During the wartime period the government controlled freedom of expression and economically regulated the publishing industry. Ultimately its control came to be extended over the private act of reading books. The national reading campaign is a typical device for it. A reading campaign started by Kunizō Nakata in Ishikawa Prefecture developed into the national movement which was boosted by libraries all over the country. Thus since the eruption of the war libraries had gradually changed from a space of individual reading through a laboratory of collective reading for public enlightenment finally to an ideological apparatus for the formation of totalitarian reading under the fascist regime.