Search - world

 
 
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 29, 2013

Policy speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the 183rd session of the Diet

Delivered Jan. 28, 2013
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 25, 2013

Can the discovery of oil save Ecuador's rainforest?

American biologist Kelly Swing thwacks a bush with his butterfly net and a dozen or so bugs and insects drop in. One is a harvester, or daddy-long-legs, another a jumping spider that leaps onto a leaf where two beetles are mating.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2013

Address shows Obama is playing make-believe

There was a make-believe quality to U.S. President Barack Obama's second inaugural address, as if all that's required to solve serious problems are the intelligence to produce proper policies and the political grit to get them approved. Perish the thought that there are deep conflicts among the things...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2013

Washington's tangled foreign policy problems

The desert sands of Mali and Algeria provide an unlikely arena for an existential challenge to the global alliance system the United States has managed since World War II. But the hesitant and timid U.S. and European Union responses to the crisis in northwestern Africa drip like acid on the rock of alliance...
MULTIMEDIA
Jan 12, 2013

Nomad writer and photographer keeps his passions fueled by travel

Fiction can work like a cheap flight; a good novel takes off, jetting readers to new worlds. Writers and photographers triple the distance traveled. Sean Lotman, 37, an avid reader, writer, photographer and nomad, has logged thousands of kilometers around the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jan 1, 2013

The year for non-Japanese in '12: a top 10

Back by popular demand, here is JBC's roundup of the top 10 human rights events that most affected non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan in 2012, in ascending order.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2013

Japan's steely resolve suggests nationalism based on fear

More than half a century ago I had dinner in Paris with Arimasa Mori, the grandson of the Meiji Era education minister Arinori Mori, who had set the prewar pattern for a Westernized but intensely patriotic education. The Mori family hailed from Kagoshima, and the part that Arinori had played in the Meiji...
BASEBALL / MLB
Dec 29, 2012

Matsui praised for impact on baseball

Kyodo, AFP-Jiji Fans in Japan were saddened Friday by the news of power-hitter Hideki Matsui's retirement from baseball at the age of 38, many wishing he would resume his career in the country.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 25, 2012

Benshi Midori Sawato

Midori Sawato is a benshi, a unique kind of performer who provides live narration to silent films at the movie theater. The benshi brings the characters in films alive using different voices and vocal expressions. They sit to the side of the screen, watching the movie with the audience and using their...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Dec 23, 2012

How to care for the children when we're at odds with the planet?

Perhaps this column should begin with a disclaimer like those found on CDs and DVDs that are intended to help protect kids from obscenity — Parental Advisory: Explicit Content.
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2012

Supply surge jolts 'peak oil' theory

The entrenched notion that the world will soon start running short of oil was jolted earlier this year when an expert study concluded that, contrary to what most people believe, oil-supply capacity is expanding so fast that it will outpace consumption by a wide margin in the next few years.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 18, 2012

Toyota on verge of seizing sales crown as Volkswagen, GM vie for second

Toyota Motor Corp. is poised to take back the title of world's biggest automaker for 2012, as Volkswagen AG fights General Motors Co. for second place heading into the final weeks.
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 16, 2012

Corinthians face major challenge against Chelsea

Corinthians manager Tite is aiming to channel the passion of his club's fanatical supporters in Sunday's Club World Cup final, but warns that Chelsea will need no second invitation to exploit any lapse in his players' resolve.
EDITORIALS
Dec 16, 2012

They do it, but hate it

Japanese students are less interested in mathematics and science than ever before even while continuing to perform relatively well, according to the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a survey conducted every four years in 42 nations by the International Association for the Evaluation...
Japan Times
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 15, 2012

Chelsea takes aim at Corinthians after reaching CWC final

Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard is determined to prove the superiority of European soccer in Sunday's Club World Cup final, but warns that Brazilian opponents Corinthians have the samba magic to jeopardize his side's plans for global domination.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2012

Arab leaders ignore crowd dynamics at their peril

In 1896, the social psychologist Gustave Le Bon warned his contemporaries of the dangers of crowds, writing that, "It is necessary to arrive at a solution to the problems offered by [crowds'] psychology, or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them." As spontaneous protest overtakes organized political...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2012

Obama's dream hits reality

It was vintage Barack Obama revived as the newly re-elected U.S. president made a teary-eyed victory speech to his supporters and promised that the best was yet to come and he would fight for all Americans to create the land of their dreams and of the American Dream.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Nov 21, 2012

Mao striving to secure GP Final spot at NHK Trophy

Two-time world champion Mao Asada will be looking to clinch her place in the Grand Prix Final at this week's NHK Trophy in Sendai.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 8, 2012

Kyoto painting schools pushed nihonga to the limit

Japan, as elsewhere, has never had a singular art world but a plurality of formations. This is as true of pre-modern art as it is for Modernism and contemporary art — think of Takashi Murakami, his "factory" Kaikai Kiki and Geisai the art fair he founded. Individuals could, as now, constitute worlds...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 6, 2012

If bully Ishihara wants one last stand, bring it on

On Oct. 25, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara announced his resignation from office. He now plans to stand for election to the Diet as head of a new conservative party. He suggested political alliances with other conservative reactionaries and xenophobes, including Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and Tachiagare...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 2, 2012

Female diplomat has rare work-life balance

Hikariko Ono has always been a survivor in Japan's male-dominated society.
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 28, 2012

Fashion Week Tokyo powers ahead

From start to finish, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo's 2013 spring/summer collections hit new heights, literally, as the catwalk parades were staged way up in the event's new home at the Hikarie shopping tower in city center Shibuya.
EDITORIALS
Oct 28, 2012

A mother's message

Twenty years after Mieko Hattori's 16-year-old son, Yoshihiro, was fatally shot while studying in America, the outspoken mother has once again called for tighter gun control laws in the United States and around the world. Her latest speech was delivered in Baton Rouge, the town where 20 years ago her...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 28, 2012

'Fresh Currents' charts the way to, and from, Fukushima

This month's column is about a book that is very much more than just a book: It is a work of art, a labor of love and a realizable dream of a better future for Japan. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Oct 24, 2012

Senkaku dispute opens door wider for Istanbul 2020 bid

A prominent Turkish journalist believes that the ongoing dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands could affect the outcome of the voting for the 2020 Olympics, thereby making Istanbul's path to victory easier.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 24, 2012

Fund banking on wider trade deficit

Japan's worsening trade gap will make it harder to service the world's largest debt, fulfilling part of the doomsday scenario that Hayman Capital Management LP is betting on.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 23, 2012

Against all odds, Mormons in Japan soldier on

According to the Mormon version of postbiblical events, Joseph Smith, guided by an angel in 1823, found sacred golden plates buried in Manchester, New York, outside Rochester. The plates are claimed to have been buried around the year 400, having been brought from Central America by a man named Mormon....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 16, 2012

Niseko puts faith in powder to revive tourism boom

Throughout most of the 2010s, the meteoric rise in popularity of Hokkaido's ski resorts among foreign visitors was widely documented in both the domestic and overseas media.
EDITORIALS
Oct 14, 2012

Aiding Myanmar's reforms

In an Oct. 11 meeting in Tokyo held at the initiative of Japan, 26 countries and five international organizations including the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank agreed to work together to help Myanmar with its reform efforts. The problem of Myanmar's overdue debts — the biggest obstacle to...

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