Publishers: Bigger & Better than Anyone

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In an earlier age hara-kiri would have been required after such an incident, but Shoriki went out and bought Yomiuri instead. Though friends warned that he was committing financial suicide, Shoriki hypoed the sluggish paper with such Western-style circulation builders as a radio section, women's pages, a mah-jongg column, race results and color comics. He eliminated all ads from the front page, a revolutionary step. Fascinated with the successful sensationalism of William Randolph Hearst (he is sometimes called "the Hearst of Japan"), he once had two gas-masked staffers descend 1,250 ft. into the bubbling, sulphurous crater of the active Mihara Volcano on Oshima Island, a favorite lovers' leap, to photograph the bodies of suicides. By 1936 Yomiuri was Tokyo's biggest paper.

Because of his editorial support of Tojo, Shoriki was jailed in grim, dank Sugamo Prison for 21 months after World War II as a war crimes suspect. But he was never charged with an offense or brought to trial. After occupation authorities removed him from their "purge" list in 1951, he resumed open direction of his paper. By sponsoring successful exhibitions of Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh, a Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, and an "Atoms-for-Peace" display that drew 360,000 visitors, Shoriki managed to keep the names Yomiuri—and Shoriki—before the public. In 1955 he won a seat in Japan's Diet as an independent; one year later he was being mentioned as a dark-horse candidate for Premier. But the brambly publisher had made too many enemies in his career. He had to settle for a Cabinet job as Japan's first Commissioner of Atomic Energy.

At the Helm. "In the Far East." says Hearst Columnist Bob Considine, "whenever editors speak of the great press lords of our age, they often mention Hearst and sometimes Beaverbrook. But they always mention Shoriki." Not that Shoriki has to rely on anyone else to mention him. Yomiuri faithfully records all of his activities, and his personal publicity corps has standing orders to invite all visiting VIPs to meet him for a headline-making chat and photos.

"I control the entire operation," says Shoriki of his role as chairman of Nippon Television, but that goes for his other operations as well. "No one questions my authority or my policies," he says. "And why? Because everyone knows that the company can't go wrong with Shoriki at the helm."