Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
National Topics
History Aug 15, 2013
Japan yet to dispose of arsenic from wartime chemical weapons in China
Japan has yet to dispose of arsenic residue from chemical weapons its Imperial army abandoned in China at the end of World War II, a source close to bilateral relations said Wednesday, noting there are calls for the toxin to be sent to Japan. ...
History Aug 14, 2013
Papers that pushed for Pacific War revisited
by Reiji Yoshida
Papers from the long-locked safe of the late Lt. Gen. Teiichi Suzuki, an Imperial Japanese Army wartime Cabinet minister, reveal his faulted argument that Japan had the wherewithal to wage war against the Allies.
History Aug 14, 2013
Memories of war's victims, victimizers
by Keiji Hirano
A freelance photojournalist has recorded the individual histories of 70 survivors of the war at home and abroad to show how they acted during wartime and how their experiences affected the rest of their lives. “I wanted to record the testimonies of war survivors ...
History Aug 13, 2013
Korean's war brothel diaries offer new details
The diaries of a Korean man who worked in wartime brothels for Japanese soldiers in Burma and Singapore during World War II are providing a wealth of new information about "comfort women."
History Aug 11, 2013
Campaign aims to introduce U.N.-recognized day in memory of wartime sex slaves
Activists launch a campaign to introduce a United Nations-proclaimed day to remember wartime sex slaves and end sexual assaults against women in wartime.
History Aug 4, 2013
Britain backed use of A-bomb against Japan: U.S. documents
Britain supported the use of atomic bombs against Japan in World War II about a month before the United States dropped the first one on Hiroshima, documents show.
History Aug 2, 2013
Exhibit highlights Taiwan sex slaves
by Keiji Hirano
A Tokyo museum focusing on wartime sex slavery is holding an exhibition on how Taiwanese women exploited by the Japanese military have struggled to recover from their ordeals. The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, better known as WAM, has collected documents and ...
History Jul 27, 2013
A drop in the ocean: the sea-dumping of chemical weapons in Okinawa
by Jon Mitchell
Accounts by U.S. veterans in the accompanying feature of tons of chemical weapons being dumped off Okinawa in autumn 1969 are the first time such revelations have been made public — but in fact they tally entirely with the Pentagon’s standard operating procedures at ...
History Jul 27, 2013
Leak finally led to removal of chemical weapons from Okinawa
1952: The Treaty of San Francisco grants control of Okinawa to the United States. The U.S. sends its first shipment of chemical weapons to Okinawa for possible deployment in the 1950-53 Korean War. 1962-63: The U.S. sends further chemical-weapons shipments to Okinawa. 1969: A ...
History | THE LIVING PAST Jul 27, 2013
What if Columbus had reached his goal: Japan?
by Michal Hoffman
Every school child knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America. Every school child knows wrongly. When the Genovese explorer’s three ships sailed westward from Palo de la Frontera, Spain, on Aug. 2, 1492, he was bound, he thought, for “the noble island of ...
History Jul 23, 2013
Taiwan government to use new wording for Japanese colonial period
Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, or Cabinet, instructed all government agencies Monday to begin calling the 50-year Japanese colonial rule of the island as the “Japanese occupation period” in official documents. The announcement came ahead of an Education Ministry decision over whether to also change the ...
History | JAPAN TIMES GONE BY Jul 20, 2013
Tokyo homeless, Olympics cancelled, medals given for kindness, Mandela's birthday feted
by Edan Corkill
100 YEARS AGO Wednesday, July 23, 1913 Tales of woe abound among Tokyo jobless Summer is generally a good season for employment-seekers of the laboring classes. This summer, however, there are twice as many unemployed men as usual. The Free Lodging House of Honjo, ...