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Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 4, 2015

Grenades cheaper than Coca-Cola menace the Central African Republic

As Capt. Victor leads a team of Spanish special forces on a night patrol in the capital of the Central African Republic, Bangui, one thing worries him most: Chinese-made hand grenades that sell for less than a soft drink.
COMMENTARY
Jan 22, 2015

Hindu zealots drag down India's great-power destiny

A tussle is going on between the cultural and economic right wings of India's ruling party. The former helped to bring the Bharatiya Janata Party to power, but only the latter can ensure it retains power by using it for the common good.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2015

Paris' bloody sequel to provocative past

French novelist Michel Houellebecq couldn't have foreseen such a horribly swift real-life sequel to his latest literary provocation, 'Submission,' out this week. With the killings in Paris, he finds himself in the cross hairs again.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Dec 21, 2014

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: a gaijin's lot in Japan?

A selection of readers' responses to Debito Arudou's last column, 'Time to burst your bubble and face reality.'
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Dec 7, 2014

International schools in East Asia are as local as they want to be

International schools are not hermetically sealed off from their surroundings. The local culture can have a huge impact on everything from the schools' academic approach and parental involvement to community outreach.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Dec 2, 2014

Russia can play good cop too, in its fight for regional influence

There were 76, but they were dubbed the 'Russian 100' —lifesavers flown in from Moscow within hours of an appeal for help from Serbia as the heaviest rainfall in more than a century inundated the Balkans in May.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2014

Tibet core to Sino-Indian ties

Tibet historically was the buffer that separated the Chinese and Indian civilizations. Ever since Communist China, in one of its first acts, gobbled up that buffer with India, Tibet has remained the core matter with India.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Nov 27, 2014

Shadowy Chinese agency woos Taiwanese to win island back

Ever since a civil war split the two sides more than 60 years ago, China has viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be absorbed into the mainland. To that end, the Taiwanese businessmen working in China form a beachhead in a war of hearts and minds.
EDITORIALS
Nov 26, 2014

Revitalizing local economies

Can the Abe administrative accomplish what past governments have tried and failed to do, and revitalize Japan's regional economies?
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 23, 2014

'White van' man tweet hits a nerve in class-obsessed Britain

Posting a picture on Twitter of a two-story house, displaying three English flags of St. George and a white tradesman's van outside, might seem innocuous to a foreign eye.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Oct 23, 2014

Traffickers use prison ships, abductions to feed Southeast Asian slave trade

When Afsar Miae left his home near Teknaf in southern Bangladesh to look for work last month, he told his mother, 'I'll see you soon' and said he expected to return that evening. He never did.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2014

Turkey seeks a broader solution to Islamic State

Turkey basically disagrees with the U.S. on the threat the Islamic State poses. While the U.S. is approaching the Islamic State as the Middle East's most pressing problem, Turkey views the group as a symptom of deeper pathologies.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 22, 2014

U.K.'s Cameron shifts tack on constitutional shake-up to mollify Scots

Scotland will get more autonomy with no "ifs or buts," Prime Minister David Cameron's office said on Sunday, after Scottish leader Alex Salmond accused him and other politicians of tricking Scots out of independence.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Sep 17, 2014

Tokyo and Saitama: How would you vote on the issue of independence for Scotland?

Britons in Kanto explain why they are backing a 'yes' in the referendum for Scottish independence or a 'no' for the status quo.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2014

As the chances of a U.K. split grow, the true costs become more clear

Until last week, almost nobody outside Scotland took very seriously the possibility that Europe's most stable and durable nation — the only big country not to have suffered invasion, revolution or civil war at any time in the past 300 years — might soon be wiped off the map.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 2, 2014

Crossing paths with James Foley in Syria's war

A former independent reporter in Syria recalls the last times he saw freelance journalist James Foley — whom the Islamic State beheaded last month — and a helpful middle-aged tailor fighting for the Free Syrian Army.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2014

The Middle East crack-up

The horror stories emerging from northern Iraq, as well as the continuing slaughter in Syria's civil war, point to the unraveling of the state system established after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire almost 100 years ago.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 23, 2014

Cheap train to the north with Basho

On July 19, the Yamagata Shinkansen debuted a luxury ashiya (foot bath) service. A ticket from Tokyo to Yamagata City, in Tohoku Prefecture, costs around ¥11,000, but 15 minutes in the foot bath car is extra. If Matsuo Basho, Japan's most well-known poet, were to retrace his 156-day-long trek through...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 22, 2014

Tokyo governor takes on big tobacco to push smoke-free games

Half a century after making $1 million off an official Olympics-branded cigarette, Tokyo's chief wants to put stricter curbs on smoking before the 2020 Summer Games.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 8, 2014

Women armed with chain saws head to the hills under Abe's growth plan

Junko Otsuka quit her job in Tokyo and headed for the woods, swapping a computer for a bush cutter and her air-conditioned office for the side of a mountain.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 6, 2014

India's political, economic potential

The general election in India in May was groundbreaking in many aspects.
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 / World
Jul 20, 2014

India's defense sector faces the malcontents

Once again, India is being courted as a potentially lucrative market for global defense contractors, but after so many false starts in the past, the new Modi government will have some convincing to do.
BUSINESS
Jun 28, 2014

Could Kim be ready to declare war over a movie?

Asian geopolitics may never be the same now that Kim Jong Un has Seth Rogen and James Franco in his cross hairs.
EDITORIALS
Jun 13, 2014

Iraq collapsing

Islamic militants have overrun northern Iraq, taking control of the country's second-largest city and sparking fears of the collapse of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 28, 2014

'Inside Llewyn Davis'

The Coen Brothers are exceptional among American filmmakers for having had a long and prosperous career without ever significantly watering down or altering their sensibility along the way. You could draw a line from their indie debut "Blood Simple" through to Oscar-winners "Fargo" and "No Country For...
COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2014

Why the dollar will remain the top currency

China is missing one crucial ingredient as it builds the renminbi's claim to reserve-currency status: the world's trust with regard to a broader and more credible set of public and political institutions.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 21, 2014

Obama's state visit comes at crucial time

With defense and trade issues still to be resolved, Thursday's U.S.-Japan summit is a high-stakes game for both sides.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 20, 2014

Damascus refugees face starvation

The desperate residents of a besieged district of Damascus were expected to run out of food on Sunday, leaving 18,000 people facing starvation and leading relief agencies to declare the crisis "unprecedented in living memory."

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past