was the official

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency may ...

of the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...

History and development

Dōmei was the end result of years of efforts by Japanese journalists and business leaders to create a national

in Japan that could compete with (and if necessary counter)

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

and other internationally recognized news agencies on a global basis. After the

Manchurian Incident The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident (九・一八), was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. On September 18, 1931, L ...

of 1931, president Yukichi Iwanaga (岩永裕吉 ''Iwanaga Yūkichi'') of the Nihon Shimbun Rengosha (日本新聞聯合社 Associated Press, or “Rengo”) proposed the merger of his news agency with the Nihon Dempo Tsushinsha (日本電報通信社 Japan Telegraphic News Agency, or “Dentsu”). Despite government backing for the move, the merger was resisted by Dentsu president Hoshio Mitsunaga ( 光永星郎 ''Mitsunaga Hoshio''), who was reluctant to give up control of his company’s lucrative

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

business, and by concerns that a merger would threaten his advertising customer base – the provincial newspapers who competed against Rengo. As a compromise, Mitsunaga agreed to split Dentsu, and separate the news agency from the advertising agency. The news agency was reorganized in a merger with Rengo on 28 December 1935 to form the Dōmei Tsūshinsha. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Dōmei News Agency came under the control of the

Ministry of Communications (Japan) The was a Cabinet-level ministry in the Empire of Japan. Its modern successors include the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan Post and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone History Meiji period On December 22, 1885 the Ministr ...

, a pre-war

cabinet Cabinet or The Cabinet may refer to: Furniture * Cabinetry, a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors and/or drawers * Display cabinet, a piece of furniture with one or more transparent glass sheets or transparent polycarbonate sheets * Filing ...

level ministry in the Japanese government. Domei maintained a network of offices outside Japan, dispatching reporters to all allied and neutral countries, and was also involved in film and radio work. It also collected news and information from various sources to pass on to the government and military, and produced various works of

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

aimed at foreign countries. Dōmei issued news to the public that was

censored Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

along government-approved lines, and broadcast news in Japanese and in major European languages through an extensive network of

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

s in east Asia,

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China, Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 afte ...

and in Japanese-occupied

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It was later authorized by the Japanese military to develop a news network and radio stations in Japanese-occupied

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and Malaya. A number of documented incidents from the period around the outbreak of the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...

show that on a personal level Dōmei's staff had good relationships with foreign journalists. Under the

Allied occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States w ...

Dōmei was disbanded, and its functions divided split between

Kyodo News is a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo. It was established in November 1945 and it distributes news to almost all newspapers, and radio and television networks in Japan. The newspapers using its news have about 50 millio ...

(共同通信社) and

Jiji Press is a news agency in Japan. History Jiji was formed in November 1945 following the breakup of Domei Tsushin, the government-controlled news service responsible for disseminating information prior to and during World War II. Jiji inherited Dome ...

(時事通信社) in 1945 following the end of World War II.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Domei Tsushin News agencies based in Japan Empire of Japan Defunct companies of Japan Dentsu British Malaya in World War II Organizations established in 1935 Organizations disestablished in 1945 1935 establishments in Japan 1945 disestablishments in Japan