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JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 15, 2009

The recession will lead to a downturn in media quality

Every day there is more gloomy news about a major manufacturer or retailer or service company cutting jobs — and not just a few dozen here or there, but thousands, tens of thousands. No one gets out alive, except self-made billionaires and McDonald's, which is doing quite well, apparently. People will...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2008

Waseda grad school to groom true newshounds

There is no doubt that Japan has produced its share of top-notch journalists: noted political writer Takashi Tachibana, war photographer Ryuichi Hirokawa and videographer Kenji Nagai, who was shot dead in September while reporting close up on the unrest in Myanmar, to cite but a few.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 18, 2005

Robotic journalists do their 'job' covering tragic deaths of girls

In a period of less than three weeks, three elementary school-age girls were recently murdered in different areas of Japan. The nature of the crimes guaranteed extensive coverage, but their occurrence in quick succession stretched the resources of the news media beyond its normal capabilities.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 6, 2000

The horror, the horror

We're back. Did you miss us? That question isn't the product of an (especially) insecure soul. I mean it.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 2, 1999

Taiwan quake shakes China's mandate

BEIJING -- Chinese news coverage of the killer earthquake in Taiwan has been both muted and sporadic, ranging from solicitous concern for the rogue province to no news at all. When the earthquake did get print or air time in the week following the temblor, coverage tended to focus on what mainland authorities,...
PODCAST / deep dive
May 17, 2023

Yes, crime is on the rise in Japan. No, you don’t have to panic.

The year so far has been marked with several high-profile crime stories and, according to the numbers, crime is on the rise. However, the types of crime we’re seeing are different from before.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 9, 2022

Queen Elizabeth’s death comes at moment of great uncertainty for Britain

The country faces its gravest economic threats in a generation, besieged by inflation, soaring energy bills and the specter of a prolonged recession.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 16, 2022

Kim Jong Un gives North Korea’s most famous TV anchor a luxury home

Ri Chun Hee, who delivers the news with a soaring, bombastic tenor, received a two-story apartment in a riverside complex from the country's leader, apparently for her loyalty.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 26, 2021

Does Google Translate make foreign language learning unnecessary? Not quite

Idioms and other turns of phrase are often taken literally when left to Google Translate to make sense of things. That means translator jobs are safe for now.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 15, 2020

Waking up to child abuse by caregivers

Children who are sexually abused may not understand what is happening to them or are cowed into silence by their abusers.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2020

U.S.-China media war on truth and trust

China now has a global propaganda machine that can deliver the government's message on its terms.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 9, 2020

COVID-19 creates two co-presidents in the U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump is a great campaigner but a poor crisis manager.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 15, 2019

Combating an unfounded fear of Japan's recluses

Although the term "hikikomori," which describes people who shun social contact and seek extreme degrees of isolation, has been in common use for several decades, it has taken on a more sinister cast recently as the media has come to view it as a social problem. In the wake of two incidents that have...
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 30, 2016

The top tech stories of 2016

The Japan Times newsroom selected these tech and digital stories as the most important of 2016.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 20, 2016

With deft political move, Japan's Emperor seeks to cement the role he created

Could the Emperor's raising of the issue of possible abdication be a move designed to stave off constitutional revision?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 19, 2014

The murky call on a hardball interview with Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga

The tabloid press plays fast and loose with the truth, so anyone who gobbled up last week's NHK story in the weekly Friday should have added a dash of salt. An unnamed employee told Friday that the prime minister's office demanded the public broadcaster apologize for questions asked in its interview...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 31, 2014

The Fukushima disaster: Three years on, who's fooling whom?

Japan's new Basic Energy Plan sees nuclear power as an important base load energy source. But whatever 'base load' means politically, the public is lulled — fooled — into a sense that, despite Fukushima, nuclear will remain a logistically viable long-term option.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 4, 2014

China gives U.S. ambassador a racist send-off

What could've ignited the state-owned China News Service to bid farewell to the ethnically Chinese, outgoing U.S. ambassador with a pseudonymous news item referring to him as a 'yellow-skinned, white-hearted banana man'?
EDITORIALS
Dec 15, 2013

Ishiba's ominous words

Statements by LDP Secretary-General Shigeru Ishiba underscore the danger that the new state secrets law could pose to Japanese democracy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2013

China's media block violates trade commitments

From the moment they land in China, Americans must adjust to an aggressively censored version of the Internet, sanitized of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: TECH
Jun 18, 2013

Apps to keep track of everything, Acer's new tablet and a better way to make presentations

Keeping track of your assets
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 14, 2013

Net TV expresses views the mainstream ignores

Last week's column mentioned "Pack-in News," a current-affairs talk show that used to stream on the Internet TV channel Kinkin.tv, which is the personal project of veteran actor-emcee Kinya Aikawa. It was a continuation of "Pack-in Journal," a show hosted by Aikawa on the satellite station Asahi Newstar...
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 11, 2012

Young hopes bloom eternal

The first anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake is a time to commemorate the victims of that terrible tragedy. But it is also an opportunity to look to the future.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 25, 2011

When will the Japanese media stop avoiding antinuke sentiment?

On Dec. 15, freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan about his new book, "Yakuza and Nuclear Power," which describes Suzuki's stint as a worker on cleanup detail at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor last summer. Though the book...
EDITORIALS
Oct 11, 2008

A secret kind of control

The Defense Ministry on Oct. 2 dismissed a 50-year-old colonel of the Air Self-Defense Force for allegedly passing a "defense secret" to a Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporter more than three years ago. The information was about a Chinese submarine that had surfaced in the South China Sea and was adrift....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 9, 2007

Media shows little respect to family of young murder victims

On Nov. 27, 11 days after 58-year-old Keiko Miura and her two preschool grandchildren went missing from Miura's home in Kagawa Prefecture, and the same day Miura's brother-in-law Masanori Kawasaki was arrested for their murder, the online Ohmy News service compared the coverage of the incident to that...
PODCAST / deep dive
Mar 29, 2023

The Japanese Diet expels some GaaSyy

From running his mouth on YouTube to running for office — and now, possibly, running from the law — GaaSyy’s journey has been a wild one.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 26, 2023

Tempered in a crucible of violence, Zelenskyy rises to the moment

In much of the world, the Ukrainian leader has become a household name, representing his country's tenacity and underdog victories against Russia.
An X90 Plus crossover — produced by Chinese automaker Jetour — sits ready for sale at a dealership in the Moscow Region on July 12.
BUSINESS
Jul 20, 2023

Made in Russia? Chinese cars drive a revival of Russia's auto factories

The rebirth of the Moskvich is a sign of China's growing sway over an important sector of Russia's economy.
The nuclear-powered USS Annapolis submarine makes a port call at South Korea's Jeju Island on Monday. It was the second such visit by a U.S. submarine to the country in the span of about a week.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2023

Nuclear Consultative Group strengthens Northeast Asian deterrence

The logic for trilateral coordination between the U.S., Japan and South Korea is compelling. The NCG is an important first step toward that goal.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years