Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/108

 on the establishment of English journals for the foreign community in Yokohama, and during the stirring times at the fall of feudalism the demand for news became so keen that one journal after another made its appearance. At first the tone of these sheets reflected the anti-foreign, anti-progressive spirit of the conservative section of the nation, and their influence seemed so pernicious that the Government prohibited their publication and treated the editors as malefactors. But the incongruity of such a policy being quickly perceived, the veto was revoked in 1 869, and journalistic enterprise received official sanction within certain limitations. All discussion of religious questions, of politics, and of legal problems was interdicted; a general injunction forbade the publication of matter prejudicial to public peace or good morals; official permission had to be obtained before issuing a journal, and the power of fining or imprisoning editors, publishers, and printers, as well as that of suspending or suppressing a newspaper was vested in administrative officials without any recourse to courts of law. It might have been foreseen that the young journalists of Japan, whose ideas of press liberty were derived from European theories, would not readily submit to these restrictions. A bitter struggle commenced between, on the one hand, irresponsible editors who were influenced partly by honest faith in the value of free speech, but mainly by a desire to embarrass the Government, and, on the