Profile

Sonja Blaschke Freelance East Asia correspondent

Sonja Blaschke is a multilingual freelance journalist, magazine editor, news desk editor, author and line producer from Germany. She has lived and worked in Japan for 20 years and speaks Japanese fluently.

Her reporting focuses primarily on social issues, politics and current developments in East Asia, particularly in Japan and Taiwan. This also includes major events such as natural disasters. In 2013, she spent several months living in Taiwan, and between 2016 and 2018 she also spent extended periods in Australia and New Zealand.

After many years working as a line producer, she directed her first television documentary in 2022. “Rice Fields Instead of Tokyo” follows young people who leave Tokyo and move to a remote mountain village to take up rice farming.

In her spare time, she is most likely to be found at rock and metal concerts around the world. Sonja attends around 70 concerts and festivals a year and writes about them online.

E-Mail info@sonjablaschke.com
Phone Japan +81-90-1103-8299
Phone Germany +49 178-89-95-180

instagram.com/sonja.blaschke

instagram.com/itravelformetal

Services

• Writing in German and English for print, online and corporate publishing media
• Since 2010 line producer & stringer for TV and film productions in Japan for public broadcasters such as ARD and ZDF (was responsible for „green topics“ at the ZDF studio in Tokyo during the 2020/21 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as flagship science and documentary programmes such as „Terra X“), and for documentaries for TV and cinema release
• In 2022, documentary debut as author and director with „Rice Fields Instead of Tokyo: Young Women in the Japanese Countryside“ (30 minutes) as part of the „NZZ Format“ series (broadcast on SRF1, SRF Info and 3sat in 2022 and 2023)
• Since 2017 freelance editor-in-chief of the only German-language business magazine focusing on Japan („Japanmarkt“), published by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Tokyo
• Live broadcasts on camera on current affairs, mainly in English, for Deutsche Welle and other broadcasters such as Wion (India), Welt TV & NTV (Germany)
• 2016-2025: Newsdesk editor (nzz.ch) and member of the newsletter team („Morning Briefing“) of Swiss newspaper „Neue Zürcher Zeitung“ (NZZ)
• Speaking engagements at universities and academic institutions in Germany and Japan

Experience abroad

• 2016-18: Stays of several months (about 2 years in total) in Australia and New Zealand to expand the reporting area
• 2013: Five-month stay in Taiwan (attended language school to learn Mandarin)
• 2007: Drei Monate in London (On-the-job training bei Financial Times)
• In Tokyo since July 2005, in the first year as a fellow of the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation, a programme implemented by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ)
• 1999: Semester abroad as a student at a community college in Ohio, USA, and two-month internship abroad in Spain (music publishing)

Qualifications

• Academic degree: Diplom-Kulturwirtin Univ., International Business & Cultural Studies (focus: UK and USA) at the University of Passau (Germany)
• Additional degree: Journalist, correspondence course in specialist journalism at the Freie Journalistenschule Berlin (Germany)
• Several stints of working in the music business: record company (BMG in Munich, Germany), music publishing (Warner/Chappell in Madrid, Spain) and radio (76.1 InterFM in Tokyo, Japan)
• Foreign languages: fluent in English, Japanese, Spanish and French; five years of Latin, basic knowledge of Italian, Chinese and Russian
• Driver’s license

Passions

• Ever inquisitive traveller and explorer
• Open-minded music enthusiast – everything from classical music to metal – and avid concertgoer (blog about personal concert travel on Instagram)