ABSTRACT
CENSORSHIP or the suppression of news and opinion is as old as are news and views themselves, and in this Japan is no exception. The Japanese press, long used to looking to the Government for official guidance, has been subjected to a certain degree of censor-ship for more than a generation. At the beginning this censorship was, by its nature, chiefly indirect and often self-imposed; in recent years and chiefly since the outbreak of the Pacific War, it has become increasingly rigid and severe and is today probably the strictest of all censor ship systems existing in democratic or totalitarian countries.
