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 ...
Dear Alice, My question is about those straw belts that get wrapped around the trunks of pine trees a meter or so above the ground. I know they have something to do with fooling insects into laying their eggs in the straw instead of ...
For the first time ever this month, shale oil was extracted from a Japanese oil field. Although the Ayukawa oil and gas field in Akita Prefecture likely doesn’t hold vast quantities, its yield is still good news for a nation seeking new energy resources ...
Oct. 15 will mark the 10th anniversary since five Japanese citizens were repatriated from North Korea after being abducted by Pyongyang’s agents in the 1970s. The government claims that the North has failed to properly address the fate of 12 more Japanese abductees that ...
After months of preparation, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s new political party, Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), was formally inaugurated at a mid-September gathering that drew more than 3,000 supporters. The country’s only national political party based outside of Tokyo aims to field ...
It’s been 18 months since the Fukushima nuclear disaster contaminated much of the prefecture and beyond, and reports are still coming in about radiation in food exceeding the government limit. In late August, Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced that heavily contaminated “ainame” (greenlings) had ...
Under the government’s new energy strategy, announced last week, Japan will aim to end its reliance on nuclear energy during the 2030s. But the public was quick to spot a contradiction, as the strategy states that the nation’s contentious nuclear fuel cycle policy will ...
Dear Alice, I travel a lot within Japan, and often come across a dated sort of tourist attraction that I don’t know quite how to describe. They are wooden façades, often hand-painted and rather amateurish, depicting a person or persons with a hole where ...
The nation’s territorial disputes heated up in August when the South Korean president made an unprecedented visit to the Takeshima Islands, which his country holds, and Chinese activists briefly landed on the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands. In July, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medevedev toured the ...
When young people say “shukatsu,” they mean job-hunting. But nowadays, older people are grimly playing on the word by changing the kanji for “shu” to convey a different kind of activity: preparing for “the end.” How are people preparing for death? Why has the ...
It sounds like a broken record: Japan is beset by a low birthrate and an aging society. The nation certainly has a long “to do” list to finish before it can create an environment more conducive to raising children. Amid a surge in singles, ...
Judo became an Olympic sport in the 1964 Tokyo Games and was dominated by the country of its origin until the 2008 Games in Beijing. This summer in London, Japan’s men failed to win a single gold medal in judo and its women claimed ...
The 11 government-sponsored hearings on what the public thinks the nation’s future energy mix should be in light of the Fukushima nuclear crisis ended earlier this month to mixed reviews. Many participants appeared doubtful the government truly intended to take their opinions into serious ...
