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COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 2014

Will Ukraine's new boss be like the old boss?

The question facing Ukrainians is whether Petro Poroshenko, the man who seems poised to win the presidency on May 25, will prove that all their recent efforts to put an end to decades of corrupt, oligarchic rule have been in vain.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Apr 2, 2014

West stumbles as autocratic forces trumps economics

A quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union, authoritarian rulers such as Vladimir Putin and Bashar Assad are showing they can and will defy international norms, suppress dissent and use military force. American policymakers are struggling with how to respond.
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.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 30, 2014

Chinese grabs $14.5 billion in assets linked to Zhou probe

Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of China's biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 30, 2014

Afghanistan at crossroads as Karzai era ends

Amid the dust and traffic of today's Kabul, three things remain almost as they were a decade or so ago. In winter, and when the wind clears the smog that is a side effect of years of economic boom, the blue sky above the snowcapped peaks that ring the city is as impressive as ever. Then there is the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 26, 2014

'Rudolf Steiner'

Austria-born, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) is known as a philosopher, literary critic and esoteric who became leader of the German Theosophical Society and later founder the Anthroposophical Society. Much of his philosophical thought was influenced by the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, while his...
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2014

Hashimoto fails in his gambit

Results of Osaka city's snap election Sunday suggest that Toru Hashimoto, although re-elected as mayor, fell short of his aim to garner sufficient voter support for his plan to integrate the city with Osaka Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2014

An economy resilient to political dysfunction

Recent analysis shows there is little correlation between America's highly publicized political dysfunction and its relative economic performance in serveral dimensions.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 22, 2014

Energy debate challenges facade of wa

Torn between his nationalistic instinct to resurrect what he seems to regard as Japan's great bygone days of empire-building and the mundane demands of caring for the pressing needs of his nation, a remarkably caring soul might almost feel sorry for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his first months in...
JAPAN / History
Mar 22, 2014

The sloughing of Japan's corporate skin goes on

"Man is born free and is everywhere in chains."
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Mar 21, 2014

Abe, Park to meet at Obama's urging

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet next week with his South Korean counterpart, Park Geun-hye, the first Tokyo-Seoul summit in two years.
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.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2014

Putin's speech as benevolent czar

Russian President Vladimir Putin's truly regal speech to Parliament heralded Russia's unabashed resurgence as an unscrupulous, unpredictable player in a world where lies and raw might trump any kind of legal framework.
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2014

Putin's Crimean prize

Even if Russia does not send its military into any other parts of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin retains the threat of future action, if only 'reluctantly,' and will be able to keep Ukraine, and the rest of central Europe, on the defensive.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2014

'Lone Survivor'

The French have Camerone, the British Isandlwana, the Greeks Thermopylae, but Americans seem particularly enamored of heroic last stands, from the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand through the "Black Hawk Down" debacle in Somalia. Add a new name to that list: Operation Red Wings, where four Navy SEALs operating...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 19, 2014

Is the world ready for another Bush?

By all appearances, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is a man on a mission.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2014

In love with the spirit of the 'Ban Bossy' campaign

A British columnist can't help falling in love with the spirit of the American campaign to ban the word 'bossy' on the grounds that it discourages little girls from ambition and leadership.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2014

West has the moral authority to criticize Putin

Vladimir Putin, like Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, is a hard-eyed realist, more than willing to trade an evanescent moral authority for the reality of actual authority. His bet is that the West is made of words when it comes to its criticism of Russian intervention in Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2014

Syria's Kurds aim for peaceful change

The civil war still engulfing Syria is not universal. Since the outbreak of protests in 2011 against President Bashar Assad's regime, the Kurdish community has consistently sought peaceful change and respect for the rights of all.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 17, 2014

U.S. military report suggests cover-up over toxic pollution in Okinawa

Perhaps the most serious concern raised in the internal U.S. military report is the fear that PCB contamination at Kadena — if made public — would prompt demands for widespread tests on other U.S. bases.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 17, 2014

Conservatives' insular mindset doesn't fit today's global reality

Japan has moved well beyond its islands, but in many respects, it has retained elements of an island mentality that is no longer compatible with its modern reality.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 16, 2014

Foreign policy piled on the wreckage for India

As one surveys the landscape of Indian foreign and security policy at the end of the UPA government's 10 years in office, it appears strewn with wreckage on all sides.
JAPAN / View from Osaka
Mar 15, 2014

Trade deals trump sex slave issue for Osakans

When Osaka Mayor and Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) co-leader Toru Hashimoto uttered his infamous remarks last May that Japan's wartime sex slave system was necessary at the time, he was roundly — and rightly — condemned at home and abroad.
BUSINESS / Economy / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Mar 15, 2014

Economy can do without structural reform

While critics of "Abenomics" begrudgingly agree Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy package has been a success so far, they are equally quick to highlight its looming headwinds.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Mar 14, 2014

Dahl still drawing on the joys and absurdities of expat life

For over 20 years, Roger Dahl has been making Japan Times readers laugh — and think — with his Opinion Page political cartoons and “Zero Gravity” comic strip, which pokes gentle fun at the foreign experience in this country.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Mar 13, 2014

Top court case highlights U.S. rift over sex science

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a religious dispute over the "Obamacare" contraception mandate, advocates on both sides are trying to set the court straight on the science.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 13, 2014

China waging psychological warfare in the East China Sea

Japanese and Western news reports suggest that the U.S. bombers and routine Japanese patrol fighters that flew into China's air-defense identification zone right after the ADIZ was proclaimed did not encounter any Chinese interceptors or radar beams.
Reader Mail
Mar 12, 2014

Hong Kong likes Japanese tourists

I would like to mention something that the Hong Kong media never puts out when it comes to problems regarding Japan: Youths such as myself have no problem with Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2014

The charge of the lightweight brigade

Would America's late right-wing hero and former President Ronald Reagan have confronted a heavily nuclear-armed Russia's move to retake Crimea — 'gifted' to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 — any differently than U.S. President Barack Obama? Not a chance.

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