ABSTRACT
There is a Japanese expression that a newspaper will emerge wherever three or more Japanese call home. The Japanese American experience partly con rms this saying. The rst Japanese language newspapers in the United States were established by Japanese immigrants (Issei) intellectuals who wanted to shape Meiji-era Japan. The political dissidents who created the rst Japanese-language newspapers in the 1880s hoped to smuggle them back to Japan. Of many papers, we primarily know of their shifting names, as activists tried to evade Japanese censors. Norio Tamura has written extensively in Japanese on these pioneering papers.
