Search - politics

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2014

Malaysian Air should learn from JAL's revival

With Malaysian Airlines losing its second Boeing 777 in four months, many passengers are sure to declare it a personal no-fly zone. Privatization is the main option being considered.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2014

Putin nears a tipping point

By overplaying its hand in Afghanistan and lying to the world about the downing of a Korean Air Lines flight 31 years ago, the Soviet regime exposed and accelerated the rot that made its collapse inevitable. There is no reason to believe in a different fate for Vladimir Putin's effort to re-establish Russia as an imperial power.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 24, 2014

Abe's security strategy lacks strategic thinking

The Abe administration's first National Security Strategy basically continues the longtime status quo policy, indicating that the prime minister remains trapped in the ongoing domestic polemics of peace vs. self-defense.
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 24, 2014

Ishihara's new party embraces 'neoconservative' policies

Jisedai no To, established by conservative lawmakers including former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, unveil policies that include drafting a new Constitution and denying non-Japanese residents the right to vote.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2014

Success of Chinese reform is key to BRICS' rise

Last week, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) took a decisive step toward building institutions that could plausibly challenge the long geopolitical and economic ascendancy of the West. But Vladimir Putin's posturing at the meeting just hours before a Malaysia Airlines jetliner was shot down in Ukraine was one indication of the group's inability to offer an acceptable moral and political alternative to Western hegemony.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2014

Coca-Cola pays expats to breathe China's air

It's hard to believe that the 15 percent bonus Coca-Cola is said to be offering will do much to help it attract or retain expatriate employees to breathe China's polluted air.
LIFE / Language / WELL SAID
Jul 21, 2014

Nani-ga sonnani okashii-no-kashira?

Today, we will introduce the adjective u304au304bu3057u3044 (funny/strange), and compare it with another adjective u304au3082u3057u308du3044 (funny/interesting).
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 20, 2014

Aging Yokotas pine for daughter's return from North Korea as abductee talks begin

Shigeru and Sakie Yokota may have their best chance yet of being reunited with their daughter, Megumi, 37 years after she was abducted by North Korean agents at age 13.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 19, 2014

Politician Nonomura weeps and the world laughs

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, but has trouble enough of its own."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 17, 2014

Ryuichi Sakamoto delves into cities and nature at Sapporo International Art Festival

Sapporo is generally known for three things: snow, ramen and beer. These things, and festivals such as the Snow Festival or City Jazz, are what draw more than 14 million tourists to the city every year.
EDITORIALS
Jul 16, 2014

No winners in Israel-Hamas conflict

The zero-sum mentality of Israel and Hamas is fueling a cycle of violence.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2014

Can't win by ravaging Gaza

Israel's targeting of Hamas is an attempt to distract from the slowly building collective sentiment among Palestinians throughout Palestine and among Palestinian citizens in Israel.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2014

Does Hamas want to get Palestinians killed?

Is Hamas trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible? Dead Palestinians represent a crucial propaganda victory for the nihilists of Hamas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 15, 2014

YMO's Yukihiro Takahashi recruits Towa Tei, Cornelius, Yoshinori Sunahara, Tomohiko Gondo and Leo Imai for an impressive supergroup

One of the unspoken rules in the progress-fixated world of electronic music is that you don't get bonus points for dwelling on past glories. So when Yukihiro Takahashi — drummer, vocalist and dapper elder statesman of electro-pop — convened a star cast of musicians at Tokyo's Ex Theater Roppongi...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2014

When Warren Harding bared all to a mistress

Long before the age of texting, U.S. President Warren Harding likely was more unguarded in his love letters to a mistress than any modern politician could hope to be.
EDITORIALS
Jul 13, 2014

'A bad day for Europe'

When British Prime Minister David Cameron denounced the nomination of former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, Cameron made himself look either ineffectual or petulant to fellow Britons.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 12, 2014

Health care system needs a new diagnosis

In March 2007, the city of Yubari in Hokkaido became the first Japanese municipality to declare bankruptcy, letting loose a flood of media coverage characterized by expressions of sympathy for residents. Yubari's debt had reached ¥63 billion, the result, according to national press reports, of an inept,...
COMMENTARY / Japan / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 12, 2014

Abe's constitutional putsch and U.S. security cooperation

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's putsch involves bypassing constitutional procedures to revise the Constitution because he lacks sufficient support to win two-thirds approval in both houses of the Diet and a majority in a national referendum. Instead, Abe achieved by diktat what he could not gain democratically,...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 12, 2014

Kurds seize Iraq oil fields, ministers pull out of government

Kurdish forces seized two oil fields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company Friday, while Kurdish politicians formally suspended their participation in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014

The silver fox of dictatorship and democracy

The reality of the times was that Eduard Shevardnadze was both a democrat and a despot. His death brings closer to the end the Gorbachev generation of reform communists who presented a stark contrast to the dour Brezhnev-era hard-liners, spurring (mostly inadvertently) the collapse of the Soviet empire and the long transition to democracy.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 10, 2014

Cost of passive power struggles

The chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation recalls how the failure of the navy minister to express a truthful personal opinion within a group closed the window on Japanese doves' hopes of averting war months before the Pearl Harbor attack.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 10, 2014

Abe's defense policy from a historical perspective

Since Japan, unlike China, neither possesses nor desires nuclear weapons, Japan's use of military power in East Asia has its limits. Therefore, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's decision to let Japan exercise the right of 'collective self-defense' is limited in scope and should not alarm countries that have no intention of attacking Japan or the U.S.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 10, 2014

Obama-Perry Texas talks fraught over migrant children crisis

As a measure of how politically fraught President Barack Obama's Texas trip is Wednesday, Republican Gov. Rick Perry reluctantly agreed to a ritual public greeting of the nation's chief executive.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014

Xi's fumbles give Obama's pivot a second chance

Years from now, when the history of Barack Obama's much-maligned 'pivot to Asia' is written, he may owe a debt of gratitude to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose overbearing ways in the region are giving Obama a second wind.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2014

Tensions will rise in Asia until China and the U.S. talk

If a direct confrontation between China and its neighbors is to be avoided, meeting the perceived 'China threat' will demand that the region's political leaders address their disputes in more creative ways. And the U.S. and China must talk.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2014

Resetting India's foreign and security policies

The Modi government is reported considering allowing up to 49 percent 'foreign direct inviestment' in India's defense sector —without requiring technology transfers — as it manages modernization.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2014

At some point, U.S. progressives must stand

You would think that, at a certain point, liberals in the U.S. with any dignity would get sick of being used and abused by Democratic Party candidates. Don't expect the dysfunctional relationship between liberals and Democrats to get any better for 2017.

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