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COMMENTARY / World
Sep 27, 2015

Something is rotten in the state of Germany

Malfeasance like that at Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank and Siemens, and the lack of executive responsibility for it, may be built into the German corporate governance system.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 24, 2015

In a first, brain-computer link enables paralyzed man to walk

A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 23, 2015

Pope Francis remains flamboyantly fact-free

The pope's ideas would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak — if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2015

Thai military delivers oppression, not happiness

The longer Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha and his cronies rule, the less likely Thailand is going to enjoy stable democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2015

Could 2016 really see a Trump vs. Sanders race?

Those who quickly wrote off Donald Trump as a buffoon failed to see that he has shrewdly read the Republican zeitgeist, and that he knows precisely where to stick the knife into competitors.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2015

Hillary is so sorry she wasn't sorry sooner

Hillary Clinton forgot a fundamental lesson of life: If everyone knows you messed up, the sooner you apologize the sooner it becomes old news.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2015

Hey Xi, try this on your U.S. trip: visit Detroit

Chinese investment is playing a significant part in protecting Detroit from a return to the crumbling urban disaster of recent headlines.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2015

Nature of sovereignty a key issue in Russia-U.S. divide

While Russia adheres to the traditional notion that state sovereignty is inviolable, the U.S. now believes it's trumped by humanitarian considerations.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2015

Vilifying China a bad campaign tactic

The more heated the anti-China rhetoric is in the U.S. presidential campaign, the more likely Beijing is to respond in kind.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2015

Welcome back to work, now just do your job

The battle over gay marriage is just the latest round of America's culture war, and it's not over yet.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Sep 20, 2015

'Don't sell your soul for a Japanese man'

Having overcome isolation and a loss of self-confidence in Japan, one American mother now finds herself doling out advice to women seeking Asian men.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2015

Did Charlie Hebdo mock the dead refugee boy?

If the people who now wax indignant about the Aylan Kurdi cartoons supported Charlie Hebdo last winter and joined demonstrations carrying 'Je suis Charlie' signs, they clearly did it for the wrong reasons.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2015

Venezuela's president starts to look desperate

Chavismo has never looked as vulnerable in Venezuela as it does now with President Nicolas Maduro's approval rating scraping bottom.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 19, 2015

Rearranging the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic

The International Atomic Energy Agency's recently released postmortem on the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011 makes for grim reading and serves as a timely reminder of why the restart of the Sendai nuclear plant in Kyushu is a bad idea.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Sep 19, 2015

Finding opportunities overseas with the 'art of hentai'

When Jacob Grady began pirating anime and manga online eight years ago, he was still in college. He took out student loans to pay the server bills, and he figured that if he ever made enough money from the site to purchase a round-trip flight to Japan, the effort and expense would be worth it.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 18, 2015

Putting Chinese medicine to the scientific test

Western doctors, elite medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies are starting to put traditional Chinese medicine to the scientific test.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 18, 2015

Upcoming session will decide the U.N.'s future

The 70th commemorative session of the General Assembly, which begins next week, should be an occasion for providing much-needed hope that the world organization can remain relevant in the coming decades.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Sep 16, 2015

Arresting possibilities: a primer on who can lock you up in Japan

Do you lie awake at night wondering 'Who can arrest me, and why?' The answer is: anyone.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2015

Europe's new geography

Only by repairing its balance sheet through fundamental economic and monetary reforms can the EU possibly ameliorate the continent's other problems.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2015

A crisis of shame engulfing Eastern Europe

Only when Eastern Europe comes to terms with its murderous past will its people be able to recognize their obligations to save those fleeing in the face of evil.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2015

Clues to why a woman can't be more like a man

A recent scientific study suggests that hormones may be responsible for the differences in men's and women's brains.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 15, 2015

Corbyn rides socialist wave to leadership of Britain's Labour Party

Uncorking the spirit of British socialism was the masterstroke that handed Jeremy Corbyn the Labour Party's top job, but he now faces a much bigger challenge — convincing voters that an admirer of Karl Marx should be Britain's next prime minister.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Sep 15, 2015

Japanese firms need more diverse workforce, says Harvard academic

The recent passage of a bill requiring companies to set numerical goals in hiring and promoting women should improve the working environment for them, a Harvard Business School professor has said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2015

Jesus Christ, the Nobel Prize and Shusaku Endo

In 1994, on the day when Kenzaburo Oe was announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature — the second Japanese writer to receive the award — eminent literary scholar Donald Keene received a long-distance call from Peter Owen, publisher of novelist Shusaku Endo's works in London, demanding...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2015

Martin Scorsese and experts analyze Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel in 'Approaching Silence'

An adaptation of Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel "Silence" — about Jesuit priests and Christian converts suffering repression in 17th-century Japan — is currently being filmed by Martin Scorsese in Taiwan and scheduled for release next year.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Sep 12, 2015

Evacuation of Fukushima elderly riskier than then-exposure to radiation: study

A study says the evacuations from nursing homes posed a greater health risk to evacuees than the radiation they would have endured had they stayed.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 11, 2015

Southern Ocean soaking up more greenhouse gases, limiting warming

The vast Southern Ocean around Antarctica has started to soak up more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in recent years, helping to limit climate change, after signs its uptake had stalled, a study said on Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2015

Putin could be planning a big gamble in Syria

Is Vladimir Putin taking the risky step of dramatically increasing Russia's military role in Syria's civil war?
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 8, 2015

A woman who could revive Japan's fortunes

LDP lawmaker Seiko Noda has some bold ideas on how to revitalize Japan, starting with the better utilization of the women who make up half its population.

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