ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts the lesser known history of communication studies in Japan with a focus on the study of rhetoric or the strategic use of communication, oral or written, to achieve specifiable goals. It examines one branch of the international history of communication study by attending to the politics, institutionalization, and intellectual history of the Western art of rhetoric and related oral practices as they played out in university education, academic research, oratorical and debating societies, and within civil society. By providing an overview of the historical development of the study of Western-style oral discourse in Japan, this chapter aims to contribute to deepening and widening people's knowledge of this largely neglected area of study and its place in the communication discipline. Parallel to the state's intensified suppression and censorship was the declining popularity of oratory supposedly due to the politicized nature of student oratory and the artificial oratorical style of many politicians and students.
