The Japan Times

• 1. Introduction

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  The Japan Times launched on the 22nd of March 1897 with an unusual ambition for its era: to give Japanese readers a window into the world through the English language. That goal placed it at the intersection of two powerful currents - Japan's drive toward international participation and the English-speaking world's curiosity about Asia. What followed was more than a century of history that pulled the newspaper through wartime name changes, government pressure, colonial advocacy, editorial controversies, and ownership battles. How did a paper founded to help Japan engage with the world end up, during one period, serving as an outlet for Imperial Japanese government communication? And what does it mean for a newspaper to reckon with its own language when the words it chooses become a political flash point?

• 2. A Colonial Press Connection

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  In 1906, Motosada Zumoto, who had launched the paper nine years earlier, was approached by Ito Hirobumi, the Japanese Resident-General of Korea, to lead the English-language newspaper The Seoul Press. The arrangement that followed was tight and deliberate. Subscriptions to The Seoul Press were sold in Japan through The Japan Times, while the reverse held true in Korea. The two newspapers operated almost as sister publications, sharing commercial infrastructure across national borders. Both papers took an editorial stance that was openly critical of Korean culture and civilization. Both advocated for Japan's colonial control over the Korean peninsula, framing that control as a civilizing mission. The Korea connection gives early context to the paper's relationship with Japanese state interests - a relationship that would grow far more complicated in the decades that followed.

• 3. Government Pressure and Wartime

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  From 1931 onward, the newspaper's editors found themselves under growing pressure from the Japanese government to align with official policy. Two years later, in 1933, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened directly, appointing Hitoshi Ashida - a former ministry official - as chief editor. The paper had been independent of government control, but that independence was effectively being renegotiated. During World War II, the newspaper became an outlet for Imperial Japanese government communication and editorial opinion. Its very name changed multiple times. After merging with The Japan Mail, it became The Japan Times and Mail, a name it held from 1918 to 1940. A subsequent merger with The Japan Advertiser produced The Japan Times and Advertiser, which ran from 1940 to 1943. Then came the name Nippon Times, used from 1943 to 1956 - a direct consequence of the wartime ban on English-language sentiment in Japan. The paper only returned to the title The Japan Times in 1956, the same year a man named Shintaro Fukushima became its president.

• 4. Ownership and Its Consequences

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  Shintaro Fukushima, who was born in 1907 and died in 1987, shaped the paper through much of the postwar period. He sold a portion of the company's shares to Toshiaki Ogasawara, chairman of Nifco, a manufacturer of automotive fasteners - an unlikely connection between the press and the auto parts industry. In 1983, Fukushima renounced his management rights, at which point Nifco took formal control. Staff changes followed, and traditions the paper had carried since its 1897 founding were altered. Ogasawara served as chairman and publisher until 2016, when his daughter Yukiko Ogasawara succeeded him. She had previously served as president from 2006 to 2012, before being replaced by Takeharu Tsutsumi, a career Japan Times staffer. Nifco eventually sold the paper to the public relations firm News2u Holdings, Inc. on the 30th of June 2017, opening a new chapter in the paper's already complicated relationship with editorial independence.

• 5. The 2018 Editorial Crisis

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  After News2u acquired the paper, the editorial stance shifted. The new ownership moved to reduce what critics had called an "anti-Japanese" tone in the paper's coverage. In November 2018, an editor's note announced two specific language changes. Where the paper had used the phrase "forced labor", it would now use "wartime laborers". Where it had referred to "women who were forced to provide sex for Japanese troops before and during World War II", it would now say "women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers". Readers and employees pushed back immediately. A particular concern was that the changes appeared to align the paper with the political positions of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On the 7th of December 2018, the paper published a response acknowledging that "the editorial note undermined the relationships of trust we have built with our readers, reporters and staff" and offered an apology. The paper denied that the changes were driven by the Abe administration's agenda, but the episode drew sustained attention to the question of who, ultimately, sets the terms of language in journalism.

• 6. Voices on the Page

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  Among the contributors the paper has published over the decades, the range is striking. Ezra Pound served as an Italian correspondent. Donald Richie wrote on books and film. Edward Seidensticker, one of the foremost translators of Japanese literature into English, also contributed. Mark Brazil ran the Wild Watch nature column from 1982 to 2015 - a tenure of more than three decades. The paper's current roster includes John Gunning covering sumo, Robert Yellin writing the Ceramic Scene column, and Robbie Swinnerton filing the Tokyo Food File. Since the 16th of October 2013, the print edition has been sold alongside The New York Times International Edition, placing the paper in the hands of readers who pick up both on the same morning.