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August 25, 2025
 

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EDITORIALS
Apr 28, 2009
New rules for incorporated bodies
A long with nonprofit organizations (NPOs), incorporated bodies, including incorporated foundations, can play an important role for communities and society through such activities as promotion of academic researches, social welfare and cultural activities. In December 2008, the revised law governing...
EDITORIALS
Apr 27, 2009
'We don't torture'
That was then U.S. President George W. Bush's emphatic response in 2005 when asked about how his government questioned terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. The release of four previously secret memos by the U.S. Justice Department reveals — in excruciating detail — just what U.S. interrogators were...
EDITORIALS
Apr 26, 2009
The promise of higher education
High school students from single-mother households are giving up on higher education, according to a recent poll by Ashinaga, an NPO providing financial support to children who have lost one or both of their parents. Rather than pursue their dreams of education, over 40 percent are going to work instead....
EDITORIALS
Apr 26, 2009
90 million Japanese wired
Internet users in Japan topped 90 million at the end of 2008, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported earlier this month. That means three out of four Japanese are communicating, shopping, reading or hanging out on the Internet. With Japan's advanced broadband and fiber-optic connections,...
EDITORIALS
Apr 25, 2009
Time to debate, Mr. Ozawa
The Liberal Democratic Party has repeatedly asked Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, to participate in a one-on-one Diet debate with Prime Minister Taro Aso. But the DPJ has refused. If this situation continues, Mr. Ozawa and the DPJ will create the impression that they have chosen...
EDITORIALS
Apr 25, 2009
Tent villages highlight shortfalls
The establishment of a tent village in Tokyo's Hibiya Park during the New Year's holidays to help unemployed temporary workers is a sobering reflection of these hard times. In the tent village, nonprofit organization and labor union activists gave advice on a variety of matters ranging from finding employment...
EDITORIALS
Apr 24, 2009
Tokyo by-law threatens freedoms
Street performances are fun for many people and give character to streets and communities such as Tokyo's Shibuya, Harajuku, Akihabara and Kichijoji areas. But now such activities may be restricted or banned due to a revision of the Tokyo metropolitan by-law for "the building of safe and secure communities,"...
EDITORIALS
Apr 23, 2009
Resignation not enough
Mr. Noboru Okubo and his eldest son have resigned respectively as chief director and vice director of the Kyoto-based Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation over irregularities related to its operations, including the accumulation of unusually large profits for a public-interest corporation and opaque...
EDITORIALS
Apr 23, 2009
A complicated trial
The Third Petty Bench of the Supreme Court, in a 5-0 decision Tuesday, upheld lower court rulings that sentenced a Wakayama woman to death for killing four people and poisoning 63 others by lacing a curry stew with arsenic during a community summer festival in July 1998. This was a difficult and unusual...
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2009
A boost for consumer rights
A government agency to promote consumer rights, a pet idea of former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, is likely to be established this fall at the earliest. The Lower House's plenary session on Friday unanimously passed related bills, products of compromise between the ruling and opposition parties. The...
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2009
Fixing social safety nets
Prime Minister Taro Aso has established a panel to discuss social security and state finance from a middle- and long-range viewpoint. The panel, described as a "conference to build a society in which people will have a sense of economic security," has held its first meeting in which it confirmed that...
EDITORIALS
Apr 21, 2009
Shukan Shincho's responsibility
Shukan Shincho weekly magazine, in its Feb. 5 issue, carried the first of a four-part series of accounts by a man who claimed to be responsible for a May 3, 1987, attack on the Asahi Shimbun newspaper's Hanshin bureau in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, that killed one reporter and injured another. But...
Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years
The Agency for Cultural Affairs is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings.
Character-crazed Japan has little appetite for Labubu
A pop-up advertisement for the newly opened Chiikawa Park in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood demonstrates how the country is chockful of cute characters — to the detriment of trends like Labubu.
At meeting rich in symbolism, Ishiba and South Korea's Lee agree to steadily build ties
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba shake hands at joint press announcement after summit talks in Tokyo on Saturday.
Are 'coolcations' the answer for Japan's heat-weary tourists?
Hikers on a trail in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture. As extreme heat continues to grip Japan, a tectonic shift may be underway in the nation’s summer tourism scene as more people gravitate toward cooler destinations.
Japan to boost support for joint ride-hailing services
Tatsuaki Igarashi, mayor of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, exits a ride-sharing vehicle at Tsukuba Station in January.
Germany's first sakemaker offers a bold brew of ideas
Reigen, Germany's first sake brewery, makes a diverse, nontraditional range of sake that includes fruit-flavored sips and wine barrel-aged renditions.
Alicia Keys closed Summer Sonic, but J-pop owned it
Summer Sonic’s 2025 lineup demonstrated its strength, showcasing the latest in J-pop, including “new kawaii” act Fruits Zipper.
Is the LDP’s catch-all approach to politics still effective?
Former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi visits Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Aug. 15. Political commentator Toru Hashimoto has suggested that Takaichi ought to lead a group of like-minded hawkish politicians out of the Liberal Democratic Party and form their own party.
Fingers sore from too much phone time? You might have ‘sumaho yubi.’
A catch-all term for tendonitis and arthritis caused by excessive smartphone use, 'sumaho yubi' may be difficult to treat for gadget-crazy Japan.
As farm minister, Koizumi is held ‘hostage’ by Ishiba
Farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi (center) attends a Lower House session on Aug. 1. Locking Koizumi into the Cabinet is Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s way of turning a potential rival into a team player, according to one expert.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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