The United States wields tremendous influence worldwide in politics, the economy, diplomacy, the military, and culture, and its influence on Japan in particular is strong. It is evident that this influence across all these fields is related to the volume of coverage the U.S. receives in Japan. In Japanese media’s international reporting, the U.S. is always at the center of the conversation, with virtually every development becoming a subject of coverage. Moreover, not only reporting about the U.S. itself, but also reporting in Japan about other countries often seems affected by the United States; countries and international issues that are prioritized in the U.S. tend to be emphasized in Japanese coverage as well. In other words, even the lens through which the world is viewed in international news may be shaped by the United States. In this article, in addition to examining international reporting in Japan, we explore in greater detail the relationship between U.S. and Japanese international coverage, drawing on data analysis of the New York Times’ international pages.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shaking hands with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (then) in 2015 (Photo: U.S. Department of State / Flickr [United States Government work])

Japanese media’s focus on the United States

Japanese media’s interest in the United States is exceptionally strong and stands out. How concentrated international coverage is on the U.S. has been made clear by past GNV studies.

 GNV has examined the country-by-country volume of international reporting across various media outlets since 2015, and with few exceptions (※1), the United States has been by far the most covered country in Japan. For example, in 2017, a study of the regional and country shares of international news in the three papers Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, and Yomiuri Shimbun found that coverage of the United States alone accounted for 28.1% of the total. In 2021, the U.S. accounted for as much as 28.2% of international news coverage on NHK’s program “News Watch 9.”

Furthermore, even on LINE NEWS, which does not conduct its own reporting but aggregates coverage from traditional media, the volume of U.S.-related stories is extremely high. In LINE NEWS DIGEST, which delivers eight editor-selected stories each morning, afternoon, and evening, U.S.-related reporting accounted for 28% of all international news during the eight months from May to December 2017. This shows the strong interest in the United States even in news delivered via such apps.

Taken together, regardless of format, Japanese media devote a very large share of their international coverage to the United States, indicating a concentrated focus on the U.S.

Japanese students playing an election game at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo (Photo: U.S. Department of State / Flickr [United States Government work] )

As a concrete example, election coverage is particularly dominated by the United States. In a GNV study of coverage volumes from six months before to the latest certification of election results through May 2017, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, ranked first, received more than four times the coverage of the second-ranked 2017 French presidential election. There is also a large difference in how long election coverage remains active: reporting on U.S. presidential elections picks up roughly 2 years before the vote, whereas for other countries’ elections there is very little coverage even going back to one month before election day.

A closer look shows that, regarding the U.S. midterm elections held in December 2022, the Mainichi Shimbun ran articles starting in June 2021—a year and a half in advance—even though these are elections for offices such as members of Congress rather than the presidency; in 2022 alone, there were 54 articles on the international pages that included the term “U.S. midterm elections” (※2). As for the presidential election scheduled for November 2024, the Mainichi Shimbun already carried an article in July 2022 stating that Donald Trump was eager to run (July 28, 2022, “Former U.S. President Trump: Trump arrives in the capital; first since leaving office; eager to run for the U.S. presidential election”). From November 2022, two years before the election, many articles on the international pages have been headlined “U.S. presidential election,” with 67 such pieces found through August 2023 (※3).

Japan is deeply tied to the United States politically and economically. In security terms, Japan is under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and maintains a close relationship centered on the Japan–U.S. alliance and the Security Treaty. Economically, trade and investment are vigorous, and Japanese companies rank No. 1 in cumulative direct investment in the United States. While it is certain that the outcome of U.S. presidential elections affects Japan, one may question the significance of such extensive coverage when, 2 years before the vote, it is still unknown who will become president. Moreover, considering that there are around 200 countries and regions in the world and many other countries have close ties with Japan, there is room to reconsider the share given to a single country—the United States—in overall international coverage. When media attention is skewed, the interests of readers, who can learn about world events only through the media, also become skewed, concentrating coverage even more on areas that already attract attention.

The world through an American lens

Japanese media not only have a strong interest in the United States and produce a large volume of U.S.-related reporting; they also frequently cover other countries through an American viewpoint.

When the United States is directly involved in an event, even countries that usually receive little coverage can draw attention. For example, in a GNV study of Japan’s three major newspapers in 2015, Cuba alone accounted for about half of Latin America coverage, and the U.S. appeared in 63% of those articles. Cuba rarely attracts much attention in Japan’s international reporting, but Japanese media were likely interested because of the change in Cuba–U.S. relations that improved ties between the two.

There are also cases where Japanese media relay the U.S. government’s perspective as is. Consider the U.S. response when the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in 2021. In response to the change of government, the United States froze the Afghan central bank’s assets held in U.S. banks, then said it would return half without involving the Taliban, with officials at a press conference announcing this as “humanitarian assistance.” However, it decided to keep the remaining half, a move that can be seen as a kind of “seizure plan.” In any case, since the money belongs to Afghanistan, it is clearly not U.S. aid, yet various Japanese media emphasized the U.S. government’s framing of it as assistance to Afghanistan and did not report the negative aspects. In this way, Japanese outlets can be seen simply following the perspectives and claims of the U.S. government and U.S. media.

Japanese media covering Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Prime Minister’s Office (Photo: U.S. Department of State / Flickr [United States Government work])

 Another example is the murder in 2018 of a Saudi journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The journalist had sought asylum in the United States in 2017 and wrote columns for outlets such as the Washington Post, making him close to U.S. media circles; the case therefore received extensive coverage in both the U.S. and Japan. After then-President Trump spoke about the incident, the volume of reporting in Japan increased, and over the next 15 days it was covered with a total word count of 30,000—comparable to the amount of reporting about Saudi Arabia during the entire year prior to the incident. This starkly shows both the high interest in an incident connected to the United States and the usual low interest in Saudi Arabia. While several reports questioned the U.S. government’s response to the case, there was little mention of matters related to Japan, and Japan’s stance—despite its dependence on Saudi Arabia for oil—was not scrutinized. In this way, even in coverage of regions that have important ties with Japan, reporting can be framed through an American perspective, focusing on the U.S. relationship rather than Japan’s.

There are also articles that view events through the United States even when the U.S. is not directly involved. One example is coverage of the 2023 conflict in Sudan. In the Yomiuri Shimbun (May 6, 2023, “Sudan: Fighting ‘may be prolonged’”), the assessment quoted was that of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, who said the conflict could drag on. The piece reported on Sudan not from the country itself or an African bureau, but from Washington, D.C. Another example is an Asahi Shimbun article (May 17, 2023, “One month of fighting in Sudan devastates daily life; 200,000 refugees to neighboring countries”) offering commentary on the U.S. response, written from Washington.

The fixation on the U.S. seen in Japanese media is influenced not only by the volume of U.S.-related reporting but also by close ties with American media. Japanese outlets frequently cite or rely on U.S. information providers. For example, in the one month of August 2023, the number of international news articles citing U.S. media was 27 in the Asahi Shimbun, 45 in the Mainichi Shimbun, and 112 in the Yomiuri Shimbun (※4).

Influence from the United States

We have reviewed many cases, but is there an overall trend of U.S. influence on Japan’s international reporting? In a past GNV study, taking the relationship between the New York Times and Japan’s three major newspapers as an example, the rankings of regions covered—by continent—matched perfectly across them. In particular, the less interest Japanese media had in a region, the more the topics they picked up resembled those covered by U.S. media. However, that study was not conclusive, and further research is needed to substantiate that Japan’s international reporting is influenced by the United States.

New York Times headquarters (Photo: Adam Kinney / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

Various factors influence international reporting by Japanese media. For example, in a GNV study examining the relationship between coverage volume and several variables, we conducted statistical analyses using data on poverty rates, population, gross domestic product (GDP), trade volume with Japan, and the distance from Tokyo to each capital. The analysis confirmed that three factors—poverty rate, distance between capitals, and population—affect coverage volume, but found no statistically significant relationship between coverage volume and either trade with Japan or each country’s GDP. In other words, globally speaking, economic ties with Japan do not affect how much a country is covered. In their international coverage, Japanese media certainly pay attention to a limited set of countries with deep ties to Japan, including the G7 and China, South Korea, North Korea, and Russia, but they seem to place little importance on strong economic relations with other countries.

In the present study, we investigate whether U.S. media’s international coverage influences that of Japanese media. Using the number of articles by country on the New York Times’ international pages in 2019, we examine how much the amount of coverage in the U.S. affects coverage volume in Japanese media. We use 2019 data to compare with a previous GNV study of Japan’s three major newspapers in 2019. This analysis confirmed a correlation between the New York Times’ country-by-country coverage volume and the volume of international reporting in Japanese newspapers (※5). In other words, Japanese media’s view of the world is influenced by how U.S. media see it. The interests of U.S. media can be said to affect the interests and international coverage of Japanese media.

A large number of containers (Photo: NOAA’s National Ocean Service / Flickr [Public Domain Mark 1.0])

What lies behind the tilt toward the United States

As we have seen, Japan’s international reporting is influenced by U.S. international coverage and by U.S. relations with the world, producing biases in how Japan’s relations with various countries are portrayed. It can also be said that Japan’s international coverage has difficulty reflecting perspectives uniquely based on Japan’s own relationships with other countries. One reason is the United States’ outsized global influence, which Japanese media tend to align with, resulting in the U.S. viewpoint being reflected. Another is that the Japanese government itself has long been heavily influenced by the U.S. in politics, the economy, and security; since Japanese media are also influenced by the government, they may be further affected. News organizations have been noted to have a passive tendency to wait for information provided by domestic and foreign “elites,” rather than proactively obtaining it.

 Next, the question of how well reporting networks are in place matters. Imbalances in newsgathering networks are reflected in the number of bureaus a news organization maintains. For example, among the Asahi Shimbun’s overseas operations—5 general bureaus and 21 bureaus in total—there is 1 general bureau and 3 bureaus in the United States, indicating a well-developed network there. By contrast, there are fewer bureaus in Africa and Latin America, which weakens independent reporting capacity and likely increases reliance on U.S. information-gathering.

Conclusion

As we have seen, statistical analysis confirms that the United States influences the international reporting of Japanese media. Given the United States’ global clout, a large volume of U.S.-related coverage may be inevitable. Even so, should Japanese media be more influenced by the United States than by Japan’s own relationships with other countries?

※1 In the first half of 2022, country-level shares of international coverage in Japan’s three major newspapers were 16.9% for Ukraine and 15.7% for Russia, both exceeding the United States at 14.5%.

※2 Based on the Mainichi Shimbun database Maisaku.

※3 In Maisaku, the keyword was “U.S. presidential election,” and the period searched was from November 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023. The target was the international pages of the Tokyo morning and evening editions.

※4 Number of times Japanese media cited U.S. media in international news during the one month of August 2023. Search conditions: national editions, morning and evening papers, international news only; keywords: “AP通信 OR ワシントン・ポスト OR ニューヨーク・タイムズ OR 米報道 OR 米紙 OR 米メディア”

※5 The regression results are as follows.

Values in parentheses are robust standard errors

*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

P-values are one criterion for assessing statistical significance. Caution is required as they cannot be interpreted in a blanket way, but the smaller the value, the stronger the inferred relationship.

Writer: Junpei Nishikawa

Data analysis: Dilou Prospere

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