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 ...
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. ...
Is The New York Times inciting a U.S. war against Iran? As it did the war against Iraq? A decade ago, the paper’s Judith Miller, along with a few of her fellow reporters, so unabashedly agitated for President George W. Bush attacking Iraq that ...
Reports of a new computer virus, dubbed “Flame,” have raised alarms about a new era of cyber threats. While countries are increasingly reliant on cyberspace for their very survival — it is now part of the social, economic and security infrastructure — it remains ...
The most recent round of nuclear negotiations with Iran began with optimism. The previous round of talks appeared to make headway and there was hope that a breakthrough could be achieved when the seven parties — the five permanent members of the United Nations ...
The situation in Syria continues to worsen. While accurate information is difficult to acquire, all indications are that the country hovers on the brink of a civil war. The most recent atrocity is a massacre in the town of Houla that left at least ...
Iran and the five permanent member nations of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (P5-plus-1) held talks in Istanbul on April 14 and agreed that they would start full talks from May 23 in Baghdad over the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. Although ...
The Bank of Japan’s tankan survey of business sentiment in March, whose results were released Monday, shows that major manufacturers are cautious about their business prospects. Their diffusion index (DI) for March — the percentage of firms optimistic about their business outlook minus the ...
BRICS is back. The five-nation group that comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa held its fourth summit last week, convening in New Delhi to present their collective views on global problems. While their opinions are increasingly relevant given their growing weight and ...
For the past few years, there has been an explosion of ways in which countries can engage in destructive behavior. The use of cyberspace as a venue of battle has changed the nature of conventional warfare. This poses problems in terms of response to ...
As Japan’s reliance on thermal power generation increases following the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and as the possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be ruled out due to the conflict between the West and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program, Japan must strive to ...
President Vladimir Putin in Russia, President Bashar Assad in Syria and President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe are detested by many of their fellow countrymen who would like to see them overthrown and tried for human rights abuses. They depend on a close coterie of ...
The United States is now wrestling with the nuclear fears of two close allies — Israel and South Korea. Israel’s alarm at the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is existential in nature. The same is true of South Korea, whose capital sits ...
