War and the latent public: Shimizu Ikutaro on rumours and public opinion in transwar Japan, 1937-1960

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between rumour and public opinion in Japan across the middle decades of the twentieth century. By situating Shimizu Ikutaro’s 1937 theory of rumour as ‘latent public opinion’ in comparative perspective, I show how he articulated an original vision of individual agency in an emergent mass-mediated society characterised by mobilisation, surveillance, and censorship. I then examine how Shimizu's theory acted as a reference point for discussions of rumour across the wartime divide. During the war, state officials drew on Shimizu's work as part of research into the efficacy of efforts to suppress rumourmongering. This ambivalent discourse on rumour provides insight into tensions between obedience and initiative during the mobilisation of the homefront for total war. After the war ended, the legacy of the wartime discourse on rumour was palpable in an undercurrent of skepticism directed toward quantitative approaches to public opinion promoted by the Allied Occupation. This skepticism shaped attitudes toward postwar democracy, leading some progressive intellectuals to turn to the rumours theorised by Shimizu as a possible basis for mobilised resistance against the sway of the mass media during the heyday of postwar protest movements.