Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
When discussing the recent ethnic riots in France, The Economist newsmagazine (“Minority Reports,” Nov. 10, 2005) posed an important question: How come some countries assimilate immigrants more peacefully than others? It concluded that five basic things are necessary: lingua franca skills; income; mobility; home ...
People are still reeling from September’s LDP landslide election, realizing that Koizumi can essentially legislate whatever he wants. For foreigners, that brings some bad news. One of Koizumi’s platforms is economic recovery through tourism and increased contact with outsiders (“Yokoso Japan”) yet his administration ...
Between Oct. 7-11, the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), Japan’s largest convocation of language educators, held its annual meeting in Shizuoka, a pleasant city between Tokyo and Osaka. Having hosted JALT before, Shizuoka is quite accustomed to taking in thousands of English-speaking foreigners. ...
Last year The Japan Times ran an article entitled “Students pay price in visa crackdown” about Americans put through the wringer on minor infractions. At a subsequent meeting in Tokyo, a spokesperson for a foreign-interests group reacted to the news candidly: “This happened to ...
Japan is following other developed countries in drafting antiterrorism laws. However, Japan’s proposals and probable implementation may present profound difficulties for its foreign communities. The “Action Plan for Pre-empting of Terrorism” (“Tero no Mizen Boshi ni Kansuru Kodo Kikaku,” available at www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/sosikihanzai/kettei/041210kettei.pdf ) was ...
With terrorists striking fear into governments worldwide, Japan too is currently considering its own version of America’s Patriot Act, to be passed in a year or two. It makes for interesting reading, particularly in terms of Japan’s internationalization and legal treatment of foreign residents. ...
You might have noticed the dragnet in Japan these days. Law enforcement’s crackdown on foreigners (bolstered by official declarations on the subject, including yesterday’s speeches by Emperor Akihito on rising crime and international terrorism and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the growing threat of ...
With U.N. studies advising more immigration, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s worldwide campaign for more foreign visitors, Japan is not doing itself any favors with its new legislation on visa overstays. On May 27, Japan’s Diet amended the “Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act,” ...
When five Japanese were taken hostage in Iraq last month, huge public concern for their safe return quickly gave way to hostility and a campaign of vilification. A disastrous public appeal by the families of three of the hostages for the withdrawal of SDF ...
There has been a lot of press recently not just on foreign crime (again), but on unethical methods of collecting data on foreigners. First was a plan by a branch of the National Police Agency to establish a crime database of “foreignness” (Zeit Gist: ...
