The Japan Times

Founded in 1897

The first issue appeared on 22 March 1897. It was brought out by Motosada Zumoto, who had been private secretary to Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, with Sueji Yamada as the company's president. Japan already had English-language newspapers, but they were run by foreign residents for foreign readers. The Japan Times was founded so that the country could explain itself, in its own words, to anyone in the world who cared to read.

A bridge, and a record

By 1915 the paper was describing its own work as building a bridge between the Japanese and the foreign community — a phrase it has never really abandoned. It has published through the Meiji, Taisho, Showa, Heisei and Reiwa eras: the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the war years, when it appeared as The Nippon Times from 1943 until the name returned in 1956, the Occupation, the recovery, and the decades since. Very little that has happened to modern Japan happened without this paper reporting it.

Independent

The Japan Times states its principles as independence, journalistic integrity and an unwavering loyalty to the truth. Since October 2013 it has been printed and distributed in Japan alongside The New York Times International Edition. It remains Japan's newspaper of record in English, read by diplomats, correspondents, executives and families who live here and think in two languages.

The Japan Times Education Services

Education has been part of this paper's subject matter for as long as it has published, because the question of how a country teaches its children is the question of what it intends to become. The Japan Times Education Services publishes the School Guide, commissions the guides and explainers in the magazine, and organises the school fairs where families meet schools in person.

About this guide

The School Guide describes international schools, boarding schools and universities in Japan and abroad using the same set of fields for every institution, so that families can compare schools on equal terms rather than on the strength of their marketing. Profiles are compiled from what schools publish about themselves; where a school takes part directly, it supplies the material and the profile carries what it has provided. Membership affects how much detail a profile carries, never the accuracy of what is published.