On the eve of the International Olympic Committee’s decision to award the 2020 Summer Games to Tokyo, Seoul’s abrupt import ban on all fisheries products from Fukushima and seven other Japanese prefectures was clearly a response to public concerns about radiation spewing into the ...

As one approaches Rokkasho, a small town of 11,000 on the remote, windswept coast of Aomori Prefecture at the very north of Japan’s main island, Honshu, one sees dozens of power-generating windmills spinning away. Aside from this ambitious renewable energy project, Rokkasho also is ...

Sept. 18 is unofficially National Humiliation Day in China, a day when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commemorates Japanese aggression and atrocities. It is a time for wallowing in the national obsession with a century of indignities inflicted on a weak China until the ...

Even if the public remains overwhelmingly skeptical about nuclear safety in general, and anxious in particular about the impact of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on the environment, there is reassuring news that we can now rest easy. ...

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) is deservedly slagged as the Keystone Cops of nuclear power, and conjures up images of Homer Simpson, the iconic nuclear safety inspector in “The Simpsons.” Perhaps it ought to adopt as its mascot Ocnus, the Greek god who personifies ...

Tokyo Disneyland is an odd place to make a political statement, but the theme park now hosts same-sex wedding ceremonies. When a lesbian couple tied the knot there at a commitment ceremony in its Cinderella Castle in 2012, what was dubbed Japan’s first gay ...

There is speculation that quiet diplomacy may lead to a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping. Certainly there are good reasons to expect no meeting of minds on some crucial issues that divide the two nations, but these need ...

The other night at my local sushi bar conversation turned to Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso’s comments about constitutional revision — specifically, his suggestion there is something to be learned from the way the Nazis revised the Weimar Constitution in 1933. The person next ...

The results of a Pew Opinion survey released in July 2013 found that the public mood in Japan is improving but remains “mostly one of dissatisfaction.” However, that dissatisfaction is 10 percent lower than the level registered in 2007 during Shinzo Abe’s first spell ...

There is considerable speculation about whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe intends to visit Yasukuni Shrine in mid-August. This is an especially sensitive time of the year as it coincides both with the annual Bon festival, when people honor their ancestors, and the anniversary of ...

Once the dust settles tonight, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party/New Komeito coalition will be in control of both houses of the Diet, promising an end to political gridlock. But with power comes responsibility, and now the pressure is on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ...