Search - question

 
 
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 2, 2014

Fast-food follies have media in a frenzy

Almost exactly a year ago (on July 27, 2013), this column reported on how the print media was inundated with concerns over the safety of foods from abroad. Among the sources cited was Takarajima magazine, which quoted a foodstuffs importer as saying, "The decline of morals due to the pursuit of profits...
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 2, 2014

Watergate: Forty years since Nixon's resignation

U.S. President Richard Nixon submitted his letter of resignation on Aug. 9, 1974 in order to save himself from the humiliation of being impeached and thrown out of office. Only two other presidents, Andrew Johnson (1867) and Bill Clinton (1998), faced impeachment, but both were acquitted in their Senate...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Aug 2, 2014

Emperor, councilors weigh war declaration; simplified Japanese created for foreigners; Russian musicians defect; foreigners' office hears thousands of problems

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 1, 2014

France's Iliad challenges SoftBank's Sprint for control of T-Mobile

French telecommunications company Iliad makes a surprise offer for T-Mobile, setting up a bidding war with Softbank's newly acquired U.S. carrier Sprint.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2014

Communist roots of China's capitalist corruption

Official voices and microbloggers are becoming more comfortable discussing the broad and entrenched nature of corruption in China. Meanwhile, personalities remain at the heart of President Xi Jinping's current anti-corruption purge.
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2014

Tiny progress in interrogations

The National Police Agency says its investigators electronically recorded the entire interrogation process in nearly 1 percent of the cases set for lay judge trials in fiscal 2013. For critics of past investigative abuses that led to the filing of false charges, this is some progress.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 1, 2014

An Iraq in peril struggles to hold together

Salman Khaled has already lived through Baghdad's sectarian disintegration; with Iraq now splintering into Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions, he says this time the survival of the country is at stake.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 31, 2014

Abe undermining rule of law

Recent decisions involving security and nuclear power policies demonstrate that Japan's leaders appear to believe that rules were made to be reinterpreted.
EDITORIALS
Jul 31, 2014

Privacy rights and 'big data'

The government is moving to expedite the use of massive amounts of personal data — collected online or otherwise from a variety of sources — for commercial purposes on condition that the data is processed to ensure anonymity of the information.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 31, 2014

Indonesia gets a sprout with a new president

Having conducted an election that produced a successor president without excessive tumult or corruption, Indonesia may well be on its way to emerging as a major global player.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 31, 2014

Yokohama Triennale 2014: Remembering the forgotten

Noise. Speed. Words. Images. We live in a digital era, constantly exposed to a massive stream of information, which we believe is vital to our daily lives.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 31, 2014

Experts question Fukushima thyroid screening

More than three years after the triple core meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture devastated the lives of thousands of residents, the effect that the radiation release is having on children's thyroid glands still weighs heavily on residents' minds.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jul 31, 2014

Japan flirts with recession; planned tax hike in doubt

Japan could be flirting with recession after the weakest factory output since 2011, which, following a surprising fall in exports last week, could pressure the central bank to ease policy and complicate a decision on whether to raise taxes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014

Hope (So-won/Negai)

It was every parent's worst nightmare: In South Korea in 2008, an 8-year-old girl was abducted and violently raped on her way to school. The perpetrator was caught and the girl identified her attacker, but she still had to appear at a public trial because the police couldn't build a solid case against...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jul 30, 2014

Fukushima disaster colors A-bomb anniversaries

Over the past three years, the atomic bombing anniversaries in August have increasingly become a time to ask new questions.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 30, 2014

Sony's fall could be great news for Abenomics

Once the pride of Japan, Sony is now a cautionary case study in complacency and mismanagement. But its latest stumble could turn out to be great news for the world's No. 3 economy.
Reader Mail
Jul 30, 2014

The name for a horrible practice

Cesar Chelala's July 29 article, "Safe alternative rites to female circumcision," was well written and interesting. I would like to comment on the headline, though.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 30, 2014

Emoto brothers' 'Godot' looks set to startle

"First off, we probably used to think we were too young to do 'Waiting for Godot,' because it's sometimes uncomfortable talking like gnarled old men," 27-year-old Tasuku Emoto said during a recent Japan Times interview with him and his younger brother Tokio, 24, who will play the central roles in Tokyo...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 30, 2014

Boehner dismisses talk of impeaching Obama

Republicans have no plans to begin impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner declared on Tuesday, putting the blame on Democrats for stirring up pre-midterm election tensions in Washington.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 29, 2014

Preparing for the next big solar storm

The probability of a solar storm striking Earth in the next decade with enough force to do serious damage to electricity networks, lasting perhaps for months, could be as high as 12 percent.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2014

Growth India can live with

India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, seems committed to boosting India's competitiveness by improving its business climate. What his plan lacks, though, is a strong focus on expanding labor-intensive industries.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 27, 2014

Dependents, know your limit: ¥1,030,000, to be exact

This week's question comes from the non-Japanese parents of a teenager who wants to work part-time to save for university.
EDITORIALS
Jul 27, 2014

More time for a deal with Iran

The biggest question about the four-month extension of negotiations over Iran's nuclear program is what impact Russian President Vladimir Putin's behavior, Israeli-Palestinian hostilities and the U.S. elections will have on them.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 26, 2014

As species die, what valuable knowledge dies with them?

In mid-June, The New York Times reported that U.S. President Barack Obama intends to use his executive authority to create the world's largest marine protected area in the south-central Pacific.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 26, 2014

Japan's 'Moe' obsession: the purest form of love, or creepy fetishization of young girls?

Anyone who has visited Tokyo's Akihabara district in the past decade will have run into countless images of cartoonish girls: in posters, in figurines and in the form of real women dressed up as French maids.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jul 25, 2014

Ruling hinged on assistance law revamp: summary

The following is a rough translation of the text of Supreme Court's July 18 ruling that found permanent residents ineligible for welfare payments.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jul 25, 2014

Designs on Japan's student potential

Shining a light on Japan's student talent pool is Gakuten, a new event from the group responsible for the Design Festa biannual international art fair. There's only one requirement of Gakuten participants — that they be enrolled in an educational institution.
WORLD
Jul 25, 2014

Group divorced from reality: top Turkish cleric

The declaration of a so-called caliphate by Islamist militants in Iraq lacks legitimacy and their death threats to Christians are a danger to civilization, Turkey's top cleric, the successor to the last caliph's most senior imam, said.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan