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May 04, 2024
 

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Shaun O'Dwyer

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Shaun O'Dwyer
For Shaun O'Dwyer's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Sep 20, 2017
Japan doesn't need to criminalize hate speech
Considering constitutional issues and the risk of creating 'martyrs,' the current law strikes the right balance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Jul 12, 2017
For East Asian students, 'Confucius made me do it' is no excuse
To understand why some students in Japan, China and Korea plagiarize or don't speak out, it's worth looking at their modern education systems.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 19, 2017
What's so bad about Imperial Rescript on Education anyway?
The 19th century rescript caught up in the Moritomo Gakuen scandal is not just a collection of homely moral precepts.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 1, 2016
Foreign volunteers helping to rebuild lives in Kumamoto
The truth is, as many volunteers are needed as can help the many homeowners who want possessions recovered from destroyed homes, or who need trash and heavy broken appliances pulled out of their otherwise intact dwellings.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 5, 2016
Preserving Okawa Elementary School is the right thing to do
All things considered, it makes sense to preserve Okawa Elementary School as a memorial, as a warning and as a site for disaster education.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 6, 2016
Immigration: the missing piece in the Tohoku recovery puzzle?
Entrepreneurship, reconstruction and tourism still may not be enough to save rapidly depopulating Onagawa.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 4, 2015
Of kimono and cultural appropriation
Clueless identity politics activists in the U.S. are no friends of Japan's struggling kimono industry.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jul 29, 2015
A Chinese front opens in the battle over Taiji's dolphin drive hunts
There was much media coverage in April of the decision by the World Association for Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) to suspend its Japanese affiliate, JAZA, because of concerns over animal cruelty due to the sourcing of captive dolphins from the infamous drive hunts in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Mar 16, 2015
Japanese activists fight against the tide to save whales and dolphins
Homegrown foes of dolphin hunts and 'research whaling' face off against a daunting array of powerful interests.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 7, 2014
Remembrance that stifles
Victim and revisionist nationalisms about the past in East Asia block the way to greater regional integration.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 22, 2014
Kaikoura and Taiji: a tale of two whaling towns
The success of a New Zealand whale-watching eco-tourist destination could hold lessons for the ailing Wakayama port tarred by association with the 'Cove' dolphin hunt.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 18, 2014
A rational conversation on whaling
On both sides of the Japanese whaling debate, there is a pressing need for critical reflection on the logic used and the realities presumed.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2014
The Tank Man's defiance
Chinese Communist authorities largely spared the student protesters of Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, though many leaders went to prison. It was ordinary citizens like the famous man who stood down the tank — along the streets to the square — who suffered the most.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 25, 2014
Japan scores whaling own goal
In the hindsight of the recent International Court of Justice's humiliating ruling against Japan's Antarctic scientific whaling, the government's slapping down of Japan Greenpeace in 2010 was probably a bad idea.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 2, 2014
Cooling down the history wars
To protect the integrity of history teaching, historians and teachers should insist, forcefully, that there are many spaces where patriotism can be cultivated in a modern democratic society but that the history classroom is not one of them.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Dec 9, 2013
Korean volunteers put the K into kizuna
One volunteer group, based at Tokyo's Meiji University, is called Kizuna International; the other, at Kyoto University, is Kizuna From Kyoto. The coincidences do not end there: Both groups' leaders share the same surname and both are ethnic Koreans.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 14, 2013
Echoes of an old debate on feminism and individualism
A century ago 'individualism' was a byword for Japan's reforming intelligentsia. To the extent that it served the goals of modernizing the Japanese state, it was acceptable.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Oct 30, 2013
Volunteers staying the course in Tohoku
Upstart NGOs It's Not Just Mud and OGA for Aid continue to punch above their weight in public conversations about the future of Tohoku.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 30, 2013
It's time for conservatives of Japan to get over the war
If conservatives renounced revisionist nationalism in favor of their inherited democracy, many outside of Japan could live with a more powerfully armed Japan.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 10, 2013
A Japanese poet's whale elegy
If some Japanese advocates of whale hunting could commune with their ancestors, they'd feel the past dismay at the impious waste of whales' lives.
Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with rivals China and Russia
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks in Syracuse, New York, on April 25.
Yen swings stir talk that Japan is in the FX market once again
An electronic screen in Tokyo displays the yen exchange rate against the U.S. dollar and the graph showing its recent swings, on Thursday.
Harajuku strives to reclaim its former glory — and surpass it
Laforet Harajuku, which celebrated its 45th anniversary last year, has been a witness to the district's evolution over the years.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Japan's May 1 intervention may have cost ¥3.66 trillion, BOJ data suggests
An electronic screen displays a graph showing Japanese yen exchange rates surging against the dollar amid signs of intervention by authorities, in Tokyo on Thursday.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
By Stephen Mansfield

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