ABSTRACT
This chapter is a survey history of the English-language press of East Asia and an attempt to position the English-language press in the transnational media history of the region. It places particular emphasis on official and unofficial news management in and from Japan and looks at the relationships between the credibility of individual newspapers and their geographical and social location. It also asks where they and their producers belong in the history of the areas covered in their reports and how they relate to the British press system. On this basis, the chapter assesses the historiographical merits of these newspapers. The chapter also discusses access to these sources and problems of historicity raised by the scarcity of the original vs. its reproduction in more compact formats. Finally, it summarizes the problems and advantages of using these newspapers to study Japan, both in itself and in transnational media history.
