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Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 24, 2013

U.S. keeps Pakistani officials in loop on drone strikes

Despite repeatedly denouncing the CIA's drone campaign, top officials in Pakistan's government have for years secretly endorsed the program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts, according to top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos obtained by The...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2013

Right way to send a message

It's harder for the U.S. to claim legitimacy for circumventing U.N. paralysis, it has used the veto more often than China and Russia combined since the end of the Cold War.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 19, 2013

Clearing way for wider military role

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is poised to achieve his long-held goal of reinterpreting Article 9 of the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise its right to engage in collective self-defense under the U.N. Charter.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 13, 2013

Even without a Cold War, the D.C.-Moscow link is still up

At 7:15 on the morning of June 5, 1967, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara reached for a handset, one connected to a secure telephone line to a military switchboard at the White House. He asked the operator to ring the Air Force sergeant on duty outside President Lyndon B. Johnson's bedroom.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 3, 2013

Rights activists demand end to exploitative trainee program

Japan has long drawn criticism from global watchdogs for failing to curb human trafficking, perhaps most conspicuously when it comes to foreign women brought in to work in the sex trade.
EDITORIALS
Jul 1, 2013

Mr. Snowden's revelations

There is real debate over whether Edward Snowden is a whistleblower for civil rights violations or a traitor who has harmed U.S. national security.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2013

Deepening, revising ties with Southeast Asia

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Japan mark the 40th anniversary of their cooperative relations this year. ASEAN and Japan's partnership, which began with the establishment of the ASEAN-Japan forum on synthetic rubber, has evolved over the 40 years. The two parties have formed close cooperation...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Apr 9, 2013

Japan's foreign trainee system said still plagued by rights abuses

Last month, a Chinese trainee went on a stabbing rampage at a Hiroshima Prefecture seafood company where he worked, killing the president and an employee and wounding six others.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Mar 16, 2013

How can the royal family champion women and endorse Saudi Arabia?

In its latest human rights report, not a great read, the United Kingdom's House of Commons foreign affairs committee wondered if the government attitude to "countries of concern" isn't a wee bit too "low key." Britain's relations with Saudi Arabia, for instance, would benefit from a "bolder" approach,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013

Two wide-ranging, informed compilations scrutinize the March 11 disasters

NATURAL DISASTER AND NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN, edited by Jeff Kingston. Routledge, 2012, 304 pp., £28.99 (paperback)
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 5, 2013

Juku: an unnecessary evil or vital steppingstone to success?

For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes at juku, or cram school.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2013

Currency veteran offers BOJ credibility on reflation

The Bank of Japan may pack a bigger punch under Haruhiko Kuroda, an opponent of deflation who ran the nation's currency policy and then built an international reputation leading the Asian Development Bank.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 16, 2013

Rewriting history is unwise

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has appointed a Cabinet that, according to press reports, contains a number of ministers who want to rewrite the history of the 20th century. They, including the new minister of education, are reported as demanding the rescinding of the statement made in 1995 by former Prime...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2013

U.S. should extradite ex-officer under Pinochet

On Dec. 28, 2012, Judge Miguel Vásquez charged eight retired army officers with the murder of Victor Jara, a popular songwriter, guitarist and theater director who was killed days after the 1973 military coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende.
JAPAN
Dec 13, 2012

Defiant North Korea launches rocket

Despite earlier reported technological problems and severe winter weather, North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket Wednesday over the Pacific, the second stage of which fell 300 km east of the Philippines.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 11, 2012

The war legacy that binds Okinawa and Vietnam

As the motorbike taxi I'm aboard zigzags through the traffic in Da Nang, Vietnam's fourth-largest city, a bus pulls out of nowhere, causing my driver to brake, swerve and slam us into a sidewalk stack of bamboo cages packed with soft plump ducklings.
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 30, 2012

Teleworking: Home sweet ... office

On March 13, 2011, just two days after the Great East Japan Earthquake, as massive aftershocks rocked the capital and fears of a radioactive cloud spreading over the country seemed all-too real, Yasuyuki Higuchi, president of a Tokyo-based software company, sat down and typed an email to his 2,200 staff....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 9, 2012

It will take more than a pop group to save Fukushima's reputation

Last March, Tatsuya Yamaguchi of the idol group Tokio told the media that he was determined to someday reopen Dash Village, the farm that he and his bandmates built from scratch as an ongoing project on their long-running Nippon TV series "The Tetsuwan Dash." The farm is in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 5, 2012

David Atkinson: Ancient Japan captures money man's interest

David Atkinson was still in his 20s when he rose to fame as a Japan-based banking analyst with the U.S. investment bank Salomon Brothers, prior to him moving to Goldman Sachs.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 15, 2012

Better late than never for Japan's first, "slowest" Olympian

Have you heard the one about the Japanese runner who took 54 years to finish the Olympic marathon?
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 13, 2012

Getting away from it all on Aguni Island

I set out for the hospital lecture hall in high spirits, looking forward to a relaxing, refreshing stay on this tiny and seemingly uncrowded island.
COMMENTARY
Apr 19, 2012

Afghan lies mirror deception of Vietnam War

In the midst of the Taliban attacks in central Kabul on Sunday, a journalist called the British embassy for a comment. "I really don't know why they are doing this," said the exasperated diplomat who answered the phone. "We'll be out of here in two years' time. All they have to do is wait."
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2012

Mistaken presumptions about Assad's Syria

Syria's uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began peacefully in Damascus a year ago, has become increasingly brutal and splintered. As the death toll nears 9,000, calls for international intervention have increased — but what worked in places like Libya won't necessarily succeed in Syria....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 17, 2012

America's pivot to Asia is not just about countering China

"All right China, come out with your hands up; we've got you surrounded!"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 10, 2012

Local Japanese school is the obvious choice if you want your child to fit in

The first day of elementary school, a milestone in a child's life, brings a mix of emotions for parents. The pride and joy of seeing their child taking his first steps into the world are tempered with feelings of anxiety in moms and dads everywhere.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 12, 2011

Foreign students back but numbers look likely to fall

They're back. Worries that foreign students would abandon Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and accompanying fiasco at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have proven to be largely unfounded.
COMMENTARY
Jul 1, 2011

Black info and media gullibility: creation of the Tiananmen myth

The recent WikiLeaks release of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing has helped finally to kill the myth of an alleged massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Longform

Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?