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July 19, 2025
 

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Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 23, 2017
In Japan under Shinzo Abe, more power to the PM, but to what end?
In his final Counterpoint column, Jeff Kingston considers where Japan is heading under scandal-hit Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 16, 2017
Grading Abe's flailing leadership and policy drift
In his penultimate Counterpoint column, Jeff Kingston gives Shinzo Abe a report card for the prime minister's nearly five years in office.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 9, 2017
Abe's extremism undermines Japan's interests
Alas, Japan's extremists have still not given up trying to find honor in the nation's 1945 wartime defeat and and the ideology that led to it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 2, 2017
Happy history in China, the land of the politically repressed
Talk about negative nation branding! With the Cambridge University Press affair, Chinese authorities have really outdone themselves in drawing attention to their fear of history.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 26, 2017
Koike tests possibilities and perils of populism in Japan
Abe occupies Koike's ideological comfort zone, so she needs to cannibalize his base to get any traction. It is thus imperative that she presents an alternative policy agenda to highlight their differences and tap into simmering dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 19, 2017
Abe tries to ride out storm in bid to restore trust deficit
A shoo-in a few months ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plunge in popularity imperils his re-election to a third term as LDP president in September 2018, fueling speculation about when he will go and who will replace him. That said, it's still too soon to count him out.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 12, 2017
The unfinished business of Indian partition
The nightmarish horrors of India's partition by the British 70 years ago on Aug. 15, 1947, cast a long shadow into the 21st century.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 5, 2017
Beleaguered Abe on the ropes as support weakens
The public has seen the true face of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and doesn't like what it sees.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 29, 2017
Labor reforms come up short for Japan's 'precariat'
The costs of not improving the lot of nonregular workers are enormous in terms of thwarted careers, social status, poverty — and even isolation, as they have a much lower marriage rate.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 22, 2017
A reset for Abe's constitutional revision agenda?
The sudden implosion in Abe's popularity has significant consequences for his agenda of constitutional revision.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 15, 2017
A decade after Niigata's nuclear close call
On July 16, 2007, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake rattled the world's largest nuclear power complex at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa — a site that the government and Tepco had insisted was seismically safe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 8, 2017
Tokyo poll offers Abe an opportunity to take a long, hard look in the mirror
We have witnessed Abe's peak and he is now a diminished leader, with the aura of invincibility he projected since December 2012 now gone.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 1, 2017
The 80th anniversary of Japan's invasion of China
Japan's actions at Marco Polo Bridge, and its subsequent campaign to conquer China, unleashed a maelstrom that casts a long shadow over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to turn the page on this history.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 24, 2017
The politics of religious hatemongering in India
The irresistible urge to mix politics and religion usually comes at the expense of secularism, tolerance and vulnerable minorities. We saw this recently in Asia with extremist Islamic groups spewing anti-Chinese hate speech to defeat the incumbent governor of Jakarta, the ebbing tide of secularism in...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 17, 2017
Sri Lanka's firebrand monk invokes Muslim menace
Galagoda Atte Gnanasara is Sri Lanka's notorious rabble-rousing monk — leader of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a radical nationalist religious organization.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 10, 2017
Arrogant Abe disrespects U.N. and the press
What is with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's arrogant disrespect for the United Nations?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 3, 2017
Asia lags Taiwan in accepting LGBTQ equality
All across Asia, LGBTQ people remain marginalized and subject to discrimination, abuse and worse, surrounding the beacon of hope in Taiwan with an abiding darkness.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 27, 2017
Under Abe, are we heading toward a beautiful Japan or an ugly future?
Where is the beauty in downplaying the 'comfort women' issue, muzzling the media, promoting patriotic education, rolling back transparency and restarting nuclear reactors?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 20, 2017
The slippery slope of appeasement in Bangladesh
Unelected religious hard-liners are pressuring Bangladesh's elected government to embrace Islamic values as they define them, resorting to street protests and inciting violence to achieve their aims.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 13, 2017
Japan's constitutional rebirth or reincarnation?
The stakes are high as the Japanese people consider Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's backward-looking vision for the future.
Living conditions index hits lowest level in 15 years in Japan
The share of respondents to a Bank of Japan quarterly survey in June who said they have become worse off came to 61.0%, up 5.1 percentage points from the previous survey.
Tokyo emerges as a top market for global tech talent
Tokyo ranks among the world's top tech talent hubs alongside Beijing, the San Francisco Bay Area, Bengaluru, Paris, New York and Dublin, according to Colliers' newly released global tech markets report.
From stalking to death threats, female candidates still face harassment
Mayu Ushida, a former NHK newscaster running for election in the Tokyo electoral district on the Democratic Party for the People ticket, signs an autograph for a voter after a public rally at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Tuesday.
CDP leader criticizes ‘Japanese First’ policy and calls for inclusive society
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yoshihiko Noda said it is obvious that Japanese society could not function without the help of foreign workers in manufacturing, health care, construction and public transportation.
JSA’s 100th anniversary event is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for sumo fans
Egyptian wrestler Osunaarashi has some fun with children during a special Japan Sumo Association event in 2017.
Japan's rice farmers are confounded by Shinjiro Koizumi’s policies
Kiyoshi Shibata stands in front of one of the rice paddies in Murayama, Yamagata Prefecture, where he produces the prefecture's signature rice brand Tsuyahime.
From stalking to death threats, female candidates still face harassment
Mayu Ushida, a former NHK newscaster running for election in the Tokyo electoral district on the Democratic Party for the People ticket, signs an autograph for a voter after a public rally at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Kawaii Lab redefines idol pop for the TikTok generation
Misa Kimura is the main producer for Kawaii Lab, a project by entertainment agency Asobisystem whose groups have found success by pairing a social media-first strategy with a fresh perspective on traditional idol-pop tropes.
Craig Mod's life in motion in a disappearing Japan
Mod's memoir “Things Become Other Things” chronicles his walking trips across the Kii Peninsula, surveying “a graceful end to a certain life cycle.”
With China and Trump, Japan defense report says world entering ‘new era of crisis’
A senior member of a Self-Defense Forces honor guard inspects a formation before the arrival of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for a visit to the Defense Ministry in Tokyo on June 30.

Podcast

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Longform

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