Search - 2014

 
 
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 3, 2016

Italian Mafia earnings from drugs rival Fiat's from cars: report

Italian mobsters make as much money trafficking narcotics in Italy as Fiat does selling cars, but without having to pay taxes, the anti-Mafia prosecutors office said Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Mar 2, 2016

Crunching the census numbers

The latest census confirms that the population is on the decline, and the government needs to get cracking on ways to keep the nation viable in the decades to come.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 2, 2016

The West has always been keen to divide the Arabs

It has been almost 100 years since colonial powers divided up the Arab world, and they have invested much time, energy, resources and all-out wars to ensure that the arbitrary divisions never truly end.
JAPAN
Mar 2, 2016

Academics, TV journalists slam minister's threat against 'biased' programming, fear media self-censorship

Journalists and academics join forces to openly criticize recent remarks by communications minister Sanae Takaichi.
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2016

Abe setting up panel to debate extra budget before G-7 summit

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will convene an advisory panel to consider an extra budget for the coming fiscal year, sources said days after the Group of 20 nations urged more fiscal spending to support the ailing global economy.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 1, 2016

Toshiba reportedly mulling battery plant in Australia as Japan seeks sub deal

The government has enlisted Toshiba Corp. to help it try to win Asia's biggest defense contract, a $36 billion deal to build a dozen submarines for Australia, three sources said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 1, 2016

The dyeing art of Japan's traditional everyday kimono

Weaver and dyer Fukumi Shimura's (b.1924) inherited an interest in craft from her mother, Toyo Ono, who made inroads through the early 20th-century mingei (folk crafts) movement led by philosopher Muneyoshi Yanagi. Introduced to the lacquer artistan Tatsuaki Kuroda in 1956, Shimura began to hone her...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2016

Australia increasingly likely to pick Japan for huge submarine order, experts say

With Australia's release of its defense white paper last week, the race to build the country's next generation of submarines enters the home stretch — and some experts say the Japanese bid appears to hold an insurmountable lead.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 29, 2016

Japan to provide Egypt with ¥2 trillion business project, take in 2,500 students

Japan has pledged to continue supporting Egypt’s democratic process five years after revolution swept the country and ousted Hosni Mubarak.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
Feb 29, 2016

Healthy Balentien ready to make up for lost time

Wladimir Balentien laughed his familiar laugh as he held court in the visitor's dugout at Tokyo Dome, making rapid-fire transitions between a number of topics, from the yakiniku he ate in Okinawa, to teammate Tetsuto Yamada or whatever else popped into his head at the time.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 29, 2016

Taking a stance against strategic pessimism

Japan and Australia's special relationship is not based simply on shared interests but also on shared values.
EDITORIALS
Feb 29, 2016

Group of 20 steps up

The G-20 has eclipsed the Group of Eight as a global economic manager but it appears to increasingly resemble that gathering: more symbol than substance.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 29, 2016

Humans can't keep trashing the oceans forever

The oceans are a critical ally of life on Earth, and we must do everything in our power to safeguard them.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 29, 2016

Stand in solidarity with sharks

A recent study suggests that we know even less about the oceans than we thought — and we may well have been doing even more damage than we realized.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 29, 2016

Competing interests converge on health care price-setting panel

On Feb. 10, as hundreds of people in business attire watched from the gallery, a panel of experts under the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry adopted a long list of proposals to revise the fees that can be charged by the nation's hospitals and pharmacies for medical procedures and prescriptions under...
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 28, 2016

In referendum, Swiss voters seen rejecting expulsion of foreigners who break the law

Swiss voters were forecast to reject a referendum proposal that foreign law-breakers be deported, according to initial projections from an exit poll by Swiss broadcaster SRF on Sunday.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Feb 28, 2016

Japan helping rise of 3x3 basketball

Japan hasn't really appeared on the global map in basketball's conventional five-man game.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Feb 28, 2016

Ousted Thai leader Thaksin's influence shows signs of waning

Sitting in her busy Bangkok noodle shop, Bunruen Klinnak professes "love" for Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled in a 2006 military coup and later fled abroad.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 27, 2016

Rocket tests have Japanese media wondering: How do you solve a problem like (North) Korea?

North Korea — what to make of it? Nobody knows. In an age of secrecy stripped bare, it has succeeded in being unfathomable. It's horrible — on that most observers agree; but how horrible? To what purpose? In spite of, or because of, what obstacles to its survival?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2016

Tokyo's literature festival resurfaces

The Tokyo International Literary Festival got off to a good start. Both the inaugural 2013 event and the 2014 edition were successful, an auspicious beginning to forging cultural and artistic connections between Eastern and Western writers on a global stage. But since the festival's forced hiatus in...

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami