advancement.
Apart from the early 1908-1912 holdings, and the October 1919 to February 1921 gap when publication was suspended , the 1912-1940 run published here is virtually complete and exclusive to Brill Primary Sources Online.
Brill has sourced an exciting range of associated English-language magazines published in tandem with the Manchuria Daily News. Here for the first time are extensive holdings from the irregular publications Manchuria Magazine, Manchuria Month, Contemporary Manchuria and the Manchuria Information Bulletin.
Published from the beginning of the war with China right up to the outbreak of the Korean War (1931 – 1952), the Japan Year Books present Japan’s news and statistics throughout the period. In its densely detailed fashion this is the name-rich, comprehensive Japanese view of the nation, reflecting its endeavours both during and after the war(s). Essential, partial, yet accurate, these politically loaded historical sources will prove to be indispensable for any serious researcher of the period. A useful contrast to the China Year Books and Chinese Year Books published in Tianjin, Shanghai and elsewhere from 1915-1945.
A leftist newsletter in times of appeasement and war
The Hongkong Weekly Press Online
shows the Crown Colony in a watershed period of unrest. With the British government incapacitated by social unrest and the General Strike of 1926, and Hongkong paralysed by the Guangzhou-Hongkong dock and other strikes of 1925-1926, the British Foreign Office sleepwalked into a period of Imperial drift in East Asia. This dynamic holding tells the tale of Hongkong’s run-up to and wounded escape from disaster in the 1920s with close, powerful reporting of a very high standard.