The 1972 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts

BIOGRAPHY of Yasuji Hanamori

Kobe, where YASUJI HANAMORI was born on October 25 1911, was one of the two major ports of Imperial Japan; a place where foreigners lived and foreign ideas were current. Growing up in this cosmopolitan environment, he became familiar with the "exotic" customs of the English, American and Indian families who were among his neighbors.

A favorite playground was the piers where he met foreign sailors who gave him strange sweets and took him aboard strange ships in the harbor. He feels these boyhood experiences heightened his sense of observation and kept him open to new ideas.

Moreover, his father, Tsunesaburo, was a trader who imported marine products and fine mats from China and was therefore in close contact with people outside the tradition-bound mainstream of Japanese society. Looking back on his childhood HANAMORI has said: "The older I grow, the more I realize that I have taken after my father, although in my youth I was very close to my mother . . . . He was a man with a strong spine, a real free thinker as well as a practitioner of his belief, a rather amazing trait among Japanese of his time."

Tsunesaburo Hanamori had little use for "illogical traditions and customs." HANAMORI remembers his father forbade the family to follow the custom of decorating the house entrance with pine branches and bamboo to celebrate the New Year. Since his father was an authority-figure, he never asked him why, but reflects that his father must have questioned the significance of such actions and rejected them. This willingness of his father to break the mold of tradition meant also that HANAMORI grew up without being inculcated with the beliefs that put loyalty to the emperor and devotion to the state above all else.

On one occasion the boy found it impossible to accept his father's standards. While he was studying at Unchu Elementary School, he remembers, he was told to bring 10 sen (five U.S. cents) as a flood relief donation. His father refused to give him the money and gave him instead a letter to take to the principal, explaining that the donation should be voluntary. The children, he argued, should have been taught about the flood and then encouraged to give spontaneously. Although HANAMORI heartily subscribes to such principles today, as a grade school student it was too great a confrontation to undertake. His father had to deliver the letter himself.

Another insight into the father's thinking and methods of child-rearing was the way he encouraged his son when he approached his high school entrance exams: he promised to buy him a bicycle in case be failed! Such a promise relaxed the boy and he passed. His father's psychological perceptions and humane approach to problems were to influence his own thinking and work.

His father's understanding failed, however, with respect to women. As the eldest son, HANAMORI was deeply moved as a child and young man by the plight of his mother, which in time led to his concern for the pitiful position of Japanese women in general. Looking back he realizes that his father's business required him to entertain and be entertained in geisha houses, but at the time he saw only his mother's sorrow and surreptitious tears and blamed his father for neglecting her. In later years HANAMORI has said that he looks back with happiness on Kobe, primarily "because of the days I spent there with my mother, although it is rather embarrassing to admit it."

At the age of 18 HANAMORI finished Third Kobe High School for Boys but failed the entrance exam for the next higher school—the three year preparatory school for the university. Taking his father's suggestion that he study to retake the exam at the city library, he set up a schedule for himself—to study from 9 to 12 and to read in other fields from lunch until 3 p.m.—but he found it hard to stick to a regime and was soon studying and reading as it pleased him.

Going through the card catalogue one day he came upon the subject of women's problems which attracted his immediate attention and sympathy. Altogether he read some 20 books on the subject, including Raicho Hiratsuka's From the Circular Window, which advocated that women regain the independence they had had under an ancient matriarchy, Tamiki Hosoda's Pathetic Episodes in the Lives of Female Mill Hands, and E.A. Westermarck's Race and Marriage.

At the end of this year of study and reading, HANAMORI entered Matsue Higher School in Matsue, a quiet old feudal town. While he was home for his first summer vacation his mother died. She was only 38. On her deathbed she asked her son what he planned to do with himself. He told her that he wanted to become a reporter or editor, perhaps, he says, because he was impressed with the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword." His youthful answer proved prophetic.

During his school years at Matsue he became known for two talents— design display and writing. During the annual school festival he not only developed a unique display concept, but he thought up the practical idea of charging a set admission fee rather than passing the hat for voluntary contributions as done previously, an improvement his schoolmates still remember him for. An extrovert, he enjoyed drinking sprees with friends in the literary and artistic circles in which he moved. He had great admiration for Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, the novelist, and Hakushu Kitahara, the poet, and his favorite the of the period were Narashige Koide, Ryuesi Kishida and Paul Klee. A classmate through high school and college, Taro Tadokoro, now president of the Book Review Journal, says of him: "He always led the class. He is a very remarkable person."

In his third year at Matsue HANAMORI fell in love with Momoyo, the daughter of a local dry goods merchant. A true love match, they were married when he had his first job in 1937 and today they have one daughter whose husband is chief editor of a nationally known magazine, and one grandchild.

Upon graduation in 1933 HANAMORI entered Tokyo Imperial University and majored in aesthetics in the Faculty of Letters. He joined the staff of the campus newspaper and immediately won recognition as a talented reporter and editor. Shozo Ogiya, his senior there by one year and now a highly respected journalist and chief editor of the Asahi Weekly remembers his rare talent, particularly in layout.

During this time HANAMORI had the opportunity to meet with Tanesuke Kojiro who was to have a major impact on his thinking as an editor. Kojiro was known respectfully as "the god of proofreading"— proofreading in an editorial sense. What so impressed the young man was his approach to the work of each author, respecting each writer's style and literary technique and limiting his own corrections to errors within their styles He learned from this experience not only to respect individualistic styles, but to respect everyone connected with the production of the printed word. As a result, when he began to edit his own magazine he gave masthead credit to all involved in the production, including the printers.

HANAMORI’s thesis for graduation from Tokyo Imperial University was entitled "The Garments and Toilet from Social, Scientific and Aesthetic Points of View," inspired perhaps by Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." He also wrote a thesis for a friend who had fallen ill and was unable to do his own work. He knew his friend, who later became a famous writer, could not afford to postpone his graduation a year.

After graduating HANAMORI was asked to join the firm of Ito Kochoen, the maker of Papillo Cosmetics, where he was made Director of Advertising and Promotion. He is remembered there as being well-liked and brilliant. As one colleague commented, "whatever he did was not commonplace." The enterprise was the business of the family of Shigejiro Sano, an artist whom HANAMORI university known at the University. Since HANAMORI was a friend and a university graduate, a rarity among the employees, he was given the exceptional privilege of attending directors' meetings. He soon became disillusioned at the way cosmetics were made and advertised and challenged their value at one such meeting. Without arguing, the management assigned him to edit the public relations magazine of the company, Women and Life, and gave him a free hand with it. Here he developed the style which he was to carry over to Kurashi-no-Techo, a style recognizable to many readers of the earlier publication.

Women and Life was short-lived due to the pressure of increased military activities in China and finally in the Pacific. It became increasingly difficult for him to maintain the quality of the magazine and to express himself fully, but as long as he could he did his best to preserve "the beauty of living."

HANAMORI was drafted into the Japanese army in 1937 to serve in Manchuria, a Japanese-occupied province of China, and was drafted again during World War II. He remained an enlisted man throughout his war years because, he says, "I opposed military training when I was in college." He thoroughly understands the common soldiers' attitude toward war and being parted from their homeland, and he has since written simply and effectively about their feelings in Kurashi-no-Techo.

He recounts in one issue the lonely tedium of the draftee:

"When soldiers got tired with marching they used to talk about food and homecoming. They seriously studied how to return home to Japan from where they were. Always the route was confronted with the ocean. Somehow they felt that they could trek the land for any distance but when they reached the Korean Strait the animated conversation always came to an abrupt standstill. In silence, dragging their heavy feet, they intensified their wish to go home.

"And it was at such a time that they suddenly became aware of the identity tag which was hanging on their bare chests. It was the shortest cut to return to Japan—'via the direct route to the Yasukuni Shrine [the national military cemetery].' "

Even more importantly HANAMORI has collected and published annually—this year is the fourth—Documents of Wartime Living. The Documents are stories of personal tragedies and horrors of wartime, sent to him at his request by the "nameless people"—the common man. The new issue is released each year on the anniversary of the Japanese surrender to remind people of the difficulties and sadness of life during war and thereby to attempt to insure that war never comes again. "This is my life work," he writes, "asking myself anew what the war was to me, and of passing the stories on to the generations to come which never had war experiences." Documents is certainly not a profit-making venture. Far more money is spent on advertising it than the return warrants, but he is eager that as many people as possible read it and remember.

HANAMORI was discharged in early 1945 after a bout in an army hospital with tuberculosis. When he returned to civilian life he served for a time in the propaganda division of Taisei-Yokusanakai, a quasi-government organization. Although many war slogans were attributed to him after he became famous, he says he was actually little more than a clerk. His one source of pride during that stint is that he persuaded the government to allow women to keep the beautiful flowing sleeves of their kimonos; the government had wanted to shorten them as a war symbol.

Immediately after the war, with Miss Shizuko Ohashi, formerly secretary to the managing editor of Asahi Shimbun, and her sister, he pioneered in the postwar publishing of fashion books in an attempt to help Japanese women recover a sense of beauty in their daily lives. They started Utsukushii Kurashi-no-Techo (The Magazine of Beautiful Living) in the autumn of 1948. Later they dropped the word "Beautiful" and called it just Kurashi-no-Techo.

From the outset Miss Ohashi was listed as the publisher (she supplied the initial capital) and HANAMORI as Editor-in-Chief, a position he still holds. They printed 10,000 copies of the first issue and the staff itself took them around in backpacks to bookstores to persuade the managers to sell them. In the rubble of postwar Tokyo they often had trouble finding the bookstores.

At first they could not afford to pay contributors, but as their fresh format, helpful hints for present day living and good writing won growing support (the first issue sold 8,000 copies, circulation today is 800,000) they became financially firm, and early contributors were surprised to receive checks for past services. HANAMORI wisely made Kurashi-no-Techo a quarterly instead of a monthly. This gave it longer "shelf life" and gave the staff 90 instead of 20 days to produce it. HANAMORI himself worked on the magazine as if it were not a periodical but a book," says one respondent, and he expected equal dedication from his staff. Today the magazine comes out six times a year.

The first issue of (Utsukushii) Kurashi-no-Techo was 96 pages, one-third the size of the 100th issue in April 1969. Eight pages were pictures, eight were color offset printing and the price was ¥110 (in 1948 equivalent to 35 U.S. cents). At the time it was published "3,700,000 families did not have houses to live in, which means one household out of four." People were still forbidden to come back to the cities from which they had been evacuated; rice was 100 times the prewar price; everything was still rationed, and department stores were offering to dye uniforms black or blue because new materials were unavailable. However, as HANAMORI points out in the 100th Anniversary Issue, the first clause of the Labor Standards Law passed by the Japanese Diet in 1947 stated a purpose of the law was to enable people to live "a life which is worthy of human beings," and Kurashi-no-Techo has been trying to show women how to live such a life for the past 25 years.

From the beginning HANAMORI put the emphasis on the kitchen and living areas which had been neglected in prewar Japanese homes in favor of the little-used guest rooms. In the second issue he gave instructions on how to make a chair for the kitchen out of an old apple crate so that the housewife could sit down—and he advised her to sit whenever possible, pointing out how much better she would feel. He tried to get women to change their priorities but in many respects he has been disappointed in the results of these efforts. He feels that the samurai tradition of the Tokugawa period still lives on, that women of the upper classes still emphasize formalities and a spartan attitude and live a "poor, joyless" life, and that commoners still accept what is given them by government and industry without complaint. For change to take place, he constantly reminds them, they need to change themselves.

Even before he began product testing HANAMORI’s policy for Kurashi-no-Techo was not to accept advertising. He wanted control of the publication, free of pressure from advertisers in regard to what he said, and unburdened by advertising space allocation. He has always been as concerned with the artistic as well as with the literary contents of the magazine and still executes many of the drawings and layouts himself.

Staff loyalty has been exceptional. At the time of the 100th Anniversary Issue, Kurashi-no-Techo still had six of the original staff of seven working on it. Personnel, which has greatly expanded, has always been carefully selected, well trained and well paid. HANAMORI insists that the staff believe in the goals of the magazine and have good taste; their salaries are continuously increased so that they can afford to buy and live with items of good. They must also know consumer habits, aspirations and attitudes, and must be many faceted, as all are called upon at times to be cook, taster, photographer and carpenter as well as writer and product tester. For example, all recipes printed in the magazine are pre-tested by the staff. They have to be simple enough for any member to follow and ingredients must be obtainable in an average market. Do-it-yourself furniture must also be simple enough for anyone on the staff to build in the office carpentry shop.

As product testers, HANAMORI writes, the staff must have untold patience as well as complete impartiality. They need a sharp sense of seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling, and they must have "unchangeable courage," unmoved alike by intimidation or bribes. To mitigate against the possibility of the latter, testers are required to take lunches with them when they go to talk to manufacturers; they are allowed to accept nothing more than the polite cup of tea. Testers also need to know the products tested through their own use of them, i.e., they should have used a refrigerator in their homes so they know what to expect of it. If not, they discuss with others what functions it should perform.

Actually HANAMORI sees product testing as more than the sum of the tests. "In a way," he writes, "product testing is social criticism and civilization criticism as well as product criticism and testers are required to study and prepare themselves for that."

Product testing began with the 20th issue of the magazine in Autumn 1953 HANAMORI waited until he had a circulation of 300,000, a readership large enough to have an impact on a manufacturer. Since then he has tested over 200 items, both Japanese and foreign made, and all in common use.

In the beginning he tested such things as rice, soy sauce, soap, towels, pens and pots—items indispensable to all. Now, as the Japanese economy has achieved a gross national product value of US$196.2 million (1970), second only to that of the United States, HANAMORI is concerned with "gadgets which make daily living convenient," such as fans, water heaters, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners. He is also concerned with items which he feels may later fit that category or which are highly advertised. Dishwashers met this criteria. HANAMORI tested their usefulness and efficiency and found them lacking in both respects. He then launched a campaign to show that they were not a good buy for the average small Japanese household. He timed his year long effort to reach its climax when companies gave year-end bonuses and couples were most likely to make major purchases. He was so successful that dishwashers have yet to become fashionable in Japan.

HANAMORI will not test leisure or luxury goods, in which categories he places automobiles. For one thing, Kurashi-no-Techo has neither the funds nor the laboratories for testing expensive, complex items, but above all HANAMORI is committed to testing products useful and necessary to all. Moreover, as he points out, there is no limit to the number of products that can be created, but there is a definite limit to the number that he can test. In the five issues, 94 to 99, Kurashi-no-Techo reported on the testing of 40 products. Sixty percent cost less than ¥1,000 (US$2.50); 20 percent between ¥1,000 and ¥5,000 (US$12.50) and 20 percent above. Today, however, testing is taking a new tangent. Kurashi-no-Techo is accumulating statistics on apartments, both government-owned and private, interviewing buyers and users and gathering data on prices, size of rooms, quality of building materials facilities and the like.

HANAMORI’s attitude toward testing is unique. Product testing, he writes, "is not for the consumer." Actually "it is the best method to make [the industrialist] manufacture only good merchandise." His goal is to get industry to stop producing "useless, unnecessary, easily breakable and poisonous merchandise and for wholesalers and retailers and department stores and supermarkets to refrain from selling these goods." To be perfectly fair he asks the manufacturer "if there is any data they want to send us or what particular model they recommend for testing." But all merchandise tested is bought on the open market without government tax exemption.

"Determining the points to be tested is a difficult and important part of the work," he points out, and must be based upon normal use conditions. Taking the simple example or a bar of soap, testing should determine if it washes well, is harmful to the skin, dissolves and suds easily and continues to do so throughout its life span, its cost per gram and its efficiency per gram. In each case he must also decide the priorities of the test: an extreme example would be, which is the most important, if a washer washes well or if the timer is accurate? Based upon such priority considerations, various testing organizations may rate products tested differently.

The testing process itself sometimes takes two years, with three daily shifts of people involved. For the most part HANAMORI has developed his own testing methods; this was necessary because he had no models to fall back on. Product testing outside the factory by a private organization was entirely new to Japan. "We are very careful," he writes, for "if the magazine makes a mistake it is the end of the credibility of the magazine."

Since his primary concern is to get the manufacturer to produce a good product rather than to educate the consumer to wise buying, Kurashi-no-Techo not only reports the results of testing but makes specific suggestions to manufacturers for improvements and encourages its readers to do likewise. It keeps in touch with companies to see if improvements have indeed been made and frequently retests after several years. An example of this policy is cooking stoves. Kurashi-no-Techo first tested Japanese and foreign-made stoves readily available on the Japanese market in 1960. At that time it reported that no Japanese stove was acceptable; the only stove of good quality and efficiency was the British made Aladdin. As a result of this report Aladdin "sold like hot cakes." Japanese manufacturers began to upgrade their products and in 1962, when Kurashi-no-Techo tested stoves a second time, there were "one or two fairly good products among those made in Japan." By 1968 when stoves were tested a third time there were some excellent Japanese models on the market. HANAMORI wonders if such improvement would have occurred if Kurashi-no-Techo had not retested.

HANAMORI today has achieved acceptability and credibility among his protagonists. In 1972, asked to comment on his work by Asahi Shimbun, the Deputy Chief of the President's Office of Hitachi Manufacturing Company responded, "the magazine is a welcome advisor and we do not consider it an enemy." The Director of Product Testing at the Institute of Matsushita Electric Machine Manufacturing Company commented, "the product testing done by this magazine is not just a scientific test but a utility test and they engage very highly developed techniques so the results are very reliable and helpful to us manufacturers, too." The President of Ishii Music Productions said, "I respect him from the bottom of my heart and I am trying to live without getting scolded by him."

While HANAMORI’s stated aim is to get Japanese industry to accept greater responsibility for producing quality products, in the process he has trained the masses to become educated buyers and wise consumers. When all other women's magazines are suffering from declining circulation, Anniversary shrewd buyers, HANAMORI writes in the Anniversary Issue, but they have developed a critical sense and have "learned of their own power through this magazine."

HANAMORI chose to make much of the 100th Anniversary Issue because, he said, it was the end of an era. The next issue was to be a new beginning, with an enlarged format, better paper, improved printing and a fresh approach. To emphasize this both to readers and staff, it was to be numbered One of the Second Century.

Kurashi-no-Techo is not, of course, limited to product testing. For one thing HANAMORI does not believe that in Japan a magazine devoted only to testing can pay for itself. His interests, moreover, are much broader—his goal is still to help women achieve a fuller, more beautiful and meaningful life. He has written articles over the years for Kurashi-no-Techo that touch on many subjects, always in a positive way and always trying to improve the quality of life or remind people of the opportunities they have. In October 1971 he published a collection of 29 of these essays in a book entitled Flag of 1.5 Sen. The 1.5 sen (a fraction of a yen) refers to the cost of sending a postcard to draft a soldier; during the war it became the term for an enlisted man. By extension HANAMORI makes it mean the common man.

The flag of the title, he says, "is a beggar's flag. It is a flag of living, sewing [together] many fragmentary pieces of cloth. . . .the first flag in the world of us nameless people." In the introduction he states that the old Japanese attitude of master and servant still exists and that the civil servant is neither civil nor a servant: "all is back as it was." His book is therefore a battlecry for change—change in the people themselves because they permit existing conditions.

In the essay "Youth in Grey (Rat-Colored Youths)" he points out that to choose to dress alike, as if in uniform, is to seek the security of anonymity in spite of the freedom to be or do anything. If you insist on doing as the majority he warns youth, you will end up "waving the red flag because you are told to or shouldering a gun again." His essay "Sapporo" is in praise of the pioneers on the northern island of Hokkaido who were neglected by the government that sent them there and survived only by their own efforts. "The World Does Not Exist for You" calls upon young girl graduates to open the heavy doors between them and careers of their choice. "What is Sake" reports the dangers to self and others of drunkenness. "Good Days and Bad Days" attacks groundless superstitions perpetuated in the Buddhist calendar. "Health Insurance Card in One-Figure Number" suggests that the "shadow" cast by one's actions may be more important than the action itself "To Throw Away Arms" shows the quixotic side of his nature. He points out that Japan is the only nation out of the 136 in the world today which has, in its constitution, forsworn the use of force. The next step he feels should be to persuade all nations "to throw their arms into the Pacific Ocean," creating an island which could be called the Island of Peace and used for the Olympic Games and a huge Wedding Hall!

For this book HANAMORI received the Yomiuri Literary Award in the Travelogue and Essay Category for 1971. It was awarded on the basis of literary merit alone without regard to his achievements as an editor. Wrote one critic, his style is "beautifully simple and yet so precise and subtly tender and so successful in eliciting truth from the commonplace experiences of our lives."

HANAMORI conceived the idea of this book when he was lying abed in Kyoto in the winter of 1968 recovering from a severe heart attack. Prior to his heart attack he was normally gregarious and talkative. He used to enjoy bopping in on friends at the Asahi Beer offices to talk to the young people employed there. He was active as a social critic on Japanese radio and television and in the major dailies. He also excelled as a platform speaker, with his keen sense of humor, genuine ability to reach and hold people and "superb timing." Since his heart attack, however, he has had to conserve his strength. Today he devotes all his energies to his magazine.

Short and well-built, HANAMORI has the hands of an artist and wears his hair in a long bob, a fact which has brought him some criticism. However, as one friend remarks, he is really rather homely and long hair makes him look better. But all this is forgotten when he smiles and starts to talk; "one is immediately struck by the sincerity and depth of his replies."

In some ways HANAMORI is a paradox. He has a rational mind combined with a warm, concerned heart. He is old-fashioned with high moral standards, yet anti-establishment and an original thinker. A famous writer and editor, he finds it very difficult to write: "As long as I am writing, I feel pain," he says, and it "never gets any easier."

Foremost, however, he is thoroughly democratic. On the masthead of Kurashi-no-Techo he lists the staff alphabetically rather than by rank, not even noting positions. He remembers all who have helped the magazine over the years and frequently sends them useful gifts. He sends the same gifts to printers that he sends to VIP's.

In 1956 HANAMORI and his staff received the esteemed Kan Kikuchi Award from Bungei Shunju for their achievement in creating a new kind of magazine. In June 1972 Asahi Shimbun chose him as its "man of the month."

HANAMORI’s philosophy of life is simple: work hard, do what you believe in and work for others, especially the "nameless people." The secret of his magazine's success, he believes, is that it appeals to the people and not to the elite, and "relates to the whole business of living and not just to one phase." It is also the "only magazine in the country not allied to government, business or a political party," and may be the only one in the world that has been a commercial success for 25 years without ever accepting advertising.

One colleague sums up the impact of HANAMORI and Kurashi-no-Techo as he sees it: "Nameless people find in this magazine and in his writings the expressions of their own feelings, desires, aspirations and even rages, accompanied with guidance on how they should act and conduct their own life in line with their feelings and reactions. In Japan, where no religion exerts widely accepted influence and guidance, his magazines are possibly read by those who are seeking some frame of reference for the so called 'moral backbone' of society." Or, as a reader has written, "You train our eyes to see through our daily lives and yet we are not aware by reading your magazine that we are being so trained."

August 1972
Manila

REFERENCES:

Asahi Shimbun (Cultural section). Tokyo. June 13, 1972.

______ . Review of Documents of Wartime Living. August 15, 1972.

Hanamori, Yasuji. Flag of 1.5 Sen. Tokyo: Kurashi-no-Techo. October 1971.

______. Kurashi-no-Techo. 100th Anniversary Issue. April 1969.

______. Ibid. No. 18, Second Century. Summer 1972.

"A Proposal for Abolishment of Resale Price Maintenance System." Tokyo: Japan Housewives Association. 1971. (Mimeographed.)

Review of Kusrashi-no-Techo issues. Interviews with and letters from colleagues of Yasuji Hanamori and others acquainted with his writings and career.