Hochi Shimbun -sponsored excursion ports-of-call commemorative postcard, c. 1910, of a chartered coastal cruise promoted by the Tokyo daily newspaper. The itinerary began in Tokyo and terminated at spa resort city Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture with port calls along the way in Kagoshima, Nagasaki, and the Inland Sea, touching three of Japan’s four home islands.

See also:
“Commemorative Cruise to Manchuria and Korea”, Rosetta Maru, 1906.
First attempt to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean, 1931.
“How Newspapers Come to Be”, Tokyo Asashi Shimbun operations postcard series, c. 1935.

Hochi Shimbun, now affiliated with the Yomiuri Shimbun Group as ‘Sports Hochi’, began as one of the oldest general newspapers in Japan, publishing its first edition only a few months behind the debut of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun. It remains the oldest daily newspaper still being published today in the country.

The newspaper began in 1872 as a woodblock-printed, string-bound news pamphlet (nishikie, ‘brocade picture’) called Yubin hochi shimbun (‘postal dispatch news’). A publishing company, ‘Hochisha’, was established in 1873 at which time its shimbun format was revised to incorporate moveable type and modern letter press technology.

In 1942, the Newspaper Control Ordinance enacted during the Pacific War stipulated that Hochi Shimbun be absorbed into the Yomirui Shimbun Company.

The Hawaii Hochi, a Japanese-language newspaper published in Honolulu, was renamed the Hawaii Herald during the conflict with the attempt to deflect any anti-Japanese sentiment attached to its affiliation with the Tokyo-based Hochi Shimbun.

Future prime minister Hara Kei began a journalism career at Hochi before entering the Foreign Ministry in 1882. The newspaper’s early editorial board included a number of ex-government ministers, and Hochi Shimbun was considered to be a semi-official government organ. It was politically affiliated from 1927-1940 with the Rikken Minseito (Constitutional Democratic Party), an important political party in pre-World War II Japan.

The Hochi Shimbun published the first reader’s column in Japan, an early letters-to-the-editor page. In its earliest years, it was published as a nishikie with illustrated front covers by the last ukiyoe genius, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Hochi Shimbun also sponsored the attempt in 1931 to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the United States.