''Ie no Hikari'' (

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

: ''Light in Home'') is a monthly Japanese family magazine published in

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. It is one of the oldest and best-selling magazines in the country. In addition, it is one of two most popular magazines in Japan during the mid-twentieth century, the other one being ''

Kingu Kingu, also spelled Qingu (, ), was a god in Babylonian mythology, and the son of the gods Abzu and Tiamat. After the murder of his father, Abzu, he served as the consort of his mother, Tiamat, who wanted to establish him as ruler and leader of ...

'' magazine. Both are the first Japanese million-seller magazines.

History and profile

''Ie no Hikari'' was established in 1925. Shimura Gentarō and Arimoto Hideo, leaders of the Industrial Cooperative, were instrumental in the foundation of the magazine. At the initial period the magazine was controlled by the ministry of agriculture and forestry, and was published by the Industrial Cooperative. The magazine targets rural readers. However, it has another version for urban readers. It supports for

agrarianism Agrarianism is a political and social philosophy that has promoted subsistence agriculture, smallholdings, and egalitarianism, with agrarian political parties normally supporting the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants ...

and features articles on

home economics Home economics, also called domestic science or family and consumer sciences, is a subject concerning human development, personal and family finances, consumer issues, housing and interior design, nutrition and food preparation, as well as texti ...

, children's stories and news. During the 1930s it covered articles on Manchuria Crisis in parallel to the official views of the government. In 1933 the magazine serialized a novel by

Toyohiko Kagawa was a Japanese Protestant Christian pacifist, Christian reformer, and labour activist. Kagawa wrote, spoke, and worked at length on ways to employ Christian principles in the ordering of society and in cooperatives. His vocation to help the ...

, ''Chichi to Mitsu no Nagaruru Sato'' (Japanese: ''A village where milk and honey flow''). It was about the implementation of cooperative insurance. The magazine is part of and published by Ie-No-Hikari Association, founded in 1944 as part of Central Industrial Union, which was later renamed as

Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives The , in short , is an independent administrative Japanese body within the Japan Agriculture (JA) Group which determines policy and administrates the group. Its legal status was originally a Recognised Corporate Body under the control of the Mini ...

. The magazine has its headquarters in Tokyo.

Circulation

During the last half of 1931 the circulation of ''Ie no Hikari'' was 150,000 copies which reached more than 500,000 copies by December 1933. In 1935 the magazine was read by a million people in the country. It managed to keep this rate until 1944. In 1994 ''Ie no Hikari'' sold 983,736 copies. ''Ie no Hikari'' had a circulation of 586,572 copies in 2010 and of 582,983 copies in 2011. In 2012 it was the sole Japanese magazine enjoyed circulation of half a million copies. It was the sixth best-selling magazine in Japan between October 2014 and September 2015 with a circulation of 569,359 copies.

Legacy

In 2019 Amy Bliss Marshall published a book named ''Magazines and the Making of Mass Culture in Japan'' in which she analysed ''Kingu'' and ''Ie no Hikari'' to demonstrate the birth of

mass culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

in Japan. The author argues that these two magazines were instrumental in the establishment of mass culture and in the

socialization In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultur ...

in Japan.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:le no hikari 1925 establishments in Japan Agricultural magazines Magazines established in 1925 Magazines published in Tokyo Monthly magazines published in Japan Political magazines published in Japan