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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“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, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
Watching the dollar’s recent plight in the foreign-exchange markets, I am reminded of a fascinating story I came across some years ago in an anthology of supernatural tales called “The Bottle Imp.” It has its origins in German folklore and goes something like this: ...
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s high-level meeting on growth strategy in Beppu, Oita Prefecture, wrapped up with a chairman’s statement on actions to be taken by 2015. That strategy is to be formally adopted at the APEC summit in November, with revisions due by ...
Conspiracy or cock-up? That is the question that invariably comes to mind when something goes very badly wrong in business or politics. As it has done in both of these two worlds in Japan lately. First came the Democratic Party of Japan’s miserable defeat ...
The G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto, closely watched last month as Europe struggled to halt the chain reaction of doubt set in motion by the Greek debt crisis, exposed their inability to coordinate on quelling financial uncertainty. The problems in the European Union ...
The Bible tells us that “those who sow in tears sing as they reap” (Psalm 126). This was true for the Jews as they returned to Jerusalem after their prolonged exile in Babylonia. However, more recent history has shown us that there can be ...
The storm that is the Greek debt problem continues to rage through the global markets. In an emergency meeting May 2, the finance ministers of the European Union agreed to work with the International Monetary Fund to provide 110 billion euro in loans to ...
The old are invariably critical of the young. Japan is no exception. The older generation finds much to bemoan in the attitudes and behaviors of their successors. One of the many complaints lodged against the younger generation in Japan is that they lack the ...
Share prices are picking up worldwide amid a growing sense that the global economy has finally hit bottom. However, we see no big change in the conservative ways Japanese households are managing their assets, which are mainly savings accounts. The recent jumps in share ...
I don’t like to say I told you so, but I told you so. Back in July last year, I wrote in this column that the post-Lehman shock world was participating in a drama in five acts, in which the fourth was likely to ...
The Japanese economy posted growth in the last quarter, but I would like to make a few observations about the components of the growth. The revised figures for gross domestic product in October-December 2009, announced on March 11, showed that economic activity grew 0.9 ...
Saint Thomas More is the patron saint of politicians. As a Catholic myself I should have known this before, but the information actually came to me quite recently via the Mainichi Shimbun. So many thanks to the newspaper for this piece of religious education. ...
The euro’s value is falling conspicuously. Compared with the highs in the last quarter of 2009, Europe’s unified currency has dropped from around ¥135 to ¥122, and from about $1.52 to roughly $1.37, losing nearly 10 percent against the yen and the dollar. What ...