This study examines the framing of fake news in Japanese news media by constructing a quantitative chronicle of how it has been depicted in Japanese newspapers using an exploratory approach. Two frames were identified using semantic network analysis on 1,624 articles about fake news published in the four largest Japanese national newspapers from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2021. The first frame depicts fake news mainly as an American political issue focusing on President Trump, the news media, and elections in the US. This frame was the main discourse in the articles published in 2016 and 2017. From 2018 onwards, the focus of the articles shifted to the second frame, which depicts fake news as social problems that emerged from internet information. This frame provides readers with a more nuanced understanding of the fake news phenomenon not only in the US but also in Japan. These findings contributes to the effort in the development of critical media literacy education, particularly in Japan.