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 ...
There were two major developments in the Japanese economy in 2006. The first was the Bank of Japan’s decision to terminate its quantitative easing policy in March and lift the benchmark short-term interest rate to 0.25 percent in July, ending the five-year, four-month reign ...
When international tensions mount, foreign currency-denominated external credit and debt can become tools of diplomacy. If a country is a huge net creditor, its overseas assets can be taken hostage. One example is the decision by the United States in 1950 to freeze China’s ...
As countries throughout the globe undergo radical economic changes from the impact of globalization, there exist two major imbalances in the world today. The first imbalance is of course the one arising from the huge current account deficits the United States continues to run. ...
Revaluation of the yuan, along with high oil prices, deceleration of the U.S. economy, and the euro’s rise against the, yen was among the major topics discussed at the Group of Seven finance ministers’ meeting in Singapore over the weekend. The yuan issue has ...
The Bank of Japan raised the unsecured overnight call rate from virtually zero to 0.25 percent at the end of its July 13-14 Policy Board meeting and hiked the official discount rate from 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent. The hike, which had been anticipated ...
A mid the public uproar over insider trading prompted by the arrest of investment fund manager Yoshiaki Murakami, the Diet quickly enacted a new law to regulate transactions involving financial products on June 7. The legislation combines the previous Securities and Exchange and other ...
In recent months, news about sharp rises in foreign currency reserves held by emerging economies has been making headlines in Japanese papers. China’s forex reserves hit $875.1 billion at the end of March, topping Japan’s $852 billion, while the combined reserves of the so-called ...
Ajoint statement released April 21 by finance minis- ters and central bankers of the Group of Seven major economies in Washington noted that the global trend in economic expansion has entered its fourth year, with inflationary pressures relatively contained despite the surge in crude ...
The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s biggest banking group, raised the rates it offers on time deposits with a maturity of one year or over on March 20. The increase varies according to the size of the deposit and the length of maturity. The ...
The current account deficit of the United States topped $800 billion in 2005. Ben Bernanke, who recently became chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, told a lecture in the spring of last year that the U.S. deficit level is “passively” determined by income, asset ...
