ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Kunio Yanagita contributions to the newspaper between the first of July, 1924, and the fourteenth of September, 1930. It shows that Yanagita’s attitude to the socio-political changes of the time, and provides with a basis for understanding the principles of his political theory. The major issue covered by Yanagita was Japan’s foreign relations, in particular, the deterioration of its relationship with China. Yanagita was strongly against the Twenty One Demands imposed on China by the Japanese during World War I. Yanagita maintains a strongly critical stance toward the Japanese government’s foreign policy, and sees no hope without fundamental change in its attitude to other Asian nations. In the Asahi Shinbun editorials Yanagita also expressed his views on various issues related to domestic politics. Yanagita suspected that the rapid spread of military eduction in Japan was conceived by members of the armed forces with the clear intention of increasing their own power.
