Asahi Shimbun Research Articles

Negotiating Plastics: De-mythicizing Individual Responsibility and Plastic Materialities in Japan, from the 1940s to the 1970s

ABSTRACT Japan is the second-largest producer of plastic waste. The government has implemented policies that encourage individual citizens to recycle and reduce plastic products to promote sustainability. This study into the history of women’s relationship with plastics de-naturalises two assumptions embedded in such environmental policies: firstly, the idea that it is the responsibility of individuals to combat the proliferation of plastics and pollution, and secondly, the notion of ‘plastics’ as a singular element to be accepted or rejected. Based on archival research of articles published in the Asahi shimbun and women’s magazines from the 1940s to the 1970s, this article chronicles changing themes in the depiction of women – plastics relationships. The history of women that emerged from the analysis shows that during this period women exercised their power collectively to negotiate the introduction of various plastic elements into the household. Women collectively determined what could be sold as a plastic product, changed the industry and shop floor practices, and influenced law and government policies regarding plastic waste disposal. The analysis reveals that such collective activities played a role in shaping a diverse history of plastics that is often lost in contemporary discourses of a single ‘plastic’ element and individual responsibility.

A critical cognitive analysis of Japan’s nuclear contaminated water discharge discourse

This research investigates the use of compound image schemas in the discourse surrounding Japan’s nuclear wastewater discharge. By analyzing editorials from Asahi Shimbun, this study reveals how discourse producers, from government bodies to media outlets, employ image schemas to navigate, shape, and legitimize their stances on this contentious issue. The investigation identifies the prevalent use of PATH and CONTAINER schemas, facilitating the construction of complex narrative spaces that define “in-group” and “out-group” dynamics, thereby guiding public perception and discourse participation towards an implicit endorsement of specific policy directions. The findings highlight the dynamic interplay between micro-level discourse strategies and macro-level cognitive frameworks, projecting tailored narratives into the public sphere. This projection, rooted in sophisticated cognitive mechanisms, illustrates the strategic use of discourse to influence public opinion and legitimize environmental policy decisions, reflecting broader social implications and the power of discourse in shaping environmental risk perceptions.

1930년대 말 국민체력저하 문제의 대두와 사회적 대응

In 1936, General Teraiichi Derauchi raised concerns about the declining national physical fitness during a regular assembly. This statement paved the way for the establishment of the Welfare Department in 1938. The recognition of the national physical fitness decline as an urgent issue by the army emerged around the mid-1930s. The army had been continuously analyzing the results of conscription examinations. Experiences utilizing the results of conscription examinations in the “Excellent Excellent young man Village Award(優良壯丁市町村表彰)” project conducted by the Asahi Shimbun in 1934, along with the appointment of Chikahiko Koizumi(小泉親彦) as the Director of the Medical Officer, prompted a re-evaluation of the physical fitness issue among servicemen. Subsequently, Koizumi's analysis of the national physical fitness issue led to General Koizumi's remarks. Subsequently, through academic research and mass media, the issue spread socially. Initially, the “Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(日本學術振興會)” established a related committee to initiate scientific examination. The research findings highlighted the necessity for accurate data to assess the nation's physical fitness. These academic research results provided a policy definition for 'physical fitness' and laid the groundwork for the National Physical Fitness Law(國民體力法) enacted in 1940. Asahi Newspaper(朝日新聞社), a prominent mass media outlet, provided a platform for the formation of societal consensus on the issue of national physical fitness. Particularly noteworthy is the 'National Physical Fitness Improvement Symposium(國民體力向上座談會)' held in June 1937. Government officials, along with experts from various fields including academia, labor, and sports, attended this symposium to discuss the causes of the decline in national physical fitness and potential improvement measures. Not only were policy perspectives discussed, but also vividly conveyed were the issues faced in practical settings. As a result of these processes, societal awareness of the issue of national physical fitness spread, and there was a growing chorus calling for alternative solutions to address it. The discussions and awareness spread at the societal level would go on to have a significant impact on the subsequent policy-making process. In other words, the national importance of the issue of national physical fitness, symbolized by the establishment of the Welfare Department during the wartime period, was shaped not only by political responses but also by the convergence of societal interest and awareness.

Critical Discourse Analysis of Japanese Mainstream Media Reports on China’s Aid to Africa: Based on Corpus Data

This paper conducts a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of coverage on China’s aid to Africa by the mainstream Japanese media, Asahi Shimbun, using corpus linguistics and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis model. The study collected relevant news articles from Asahi Shimbun published between 1984 and 2023. Using the timeline of the coverage as a framework, it carried out statistical analyses, including word frequency analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and correlation analysis, accompanied by visualization techniques. By integrating historical context, the study explores the linguistic features and evolving focal points across different periods of reporting. Through analyzing word frequency, keyword indexing, collocations, and grammatical structures, the study reveals the underlying meaning of the discourse, exposing Japan’s ideology and discourse power structure within the media’s narrative. This research offers new perspectives and methodologies for exploring the interplay between media, international relations, and development aid.

순혈(純血)’의 환상과 혼혈아의 등장

The term “mixed race” is not currently used in South Korea. In Japan, Asahi Shimbun decided in January 2004 to avoid using the term “mixed-race child”. This is because “mixed race” is a term that sets boundaries between humans and otherizes them, and is not appropriate in this era of increasing globalization. The term “mixed race” first appeared in Korea during the colonial period, particularly around 1940. In this study, we will examine the reason and meaning behind the full-fledged emergence of the term “mixed race” in two novels that feature mixed-race children: “Typhoon” (1943) by Kane Raise and “Pirate Story of the South Seas” by Ando Sakan. (1939). Around 1940, there was a serious debate going on in Japan about “maintaining the purity of the race”, and Kim Nae-sung's “Typhoon” and Ahn Tou-hee's “Inferno in the South Sea” were very relevant to this era. It was a novel created in which the main character was a mixed-race man who aimed to build a mixed-race empire in this atmosphere. The exploration of the “mixed-race people” that appear in these two novels has an important meaning in investigating the substance of the pure-blood ideology that was spread by the Japanese Empire during the colonial period. In addition, the conclusions of these two novels are worth noting in order to clearly understand the origins of racial prejudice and discriminatory perceptions that still persist today.

SU-ISU BERKAITAN EKONOMI GIG DI JEPUN: ANALISIS LAPORAN AKHBAR

The global COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the media landscape in Japan, as news coverage that previously focused on the preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has shifted towards pandemic-related issues. Increased news reports on current pandemic-related issues, including those related to gig economy workers, have emerged. Social restrictions and the rise in online activities have driven the growth of the gig economy in Japan, which was initially needed to address the imbalance in talent supply and demand, along with a declining young population. However, a lack of legal oversight has led to various issues, ultimately resulting in the formation of labor unions demanding job justice for gig workers. Previous studies have been conducted on gig workers, such as labor injustices and proposals for regulating labor standards like collective bargaining, but there is still a lack of research exploring media reporting on the gig economy in Japan. Therefore, this study aims to identify current issues related to the gig economy in Japan, focusing on online food delivery platform workers through media coverage analysis. Data was collected from the online news archive of Asahi Shimbun from February 2021 to December 2022 using the search terms "gig economy" and "uber eats." The research findings were obtained through content analysis conducted with the assistance of Leximancer software. It was found that Asahi Shimbun's news reporting on the gig economy during the COVID-19 pandemic tended to be more negative in sentiment than positive. Negative sentiment emerged due to prominent reports of dissatisfaction among gig workers with the Uber Eats Japan food delivery service company, primarily stemming from changes in the delivery compensation system. This study is expected to contribute to the understanding of gig economy issues as portrayed in the media, serving as a guide for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and labor unions to improve the quality of gig work in Japan and globally.

Covering the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as the Recovery Olympics After Fukushima

This article examines how major Japanese national newspapers - t he Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the Sankei Shimbun - discussed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as the “Recovery Olympics” in relation to radioactive materials as a key post-Fukushima environmental contamination issue. Although many scholars have critically examined the concept of the Recovery Olympics in the context of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, this study employs Beck’s risk society and Boykoff’s celebration capitalism theories to distinguish between the recovery discourses of the earthquake and tsunami versus the Fukushima disaster. It then explores the media’s depiction of the Recovery Olympics in relation to radioactive contamination. Using Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approch to critical discourse analysis, this study demonstrates that the leading Japanese national newspapers localized the issue of post-Fukushima environmental contamination within Fukushima Prefecture, thereby obscuring broader impacts for the Olympics. Additionally, it uncovers how these newspapers emphasized safety standards, transforming post-Fukushima environmental contamination below such standards into a symbol legitimizing the Recovery Olympics.

Fifty Years of Bangladesh-Japan Relations: Japan’s Contribution to the Freedom Struggle of Bangladesh

The year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Bangladesh and Japan. Japan was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladesh officially, on 10 th February 1972, fewer than two months after the latter gained independence. This article investigates the great assistance that Japan extended to Bangladesh at this crucial juncture in its history, while also exploring several new insights into Japan’s contribution to the freedom struggle in 1971. The widespread support and cooperation of the Japanese people towards Bangladesh during its resistance against the Pakistan military were spontaneous and overwhelming. Many Japanese organizations, like the 'Japan-Bangladesh Friendship Association' (JBFA), the 'Bangladesh Solidarity Front' (BSF), and the Japan Red Cross Society (JRCS), made an immense contribution to Bangladesh's War of Liberation. Notable Japanese politicians and professionals, like Takashi Hayakawa (MP), Professor Tsuyoshi Nara, and Professor Setsurei Tsurushima, coordinated and strengthened their collective efforts to support Bangladesh. The Japanese press and media, like the Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, and Asahi Shimbun, also played a very positive role in mobilizing public opinion in favor of the independence of Bangladesh. The Japanese government was sympathetic towards the defecting Bengali diplomats who left the Pakistani side and were in Japan under special permission from the Japanese government. Even the Japanese United Nations (UN) Mission came forward to sponsor or co-sponsor several resolutions supporting the means of Bangladesh. We earnestly hope that fifty years of bilateral relations will elevate into "heart- to-heart" relations, from a comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership.

Girls (and Boys) Debating Democracy in Aoi sanmyaku

Histories of democracy in modern Japan often position ‘democracy’ itself as an elite, introduced, inorganic facet of post-defeat Japan’s reconstruction by outside influences. However, analysis of discourses and texts prior to this revisionist narrative reveal a much more complex and continuous intellectual history at play. Ishizaka Yōjirō’s (1900–1986) run-away hit Aoi sanmyaku (Blue mountain range, 1947) was a timely and highly influential serialised work in The Asahi Shimbun, which was quickly republished as a novel and then adapted into a massively successful film in 1949. In this discussion the work both uses and challenges a feudalism versus democracy binary, and reveals strong intellectual continuities between prewar and post-war thinking regarding modernity. The work also challenges the positioning of relationships between school-age male and female students as a symbol of democracy and modernism in this era. Through Ishizaka’s use of debate and humour, this work is not an account of the failings of democracy, or its success, but rather an exploration of the tensions that emerge with attempts to implement these discourses.

How did Ethnic Sports Disseminate to the World? : A Case Study on the Localization of Taijiquan in Japan before 1970s

This paper aims to reveal the development of Taijiquan in Japan before 1970s. by analyzing the materials including Yomiuri Shimbun (newspaper published since 1874), Asahi Shimbun (newspaper published since 1879), Taiiku Nihon (magazine published between 1940 and 1944), books related to China, and materials from interview on Japanese martial artists, the following results were found. In 1932 Sakuma Teijiro, a journalist, published a book that introduced 77 with Chinese custom. Among which, Taijiquan’s techniques were mentioned. So far this is the first time Taijiquan has appeared in historical materials in Japan. After late 1930s, Taijiquan began to appear more often in the articles on newspaper and magazine. The articles used karate (“唐手” or “空手”), jujutsu (“柔術”), or gymnastics, which are familiar things to Japanese, to introduced Taijiquan. In 1940, Chu Minyi, then ambassador of Japan, published an article on Taiiku Nihon to introduce Taijiquan in detail. However, Taijiquan was still not popular in Japan during 1940s. After 1949, due to the Cold War and conflicts between East and West countries, only few articles in materials mentioned Taijiquan and the content mainly comes from Hong Kong and Taiwan instead of mainland China. This situation continued until the late 1960s when Taijiquan has been gradually attracting attention as a health method. The Japan Taijiquan Association was formed in April 1968. Then in 1979, after about 10 years of formation of the Japan Taijiquan Association, Taijiquan has already developed into a movement with a certain degree of recognition in Japan.

Интеграция коммуникативных и географических подходов в медиаэкологических исследованиях (на примере анализа крупнейших газетных изданий России, Китая и Японии)

The article announces a new concept of media ecology as a scientific field of research within the framework of the paradigm of mediatization of the information space. The term “media ecology” is already used in science, but in a different conceptual meaning. The authors conducted its detuning from existing analogues at the terminological level, specified the field of scientific research of media ecology, designated its thematic field, defined methodological and theoretical bases and research tools. The possibility of using geographical and geoinformation research methods within the framework of the proposed concept is indicated. Examples of maps and geographical studies on media-ecological topics are given. The results of a pilot study on the analysis of empirical material by methods and tools of media ecology on the example of the largest newspaper publications of the three countries are also presented. These are “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” (edition of the Government of the Russian Federation), “Zhenmin Zhibao” (Publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China) and “Asahi Shimbun” (national newspaper of Japan). The study was conducted according to the method of communicative five-stage analysis with elements of comparative geographical analysis. The article contains an examination of the peculiarities of the environmental policy of the three countries, a comparative analysis of the format of publications and a frequency analysis of archives posted on the websites of publications. The authors also compared the traffic to the websites of publications and the average reading time of materials, analyzed the features of feedback and communication with readers. Conclusions are drawn about the degree of effectiveness of the communicative impact of the publications under consideration on the audience. The highest efficiency was found in the Japanese newspaper “Asahi Shimbun”, the average—in the “Russian newspaper”, and the lowest—in the Chinese “Zhenmin Zhibao”.

Nihonjinron and depictions of racial foreigners: reporting on black people in Asahi Shimbun (2001–2010)

We examine the Japanese-language newspaper Asahi Shimbun for its reporting on Black people in Japan and the United States from 2001–2010, a time when Japan was forced to boost immigration. While a response to major labor shortages, increased diversity required Japan to rethink its relationship with racial others, among whom Blacks have long been unique in Japanese history. While the newspaper’s narratives in stories of Japan and the United States had overlapping themes, the emphasis differed with national context. Its reporting on the U.S. characterized Black-Japanese relations as being racially aligned, suggesting Japanese have a parallel set of experiences with Western racism; reporting also described the U.S. failing miserably in its treatment of African Americans. Reporting on Blacks in Japan used black cultural artifacts as a tool to understand Japanese life. On occasion, the “Ambiguous Foreigner” appears when referencing Afro-Japanese families or Africans in Japan. The idea of Japanese racism holds little credence in reporting, but when evident a remedy was quickly and responsively provided. Asahi bolsters the idea of Japanese exceptionalism/Nihonjinron identity vis-a-vis the U.S. and portrays Japan as a model of a modern, post-racist nation.

Cultural Dialogue Between Japan and Socialist Eurasia in 1960s–1970s: Visits of Novelists Yasushi Inoue and Ryotaro Shiba to the USSR and Mongolia

This article explores a narrow aspect of cultural dialogue between Japan and socialist Eurasia (the Central Asian and Siberian regions of the USSR and Mongolian People’s Republic) during Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, using essays by Japanese writers Yasushi Inoue and Ryotaro Shiba, who visited Soviet Central Asia and the Far East and socialist Mongolia in 1965–1973; trips by Japanese writers; and the image of socialist Eurasia in Japanese public opinion. The sources for the analysis are The Tale of the Western Region by Yasushi Inoue (Seiiki Monogatari, 1968, trans. in English in 1971 as Journey beyond Samarkand and Mongolian Travel Notes by Ryotaro Shiba (Mongoru kiko:, 1974). Yasushi Inoue made two trips to Soviet Central Asia in 1965 and 1968, and Ryotaro Shiba went to Mongolian People’s Republic through the Soviet Far East (Khabarovsk and Irkutsk) in 1973. Researched texts serve as a platform for the author’s dialogue with a wide readership in Japan that helped shape the public image of the Soviet Union in non-central regions. The popularity of Inoue’s and Shiba’s image of socialist Eurasia is confirmed by the fact that Shiba’s travel notes were reprinted for several times by different publishers in Japan, although it was first published in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun in 1973–1974; a novel by Yasushi Inoue also was reprinted in several editions and served as inspiration for the modern writer Ryo Kuroki, who dedicated his novel Runway on the Great Silk Road about Japanese-Kyrgyz relations in the early 2000s.

ANALISIS SUBJEKTIFITAS MEDIA DARING JEPANG MENGENAI ISU LARANGAN KELUAR MASUK JEPANG PADA MASA PANDEMI VIRUS COVID-19: SEBUAH PENELITIAN SEMIOTIK

The polarization between conservative and progressive media created a middle ground for the print media to maintain sufficient readerships which are decreasing due to the declining Japanese birth rate. But why it relates to ‘security’, what is the reason? This research aims to examine news articles from the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun mass media in English, namely, The Japan News and The Asahi Shimbun, as a reference medium to understand the framing between conservative and progressive Japanese mass media regarding the issue of prohibiting entry and exit of Japan for the international community during the pandemic. Researchers used qualitative methods, content analysis, with a semiotics approach in which researcher used the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) software to filter out low-frequency nouns with a number> 5 which became the key vocabulary to understand the debate on the prohibition of entry an­d leaving Japan during January- August 2020. No less than 19 news articles were collected from The Japan News and 21 news articles were collected from The Asahi Shimbun by searching for the terms Ban/ Re-entry/ Travel/ Entry. After being filtered, 22 nouns >5 were found which were used by The Japan News and The Asahi Shimbun. In addition, there are 5 nouns found only in one medium with a total of >5. The result shows that The Japan News is a pro-government media that rarely criticizes the government. Criticism will be made if government policies disrupt the economy and are related to the Keidanren (Japan Business Association). On the other hand, The Asahi Shimbun is a counter-government media that criticize the government but has close ties to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. To understand the Japanese mass media information data strategically, both mass media have an important role in the international community.

An Abridged Version of My Book, Asahi Shimbun no Ianfu Hōdō to Saiban [The Reports of Comfort Women by the Asahi Newspaper and Litigations

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun has covered the Comfort Women issue since the 1990s, and because of that, it has been a target of the rightwing attack in Japan until now. Ryūichi Kitano, Senior Staff Writer at Asahi Shimbun, decided to write a tome about the entire proceedings of legal battles with the rightwing groups in Japan over Asahi’s coverage of the comfort women issue. The book was published in August 2020, and this contribution by Mr. Kitano is a summary of the 539 page-long record of historical documents and commentaries regarding the litigations and the comfort women issue. Mr. Kitano believes that this book is the only reliable source from Japan that present and future researchers of the comfort women issue can reliably use.

Latent Semantic Scaling: A Semisupervised Text Analysis Technique for New Domains and Languages

ABSTRACT Many social scientists recognize that quantitative text analysis is a useful research methodology, but its application is still concentrated in documents written in European languages, especially English, and few sub-fields of political science, such as comparative politics and legislative studies. This seems to be due to the absence of flexible and cost-efficient methods that can be used to analyze documents in different domains and languages. Aiming to solve this problem, this paper proposes a semisupervised document scaling technique, called Latent Semantic Scaling (LSS), which can locate documents on various pre-defined dimensions. LSS achieves this by combining user-provided seed words and latent semantic analysis (word embedding). The article demonstrates its flexibility and efficiency in large-scale sentiment analysis of New York Times articles on the economy and Asahi Shimbun articles on politics. These examples show that LSS can produce results comparable to that of the Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary (LSD) in both English and Japanese with only small sets of sentiment seed words. A new heuristic method that assists LSS users to choose a near-optimal number of singular values to obtain word vectors that best capture differences between documents on target dimensions is also presented.

Research and Practice of Computer-assisted Japanese Intensive Reading Education

With economic globalization, China’s foreign exchanges have been increasing. As a neighbouring country of China, Japan has close trade relations with China and has a large amount of cultural output. People’s learning of Japanese is also becoming more common. Using computer tools to make Japanese intensive reading education a higher level is the goal of educators’ current research and practice. This article will explain from three aspects. First, the author will clarify the teaching content and teaching goals of Japanese intensive reading. Second, the author will analyze the current use of basic computer-aided tools and analyze the advantages and disadvantages, including the related auxiliary word software MOJi as an example. Software suitable for training reading is based on the Asahi Shimbun, and computer-assisted translation tools are based on TRADOS. Finally, the author will summarize and prospect the current computer tools.

"『아사히신문』 외지판에 나타난 금강산 인식: ｢조선잡관｣과 《대금강산보》를 중심으로"

"『아사히신문』 외지판에 나타난 금강산 인식: ｢조선잡관｣과 《대금강산보》를 중심으로"

전쟁과 국가 그리고 헌법 : 山室信一 『憲法9条の思想水脈』（朝日新聞出版 2007年)

전쟁과 국가 그리고 헌법 : 山室信一 『憲法9条の思想水脈』（朝日新聞出版 2007年)

Media discourses of territorial disputes in Japan

ABSTRACT This paper deconstructs Japanese media discourses of Japan’s territorial disputes in selected newspapers in English – namely The Asahi Shimbun, The Japan News and The Japan Times from 2002 to 2018. Embedded in critical geopolitics, content and discourse analyses were conducted with the lexicostatistical tool AntConc, using articles available in the LexisNexis and Kikozu II Visual databases. The outcomes illustrate that nationalist geopolitical imaginations are popular among all researched newspapers as demonstrated by a strong dominance of solely Japanese toponyms in the discourses as well as a focus on supporting Japan’s obstinate approach rather than promoting solutions.