War meant business, as the factory worker Kumagaya Tokuichi later remembered: ‘News about China was everywhere. Even my father subscribed to the Asahi Graph [ . . . ]. By the end of 1937, everybody in the country was working. For the first time, I was able to take care of my father. War’s not bad at all, I thought.’ Indeed, for Japan’s early Showa media conglomerates those were good days too, as war’s popularity became the main root of their business expansion, and publishers built an entire entertainment empire around the conflict. Asahi News alone sent hundreds of reporters to China. The professionalism of its war reporting left an impression on Italian fascists, who admired its propaganda achievements, mentioning the ‘perfect organization’ and, above all, the dozens of aircraft which Asahi used in China.