For Malcolm Foster's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
In modern Japan, every emperor's era has its own name — appearing in places such as coins, official paperwork and newspapers — and with a rare abdication coming at the end of April, there was much speculation about what the new gengō would be. On ...
Shinichiro Tsukada says his small plastering company in Tokyo wouldn't survive without the 22 Chinese and Vietnamese workers who make up half his payroll. "They're treasures, real treasures," he said. "Workers are disappearing as our population ages. Buildings cannot be built because there aren't enough ...
Paro the furry seal cries softly while an elderly woman pets it. Pepper, a humanoid, waves while leading a seniors' exercise group. The upright Tree guides a disabled man taking shaky steps, saying in a gentle feminine voice, "right, left, well done!" Robots have the ...
Japan Inc. has little faith in the central bank's latest shift in monetary policy, with companies saying it will not generate long-desired inflation, spur further business investment or have an impact on the economy. The findings of the Reuters Corporate Survey — the first broad ...
Japan has been overtaken by China as the world's No. 2 economy. Its flagship company, Toyota Motor Corp., recalled more than 10 million vehicles in an embarrassing safety crisis. Its fourth prime minister resigned in three years, and the government remains unable to jolt ...
When Mio Honzawa starts fifth grade next April, her textbooks will be thicker. Alarmed that children here are falling behind the kids in rivals such as South Korea and Hong Kong, the education ministry is adding about 1,200 pages to elementary school textbooks, bringing the ...
Normally, proposing a tax hike is considered a sure way to lose an election. But Prime Minister Naoto Kan is saying that's what Japan needs to rein in its bulging national debt in the campaign leading up to this Sunday's Upper House election. The poll, in ...
Seafood-loving Japan — having faced years of international pressure to stop whaling — finds itself with a potentially bigger fight over a highly prized type of tuna that conservation groups say is being fished to extinction. A proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin ...
Exactly a year after Barack Obama was voted in as president, his successor, George W. Bush, talked in Japan on Wednesday about his former life — in sports. Bush, a former part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team, offered no assessment of the choices facing ...
A speech and a Nobel prize have raised hopes in Japan that Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities devastated by U.S. atomic bombs in World War II. Past presidents have avoided a visit that ...
