Between visiting Hearst Castle (great site if you're ever in south-central California) last winter and seeing some incidental references to Hearst's editorial opinions, it appears he demogogued fears of the "yellow peril", particularly with regard to a war scare in 1913 (if not also earlier).
If you were not Korean or Russian or in former Chinese territories, Japanese foreign policy back then was not particularly malign.
But, fast-forward a couple decades to the Panay incident, the Hearst Papers were adamant that Japanese aggression in Asia was none of America's business. I believe he later brought back Yellow Peril themes in his papers, but only *after Pearl Harbor*.
In terms of Japan's actual behavior, not only towards Asians, but even Americans as well, Hearst's timing was odd and misplaced.
So I speculated on some reasons for the shifts in Hearst's views.
a) Hearst felt guilty about advocacy of the Spanish-American War by the 1930s
b) Hearst only cared about Japan when Japanese immigration was an issue, once that ended in the 20s he did not care about Far East
c) Hearst was all for a "splendid little war" in 1898, but knew from WWI he didn't like a big war
d) He was a Germanophile, that’s why he opposed US involvement in both World Wars even though he was hawkish on Spain
e) He was an Anglophobe – didn’t like early Anglo-allied Japan, didn’t care about Japan after alliance ended