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Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 17, 2018

Abe seen to be in the 'danger zone' as scandals pile up

When Shinzo Abe resigned as prime minister 11 years ago it came out of nowhere, two days after a major policy speech. Now, Tokyo is wondering if he'll shock the government again.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / Sac Bunts
Apr 16, 2018

In Shohei Ohtani, Japan finally has its world-beater

It must take a considerable amount of willpower for Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama not to respond to questions about his former player Shohei Ohtani with a simple, "I told you so." Although the sly smile he lets slip on occasion more or less does the job.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 14, 2018

Japan faces up to the prospect of losing a middle-class war

Modern middle-class life, you could reasonably argue, generates more happiness among more people than any other ever conceived. It has been extravagantly derided — as bourgeois, soulless, spiritless, narrow, boring, mindlessly acquisitive and so on. But back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Apr 14, 2018

'The Man in the High Castle': Exploring a world in which the Axis powers reign supreme

First published in 1962 and recently made into a series for Amazon TV, Phillip K. Dick's novel imagines a counterfactual World War II, in which Germany and Japan have conquered Europe and America.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Apr 14, 2018

Ando Shoeki: He who dared anger the gods

A mind like Shoeki Ando — bold, mischievous, unconventional, borderline crackpot, one might almost say — is worth probing, if only for those qualities, let alone for his ideas, which leave the mainstream so far behind that the word 'evil' has been attached to him.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2018

The Orwellian danger of Facebook

Is Mark Zuckerberg really in control of Facebook? Or is he a sorcerer's apprentice that cannot handle the invention?
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Apr 13, 2018

In Tohoku, samurai cuisine is racking up Michelin stars

In the town of Shiogama in Miyagi Prefecture, there's a residential neighborhood overlooking Matsushima Bay, the epicenter of Japan's catastrophic March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. On a quiet street there, chef Hideyuki Irakawa and his wife, Michiko, have been serving samurai food from their...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Apr 11, 2018

Pick up a secondhand book in Japan and unearth a mystery

Perhaps the greatest pleasure to be derived from shopping at secondhand book stores in Japan comes from never knowing what might turn up between their pages.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2018

Crime and no punishment for the Iraq War

The illegality of the invasion of Iraq is directly relevant to official U.S. thinking on Iran and North Korea today.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2018

'Patient X' by David Peace: An intensely profound portrait of a writer's life and death

There is an astounding authenticity permeating Peace's writing on Japan, as if he is painstakingly recreating the biography of an entire nation and age.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOKS ABOUT JAPAN
Apr 7, 2018

‘Destiny: The Secret Operations of the Yodogo Exiles’: the true story of a group of Japanese radicals

Based on interviews with the hijackers and their wives over several trips to North Korea, journalist, author and editor Koji Takazawa's 'Destiny' tells the story of the group of student radicals who hijacked a plane and redirected it to North Korea in 1970.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 3, 2018

Hubble spots most distant star ever detected halfway across the universe

Scientists have detected the most distant star ever viewed, a blue behemoth located more than halfway across the universe and named after the ancient Greek mythological figure Icarus.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 2, 2018

Softbank's Masayoshi Son may be about to surprise us anew

Corporate Japan could do with more of Masayoshi Son's 'swing for the fences' approach to business.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 2, 2018

Trump's new national security team cause for concern

A dangerous world could become more dangerous still.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Apr 1, 2018

Japan's Supreme Court orders a child be sent home in a Hague parental abduction case. Maybe.

Defanged habeas corpus grew some teeth in last month's Nagoya international custody ruling, but the problem of toothless enforcement remains.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 1, 2018

The challenges facing Japan's universities

Cultivating students' power to think requires a strong financial foundation
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 31, 2018

Too much of an education could be bad for your future

While school rucksacks in Japan may be getting heavier, the prospects for the over-educated may be getting bleaker.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2018

What did Cambridge Analytica really do?

It's possible that despite capturing Facebook data on 50 million people, Cambridge Analytica didn't actually accomplish anything noteworthy in the realm of politics.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 30, 2018

Thawing out on the stove train through Tsugaru

In his 1944 semi-autobiographical "Return to Tsugaru," Japanese author Osamu Dazai (1909-48) revisits his native Tsugaru, a peninsula in northernmost Aomori Prefecture and, apart from praising its people, has mostly unflattering things to say about the place. Forty years later, British writer Alan Booth...
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 30, 2018

Philippines' city of the future: New Clark

He may never set foot in New Clark City, but taxi driver Edgard Labitag hopes the Philippines' first green, disaster-resilient, high-tech metropolis will ease the pressure on Manila — meaning fewer hours stuck in traffic and more time with his children.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2018

Scoring an own goal: China's Belt and Road funding terms spark criticism

The recipients of Beijing's supposed largess regularly find themselves trapped in debt leading to rising anti-Chinese sentiment.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Mar 28, 2018

Why not try Canada, eh?: For Japanese students, a university up north is worth considering

Japanese students just hoping for a cheaper college option than the U.S. by heading north may be disappointed — but there are plenty of other benefits.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2018

The case against counting calories

Forces beyond our control affect how much energy we burn each day.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Mar 27, 2018

As Vatican and China talk, Taiwan looks on nervously

Five blocks from the Vatican, on the bustling, tourist-packed street leading to St. Peter's Basilica, a Taiwanese flag flutters from the window of a third-story suite of offices that house Taipei's embassy to the Holy See.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2018

Why the South China Sea is critical to security

To thwart China's further designs in the South China Sea and its attempts to change the maritime status quo in the Indian Ocean and the East China Sea, a constellation of democratic states linked by interlocking strategic cooperation is needed.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 24, 2018

Good libations: Examining the evolution of Japan's rich cocktail culture

The art of the cocktail is indisputably non-Japanese. The word itself is old American slang for a pick-me-up, referring in modern parlance to any mixed drink containing liquor and at least one other ingredient. Even if you aren't a drinker, chances are you can name quite a few: the martini, the Manhattan,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 24, 2018

World debates what action to take over North Korea

Nine years after then-U.S President Barack Obama committed America to the pursuit of "a world without nuclear weapons," nine months after the U.N. adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and five months after the Nobel Peace Prize Committee conferred one of the world's highest honors...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 23, 2018

How to unleash Japan's animal spirits

The postwar system that built Japan's formidable middle class is faltering. A two-tiered employment system is needed.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2018

Trump's tariffs may be playing into Xi's hands

Tough U.S. measures allow the Chinese leader to be the economic nationalist he wants to be.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami