The University of Tokyo will fully withdraw funding from Komaba Times, one of the university’s only English-language student magazines, starting next fall. This decision ends an annual subsidy and leaves the future of Komaba Times uncertain. According to a university representative, Komaba Times received 700,000 yen in funding in 2025. Komaba Times staff said the annual subsidy has helped cover printing costs, allowing the magazine to distribute 1,500 copies free of charge on campus. Komaba Times was established in fall 2011, one year before Programs in English at Komaba (PEAK), and will see its funding cut the same year that PEAK admits its last cohort, before being succeeded by the College of Design.
Komaba Times began as an elective pass or fail journalistic writing course, born from an idea by Prof Itatsu, who specializes in History, Media, Leisure, and Social Minorities at the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies. Prof Itatsu explained in an interview with the Todai Shimbun that the idea was inspired by her own experience as an international student at the University of Southern California where she learned the “value of a sense of belonging” and “integration into the bigger campus life”. According to a university representative, the establishment of an English-language magazine provided a “good way to advertise the kind of international education that this university is engaged in.” This was one of the main reasons why the university funded Komaba Times from the beginning, providing the subsidy through the Global 30 initiative, which also funded the majority of PEAK.
The pilot edition, published in April 2012, was composed of 14 articles by seven April-entry students. At the time of PEAK’s establishment, UTokyo conducted in-person interviews for PEAK admissions, travelling around the world. UTokyo brought issues of Komaba Times to the interviews, showing prospective students a firsthand account of university life, which Professor Itatsu considered “far more compelling than faculty members or staff giving their account of what university life would be.”
As PEAK students joined the university, the focus of Komaba Times shifted from news-style writing to more introspective “reflections on self-experience” due to the Komaba Times annual release structure and student interests. Prof Itatsu shifted the class and Komaba Times to accommodate this change, and recalled a specific story that left a considerable impression on her. The story was written by a Korean student, with a background from New Zealand, who used the art of Kintsugi (mending broken pottery with gold, silver, or platinum lacquer) to illustrate broken pasts, mending, and his relationship with his mother.
While Prof Itatsu stopped teaching the elective course when she moved to the Hongo Campus in April 2019, strong desire from students ensured the continuation of the Komaba Times. Prof Itatsu remained involved, working with the newly selected “brilliant editor-in-chief”, meeting irregularly to make sure that everything was on track. Considering that the Komaba Times was no longer an official course and a student-led initiative, Prof Itatsu remarked that they were “extremely fortunate” to continue receiving funding from the university.
Now, the Komaba Times has expanded from 16 pages per edition to 60. Over a thousand copies are produced and distributed on campus every year. The Komaba Times student-led team is composed of diverse PEAK, April-entry, exchange, graduate, and PhD students.
Komaba Times is now led by Anna Cui, Editor-in-Chief of the 15th issue and fourth year PEAK student. She discovered the Komaba Times in her first year, stating that “Komaba Times gave me a window to understand more about the university because back then I couldn’t read Japanese.” Through Komaba Times, she learned about the origins of water dispensers on campus, which were pioneered by PEAK students, as well as the approximate 4 to 1 male-to-female gender ratio at UTokyo. This, combined with Cui’s prior experience as chief designer for a high school publication, compelled her to join Komaba Times in her second year.
One article in the 15th issue stood out particularly to Cui. Min Chung, a Korean graduate student, wrote about her experience being the only foreigner and girl in her lab. This resonated with Cui, who is often also “the only girl and foreigner” in her path and frequently found herself as the only woman in lab meetings and the only woman and foreigner in her sports club cohort. Since the community of international students at UTokyo is small, it can be “hard to hear other people’s experiences and feel like they are also going through the same thing.” She imagines Komaba Times “provides value for a lot of other people in the same way.”
Cui emphasised how she is impressed that Prof Itatsu only had to “discuss with one student about one article and everything else has been completely untouched over the past 15 years”. This has allowed Komaba Times the autonomy to genuinely represent international students who often have a “very different angle and opinion” from Japanese students.
As Editor-in-Chief of the Komaba Times, Cui is responsible for setting comprehensive schedules and deadlines, recruiting and managing department heads for writing, design, and marketing, and coordinating directly with Professor Itatsu and the print shop to manage the budget and production.
Prof Itatsu was told by the university in autumn 2025 that due to budget constraints, it was possible that funding for the Komaba Times would be “tight” the following year. A university representative cited a “significant reduction in the overall budget, including for the activities of the Center for Global Education”, which funds Komaba Times, as the reason. This ultimately resulted in the final decision in March 2026 to cut funding completely for Komaba Times in autumn 2026. A university representative confirmed that no members of Komaba Times were consulted before the decision was made to discontinue the subsidy.
Beyond financial reasons, the university representative referenced new official English-language resources that have been created since 2012 and that they would like to “shift the focus to this kind of publication”. Cui thinks these resources differ significantly and that Komaba Times is “an irreplaceable meaningful production” and “is not something that can be easily substituted with just some other English pamphlets”.
While the university representative personally emphasised their support for Komaba Times activities going forward, the discontinuation of official financial support was made clear. The university representative cited the subsidies as an “anomaly” as it is “quite unusual for a university to be supporting a student organisation financially.” Removal of the subsidies would be “normalising the system”.
Cui understands that UTokyo’s position as a public school results in “a lot of budget constraints” but laments the budget being cut from “everything to nothing versus like a gradual rundown”. Prof Itatsu clarified that over the past four to five years, the budget has been “cut back a little bit”, however Cui was unaware of these gradual budget cuts. She clarified that “it’s hard to see the overall trend” as the Editor-in-Chief role rotates annually.
Although Prof Itatsu was notified of the official budget cut decision in March, the information was not conveyed to Cui until two months later at a picnic celebrating the release of the 15th edition. This delay impacted Cui, who graduates in July and is currently writing her thesis at the same time as “squeezing in this responsibility before I graduate, it’s a bit of a rush.” Cui wishes the university provided earlier notification and more transparency. This has created difficulty in finding a successor for next year, who will have to manage finding alternatives for Komaba Times, such as sponsorships, ads, or going digital to manage costs, in addition to the usual responsibilities.
Looking forward, the university representative stated they personally hoped that “students will consider going digital and ensure the continuation of their effort”, eliminating the printing costs that take up most of the budget. In contrast to the administration, Cui hopes that next year’s Komaba Times will be able to continue as a physical magazine, referring to it as a “very unique kind of production around campus”. From the creator’s point of view, a physical copy creates a “sense of achievement” and “using different types of paper is part of the creative process as well.” For the readership, a physical copy enables Komaba Times to reach April-entry students who may not have heard of them yet. Cui worries that by “turning purely digital, let’s say if it’s only a website, it will only be the fans” that come to read the magazine. In contrast, a Japanese student seeing the same magazine distributed around campus may “eventually want to pick up one because it’s free and flip through” it.
Prof Itatsu acknowledges that although there is a “beauty in keeping the paper version”, she does not “necessarily think it’s a necessity”. She believes Komaba Times has “protean-like characteristics where it is able to kind of shape shift according to the context”. She thinks this is a great opportunity for students to “think outside the box”. In fact, this is not the first time that Komaba Times has discussed becoming an independent student-led initiative. According to Prof Itatsu, around Issue 10, there was an “effort to actually make it a standalone student publication” that did not rely financially on the university. She noted that while “there was no instance of the university telling us what to do”, university funding and distribution to partner universities and prospective students influenced content as “we were making sure that it was representing the university in a particular way”. As a result, the students hoped that financial independence would grant them “more creative and editorial control”.
Although they developed a financial model to get advertising and to receive sponsorships, this did not come to fruition. Prof Itatsu attributes that to the difficulty of being international students in Japan, as “it can be quite difficult to get your foot in the door” with organisations and sponsorships. She elaborated that this was a “big challenge that they weren’t quite anticipating”. Secondly, “it was my understanding that it was way too much work” compared to what they had anticipated – highlighting the similar challenges that Komaba Times now faces unexpectedly.
Prior to the news of funding cuts, the future of Komaba Times was already under question with the end of PEAK, the main English-language undergraduate program at Komaba. Instead, College of Design is planned to be at Asano Campus, approximately 45 minutes away from Komaba Campus by train. Prof Itatsu hopes that PEAK students and College of Design students will work together for “not necessarily a handover but some kind of chat”. She thinks perhaps this could lead College of Design students to “change the name” and keep the publication going – creating a “beautiful legacy for Komaba Times”.
Cui imagines that “even if Komaba Times died out, as long as there are international students in the campus, they’re going to build something like the magazine to showcase their voices.” She insists Komaba Times is going to continue “no matter what”.
The post UTokyo Ends Funding for Komaba Times After 15 Years first appeared on 東大新聞オンライン.
UTokyo Ends Funding for Komaba Times After 15 Years 2026 IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2025 2026-07-14 14:00:32
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