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 ...
A campaign promise that helped bring Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her political party to power in July elections is roiling the global market for rice, Asia’s staple food that is now eaten by nearly half the world’s population. They promised their government ...
The catastrophic accident at Japan’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant earlier this year undermined confidence in, and support for, nuclear power around the world. The plant north of Tokyo on the Pacific coast was hit by a series of explosions, fires and serious radiation ...
To what extent will our future on Earth be shaped by fire? As the world gets hotter, the risk of more and bigger fires increases. 2010 was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures 0.53 degree Celsius above the 1961-1990 average. This year ...
China’s President Hu Jintao has a reserved demeanor. So it is hard to imagine him as a poker player. But in energy politics with neighboring Russia, he certainly is. On a visit in midyear to the world’s biggest natural gas exporter and one of ...
As Chinese President Hu Jintao greeted his Philippine counterpart Benigno Aquino in Beijing recently at the start of a state visit, the official Xinhua news agency laid out terms for a sustained improvement in relations between the world’s second biggest economy and its much ...
China lost no time warning Yoshihiko Noda what it expected of him, after he was chosen by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan as its leader this week and subsequently was elected prime minister. The official Xinhua news agency said on Aug. 29 that ...
Buoyed by growing economic and military strength, China is drawing more lines in the sand in the vast, but disputed, offshore zones in Asia over which it claims sovereignty or jurisdiction. These “red lines,” which China warns should not be crossed, affect the vital ...
As the United States and Europe struggle with heavy debts and weak growth, China increasingly powers the expansion of nearly every economy in the Asia Pacific region. It raises a critical question, particularly for Southeast Asia and Australia: Which are the ties that bind ...
U.S. prominence in Asia since World War II has rested on a widespread belief among friends, foes and nonaligned nations alike that Washington would use its economic and military power to prevent what it saw as dangerous challenges to the region’s peace, stability and ...
China appears to have reached a watershed in its food security strategy, which has long set a target of 95 percent self-sufficiency in four key grains — rice, wheat, corn and soybeans. If recent trends continue, the world’s most populous nation and second-largest economy ...
