Japan’s First Newspaper Was Born Next to the KanteibyoJoseph Heco’s Kaigai Shimbun and Lot 141 of the foreign settlement

Near the Kanteibyo stands a stone marking the birthplace of the newspaper in Japan. A few years after the port opened, a Japanese man made a Japanese-language newspaper here: Joseph Heco, a castaway who had grown up in America.

The stone at Lot 141

Near the Kanteibyo, on what was Lot 141 of the foreign settlement, a stone marks the birthplace of the newspaper in Japan. Here in 1864, the Japanese-language Kaigai Shimbun (“Overseas News”) was produced. Recent research also favors 1865 as the founding year.

A castaway who went to America

Its publisher, Joseph Heco, was born in Hyogo as Hamada Hikozo. In 1850, aged 13, the ship taking him home from Edo was caught in a storm and drifted into the Pacific. An American merchant ship rescued him, and he stayed in the United States.

Eight years later, at 21, he returned to Japan as an interpreter for the American consulate and worked in the first US–Japan negotiations. He is also known as the first Japanese-born naturalized American.

Four subscribers

The Kaigai Shimbun translated foreign newspapers brought in by ship, giving the latest news country by country, along with commodity prices and advertisements. It looked like a booklet of folded Japanese paper, printed from woodblocks. At first it had just four regular subscribers.

From Yokohama to all of Japan

The Kaigai Shimbun ended with its 26th issue in 1866, when Heco moved to Nagasaki. Japanese-language papers by foreigners followed in Yokohama, and on January 28, 1871 the Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun became Japan’s first daily Japanese-language newspaper.

The settlement also had English and other foreign-language papers. No Chinese newspaper is recorded, but the Chinese magazines Qingyi Bao (1898) and Xinmin Congbao (from 1902) were published in Chinatown.