President Barack Obama, now facing the consequences of automatic spending cuts and the complications they raise for his broader domestic agenda, is taking the most specific steps of his administration in an attempt to ensure the election of a Democratic-controlled Congress in two years. ...
It’s a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chugoku no gunkan (中国の軍艦, Chinese warships) in the Higashi Shina Kai (東シナ海, East China Sea) challenged Japan’s Kaijo Jieitai (海上自衛隊, Maritime Self Defense Forces, MSDF) patrols in a manner deemed kyōiteki (脅威的, threatening). And on Feb. ...
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, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
How long will English last as a major world language? The answer must be: a very long time. How long will English remain dominant worldwide as a second language in schools and universities? I believe it will be for one more generation — max. ...
They're funny, finicky and feisty, not to mention being full of wicked mischief, with their own way of talking, too. Outside of Japan, think of Liverpool, not London; or Munich, not Berlin; or Mumbai, not Delhi. I'm talking about the people of Osaka.
Calling all those readers who in their heart of hearts have always wanted to be British! Well, you’ve got your chance now, you presumptuous Penny-Laners and putative Pythons. That chance comes courtesy of a test known as “The Stonehenge Plunge,” which last year 150,000 ...
“They were remarks made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. But since then we have welcomed in the 21st century."
Second of two parts Next month we will commemorate the second anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the ongoing nuclear calamity that ensued. But the personal tragedies it has brought about will remain on the conscience of the Japanese until ...
Covering the catastrophic series of events that began with the magnitude 9 earthquake and the tsunami it triggered on March 11, 2011, "Tōden Fukushima Genpatsu Jiko Sōri Toshite Kangaeta Koto" is one of the most revealing and insightful books published in Japan in ...
What is behind the miserable social status of women in Japan? In October last year, the World Economic Forum, a prestigious independent organization based in Geneva, published a report on the gender gap in countries around the world. Japan’s overall ranking was 101, the ...
Beate Sirota Gordon passed away on Dec. 30. She was 89. In 1946, when Article 24 of the Japanese Constitution was being written — and finding herself to be “the only woman in the room,” as she put it with inveterate modesty in her ...
Way back in the heady 1960s, Japan was one big Cathedral of Optimism, and I found myself among a people who believed their country was finally on that road laid out before them in the post-feudal Meiji Era (1868-1912) to “catch up with and ...
Ryotaro Shiba, the great author of historical novels, was a student of Mongolian at Osaka University of Foreign Languages when, at the end of 1943, he was drafted into the army. Then aged 20, he received a “provisional graduation qualification” (the actual certificate was ...
If you remember the Pinto, dear reader, then you may be as old as the hills — or at least as old as I am. No, I am not referring to the horse that the Cisco Kid rode, a feisty pinto named Diablo. I’m ...
This is the 15th general election I have witnessed since coming to live in Japan in 1967, and by any standards it is the most crucial one of those for this country. Only once before have I regarded an upcoming general election in the ...
