For Daisuke Yamamoto's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
As people across the world witnessed the birth of a landmark international agreement on combating global warming, Japan remained almost invisible throughout the two weeks of high-stakes negotiations at the U.N. climate talks on the outskirts of Paris. Japan's failure to display a meaningful role ...
With high-stakes issues testing bilateral ties, Japan is looking to new U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy to become a bridge between the two allies.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visits to Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines last week underscores his government's eagerness to forge closer ties with the fast-growing Southeast Asia region as part of efforts to revive Japan's economy. Deepening cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is ...
Despite six months of active foreign diplomacy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces an uncertain path to improving ties with China and South Korea as territorial disputes and disagreements on wartime history continue. Whether Abe and his top Cabinet ministers opt to visit war-linked Yasukuni Shrine ...
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by pitching his economic policies to his fellow leaders at the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland, has put himself in a bind with the need to show a blueprint for achieving both growth and fiscal rehabilitation. The just-completed summit ...
At a time when North Korea's erratic behavior has underscored the need for cooperation in Asia, Japan's delicate ties with China and South Korea have become even more tenuous amid increasing displays of nationalism by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The latest cooling ...
With the New Year holidays over, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces the challenge of healing Japan-U.S. ties strained under Japan's previous administration and of improving ties with China and South Korea, soured by various territorial disputes. Amid concerns over the perceived rightwing shift in Japanese ...
The first senior-level talks held between Japan and North Korea since August 2008 have resulted in an agreement to continue discussing Pyongyang's past abductions of Japanese nationals, despite the two sides' vastly differing agendas. Although a resolution of the decades-old abductee dispute is still not ...
The yen's historic surge since last summer has taken a breather, particularly in light of the Bank of Japan's expansion of monetary easing earlier this month, lessening exporters' pain and boosting stock prices. But it is unclear how long the trend will continue. Some watchers ...
Hundreds of single men and women in countless cities across the country are hopping from bar to bar every weekend in search of soul mates, or just to get to know the opposite sex, at parties known as "machikon." A sign of just how popular ...
