Ever since 1897 The Japan Times has reported daily in English on people, places and goings-on in and beyond this country. During those 116 years, our articles have often included information that never made it into the Japanese-language press — as in 1934, when the Society Page carried an interview with a German journalist named Richard Sorge — a full seven years before he made headlines having been exposed as a Soviet spy; or the routine report we ran on a young woman's victory in a small tennis tournament in 1955 — some four years before she became the new Crown Princess (now Empress) Michiko.

The potential for discoveries such as these in the archives of The Japan Times is limitless, though unearthing such gems has always involved time-consuming trawls through brittle bound copies or fragile spools of microfilm.

Now, though, with the imminent launch of the newspaper's first-ever digital archive, we believe whole new and exciting vistas will open up of particular interest to historians or others concerned with this country over a period that straddles three centuries.