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JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 26, 2018

In Japan's Diet, is there such a thing as too much time for questions?

It may be hard to find a workplace more rife with inefficiency and inertia than the national Diet.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Top Global Universities in Japan
Oct 5, 2020

Creating a better future through liberal arts education

Established in 1953 in Mitaka, Tokyo, International Christian University (ICU) is one of the few universities in Japan to have a College of Liberal Arts, and it has focused on liberal arts education since its founding. Classroom buildings and facilities are located on a wooded campus of about 620,000...
Japan Times
JAPAN / IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition
Sep 14, 2018

On accelerating sanitation, clean water access

Faced with a fast rate of urbanization and population growth, national and local governments are finding it difficult to provide essential services such as safe drinking water and sanitation, especially in the socioeconomic context of lower and middle-income countries. Performing utilities have a key...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 24, 2000

Americans hold positive view of Japan

An important new poll on U.S. attitudes toward Japan's wartime past will please neither those who feel that Japan has not done enough to atone nor those who believe that Japan has done all it needs to do. Using a sample of 1,000 registered voters in California, the survey by Pacific Research & Strategies...
Japan Times
PODCAST / deep dive
Mar 2, 2023

Infinity and beyond: Yayoi Kusama’s next evolution

Culture critic Thu-Huong Ha joins the podcast to explain Yayoi Kusama’s latest stage of evolution.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 31, 2020

Democrats' bid for new Trump impeachment witnesses likely to fall short

Democrats appeared to have fallen short Thursday in their bid to secure the votes needed to call witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial, clearing the way for Trump's likely acquittal as early as this weekend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2010

Roberts finally makes it to Japan — but was it worth the wait?

Does Julia Roberts hate Japan? The local media were obsessed with this question prior to the Hollywood star's first-ever trip here last month to promote her new film, "Eat Pray Love," based on Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir about her journeys to Italy, India and Indonesia.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 25, 2006

A land without similes

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Nov 15, 2004

The importance of questioning fearlessly and answering honestly

"Any damn fool can answer a question. The important thing is to ask one."
COMMENTARY
Nov 20, 2002

North Korean motives fan speculation

SEOUL -- I have given a series of lectures on U.S. Asia policy in the weeks since the revelation about North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program. While the audiences and locations in South Korea, Japan and the United States have varied widely, the questions have been remarkably similar. Along with...
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 8, 2019

The drama of the 'Kurillian knot'

Not resolving the territorial dispute with Russia remains a solid option on the table for Tokyo, but choosing it would risk Japan's irrelevance in the region.
COMMENTARY / World
May 27, 2016

China's South China Sea quest

What does Beijing want in the South China Sea? The answer is control.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 21, 2014

After Scottish vote, U.K. faces monumental shift in governance — and all that comes with it

When 3.6 million Scots voted Thursday on whether to leave or stay within the United Kingdom, they were answering one simple question: Should Scotland be an independent country?
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Dec 4, 2013

Japan should shun treaty that will shield nuclear tech suppliers

Japan is preparing to sign a treaty known as the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which assigns accident liability entirely to plant operators rather than equipment and technology vendors.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 17, 2013

Whoever could pass a test to list 'values at the heart of being Japanese'?

Calling all those readers who in their heart of hearts have always wanted to be British! Well, you've got your chance now, you presumptuous Penny-Laners and putative Pythons.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 16, 2010

The value of seemingly empty Japanese phrases

Japanese is often considered an indirect and ambiguous language, and that's because it is. The national character, too, often appears passive and indirect to non-Japanese. As a result, it can be tempting for newcomers to take a lead from Frank Sinatra and do things "My Way," and generally this works...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Apr 22, 2023

Biden has held the fewest news conferences since Reagan. Any questions?

As the U.S. president prepares to announce his bid for a second term as soon as Tuesday, his decision to keep the news media at arm’s length is part of a deliberate strategy.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 28, 2021

Let the verbs do the work when it comes to pronouns and polite speech in Japanese

The verb forms in polite speech more distinctly refer to people in a way that makes it nearly impossible to confuse the actors in a sentence .
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jun 6, 2019

Japanese, Italian, Korean? I'm all of these

One question I have always found difficult is, "Where are you from?" While most people I meet are able to answer it with a single word — Japan, England, India — for me the answer is a lot more complicated.
The question of when a person dies is a scientific and moral issue with far-reaching implications in the area of organ transplants, among others.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 16, 2023

When does science say we die?

Debates about when a human being dies are yet unresolved, with profound implications for the medical profession and areas such as organ transplants.
The victory of Ukraine-born Karolina Shiino (center) in the Miss Japan contest held last month has sparked a debate on what makes someone truly Japanese.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 1, 2024

A Ukraine-born beauty queen and what it means to be Japanese

Shiino's Miss Japan victory has ignited a debate on the definition of "Japaneseness," and raises questions on what it truly means to be Japanese.
Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at Enmarket Arena during a two-day campaign bus tour in Savannah, Georgia, on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 30, 2024

Seven takeaways from Harris’ first major interview

The vice president answered questions in the CNN interview without causing herself political harm or providing herself a significant boost.
Local activists and tech workers protest against Google and Amazon's Project Nimbus contract with the Israeli military and government, outside the Google Cloud Next Conference in San Francisco, California, on August 29, 2023.
WORLD
Oct 8, 2024

Decoding the role Big Tech plays in the war in Gaza

The Israel-Hamas war has spotlighted how artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used on the battlefield.
China has shifted the economic narrative. The country's rapid growth and production under a repressive regime challenges the idea that good institutions are necessary for wealth.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 18, 2024

Beijing’s success is a conundrum for Nobel winners

China has shifted the economic narrative. The country's rapid growth under a repressive regime challenges the idea that good institutions are necessary for wealth.
Donald Trump in the past has netted important victories before the Supreme Court for his policies on trade, immigration and the environment.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 12, 2024

One of Trump’s few checks on power? The Supreme Court he shaped.

The president-elect hasn’t always gotten his way and he may need the court’s help to fulfill his campaign-trail promises.
An anti-regime fighter tears off a poster depicting Syrian President Bashar Assad (left) and his brother Maher at the airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 3, 2024

Syria flare-up jolts U.S. and offers chance for Trump

The Biden administration has committed more than $1 billion over the past year in humanitarian aid for Syria's displaced.
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump clash with police while storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
COMMENTARY / World / The Year Ahead
Dec 29, 2024

Will the guardrails of U.S. democracy hold?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump continues to express admiration for authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin hold a bilateral meeting at the Group of 20 leaders summit in Osaka in June 2019.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 18, 2025

Trump discussion with Putin to focus on what Ukraine will lose

In an echo of the Yalta Conference in 1945, the American and Russian leaders will talk on Tuesday about who gets what in the process of ending the war in Ukraine.
A soldier on a tank waves an Israeli flag amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas near the Israel-Gaza border in January 2024. 
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2025

War responsibility across borders and generations

The Asia-Pacific War is often remembered for the culpability of leaders, but this overlooks the multitudes who filled the ranks below.
Demonstrators protest at the port of Mutsu-Ogawara in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, in March 1997, as a British freighter arrives with processed nuclear waste, whose fissile elements can be 
fabricated into new nuclear mixed-oxide fuel.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 23, 2025

Could pacifist Japan ever arm itself with nuclear weapons?

It has always been a question of having the will to act and the belief that the U.S. nuclear deterrence commitment to Japan was beyond question.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell