25
P/SUNNY
The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. “Contemporary Japan” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
For Jeff Kingston's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
The politics of immigration in Japan involve anxieties about national identity and worries about crime. Looking at other countries with large numbers of immigrants, the Japanese government has said “no thanks.” There are, however, strong economic reasons for Japan to let down the drawbridges. ...
Japan used to be the world’s leading foreign aid donor in the 1990s, spreading most of its largesse around Asia. But since 2001, Japan has slipped to fifth in donor rankings as budget deficits and the absence of strong political support lead to cuts ...
Japan’s continued resort to the death penalty raises a number of troubling questions.
It was not the most elegant way to launch a national conversation about the right to die, but this past January Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, 72, certainly drew attention to the issue of terminal patients. Unfortunately he did so by saying that old ...
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is no stranger to historical controversy. Back in 2001 he pressured national broadcaster NHK to revise a documentary about the judgment of an international people’s tribunal regarding the war responsibility of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously known as Emperor Showa). And in ...
Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund, believes women can save Japan. Some would argue they already are, taking on as they do all sorts of responsibilities ranging from mother, wife and caregiver for elderly relatives to employee, volunteer and household finance minister. ...
Alarming outbreaks of sectarian violence pitting Buddhists against Muslims in Myanmar cast an ominous cloud over that nation’s democratic transition from military rule. Reading shocking reports of killings, arson and mayhem instigated by monks, or perhaps provocateurs, there is good reason to despair about ...
Donald Richie, prolific author of more than 40 books and longtime contributor to The Japan Times, died in February at age 88. April 17 was his birthday, so this review pays tribute by sharing some of the insights he passed on during an interview, ...
There is an irrational exuberance about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe evident in his 70 percent public-approval rating, a soaring Nikkei stock average and the Japanese media cheerleading the same man it hounded out of office in September 2007. The polite, face-saving fiction that Abe ...
CAPTURED: The Forgotten Men of Guam, by Roger Mansell. Edited by Linda Goetz Holmes. Naval Institute Press, 2012, 288 pp., $33.95 (hardcover) The 140,000 allied prisoners of war captured by the Japanese during World War II endured horrific cruelties and a comparatively high percentage ...
This superb book charts the improbable rise of South Korea from the devastation of war and impoverishment to rapid development and prosperity, and from brutal dictatorship to the most vibrant democracy in Asia. It is "impossible" in terms of its economic and political achievements, ...
This superbly told tale about the waxing and waning fortunes of Kaminoseki town over the past four centuries presents some interesting local counterpoints to the more familiar national narrative.