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June 08, 2025
 

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Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
Foreign workers are not robots
Regarding the May 19 article "Success of 'Abenomics' hinges on immigration policy": Japan's demographic, economic and social future must be planned beyond Abenomics. What the Abe administration seems to be hinting at — an "immigration" policy divorced from an "immigrant" policy — is a symptom of...
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
Helping hand from the military
As a Thai citizen who has been observing the political situation in Thailand closely, I understand that most Japan Times readers might not accept the military coup in Thailand, but this is the best decision Thailand can come to at the moment.
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
Crack down on unpaid overtime
Regarding the May 21 Bloomberg article "Foreign domestics seen as aiding working mothers": I have to say that the solution to keeping women in the workplace and to increasing family size lies not with either increasing the number of domestic helpers (which would benefit only those women who could afford...
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
Beyond the traditional confines
I like working women: Professional women. Women brought up on the basis of equality, educated on a par with their male counterparts. Women with a voice and something to say within society's pecking order, not on its margins. Challengers. Especially women brighter than myself.
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
'Cinderella' workers won't help
These days a lot of companies and government organizations are bent on building a female workforce as they anticipate workforce shortages because of our aging society. It is a matter for congratulation that we see this trend finally happening in Japan, which was once known strictly as a vertically structured...
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
To live in a place free of garbage
The May 20 Bloomberg article "Trash troubles pile up in China's Garbage Era" reminded me of my first trip to China as a student of Chinese four years ago. It was a trip mainly to the former "Manchukuo," a Japanese puppet country before and during the war. In the major cities of Harbin and Changchun,...
Reader Mail
May 28, 2014
U.S. patience, vigilance needed
Regarding Doug Bandow's May 24 article "Opportunity for U.S. to extricate itself from Korea": I wonder if this article was written before or after last week's exchange of naval gunfire between the two Koreas.
Reader Mail
May 24, 2014
A free society can handle wing nuts
Regarding Timothy Bedwell's May 11 letter, "Deniers won't let war wounds heal": While agreeing with the first part of Bedwell's letter, I cannot agree with his conclusion [that anyone that denies the reality of the horror of Japanese imperialism should be thrown in jail].
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014
Abe makes old-timers bristle
At his recent press conference on the need for Japan to legalize its use of collective self-defense, how many times did Prime Minister Shinzo Abe say "... protecting the property and lives of the people and ensuring the security of the country as prime minister"? He occasionally mentioned the lives of...
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014
Spare Japan a Vietnam spectacle
Most of us are against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan for collective self-defense. If Japan had legalized this in 1965, thousands of Japanese soldiers might have been sent to fight in the jungles of South Vietnam with the United States. What a meaningless loss of life that would have proven to be....
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014
Vulnerability of nuclear power
On April 11, NHK broadcast a debate program concerning the right to collective self-defense. In the middle of it, all six participants and two moderators were frozen by a question from a scholar: "Each and every government official insists that the international environment surrounding Japan is getting...
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014
Clear view of immigration bias
It was good to read about Hidenori Sakanaka, former director of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, essentially admitting that, despite its international treaty obligations, Japan is a determinedly anti-immigration country with a racial prejudice ("Population fixes have anti-foreign bias, official...
Reader Mail
May 21, 2014
Uncertainties of social welfare
The May 9 editorial "Social welfare is not for profit" expresses concern that publicly subsidized operators of social welfare services are accumulating large amounts of internal reserves. Although maximization of public benefits is an essential part of such businesses, much deeper analysis of why they...
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 20, 2014
Washington mixes signals about aims toward China
Even while reconfirming its 'pivot to Asia,' Washington tries to construct multifaceted bilateral ties with Beijing, raising questions about the ultimate fate of longtime alliances between the U.S. and a number of Asia-Pacific countries.
Reader Mail
May 17, 2014
Remarks smack of church-bashing
Regarding Hugh Cortazzi's May 14 article, "Human rights and religion": It's pretty obvious that, with regard to Roman Catholicism's all-male clergy, Cortazzi has not bothered to at least give a fair hearing to the church's side of the issue. If he had bothered, he wouldn't have been so quick to lump...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 17, 2014
The 'variety' of reasons foreigners come to Japan; profiles of Senshin Settlers; CM of the week: Kellogg's
The "You" in the title of the variety show "You wa nani shi Nihon e?" (What Are You Doing in Japan?; TV Tokyo, Mon, 6:57 p.m.) is fluid, since it can be used as both a second person and a third person pronoun. In both cases, "you" always refers to foreigners who are visiting Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
May 15, 2014
Cute duckie cream puffs hatched at Shiga hotel
Cream puffs shaped like spotbill duckling recently went on sale at Café de l’Abbye at the Royal Oak Hotel Spa & Gardens in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture.
Reader Mail
May 14, 2014
Imagination as a force for peace
We should welcome the hibakusha mind, as proposed by Peruvian diplomat Enrique Roman-Morey in the May 11 Kyodo article "Citizens need hibakusha 'minds.' " As an exercise in diplomacy, it beats tweeting about dolphin kills. (In January, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy tweeted: "Deeply concerned...
Reader Mail
May 14, 2014
Where the war buck stopped
With regard to Timothy Bedwell's letter, "Denier won't let war wounds heal," I'd like to add my two pence worth.
Reader Mail
May 14, 2014
The overall desire to conform
Regarding Getironic's May 11 letter, "Ego therapy, collectivism or something else": It's equally as tempting to psychoanalyze the desire to conform, wear polo shirts and listen to Kenny G [as it is to psychoanalyze the desire for a tattoo].
Foreign tourists with unpaid medical bills in Japan to be denied entry
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during ministerial meeting meeting on foreign residents in Japan on Friday at the Prime Minister's Office.
Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists
A tax-free shop in Kyoto in April 2024. Last week, members of a Liberal Democratic Party study group drafted a proposal seeking to scrap the country's tax-free shopping system altogether.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.
Japan won’t wait for G7 summit for possible U.S. trade deal
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's top negotiator in tariff talks with the U.S. speaks to reporters at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Friday.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.
What can Kenji Yanobe’s cosmic cats teach us about humanity?
Kenji Yanobe’s spacesuited cats are the main characters of “Ship’s Cat Island,” the inaugural exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno in Saitama Prefecture.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
Detail of Takashi Murakami, “Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP” (2023-25)
Japan’s prison reform focuses on rehabilitation
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Suzuki said preparations for the changes that will focus more on rehabilitation are being actively made at each correctional facility.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after
Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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