Although Japan and South Korea reached a final settlement several years ago involving payments to Korean women who were forced to sexually service Japanese troops in the 1930s and '40s, the issue won't go away, and not just because the new South Korean president ...
Taro Kono's appointment as the new foreign minister is raising eyebrows. Though he hasn't shown any indication that he will buck Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's agenda, Kono is considered a leftish maverick within the Liberal Democratic Party, especially with regard to its nuclear energy ...
Tomomi Inada's resignation as defense minister ended a tenure that often made reporters wonder if her transgressions had more to do with ignorance than with incompetence. It would be wrong to associate her failures with her sex, though there were some in the media ...
Few recent scandals have been as entertaining as Lower House lawmaker Mayuko Toyota's verbal and physical attack on her secretary as revealed in a recording leaked to the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho. With the recording coming to light in the week before the Tokyo ...
On July 7, during a public assembly in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, Shunichi Tanaka, head of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority, was asked how his organization would respond to a North Korean missile attack. Tanaka replied that it would make more sense for North Korea to ...
The Liberal Democratic Party lost a large number of seats to Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's upstart Tomin First Party in the Tokyo assembly election. Media surveys reveal that the public is dismayed by recent scandals involving the LDP, in particular the one surrounding educational ...
Though last Sunday's Tokyo assembly elections garnered the most media attention, another contest came in a close second, even if only two people were involved. Fourteen-year-old Sota Fujii's record-setting winning streak of 29 games of shogi was finally broken on July 2 when he ...
Since being arrested for possession of stimulant drugs on June 2, it is assumed that 30-year-old actor Ryo Hashizume's career is over. As Mark Schilling wrote in the June 15 Japan Times, Hashizume's latest film, in which he played a supporting role, was pulled ...
Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a report critical of the Japanese government. The author, David Kaye, expressed concern over the way the media is pressured by the authorities to support their policies. The government objected to the report, saying it ...
The ongoing scandal involving the private educational corporation Kake Gakuen hinges on whether or not Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indirectly pushed the Cabinet to approve a new veterinary department for Okayama University of Science, a school run by Kake, whose chairman, Kotaro Kake, is ...
NHK has become the go-to media outlet for scoops on the Imperial family. In July, the public broadcaster was the first to break the news that the Emperor wanted to step down and, last month, it was the first to report Princess Mako's intention ...
Though the prison population in Japan is remarkably small compared to other countries, there have been increases in recent years among certain demographics. The media is particularly sensitive to elderly inmates. Less remarked upon are female prisoners. A Ministry of Justice study released last year ...
