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 ...
The national savings rate dropped to as low as 2.8 percent in 2004, according to a report released by the Cabinet Office last month. This is incredibly low, given the figure had been above 10 percent until as recently as 1999. When Japan’s huge ...
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in his first news conference of the year, argued that Yasukuni is not a diplomatic issue, rebutting claims that Japan is being isolated in Asia because of his repeated visits to the war-related Shinto shrine. Naturally, freedom of speech in ...
The government bills drafted to privatize the state-run postal services were finally enacted into laws in mid-October, but there will be two major challenges ahead as privatization is carried out. One is the how to reorganize, abolish or privatize government-affiliated financial institutions that have ...
Postwar Japan gave up guns for butter in its bid to prioritize economic reconstruction. This position has lingered for 60 years, and Japan today continues to rely heavily on its alliance with the United States for its own national defense. On Oct. 29, Japan ...
Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 advanced and emerging economies expressed strong concern Oct. 16 that high oil prices could decelerate growth and destabilize the global economy as they wrapped up their annual meeting on the outskirts of Beijing. Reflecting the views ...
The two biggest events in the postwar history of currency exchange markets are the Nixon shock of August 1971 and the Plaza Accord of September 1985. In the first case, then U.S. President Richard Nixon terminated the convertibility of the dollar to gold. An ...
On July 21, the People’s Bank of China announced it had ended the yuan’s effective peg to the U.S. dollar and that it would link it to a basket of currencies based on China’s main trading partners. The central bank also said that the ...
Now that he’s back from the Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi faces an uphill battle to get his postal privatization bills approved by the House of Councilors. In the House of Representatives vote held just before Koizumi’s departure ...
The Netherlands followed France in rejecting the EU Constitution in a referendum earlier this month. While France has long been the driving political force behind European integration, the Netherlands has also been a key player in the integration process. The “no” votes by these ...
On April 1, the government’s limited deposit guarantee, known as the “payoff” system, took full effect as scheduled. So far, the measure hasn’t resulted in any visible disturbances, such as a major shift of funds out of bank accounts. Why? One of the reasons ...
