November 19, 2025

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JAPAN

History

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A front page report from November 1950 indicated that the government was in talks with French and British companies about launching television for the first time ever in Japan.

JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By

Nov 1, 2025

Japan Times 1950: Negotiations under way to bring TV to Japan

In November 1950, British and French officials were offering their broadcasting technology to help Japan launch its first television channel, pending a permit from the government.

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.

JAPAN / History / Longform

Oct 27, 2025

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell

By Alex K.T. Martin

A sealed 1930s subway platform beneath Shimbashi Station still holds traces of what the capital looked like before the war.

A print by Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794-1832) depicts a bustling scene at a fish market in Nihonbashi.

JAPAN / History / The Living Past

Oct 18, 2025

Of sound and silence in old Japan

By Michael Hoffman

While haiku poets like Basho extolled the virtues of tranquility, premodern Japan was likely a noisier affair than most people imagine.

Legal scholar Shigeto Hozumi conducted some 250 lecture sessions for Empress Nagako, posthumously known as Empress Kojun, between 1924 and 1950.

JAPAN / History

Oct 9, 2025

Late Empress Kojun received lectures on World War II from experts, records show

In a lecture in February 1942, after Japan went to war with the United States, one scholar explained to Empress Kojun speeches delivered to parliament by the then prime minister.

Empress Nagako, posthumously known as Empress Kojun, fixes the hair of Emperor Hirohito, known posthumously as Emperor Showa, at the Nasu Imperial Villa in Tochigi Prefecture in August 1947.

JAPAN / History

Oct 9, 2025

Official records of late Empress Kojun's life include her experiences in World War II

The empress spent Aug. 15, 1945, when Emperor Showa declared Japan's surrender in World War II, inside a bunker facility that had served as her home, the records state.

Hideki Shirakawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, became the second Japanese person to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in October 2000.

JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By

Oct 1, 2025

Japan Times 2000: Japanese professor wins Nobel Prize in chemistry

Hideki Shirakawa received the Nobel Prize in October 2000 along with two American scientists for their revolutionary work on conductive polymers.

Hisao Ito, a former resident of Tinian in the Mariana Islands, points to himself in a family photo taken when he was a child.

JAPAN / History

Sep 24, 2025

World War II survivor bears witness to family tragedy in Tinian mass suicide

Eighty-one years after the mass suicide, the memory of his father killing two of his sisters remains lodged in the survivor's mind, yet he holds no grudge against his father.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.

A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo

By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

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