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.
As president of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda spent the past seven years confronting the challenges posed by 48 diverse, dynamic and complex Asia-Pacific economies. If he thought ...
If the two countries work to tackle problems in their own societies, the Japan-U.S. partnership could be as significant in the future as it has ever been.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's grandiose plan to reinforce the nation's infrastructure could end up being a pie in the sky unless more attention is paid to details.
Japan and China should reconfirm pledges made in the 1978 friendship treaty and set up a forum for dialogue to ...
Unnecessary U.S. wars in the Middle East have unintended consequences at home just as Japan's war against China still casts ...
Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is proposing a bold departure for his country’s economy. He’s mostly right. Japan continues to underperform, and bad macroeconomic policy has been the main reason. Abenomics isn’t riskless or easy, however. The government will have to be wise ...
China is walking a fence. It blames the U.S. for North Korea's ambitions, yet works to avoid being seen as the enabler of the North's nuclear program.
As the U.S. seeks to contend with a rising China, the ability of Japan to contribute, and to serve as a positive democratic role model, matters a great deal.
As President Barack Obama struggles to get his Defense and Treasury choices in place, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has his own personnel challenges.
One question that typically has received little attention in the Japan-China dispute over the Senkaku Islands is, what's in it for the parties involved?
It's hard to understand why some elements in Japan and overseas argue that the Abe Cabinet is causing Japanese politics to swing dangerously right.
Fiscal and monetary policies will do little to stimulate economic growth in Japan. So, it is time for a strategy to encourage private-sector investments.
Given the regional paranoia concerning China's regional ambitions, the Trans-Pacific Partnership could realistically be called the "Afraid of China Club."
Neither Japan nor China can give up its claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, but stoking up conflict in today's world economy would hurt them both.
My favorite Haruhiko Kuroda moment was on a Tokyo-bound flight on March 13, 2011, two days after a gigantic earthquake struck northeast Japan. I was in the Philippines when the quake precipitated a nuclear crisis. On the first available flight back, the president of ...
The U.S. should reject the notion of preparing for war in the Pacific, and let Japan and its neighbors cooperate to counter Beijing's geopolitical ambitions.
Americans are treating the present economy as if the bubbly growth from 2000 to 2007 will return. It may simply be time to learn how to live with less.
