"Hisakichi Maeda: The Osaka Native Who Created the Sankei Shimbun and Tokyo Tower"

2024/02/13

I wrote a biography of Hisakichi Maeda. Maeda was the founder of the Sankei Shimbun and the creator of Tokyo Tower. Maeda himself was a primary school graduate and had no academic connection to Keio, but on the other hand, as the person who oversaw the end of the Jiji Shimpo, he had a significant connection to Keio.

From Keio's perspective, Maeda is a villain. He was the person responsible when Jiji was forced to suspend publication before the war, and he faced considerable backlash from the Mita area. After the war, he revived the Jiji Shimpo, but his likely aim was to use Jiji's prestige to secure newsprint allocations at the time, rather than putting in effort regardless of profitability.

However, tracing Maeda's steps reveals that Keio networks played a crucial role at key points in his turbulent life. Ichizo Kobayashi was like a mentor to Maeda, and he was also close to figures such as Shinzo Koizumi and Yasuzaemon Matsunaga. Among them, his relationship with Takuzo Itakura, the last president of the Jiji Shimpo, was perhaps the deepest.

Maeda seems to have been bullied considerably when he took on the reconstruction of the Jiji Shimpo. One of those people was Itakura. Even in his reminiscences after Itakura's death, Maeda complained, "The professors at Keio—they're difficult. Well, I hate to name names, but people like Mr. Takuzo Itakura." Itakura, for his part, openly looked down on him, saying, "When running a newspaper in Tokyo, a type like Maeda is not suitable. He's a merchant, after all. It has to be someone with some political sense or some kind of intellect..."

What is interesting is that Itakura went out of his way to help Maeda after the war when Maeda became a member of the House of Councillors. The site of the Sankei Building towering in Otemachi was originally sold off by the government, and this was made possible because Itakura spoke to Shigeru Yoshida, who was the Prime Minister at the time and a close friend. After Jiji was gone, Maeda also treated Itakura generously as the chairman of the editorial board and editor-in-chief of the Sankei.

Are we perhaps too accustomed to communication where we exchange pleasantries? Is that why we cannot understand a relationship like Maeda and Itakura's, where they hurled insults at each other? No flattery, no sycophancy. Originally, that would be the Keio way. This book contains many other such clashes of personality.

"Hisakichi Maeda: The Osaka Native Who Created the Sankei Shimbun and Tokyo Tower"

Michiya Matsuo

Sogensha

336 pages, 2,750 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.