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.
Regarding the Feb. 20 Kyodo article “Japan asks Netherlands to clamp down on Sea Shepherd“: Why is one more dead whale to fill the freezers of Japan such a source of national pride in the face of international condemnation? richard gordon panacea, florida The ...
With regard to Hisahiko Okazaki’s Feb. 20 commentary titled “Japan’s step toward normalcy,” I’d like to add my two pence worth. Okazaki mentions that “certain elements in Japan and overseas are warning of a dangerous swing to the right in Japan politics” and that ...
Regarding the Feb. 15 article “LDP gets behind the Hague Convention“: Good for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for pushing Japan into the Hague Convention. Unfortunately his act of courage comes too late for many American fathers whose ex-wives took advantage of Japan’s exempt status ...
Regarding the Feb. 19 AFP article out of Wellington titled “Passengers get green light to fart on flights” (which cites a New Zealand Medical Journal report of a medical study’s conclusion that changes in air pressure during flight result in the gut producing more ...
I’m very disappointed with the government’s decision to exclude pro-Pyongyang high schools from its tuition-waiver program. It is clear that students attending these schools have nothing to do with the diplomatic problems between North Korea and Japan. As a high school teacher, I know ...
The lamentably hostile language and conduct of the North Korean government remind us of the Japan that stood against the whole world in the 1930s and early ’40s. Withdrawing from the League of Nations, invading China and other Asian nations, and then attacking Pearl ...
Regarding the Feb. 28, 2008, article “Why’s Japan grown so ugly?“: I was struck by how amazingly naive this article seems; this approach to town planning is part of why I fled Britain. On paper it is a fine idea — preserving an area’s ...
Regarding The Washington Post article titled “Mr. Obama, did you or did you not kill Anwar al-Awlaki?,” which ran in The Japan Times opinion section Feb. 16: Writer David Cole asks whether Obama killed the American citizen with a drone strike. To which, U.S. ...
Regarding Ralph Cossa’s Feb. 8 article “Breaking past the tired old plot with Pyongyang“: Cossa rails against North Korea’s attempt, in the face of U.S. threats, to enhance its security by conducting missile and nuclear tests. He then details North Korea’s sins and, in ...
As a Japanese citizen, I strongly deplore seeing the Japanese government contradict energy policy that has already been written. It is not natural to say that all nuclear plants will cease operation by 2030 after the trade and industry ministry has endorsed resuming nuclear ...
Feminists of all stripes are having a field day with the Minami Minegishi scandal, but the Feb. 17 editorial, “AKB48 and sexual politics,” is the second Japan Times editorial to cite irrelevant data in the course of analyzing the issue. The World Economic Forum’s ...
Regarding the Feb. 14 AFP article “Tibetan in Nepal 100th to set self on fire since ’09“: I am sure that anyone who grew up with 20th- century values should be appalled by this continuing campaign of suicide and self-torture. However, I use the ...
