At the end of March, having reached the age of 70 three months ago, I’ll retire from my post as a lecturer at Okinawa Christian University — mandatory retirement. Knowing this has given me a real sense of liberation in the past year or ...
U.S. military personnel in Okinawa committed only 32 crimes last year, falling about 40 percent from 2012 to the lowest level since the prefecture’s return to Japan from U.S. control in 1972, it is reported at a bilateral meeting.
Yoshitaka Nakayama, backed by the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition, was re-elected Sunday as mayor of Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture. Nakayama, 46, won 15,903 votes against 11,881 for Nagateru Ohama, 66, a former Ishigaki mayor who ran as an independent. With Nakayama’s victory, the LDP ...
Kinder International Film Festival in Okinawa celebrates it's first event.
For 10 years, Hiroshi Ashitomi has been coming to the beach near his Okinawa home every day to sit. He loves nothing more than the sea around the island, the rare sightings of dugongs and sea turtles, the tan sand and the crags out ...
A special investigative committee of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly met last week and early this week to determine why Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima reversed his campaign pledge to get U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma moved outside Okinawa. But the hearings created more questions than ...
Japan’s culture wars are heating up to the detriment of the nation. The Financial Times is right to warn that the jingoism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and attempts to stifle public debate, are grave threats to Japan’s open society. Most Japanese don’t want ...
Okinawa will set up a panel of scholars and other experts in fiscal 2014 to flesh out a plan to construct its first railway system. Okinawa is the sole prefecture without a railway, except for a monorail line in the prefectural capital of Naha. ...
Arsenic at levels 21 times above what Japanese environmental regulations allow has been detected in soil where a U.S. military helicopter crashed last summer in Okinawa.
Susumu Inamine, mayor of Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, vowed Thursday to use every weapon in his arsenal to block the central government’s efforts to construct a replacement base in his city for the U.S. Futenma airfield. Inamine defeated a pro-base rival to win re-election last ...
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy on Thursday visited a location planned to accommodate a replacement for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which is in Ginowan, Okinawa. The visit to Camp Schwab in the Henoko district of Nago on the eastern shore of ...
Caroline Kennedy on Tuesday made her first visit to Okinawa since she became U.S. ambassador in November. She will meet officials of the prefecture that hosts the bulk of the U.S. military presence in Japan. Arriving at Naha Airport on an evening flight with ...
