February 21 is the anniversary of The Mainichi Newspapers' founding. This year marks a milestone 140th anniversary, and "The Mainichi Newspapers: 140 Years of History"—tracing that history through the pages—is on display at the Art Salon on the first floor of Palaceside Building.
The Mainichi traces its roots to "Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun," Japan's first daily newspaper published in Tokyo on February 21, 1872 (Meiji 5). It continues today through integration in the late Meiji era with "Osaka Mainichi Shimbun," a business paper descended from "Osaka Nippo," founded in Osaka on February 20, 1876. Among Japan's surviving dailies, it is the most venerable.
The exhibition presents 24 panels of milestone front pages since the inaugural issue of "Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun" (photo), plus 22 photographs from the Great East Japan Earthquake. The first issue, printed from stereotype plates, led with "Official Gazette" notices much like government bulletins, also reporting news such as a murder in Nagano Prefecture—1,239 characters in all, with a print run of 1,000 copies. Other panels include the February 27, 1936 issue on the February 26 Incident; the December 9, 1941 declaration of war on the United States and Britain following the attack on Pearl Harbor; the August 8, 1945 issue reporting Hiroshima's atomic bomb as a "new bomb," two days late; and the August 15, 1945 issue carrying the imperial rescript on the Potsdam Declaration, said to have been distributed after the emperor's broadcast.
Postwar pages include the promulgation of the new constitution (November 4, 1946); the opening of the Tokyo Olympics (October 10, 1964); the Apollo 11 moon landing (July 21, 1969); the arrest of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka in the Lockheed scandal (July 27, 1976); the Japan Airlines jumbo crash (August 13, 1985); the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 10, 1989); the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (January 17, 1995); the subway sarin attack (March 20, 1995); the September 11 attacks in the United States (September 12, 2001); and the Great East Japan Earthquake (March 12, 2011)—memorable front pages line the walls.
The exhibition runs through the 24th (10 a.m.–5 p.m.). Admission is free. Why not stop by and compare the pages with your own memories of life?