Abstract
Right before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-1954), the Great Eastern Broadcasting Station (GEBS) was established in Shanghai under the aegis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (MOFA). Prior to the launching of the GEBS, Japan had not owned similar radio stations in China for years. As a result, the Embassy of Japan in China held rounds of discussions on the plan and Japanese governments, ranging from the MOFA, the Navy, the Army, the Ministry of Communications (MOC), and NHK-Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nihon Hoso Kyoku) provided financial, technological, and equipment support. In the mid-1930s when the Sino-Japanese relations became intensified, the GEBS assumed the primary role of disseminating government policies to over 30,000 Japanese expatriates in Shanghai to make sure that they could remain settled while supporting military endeavors of the Japanese army once the war between China and Japanese broke out. After 1937, the GEBS became an essential propaganda tool to advance imperial policies of Japan. Although the station differed from the Army-controlled Greater Shanghai Broadcasting Station (Dai Shanhai Hoso Kyoku) in many aspects, it was in line with the latter in terms of advancing wartime ideology of the Japanese empire. As the Japanese-occupied areas were enlarged, target audience of the GEBS also expanded to Chinese people and foreign nationals when Japanese, English, Russian, and Shanghai-dialect news was broadcast by the station. Suffice it to say that the GEBS was closely related to wartime propaganda of the Japanese imperial expansion.