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 ...
For a while, Europe's political elites had convinced themselves the worst of the euro crisis had passed. Italy's latest election quashes this optimism.
As long as India focuses on consolidating national aspirations, and not on developing global governance norms, it will remain an incomplete power.
If a Mediterranean diet lengthens life spans as reported, inhabitants of southern Europe can look forward to long lives — of anxiety and privation.
U.S. conservatives continue a healthy debate over how they can reconnect with voters and channel their ideals and goals into ...
The life of Park Geun Hye, South Korea’s just-inaugurated first female president, has so far been bookended by two larger-than-life ...
In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Feb. 22, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe informed the audience of officials, experts and journalists that Japan is “back” and will not stand down in its ongoing sovereignty dispute with China ...
In one of Moscow’s central subway stations — Arbatskaya — the escalator leading up to the city exit ends in a spacious vestibule. On the front wall, a classic frame several meters high is covered with white plaster. It bears no image, and the ...
A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 civilian injuries in that country during 2012. Unmentioned is a serious side effect of the conflict: the high number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan. ...
Leon Panetta's failure to accommodate a rapidly changing world will be his most important, and disappointing, legacy as U.S. secretary of defense.
As China catches up with the West in technology and relies increasingly on cyberspace for business and security, it may seek a cyberspace detente.
Unlike China, which has shown clear signs of economic stabilization since mid-2012, India has been slow to recover amid delay of necessary reforms.
Is Afghanistan in store for an Iraq-style "soft partition," with protracted strife eventually creating a "hard partition," after U.S. military forces go home.
It is hard to identify a correlation between regulatory structure and state success in heading off or responding to the financial crisis triggered in 2008.
If the recent circus performance of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors is a preview, their September summit threatens to be a waste.
Misconceptions abound about how 117 cardinals, gathering from across the globe inside the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, will elect a new pope next month.
“Your dearest wish is for our state structure and ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds away to develop or else collapses.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that in 1974, in ...
Peace between Israelis and Palestinians will not be achieved overnight, but it is only through a massive effort involving the citizenry that reconciliation and cooperation can occur between both peoples.
