Search - u_times

 
 
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima on Nov. 14.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 10, 2024

U.S. wakes up to China’s growing presence in its ‘backyard’

China has long eyed Latin America’s food and mineral resources, using them to build business connections for over two decades.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Andrew leave after Prince Philip's Thanksgiving Service at Westminster Abbey in March 2022. Revelations that a suspected Chinese spy became a confidant of Britain's Prince Andrew is renewing scrutiny of King Charles' disgraced brother.
WORLD
Dec 15, 2024

Latest scandal raises fresh questions about U.K.'s Prince Andrew

The latest scandal erupted on Thursday after judges upheld a government ban on the Chinese businessman, identified only as H6, from entering Britain.
Here we go again, a Christmas marked by legal battles, evolving traditions, commercial influence, and debates over greetings.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2024

There is no war on Christmas. There are many.

As usual, our holiday cornucopia overfloweth with litigation.
On the first day of the 2000s, the world was relieved that the Y2K computer glitch was mostly nothing. And in Russia, Vladimir Putin came to power.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Jan 1, 2025

Japan Times 2000: Japanese celebrate new year

Check out what was on the front page on Jan. 1 in 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000.
Signage at the TikTok offices in Singapore, on Aug. 4, 2023
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 7, 2025

TikTok ban thrusts Apple and Google into U.S.-China geopolitical fray

TikTok creators are posting videos promoting ways to get around a looming shutdown of the app in the U.S., which could spell trouble for companies required to enforce the ban.
Hanna Shelest outside her apartment building in Odesa, Ukraine, on Jan. 20
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2025

I spent Trump’s inauguration in Ukraine. This is what I saw.

In nearly three years since Russia’s invasion, Odesa has moved from shock and fear to denial and, finally, adaptation.
The front page of The Japan Times on Feb. 21, 1925, carried news of clashes in the streets over the debate of extending voting rights to Japanese males over the age of 25.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Feb 1, 2025

Japan Times 1925: Tokyo factions ready to fight over manhood suffrage bill in Diet

Objections from the country's 1% came as Japan debated extending voting rights to all men over the age of 25.
Visitors attend the Myanmar Power and Solar Energy Storage Expo 2025 in Yangon on Jan. 10. Power outages are common across Yangon, a result of rolling blackouts scheduled by the country's junta government.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Feb 2, 2025

Seeking light in dark times four years after Myanmar coup

The country has fossil fuel reserves and strong potential for renewables but is crippled by instability, investor flight, a lack of infrastructure and other problems.
DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough has shaken assumptions about China’s innovation, highlighted weaknesses in U.S. tech restrictions, and reinforced China’s push for self-sufficiency despite export controls.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 4, 2025

DeepSeek forces a rethink of China’s ability to innovate

The Trump administration hasn’t outlined a policy toward technology flows yet, but it ordered a review of export controls on day one.
President Donald Trump’s order making English the official language of the country is unnecessary, as nearly 80% of people in the U.S. already speak it at home.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2025

America doesn’t need an official language

After all, what is our shared culture if not the mix of cultures — including languages — that make and remake America every day?
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, at the White House on Feb. 24. American conservatives want Europe to take on more military responsibility but often scorn its structure, making France the strongest candidate for leadership.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2025

Why U.S. conservatives should fall in love with France

For American conservatives who sincerely want a capable Europe, just supporting European populism is not enough.
A wave of fear is spreading in immigrant communities as ICE uses secretive, aggressive tactics, bypassing legal protections and spreading panic reminiscent of authoritarian crackdowns.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2025

Unmarked vans and secret lists. The police state has arrived.

"It’s the unmarked cars,” a friend who grew up under an Argentine dictatorship said. He had watched the video of Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction. In the video, which Khalil’s wife recorded, she asks for the names of the men in plainclothes who handcuffed her husband.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Oval Office on Feb. 27. U.S. conservatives may be unlikely defenders of free speech but their criticism of censorship in the U.K. and Europe raises real concerns about vague hate laws and curbs on liberty in the name of harmony. 
COMMENTARY
Jun 2, 2025

European kindness is threatening the foundations of free speech

Right-wing U.S. critics of U.K. and European censorship have a point.
Tokyo police declared that Japanese young men and women were simply "not accustomed to one another’s society" due to their cultural upbringing — and thus freewheeling dance venues and foreign customs needed to be reined in.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Jun 4, 2025

Japan Times 1925: Tokyo police impose curfew on ‘social dances’

In June 1925, concern over “the moral effects of the Western dancing” on Japanese youth led to restrictions on social venues.
A front-page article from July 1950 reported that Kyoto's historic Kinkakuji had been "totally razed" in a fire.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Jul 5, 2025

Japan Times 1950: Kyoto’s ‘Golden Temple’ burns to the ground

The historic Kinkakuji was destroyed in an act of arson in July 1950, a shocking event that would serve as the inspiration for a novel by Yukio Mishima.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is unable to satisfy his supporters’ demands for answers he can’t deliver, is now trapped by the very Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy he once promoted.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2025

Trump can’t put the Epstein genie back in the bottle

Trump now finds himself in the unusual position of trying to stuff the Epstein genie back into a bottle that he helped uncork.
In August 1950, The Japan Times reported on the canceling of Hiroshima's fifth annual peace ceremony due to the Korean War.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Aug 2, 2025

Japan Times 1950: Hiroshima peace festival canceled

In August 1950, the fifth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the city’s annual ceremony praying for peace was canceled due to ongoing combat on the Korean Peninsula.
Prime Minister Yoshio Mori declared in September 2000 that Japan must “grab the historic opportunity of the IT revolution."
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Sep 6, 2025

Japan Times 2000: Prime minister pitches ‘e-Japan’ as way of life

Japan must “grab the historic opportunity of the IT revolution,” Prime Minister Yoshio Mori declared as the final Diet session of the century opened in September 2000.
Chinese migrants intent on reaching the United States walking in the jungle of Panama’s Darien Gap on March 3, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Sep 16, 2025

He risked everything to leave China for the U.S. Then he was sent back.

Tao was not a Chinese dissident, just an ordinary worker who wanted freedom. Deportation did not stop him from trying again.
Haitian children walk past piles of garbage at the School Argentine Bellegarde, converted into a shelter for displaced people, in downtown Port-au-Prince on Oct. 3. More than 16,000 people have been killed in armed violence in Haiti since the start of 2022, the United Nations said on October 3, warning that "the worst may be yet to come."
WORLD / Society
Oct 9, 2025

'Daily struggle for survival' for Haiti children, U.N. report says

An estimated 680,000 children have been displaced by gang violence in crisis-wracked Haiti, nearly double the number from a year ago.
An American F-15 jet takes off from Anderson Air Force Base in Guam earlier this year. The U.S. is hunting for malicious computer code it believes China has hidden deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 30, 2023

U.S. hunts Chinese malware amid military disruption fears

The U.S. believes the malware could give China the power to disrupt or slow military deployments or resupply operations.
Demonstrators hold a rally in Washington on Thursday, the day former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is facing federal charges related to attempts to overturn his 2020 election, appeared in a U.S. district court in the nation's capital.
EDITORIALS
Aug 4, 2023

The United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump

The outcome of the trial against former U.S. President Donald Trump will test the rule of law and U.S. democracy.
U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol meet during the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima in May.
EDITORIALS
Aug 18, 2023

A trilateral summit to reshape Northeast Asia

The summit follows years of hard work to overcome bitter historical legacies, most stemming from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pose for a photo during their meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, in April 2019.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 5, 2023

U.S. says North Korea's Kim expects to meet Putin for arms deal

The two pariah states are reportedly looking to reach a deal on weapons in exchange for food and satellite and submarine technological support.
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa during a news conference at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo on Friday
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 18, 2023

Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa's diplomatic chops to be tested at U.N.

The visit to New York marks the top diplomat's first overseas trip since she became foreign minister in last week's Cabinet reshuffle.
The U.S. Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, its flagship medical center in Germany, is seen in 2021. The medical center has quietly started admitting Ukrainian Army soldiers who were wounded in combat, most of them American volunteers.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 24, 2023

U.S. Army hospital in Germany treating Americans hurt fighting in Ukraine

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center has quietly started admitting Ukrainian Army soldiers who were wounded in combat, most of them American volunteers.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 28, 2023

Japanese universities move up in global rankings

The overall improvement is due to a change in methodology by Times Higher Education.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington in December 2014.
WORLD
Sep 29, 2023

Long-serving U.S. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein dies at 90

Feinstein was a Washington trail-blazer who among other accomplishments became the first woman to head the influential Senate Intelligence Committee.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 17, 2023

South Korea, Japan and U.S. set up three-way security hotline

he hotline comes at a time of military tensions with North Korea and China's growing regional influence.
Palestinian refugees flee to Rafah, in southern Gaza, after Israeli airstrikes on Friday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 17, 2023

Japan must uphold humanitarianism in the Middle East

War cries from Israel and Hamas must be met with appeals for the defense of human life, a position Japan has historically held.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes