The Black Panther Party and the Japanese Press

This paper examines representations of the Black Panther Party (BPP) in three of Japan’s top-circulating newspapers—Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun—from 1966 to 1979, these years marking the period of greatest BPP activity. The purpose of this analysis is to bring renewed perspective regarding the light in which the BPP was covered by a non-US press, as a step toward further developing scholarship of transnational discourse on black militancy. Through making additions to said scholarship, the author wishes to contribute to the greater aim of reexamining frameworks of representational power, calling into question the lynchpins of this power as they function toward our understanding of blackness and race in an historical context. The paper is divided into two distinct parts. The first part chronicles the trajectory of the Japan and black American relationship. This forms the context for the author’s examination of BPP coverage in the aforementioned newspapers.