Lord High Publisher

In Japan, where the literacy rate is probably the highest in the world (98%), newspapers are big and often sensational. For a story that may make bright reading, it is not unusual for editors to dispatch their own planes, huge task forces of reporters and hundreds of carrier pigeons to bring bulletins back.

In all Japan no single daily is as big as the Tokyo edition of Yomiuri* (circ. 2,100,000). And no publisher is more flamboyant than Yomiuri's swaggering, marble-domed Matsutaro Shoriki. 69, who also owns eight big magazines and Japan's only commercial TV network. Once, for a lively story, Publisher Shoriki sent a team of reporters "down as far as you possibly dare" into an offshore volcano crater. When they returned and reported that the crater was full of the bodies of suicides, Shoriki built a platform overlooking the crater, ran excursion boats to the site and watched Yomiuri's circulation climb with the suicide rate. Such spectacular journalism has made Shoriki the most successful publisher in the country and earned him the reputation among Western newsmen as "the Hearst of Japan."

In Tokyo last week guidebooks heralded a monument Publisher Shoriki had raised to himself. He opened a 436-ft. TV tower, one of the tallest structures in the city, equipped with an elevator so that sightseers can "get a view of Tokyo equal to the birds'." Said Publisher Shoriki matter-of-factly: "The people of Japan expect Shoriki to do things bigger and better than anyone else."

A Modest Pamphlet. Shoriki has been fulfilling such great expectations ever since he abruptly cut short his career as deputy police chief in Tokyo in 1924 after an assassin almost succeeded in killing the pVince regent (now Emperor). Says Shoriki, who was held responsible for the inadequate guard: "Instead of committing harakiri, I bought a newspaper." With borrowed money he purchased tiny (circ. 40,000), struggling Yomiuri, which means "reading for sale." cashed in on his police experience by getting the most sensational crime coverage in Tokyo. He added a pioneering radio section and the comics. In four years Yomiuri's circulation increased fivefold. Then Shoriki dis covered "base bolu."

From the U.S. he imported such big-league stars as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx, reported every move they made in Yomiuri. On one tour Ruth hit 18 home runs. Says Shoriki: "Every smack boosted circulation." (Later. Shoriki started the Japanese baseball league, now led by his own Yomiuri Giants.) From the U.S. he also imported the moneymaking journalistic ideas of his good friend, the late William Randolph Hearst.*

As World War II approached, Shoriki nimbly changed his pro-American ways, boomed Yomiuri's circulation to a million by making the paper Japan's most powerful journalistic voice for expansion and militarism. At war's end, Shoriki busied himself with another project: a 29-page pamphlet titled Matsutaro Shoriki's Character and Career. Said an explanatory note: "This pamphlet has been written by his friends so the American consul will fully understand his character and career in case he is indicted as a war-criminal suspect." The pamphlet failed. In 1945 U.S. occupation forces locked up Shoriki for 21 months as a war criminal for his militaristic journalism but never brought him to trial.

Adjustable. When Shoriki was released, he set up an office a block from his bombed-out building, ate tomato-and-cucumber sandwiches by the dozens and ice cream by the gallons while editors marched through for their instructions. In 1951 the Japanese Peace Treaty made his ownership of the paper legal, and Shoriki got back full control of Yomiuri and its rebuilt plant.

Shoriki, who has always adjusted his politics to the hard facts of selling papers, has returned to plugging U.S.-Japanese friendship. Bitterly antiCommunist, he fills Yomiuri with such features as U.S. baseball news, New York stock-market tables, women's columns and elaborate news of Japan's growing movie industry. To charges from critics that he has at varying times taken "influence" money from the Japanese government, the Nazis, the U.S. Government or William Ran dolph Hearst, Publisher Shoriki has a typically cocky answer. Says he: "If you have enough ideas, you don't need nearly as much money."

* Next biggest Tokyo dailies: Mainichi (circ. 1,900,000) and Asahi (1,600,000). Regional editions, published all over Japan, give them a combined total circulation of about 8,000,000. By comparison, Yomiuri's circulation outside Tokyo is small (600,000). * To whom Shoriki once presented a suit of samurai armor. In return, Hearst sent Shoriki three bison, which were condemned as "American propaganda" during World War II and put to death as "ferocious animals."

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