Search - politics

 
 
Reader Mail
Dec 11, 2013

A better use of students' time

Regarding the Dec. 3 Kyodo-Jiji article "University students start job hunt": I have to admit that I do not get the annual university student job hunt, which started this month.
EDITORIALS
Dec 10, 2013

Karzai balks on a deal

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is playing a dangerous game. His term in office expires next April, yet he is balking on a security deal with the U.S. to try to preserve his political leverage.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2013

Nuke 'black box' needed: investigator

The global nuclear power industry needs to share cross-border information to prevent accidents, replicating the transparency of international air traffic control, according to the head of an investigation into the disaster at Fukushima No. 1.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Dec 9, 2013

Korean volunteers put the K into kizuna

One volunteer group, based at Tokyo's Meiji University, is called Kizuna International; the other, at Kyoto University, is Kizuna From Kyoto. The coincidences do not end there: Both groups' leaders share the same surname and both are ethnic Koreans.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 9, 2013

Ukraine throngs now demand systemic change

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians filled the streets of Kiev on Sunday — no longer focused solely on a trade agreement with the European Union, but now also looking to recast their country's frayed and corrupt political system.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 7, 2013

Inequality threatens Mandela legacy

Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in apartheid jails in 1990 pledging to seize South Africa's mines and banks. Four years later, his government slashed spending and courted foreign investors, paving the way for the longest period of growth in the country's history.
EDITORIALS
Dec 6, 2013

Government without oversight

Even if the state secrets bill becomes a law, it will be important for people to continue grass-roots movements to oppose it and to prevent from being used to curb their right to know and to express their thought and opinions.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 6, 2013

ADIZs: separating fact from fiction

The fact that China's new air defense identification zone overlaps that of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea is not 'illegal' and is perhaps part of a strategy to level the legal playing field vis-a-vis Japan's claims in the disputed area.
EDITORIALS
Dec 5, 2013

Voter inequality under the law

The disparity in vote value between more and less populous Upper House constituencies has grown so wide that it is undermining the principle of equality under the law with regard to the representation of voters's will.
Reader Mail
Dec 4, 2013

Maritime rifts could cost China

Regarding Kevin Rafferty's Nov. 29 article, "Can Xi's reforms succeed?": Much has written about Chinese President Xi Jinping's determination to push national reforms, but he has yet to overcome three institutional obstacles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 4, 2013

Trapped by human society

Osaka-born Tetsumi Kudo's oeuvre has been the subject of a number of major international retrospectives since his death in 1990, and these indicate the artist's increasing postwar historical significance. The current National Museum of Art, Osaka retrospective is magisterial. With more than 600 pages,...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 3, 2013

A vital role for Caroline Kennedy

Given the nexus of issues that tie vital U.S. interests to Japan's reform process, Caroline Kennedy, the new U.S. ambassador to Japan, could well prove to be a crucial link between the countries.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 3, 2013

Nori represents Japan at BC One breakdancing competition

This past weekend's Red Bull BC One breakdancing event in Seoul was something of a battle of titans.
EDITORIALS
Dec 2, 2013

The politics of secrets

Flip-flops in government explanations of the contentious bill for protecting state secrets — now under deliberation in the Upper House — suggest that the government itself does not have a clear idea of how it plans to prevent the arbitrary designation of information as a special secret.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Dec 2, 2013

Obama may be rare ex-leader who stays in Washington after presidency

Throughout his time in office, President Barack Obama has opened many outside-the-Beltway speeches with a suggestion that he, too, feels like an outsider in the nation's baffling, frustrating capital city. He shouts to the audience about how good it is to be wherever he is that day — Cleveland, Miami,...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Dec 1, 2013

Who is Xi? Chinese leader enigma to world

In early November, China's most powerful man, Xi Jinping, stepped into a rustic farmhouse while on an inspection tour in far-flung Hunan province. The occupants' sole electrical appliance, a fluorescent light bulb, burned overhead. Shi Pazhuan, the family matriarch, was confused. "What should I call...
JAPAN / Politics / ANALYSIS
Dec 1, 2013

China's new air zone at top of agenda for Biden's visit to Tokyo

When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visits Japan on Monday, his most urgent task will be to assure Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the U.S. stands firmly against China's new air defense identification zone.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Dec 1, 2013

Crusader for social activism brings Change.org to Japan

The woman who brought Change.org to Japan says the online petition platform is just the ticket to get the normally reticent Japanese to become more active in achieving social change.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 30, 2013

The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan

Misfits. Oddballs. Bohemians. In Tokugawa Japan? Yes indeed, a veritable plethora of them. The Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867) was hardly the first repressive regime, or the last, to throw nonconformity out the front door only to find it creeping in through the back door, through the window, through cracks...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 30, 2013

The secret of keeping official secrets secret

"He that would keep a secret must keep it secret that he hath a secret to keep," says Sir Humphrey Appleby, permanent secretary to the Department of Administrative Affairs, a fictitious branch of the British government. He is one of the main characters in the highly acclaimed 1980s BBC television series...
EDITORIALS
Nov 28, 2013

The Ukraine tug of war

Russian President Vladimir Putin has won an important foreign policy victory with the decision by Ukraine to suspend talks on an association agreement with the European Union.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Nov 28, 2013

Pakistan has a new, little-known military commander

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif named a new military chief Wednesday, bypassing seniority to install a low-profile army general in the powerful position.
Reader Mail
Nov 27, 2013

A tale of two untimely deaths

William Andrews' Nov. 19 article "Wife fights decades-long battle to free activist leader," underscores the typical treatment of a death, or a human life, because a riot police member trumps a citizen. On the one hand a poor policeman, dispatched to Shibuya from Niigata was fatally set afire by demonstrators...
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 27, 2013

With shift to Russia, ex-leader stays in cell

For many in the United States and Europe, Ukraine's future had been bound up with the fate of a former prime minister with halolike braids who was jailed in an act of political retribution.
JAPAN / Politics
Nov 27, 2013

Inose in denial mode as cash cloud hangs heavier

Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose's failure to declare a whopping u00a550 million he received from a shady hospital tycoon sees his political career take a pounding.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Nov 27, 2013

Pope denounces trickle-down economics in critique of inequality

Pope Francis on Tuesday sharply criticized growing economic inequality and unfettered markets in a lengthy paper outlining a populist philosophy that he says will guide his papacy as he pushes the Catholic Church to reach out more, particularly to the disenfranchised.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2013

The unraveling of Barack Obama's presidency

When it comes to Obamacare, U.S. President Barack Obama is like someone who burns down your house. Then shows up with an empty water bucket. Then lectures you about how defective the house was.
JAPAN / KANSAI PERSPECTIVE
Nov 24, 2013

Bullet trains on a pro-nuclear curve

In the debate over the future of nuclear power, which provided about a third of Japan's electricity needs before the Fukushima disaster began in 2011, commentators for and against resuming its use have argued their case.
Reader Mail
Nov 23, 2013

Memory of JFK's death still painful

Regarding Mark Schreiber's Nov. 17 article: I was 18, two years older than Schreiber, when I heard the news. The memory is painful beyond all politics. This is one of Schreiber's best articles — and the competition is stiff.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 23, 2013

Ukraine puts brakes on historic EU deal

Stuck between Russia and the European Union, and chafing at the need to choose between them, the Ukrainian government faltered Thursday as threats from its big Slavic neighbor mounted.

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