The most common gripe I hear from white-collar employees at Japanese companies is about the fluid meaning of "quitting time." The feeling is that even if a worker has finished their tasks for the day, it is considered bad form to leave the office ...

Privatization of public enterprises is a core tenet of neoliberalism, and probably the most representative domestic development in this regard was the privatization of Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1987. The resulting rail companies, distinguished primarily by region, have demonstrated differing degrees of success. ...

One of the issues U.S. voters say they care the most about right now is health care. America is almost alone in the developed world in not providing its citizens with universal medical care. Japan, on the other hand, has universal health, though it differs ...

Thanks to Netflix, many are familiar with Japanese clutter-buster Marie Kondo and her soothing remedies for the melancholy brought on by conspicuous consumption. Kondo is already a superstar in Japan, where closet sizes barely keep up with snowballing affluence, but she wasn't the first ...

Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan Inc., which employs about 17,000 people, announced earlier this month it would allow office workers to come to work in jeans and sneakers. Factory workers in the company will still be required to wear uniforms and sales staff will still be ...

Thai police last month raided a residence in Pattaya where an alleged telephone swindling operation was taking place. They discovered 15 Japanese nationals suspected of calling retired people in Japan and fooling them into purchasing electronic money. Japanese police say they will arrest the ...

On March 21, a female student at the Akita University of Art in Araya Okawamachi, Akita Prefecture, was slated to give a valedictory speech at the college's graduation ceremony. According to the Asahi Shimbun on March 31, the unnamed woman wanted to talk partly ...

In an Asahi Shimbun editorial published March 30, a week before nationwide elections were held for prefectural and municipal assemblies on April 7, the newspaper fretted about the state of local politics. Usually in such cases, it's voter apathy the media laments, but in this ...

In early March, 35 people gathered on the first floor of a two-story house in Tokyo to listen to the British keyboard player Morgan Fisher reminisce about his days with 1970s rock act Mott the Hoople. This month, Fisher is joining a reunion of ...

Among the hundreds of recent articles about the impending end of the Heisei Era was one Asahi Shimbun opinion piece by Yukiya Chikashige, who has covered the Imperial family for the past 30 years. He wrote that women's weekly magazines invented the modern image ...