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COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
May 24, 2014

Tiananmen Square stokes patriotic education

Last week, I discussed the prelude to the Tiananmen Square uprising and the ruthless government crackdown on June 4, 1989. The slaughter of students and their supporters who gathered in Beijing in the spring of 1989 and occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks made the world recoil in horror and isolated...
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2014

A right-wing shock for Europe?

A new European Parliament will be elected this weekend on the heels of French poll that says fewer than 40 percent of France's citizens think the European Union is a good thing.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
May 20, 2014

Amid 'witch hunt,' S. Korea crew adrift

Tried and convicted by an angry public before their case has even come to court, South Korea's legal system appears to be failing 15 surviving crew members of the Sewol ferry, which sank last month, killing hundreds of children.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
May 13, 2014

Activist seeks to tap power of youth for political change

The world's top economies and financial watchdogs have repeatedly warned Japan to take action against its snowballing debt, but it's the younger generations of Japanese who stand to be most affected by the repercussions as a shrinking and rapidly aging population bleeds social security dry.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
May 4, 2014

Kikokushijo: returnees to a country not yet ready for them

Though the number of returnee students has tripled since 1977, and despite the recent government push to develop 'global human resources,' the existence of this group of globally educated young people has been largely ignored by policymakers.
JAPAN / Media
Apr 30, 2014

Advisers assess Japan Times performance after INYT tie-up

Now that The Japan Times is being distributed together with the International New York Times, the advisory board members agreed that there should be a newsroom shift toward even more coverage of Japan.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2014

Manga about work at Fukushima No. 1 stirs locals' ire

Cartoon characters who suffered nosebleeds after a visit to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are turning into a headache for manga publisher Shogakukan.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 27, 2014

Politicians running in place

Today, there's not so much political competition in Japan between the ruling and opposition camps as there is among opposition parties seeking to ally themselves with the ruling camp. Have individual lawmakers become less willing to take risks by speaking up?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 26, 2014

Asian paradox: Closer but cooler

The mini-Cold War between Japan and South Korea has kept Washington busy as it tries to forge closer security ties between its allies to offset the rise of China. Policymakers confront the Asian paradox of deepening distrust and conflict in tandem with widening economic and human exchanges. Relations...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 25, 2014

Japan scores whaling own goal

In the hindsight of the recent International Court of Justice's humiliating ruling against Japan's Antarctic scientific whaling, the government's slapping down of Japan Greenpeace in 2010 was probably a bad idea.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2014

Threats to the world order

Russian President Vladimir Putin's threatening behavior along the border with Ukraine should lead to a thorough review not only of European reliance on supplies of Russian gas but also of NATO's readiness to meet Russian threats.
COMMENTARY
Apr 4, 2014

Scotland: a nation, not a region

For Scotland, independence — the question in September's referendum — is about democracy not nationalism. It's about righting the wrongs of a country living its life as a region.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 2014

The India democracy show

Indians are just days away from the start of the greatest democratic show on earth, as 814.5 million of them prepare to cast ballots at 930,000 polling stations between April 7 and May 12.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Mar 28, 2014

Moyes, Wenger on hot seat as teams struggle

The case for the prosecution is gathering momentum while the defense's Groundhog Day excuses lose credibility with each poor result.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2014

Momii's rise tests NHK's reputation

For millions of Japanese, and even Japan-watchers abroad, NHK is a trusted source of information: gray in tone perhaps, but neither black nor white on the issues. This assumption has been put to the test by new NHK Chairman Katsuto Momii, whose recent remarks have led many to wonder whether the public...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 31, 2014

Japan and China's great African game

It's no longer Western powers vying for African land and the continent's wealth as they had until the outbreak of World War I. The power struggle now is among Asian nations, most notably China and Japan.
Japan Times
JAPAN / DAVOS SPECIAL 2014
Jan 23, 2014

Reshaping Japan's next decade

(Publicity)
COMMENTARY
Jan 21, 2014

Japan heading for darker days

It's still baffling why the Abe administration was in such a hurry to have the state secrets bill passed when various opinion surveys showed that the bill was opposed by about 80 percnet of respondens on the very day the Upper House voted on it.
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jan 15, 2014

Three cases, three paths to legitimacy for Supreme Court

When I began studying Japanese, one of my goals was to be able to read the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's version of The Wall Street Journal. Achieving that goal, however, meant realizing that it is possibly The Most Boring Newspaper on Earth.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jan 3, 2014

Hard to figure out what Anelka was thinking with gesture

Let us assume, for a moment, Nicolas Anelka was telling the truth.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GERMAN JOURNALIST SYMPOSIUM
Jan 3, 2014

Germany's role in EU divides bloc

Does Germany hurt or help Europe?
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 20, 2013

Dictatorship of the majority

Japanese civic movements conspicuously picked up steam to oppose the state secrets bill just before its enactment into law, illustrating that many Japanese voters become critical of the Abe administration when it takes up issues other than the economy.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Dec 19, 2013

Rift growing between allies

The gut feeling of American military leaderes is that if only to prevent war between the U.S. and China, they don't want Japan's Self-Defense Forces to possess offensive-strike capabilities.
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Dec 18, 2013

Supreme Court could hear NSA phone plan

A federal judge may have laid the foundation for U.S. Supreme Court review of the National Security Agency's telephone data surveillance program when he said it probably violates constitutional privacy rights.
EDITORIALS
Dec 16, 2013

Defaulting to the old ways

The Abe administration seems to be reverting to an old energy policy by revisiting an old policymaking process, despite the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
WORLD
Dec 15, 2013

Some Afrikaners unmoved by Mandela death

Dirk Smit's reaction to the death of Nelson Mandela, it would be fair to assume, puts him in the minority of South Africans.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2013

Russia's economic model losing potential for growth

In the absence of genuine political reform in Russia, there will be no end to capital drain and no adequate stimuli for invigorating a massive influx of investment capital.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes