A study demonstrates the existence of a wartime register in Japanese newspaper journalism and characterizes its major linguistic and stylistic features. Special emphasis is placed on the aspect of modality as related to point of view. Modality expresses the mode within which the propositional content of a sentence is presented as certain, reliable, or authoritative, and it functions to regulate interpersonal relations in a language community. Point of view indicates a particular way of conceptualizing and refers to world-view or ideology. In relation to, or as a part of, modal functions, these issues are considered: point of view; certainty and probability; deontic and epistemic modality; and the use of classical style. To demonstrate the special features of modality in the wartime register, a diachronic comparison is made with texts from peacetime discourse. Contains 36 references. (Author/MSE)