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Toyohiro Akiyama, First Japanese Person in Space, Dies at 84

morning · · thread: Toyohiro Akiyama, First Japanese Person in Space, Dies at 84

2 sources · Japan

Who reported this

  • Asahi Shimbun Japan · Centre-left · Asahi Shimbun Company (family and employee held)
  • Kyodo News Japan · Centre · Non-profit publisher cooperative

What the colours mean

  • Left
  • Centre-left
  • Centre
  • Centre-right
  • Right
  • A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.

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Every source for this story reports from Japan.

Toyohiro Akiyama, the first Japanese citizen to travel into space, has died at the age of 84. A relative confirmed the news on Tuesday. A former journalist for TBS, Akiyama flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in December 1990 and stayed on the Mir space station. During his mission, he provided reports on space life and conducted experiments using toys and frogs to demonstrate zero gravity. Upon seeing Earth, he remarked that the planet was blue, though he noted that the seas around Japan lacked the transparency seen in the Caribbean or Indian Oceans.

Following his career in journalism, Akiyama retired from TBS and transitioned to organic farming in Tamura City, Fukushima Prefecture. After the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, he lived in Gunma Prefecture with the support of an organic farming group and published a memoir titled "Nuclear Refugee Diary: From the Land of Anger." He also served as a professor at Kyoto University of the Arts from 2011 to 2018.

How each side framed it

Centre-left
The reporting provided extensive biographical detail, emphasizing his later life as an organic farmer and his activism following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Centre
The reporting focused on the primary fact of his death and his historical status as the first Japanese person in space.

Sources

100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.