In November 2018, Onishi wrote an article about the lonely deaths of the elderly in Japan, titled "A Generation in Japan Faces a Lonely Death" for which he was nominated as a 2018Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing finalist.[4] Readers thanked Norimitsu for his "profoundly moving piece" about two people who live alone in a danchi, a sprawling government apartment complex, outside Tokyo.[5]
Onishi was a reporter forThe Detroit Free Press from 1992 until 1993.[citation needed] In December 1993, he joinedThe New York Times where he began as police reporter from January to July 1994 and city weekly reporter from July 1994 to March 1995.[citation needed] He went on to become theQueens bureau chief from March 1995 to September 1997 and later theWest Africa bureau chief from 1998 to 2002.[7]
Onishi became theTokyo bureau chief for theTimes in August 2003. In 2008, he was transferred to head the Southeast Asia bureau inJakarta;Martin Fackler succeeded him as chief of the Tokyo bureau. In 2012, he was part of a team of reporters, which also included Fackler andHiroko Tabuchi, that was named as finalist for thePulitzer Prize in International Reporting for its investigative coverage of the March 2011Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.[8]
While reporting in West Africa, Onishi is credited with coining the wordNollywood as the now accepted nomenclature for what was at the time known locally as Nigeria's "home-video film industry".[9] In September and October 2014, Onishi reported on theebola virus epidemic in West Africa fromLiberia.[10][11][12]
Onishi has accused various Japanese politicians of historical revisionism, particularly on the topics of theNanjing Massacre andcomfort women.[14][15] Conservatives in Japan such asKohyu Nishimura[16] andYoshihisa Komori[17] accuse Onishi of holding aleftist perspective and having a strong "anti-Japan" bias, which, they suggest, helps foster vilification of Japan abroad. This is partially due to Onishi's criticisms of Japan's most influential far-right organisation and lobby,Nippon Kaigi, which has members including prominent Japanese politicians and former prime ministers.
Another article, "Letter from Asia: Why Japan Seems Content to Be Run by One Party"[18] provoked an official objection statement from theMinistry of Foreign Affairs of Japan for being "an incorrect article."[19] In it, Onishi referred toJapan's democracy as an "illusion" and immature, comparing its government to that ofNorth Korea andChina.[20]
His article on December 17, 2006, "Japan Rightists Fan Fury Over North Korea Abductions,"[21] was also criticized byKyoko Nakayama, Special Adviser to the Japanese Prime Minister on Abduction.[22][23] Thomas H. Snitch, a former professor ofAmerican University also suggested that Onishi's coverage on Japan's effort to deal with the issue of theNorth Korean abductions of Japanese is influenced by political bias.[24] Some Japanese conservatives even made unproven claims that Onishi is a naturalized Japanese citizen of Korean descent.[25][26]
^Okome, Onookome. (2017). "Africa in Nollywood, Nollywood in Africa." In D L Hodgson and J A Byfield (Ed.),Global Africa: Into the Twenty-First Century (pp. 347-355) Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
