| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Janice Matsumura. More than a Momentary Nightmare: The Yokohama Incident and Wartime Japan. (Cornell East Asia Series, number 92.) Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program. 1998. Pp. vi, 172. Cloth $22.00, paper $14.00.

How vigorously did ordinary Japanese resist their government's policies at the height of World War II? And how effective were the Japanese state's techniques of controlling thought and expression on the home front? In both cases, the answer is less than one might expect, according to Janice Matsumura. Her well-researched, clearly written monograph addresses these questions by focusing on the arrest and eventual prosecution of several dozen journalists and policy researchers, starting in September 1942, for allegedly violating the revised Peace Preservation Law of 1941 or conspiring to revive the outlawed Japan Communist Party. 1

Matsumura argues persuasively that this episode, known since the war as the Yokohama Incident, was not a simple case of press censorship by an all-powerful thought police. Instead, the targets were not only journalists but also certain well-connected researchers who had recently renounced leftist positions and now professed to support the wartime imperial government. The researchers, some of whom were linked to the elite Showa Research Association that advised the first Konoe cabinet in 1937–1939, suffered especially harsh treatment, although two years later the police renewed the pressure on journalists by shutting down several hard-hitting monthlies and harassing major publishers. . . .

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