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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Mar 4, 2015

U.S. author recounts 'lecture' he got about 'comfort women' from uninvited Japanese guests

The American historian whose book has been slammed by the Japanese government for its content on WWII sex slaves speaks out.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jan 17, 2015

'Refugees should have the same opportunities in life as everyone else'

What do Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, composer Frederic Chopin, war photographer Robert Capa and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud have in common? They were all refugees.
WORLD
Jan 6, 2015

CIA says its inspector general is resigning at end of month

CIA Inspector General David Buckley, who investigated a dispute between the agency and Congress over the handling of records of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities, is resigning effective Jan. 31, the CIA said on Monday.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 20, 2014

Abductees' families still skeptical on sending reps to N. Korea

Many relatives of abductees said Monday they remain skeptical about the government's decision to send officials to Pyongyang to learn firsthand the status of North Korea's latest probe into the victims' fates.
JAPAN / History / IMPERIAL ANNALS
Oct 11, 2014

Selective history: Hirohito's chronicles

Between July 30 and Aug. 2, 1945, when most of Japan's cities, including Tokyo, lay in smoldering ruins from U.S. aerial bombing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were days away from being incinerated by American nuclear weapons, Emperor Hirohito sent an envoy to several Shinto shrines to pray for the "crushing...
OLYMPICS / ROBERT WHITING'S 1964 OLYMPICS RETROSPECTIVE
Oct 10, 2014

Olympic construction transformed Tokyo

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had a profound impact on the capital city and the nation. In the opening installment of a five-part series that will run during the next two weeks, best-selling author Robert Whiting, who lived in Japan at the time, takes a look back at the preparations for the event.
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2014

Curbing hate speech

Hate speech against Korean residents in Japan has become a big enough international issue for the United Nations to urge Tokyo to take steps to deal with the problem.
JAPAN / Politics / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 17, 2014

Foreign Ministry officials to meet with abductees' families

Japan's newly appointed minister in charge of the abduction issue says the government will arrange a meeting on Friday with families of the victims, in response to their request for a direct explanation about the status of negotiations with North Korea.
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2014

Abe pressures North Korea at rally for abductees' families

With North Korea's report approaching on its second probe into the fate of the Japanese it abducted, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday vowed in front of their families that his administration is committed to bringing them home.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Sep 10, 2014

Five reasons why agricultural reform will be a tough slog

Today's column, in list form, tackles a subject that defies a more conventional presentation: Japanese agricultural regulation.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2014

Improving disaster preparedness

Japan's municipal authorities must examine why their collective past experience with torrential rains failed to prevent the deaths of dozens of people in mudslides that engulfed hilly residential areas of Hiroshima early Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2014

Giving a resolute pro-India neighbor its due

It's an indication of the ham-handed manner in which Indian foreign policy is managed that even relations with Bhutan have seemed troubled in the past few years.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 10, 2014

Obama administration waging war on media

Insiders say the pressure of America's powerful national security apparatus and the fear among White House aides of facing the wrath of the intelligence community has made the once-media-friendly President Barack Obama appear neo-Nixonian.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 24, 2014

Getting past the stigma of dementia

Last April, the Nagoya High Court ordered a 91-year-old woman in Obu, Aichi Prefecture, to pay ¥3 million in compensation to JR Tokai for disruption of service after her husband was struck and killed by one of the company's trains. The man, who was 85 at the time of the accident in December 1997, suffered...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 24, 2014

Suga again denies revisionism

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga denies speculation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is considering a key aide's proposal to issue a new government statement on the 'comfort women' issue.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Mar 21, 2014

Cracks in the ruling coalition

The exercise of Japan's right to collective self-defense has become Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's political creed, but ruling coalition partner New Komeito wants Abe to slow his approach, and others close to Abe have grown apprehensive about the rise of anti-American conservatism within Abe's Liberal Democratic Party. The ruling coalition is showing cracks.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 18, 2014

Vegan metalheads go to the Extreme

A little-known part of the music scene will be celebrated next week at Tokyo's Asakusa Kurawood venue, far from the candy-pop quirk of Harajuku. Obscene Extreme Festival (OEF) promises to be confrontational and dark and — yes, the capital letters are insisted upon — "UNLEASH HELL."
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 16, 2013

Japan pins hopes on Kennedy

With a controversial base relocation in Okinawa and other high-stakes issues testing the resilience of ties with the United States, people in Japan are looking to new U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy for not just her celebrity status, but also her potential to become a new bridge between the two allies....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jul 2, 2013

The LDP constitution, article by article: a preview of things to come?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for constitutional change. Yet he is playing the political huckster by proposing to first only fiddle with the amendment procedure in Article 96, lowering the threshold for the process to move forward from the approval of two-thirds of both houses of the Diet, as...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 18, 2013

Democracy, interrupted: How local voices were silenced in Tokyo's first referendum

On Sunday, May 26, something quite remarkable happened in Kodaira city, western Tokyo: Over 50,000 citizens voted in Tokyo's very first local referendum (jūmin tōhyō) on the issue of whether a 50-year-old plan to construct a road should be reviewed or not.
JAPAN / Politics
May 23, 2013

Pyongyang aid hinged to abductees; report hints Noda was told of survivors

Tokyo will never provide economic aid to North Korea unless Pyongyang safely returns all the Japanese nationals its agents abducted to North Korea, the Cabinet minister in charge of the issue said in a written statement Wednesday released after a report surfaced suggesting some victims may still be alive....
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2013

Graft: a cancer on society

Some British companies fear that adhering to the international convention against bribery and corruption puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 13, 2013

In Abe's future, a nationalist rewrite of the past?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has kept a diplomatically low profile, particularly over historical issues, focusing instead on economic and other domestic matters ahead of the July Upper House election.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 11, 2013

Toxic management erodes safety at 'world's safest' nuclear plant

On Jan. 30, 2012, Byron Nuclear Generating Station lost operability to all of its safety-related equipment. At the time, Jim Hazen was the nuclear station operator responsible for the affected reactor, one of two at the Exelon-owned nuclear plant in Byron, Illinois.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell