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Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Oct 12, 2017

Motosada Zumoto and the origins of The Japan Times

A 10-minute walk from JR Sapporo Station brings one to a small, white clock tower in the city center. The 13-meter-high Western timepiece is an iconic image of the city and Hokkaido.
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
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Aug 23, 2017

Trump or decency? Every American, whether in Japan or elsewhere, must choose a side

Trump made his choice. Now it is time for every American, including those of us living in Japan, to choose between hate and tolerance, ignorance and knowledge, revisionism and truth.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2017

The tragedy of India's partition, 70 years on

The India-Pakistan border is a 70-year-old scar that will not heal.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Aug 9, 2017

Of guns and cutlery: Memories of the war, from the Netherlands to Japan

A chance rediscovery leads an author to reflect on the lessons to be learned from the devastation of two continents.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Aug 2, 2017

Hope after the horror revealed in letters from postwar Hiroshima

Sixty years on, letters that formed the basis of Austrian writer Jungk's acclaimed account of life after the A-bomb are set to be published.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2017

Asia's hierarchies of humiliation

Historical humiliations can create an all-consuming desire for vengeance that overwhelms more sober foreign policy motivations.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 28, 2017

Before the White House, Kennedy was a high-school prankster

Years before he captained the torpedo boat PT-109, ran for office or set the United States on a path to put a man on the moon, President John F. Kennedy was a troublesome teen whose high jinks nearly got him kicked out of his prestigious boarding school.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 6, 2017

'Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring': Uncovering a little-known chapter in history

Even some dedicated Japanophiles are unaware of an important international espionage ring that operated in Tokyo before and during World War II.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 18, 2017

Why is Japan's public diplomacy so utterly inept?

Why does the Foreign Ministry insist on drawing attention to wartime Japan when the rest of the world is far more interested in 21st century Japan?
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Mar 13, 2017

China lawmakers add defaming Communist Party 'heroes' to civil code offenses

Lawmakers on Sunday introduced amendments to China's nascent civil code to make defaming "heroes and martyrs" of the ruling Communist Party a civil offense, as the leadership moves to strengthen its grasp on the history of the People's Republic.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 4, 2017

'Comfort women' in South Korea who serviced U.S. forces seek justice

Historical 'comfort women' cases involving Japanese and U.S. forces should be mutually reinforcing and underscore the ongoing need to hold Tokyo, Seoul and Washington accountable in ways that address the traumas and indignities endured.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 25, 2017

'Radicalism in the Wilderness: International Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan': Reiko Tomii brings Japanese art in from the cold

Reiko Tomii's profound and accessible study of 1960s avant-garde art from Japan offers an answer to a perennial problem in the appreciation of Japanese culture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Feb 5, 2017

No country for old emperors

Brushing over precedents and kicking looming threats down the line, a government-appointed panel has dutifully paved the way for a politically convenient one-off abdication.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Feb 10, 2016

Educate the people and keep the 'manji' (卍) on Japan's maps

Why the ancient symbol should be left where it is, despite its dark connotations from the 20th century.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 9, 2016

'Comfort women' problem requires a grand gesture

Due to his unassailable nationalist credentials, Prime Minister Abe is uniquely positioned to make a powerfully symbolic gesture of contrition.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 2, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu's bid to rewrite history

Benjamin Netanyahu's recent falsehoods on the origins of the Holocaust are not the first time his words conflict with historical facts.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 27, 2015

Chinese paper says West is trying to 'falsify' history of Communist Party, military

Enemy forces in the West are trying to "falsify" the history of China's ruling Communist Party and its military and force a "color revolution" on troops who are too susceptible to outside influences, the military's official newspaper said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 26, 2015

'Sea of Opportunity' charts the history of immigrant Japanese fishermen in Hawaii

The common image of Japanese immigrants toiling in the sugarcane fields of Hawaii and — through years of sheer gumption — rising in the social ranks of the island is well established. Like the account I came across some years ago of Japanese pirates looting Mekong River villages in Cambodia, the...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2015

Honor the past, not the racism

Rather than try to sanitize U.S. history, Americans should explore it and realize they can admire some aspects of the greats of the past without endorsing everything for which they stood.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Sep 9, 2015

Forget Germany — Japan must deal with WWII its own way

The onus is on the Japanese to find their own form of moral atonement — and convey it to the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Aug 26, 2015

Abe's historically selective WWII speech gets borderline failing grade

I couldn't help asking myself what grade Prime Minister Abe would have got had he made his presentation in one of my Japanese studies classes. The answer, I regret to say, is C- or D+.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2015

The historian who helped kill the Soviet Union

Born in the same year as the Soviet Union, historian Robert Conquest helped kill it with information.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 22, 2015

20th women's conference looks to make history

Gender equality in the workforce is not a simple thing to achieve.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 1, 2015

Abe and history: What's next?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs to dramatically and definitively address the 'comfort women' issue head on.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic