This paper explores factors in the framing of collective memory based on a comparative media policy analysis on mainland Japan and Okinawa during the period immediately after World War II. The paper highlights reasons for disparities in the collective memories of Japanese people from these two regions based on their original experiences of the war and Japan’s surrender, U.S. occupation policy on the two regions, and their postwar commemoration traditions. The discussion draws on evidence from official U.S. wartime and postwar documentation. The paper makes a significant contribution to the literature in the field as it highlights the importance of the framing process, which is often largely ignored in collective memory research, as memory is deeply intertwined with society itself.

This article analyses a large-scale data set of climate change coverage in Japanese newspapers in order to create a media map. A gradual increase in climate coverage with repeating up-down attention cycles is found. Cluster analysis shows topics in climate coverage can be classified into two major categories: climate science and mitigation techniques, and international climate negotiations. Correspondence analysis shows a shift of media attention from climate change as one among several global environmental problems and Japan’s international contribution, towards mitigation techniques. The shift begins in 1997, indicating this year as a tipping point of media attention. Finally, the relationship between political discourse and media attention is discussed, with reference to the media attention cycle model.

The Cove, a US documentary highly critical of annual dolphin hunts in the small town of Taiji, Japan, triggered a surge of global activism aimed at pressuring local fishermen and the Japanese government to stop the hunts. The resulting moral standoff between Western activists and various actors within Japan supporting Taiji fishermen was closely covered by the international and Japanese media. This study uses a content analysis to examine framing and sources in articles about Taiji from the three main Western news agencies—the Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Reuters—as well as the main Japanese news agency, Kyodo News (Kyodo). The study reveals that the release of The Cove corresponded to an overall spike in coverage of Taiji, as well as significant differences in the way the town was portrayed. The results of the study strongly indicate the birth of a “global prohibition regime” to ban Taiji’s dolphin hunts, based on Western moral standards and promoted by activists in mainstream media coverage. Understanding the development of prohibition regimes is crucial today, given the global power and influence of the Western media and its tendency to target different cultures and ideologies.