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June 08, 2025
 

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Reader Mail
Jul 9, 2014
Disturbing SDF recruiting drive
Regarding the July 5 article "Timing is everything in the SDF's recruitment drive": The recruitment tieup between the Self-Defense Forces and the all-girl pop troupe AKB48 is awkward. Could it mean Japan will have conscription in the future?
Reader Mail
Jul 9, 2014
Media lap up the North's drivel
Regarding the June 26 AFP-Jiji article "Poking fun at Pyongyang: Movie about plot to kill Kim angers North": North Korea, which has launched numerous diatribes against U.S. senior officials, has again demonstrated its usual anachronistic behavior by threatening to "mercilessly" target the United States...
Reader Mail
Jul 9, 2014
English for third graders lagging
Since the education ministry announced its plan in October 2013 to start English education from the third grade of elementary school, more than half a year has passed and the ministry still has not decided when to start. Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, Japan faces the problem of how to improve and...
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014
Japan's voters seem apathetic to sexist pols
Regarding Philip Brasor's June 29 Media Mix column, "Sexist remarks seen through a clouded lens": I find it ironic and quite hypocritical that Tokyo assembly member Ayaka Shiomura, who spent most of her professional life perpetuating the marginalization of women, now plays the victim when that sexism...
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014
Flag the opinion of a nonresident
It's very useful to hear about perceptions of Japan from people living outside the country.
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014
Reinterpretation is no suicide pact
As a scholar specializing in international law and with 10 years of experience in teaching the law, I read the July 3 editorial, titled "Abe guts Article 9," with great disappointment and dismay.
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014
Give the athletes a break in 2020
Regarding the June 20 article "Holding 2020 Games in August dangerous": What was Tokyo's Governor's Office thinking when it made its pitch to the International Olympic Committee?
Reader Mail
Jul 2, 2014
War decisions aren't 'collective'
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution states that "the Japanese people shall forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes."
Reader Mail
Jul 2, 2014
Source of sadness over gender
The June 22 editorial "Struggling with gender identity" commends Japan's education ministry for conducting its first-ever survey on the issue of gender identity among the nation's youth. The psychological condition in which the gender into which some individuals are born seems to contradict the gender...
Reader Mail
Jul 2, 2014
More foul play against Okinawa
Tokyo has agreed with Washington over our heads to set up an always-off-limits water area in Oura Bay adjacent to the projected new base at Henoko. The off-limits water area will extend over almost half of Oura Bay.
Reader Mail
Jul 2, 2014
Does this drama serve women?
NHK, Japan's semi-public broadcaster, has launched a new series of dramas with fanfare during prime time on Thursdays.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 1, 2014
China's 'shadow banking' challenge
A new financial service operated by China's biggest e-commerce firm Alibaba could crack open the country's economic system as it draws customers from the major state-owned commercial banks by paying higher interest rates to depositors.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Backhanded apology accepted
Regarding the June 24 article "Lawmaker apologizes for sexist jibe": It was appropriate that Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly member Akihiro Suzuki offered an apology to Your Party assembly member Ayaka Shiomura, the woman he and others heckled a few days earlier when she attempted to discuss the special...
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Assembly bears responsibility
If a fellow passenger in a car knows the driver is drunk, he or she is liable to the same severe penalties as the drunken oaf.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Heap ridicule on other speakers
Is this what the country needs? Cowardly politicians, bullies in the ranks, loudmouthed sexists without a brain?
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Scare tactics from the EU tribe
Jim Makin's June 12 letter, "EU pullout would lower wages," shows a hazy knowledge of just about everything. To enumerate where he is in error:
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Duty-free reform off the mark
Regarding the June 18 Kyodo article "Duty-free reform to boost tourism": I feel that this initiative will have little effect on tourist numbers. To Western visitors, Japan is very "foreign"; prospective tourists are nervous at the prospect of a visit. This duty-free initiative is wide of the mark.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
A plea for more public seating
"Duty-free reform to boost tourism" and the June 18 article "Narita Express train headed to Mount Fuji" are more ideas to boost foreign tourism in Japan, to encourage people to visit and shop here, and to make the country more inviting.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014
Tired of supporting 'nonsense'
Regarding the June 19 Jiji article "Nation's whaling program up against the wall": I wonder about the paragraph that begins with "While the country is eager to resume commercial whaling ..." What do the writers mean by "the country"?
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2014
Everybody must take on bullying
Reading Walt Gardner's June 1 article, "Bullying weakens Japanese, U.S. schools," made me feel really sad — not only because bullying of students in Japan, no matter who they are, seems to be rife at the moment but also because it is a problem that just does not seem to go away.
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

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Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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