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 ...
Formed only a month ago, Nippon Mirai no To (Tomorrow Party of Japan) may soon be history. Founder Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada and ally Ichiro Ozawa are at odds over the party’s future, while Kada faces intense criticism within her prefecture for ignoring her ...
Liberal Democratic Party leader Shinzo Abe returned to the prime minister’s office facing a host of diplomatic challenges. But perhaps none is greater than the wariness, and fear, abroad that his rightwing, nationalistic views will strain Tokyo’s relations with Washington and create further tensions ...
The “third-force” parties that ran in Sunday’s Lower House election hoped to win enough seats to serve as a powerful check to the established parties but got crushed at the polls. They’ve now turned their focus to next summer’s Upper House election. For Nippon ...
Exit polls Sunday night showed Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) picking up around 50 seats in the Lower House election, a far cry from the hundreds of seats party leaders had hoped for. But party leaders were already looking ahead to the ...
Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) is stumbling into Sunday’s Lower House election with polls showing it will pick up just a fraction of the seats it was eyeing, as internal squabbles have sown confusion and distrust among voters. However, with the Liberal ...
On a snowy afternoon just a few days before the general election, local politicians and many residents of Fukui Prefecture were in a state of shock and wondering what the future holds, after a team of nuclear experts declared it is highly likely that ...
Confusion continues about what Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) will do after Sunday’s Lower House election, with top leaders making contradictory statements over whether they would join forces with the Liberal Democratic Party to possibly form a two-thirds majority in both Diet ...
As Nippon Mirai no To (Tomorrow Party of Japan) leader Yukiko Kada tours Japan drumming up support for her new group’s candidates in the Dec. 16 election, she is facing a growing backlash in Shiga Prefecture, where she’s the governor. Political opponents, especially in ...
Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) founder and deputy leader Toru Hashimoto continued his personal Twitter feed Thursday, two days after campaigning officially began and a day after Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the legality of his actions would be left up ...
The so-called main third force parties hope to cast themselves after the Lower House election as viable alternatives to the established parties by proposing ambitious, even radical, reforms in a number of areas. But given widespread predictions of victory for the Liberal Democratic Party, ...
