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JAPAN
Jun 7, 2013

Video of Tokyo cop's crowd-control comments goes viral

A Tokyo police officer is winning praise for quick-witted comments that kept excited soccer fans from getting out of hand Tuesday night in Shibuya after Japan won a ticket to the 2014 World Cup.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 6, 2013

China's troubling core interests

This week Chinese President Xi Jinping appears set to offer his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, an alluring deal for closer economic cooperation.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 6, 2013

Real scandal is the power IRS wields

American Republicans on Capitol Hill are abuzz with the possibility that the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service will lead to tax reform.
Reader Mail
Jun 6, 2013

Memories of a Pakistani village

The May 31 AFP-JIJI article "India's Africans keeping ancient customs alive" brought back memories of my visit to two Shidi villages in Sindh province, Pakistan, some years back.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 5, 2013

Alaska's Bristol Bay mine: Ground zero for the next big environmental fight?

A dispute over a proposed copper and gold mine near Alaska's Bristol Bay may be one of the most important environmental decisions of President Barack Obama's second term — yet few are even aware that the fight is happening.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 4, 2013

Manning 'harvested' secret papers: prosecution

Opening the court-martial of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, a military prosecutor charged Monday that he "harvested" a massive trove of classified information from secure networks and made it available to America's enemies by dumping it onto the Internet.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 4, 2013

'Okinawa bacteria' toxic legacy crosses continents, spans generations

Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City houses one of Vietnam's busiest maternity clinics, but hidden in a quiet corner, far from the wards of proud new mothers, is a room stacked floor to ceiling with every parent's nightmare.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 4, 2013

A term for Abe's ilk? Well, nonliberal

Foreign media and overseas Japan experts largely use 19th- and 20th-century labels to describe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and current Japanese politics led by his Liberal Democratic Party — "right-wing," "hawkish," "conservative" and "nationalist."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2013

Cote d'Ivoire leader makes case for broader ties

Pledges to assist African development show "lots of generosity" but Japan can benefit from extending assistance in a variety of fields, Cote d'Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara said Monday.
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2013

Rights groups tell Japan to fully tape interrogations of criminal suspects

Human rights organizations submitted a petition Monday to the Justice Ministry urging the government to introduce full recordings of interrogations by prosecutors and police.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 4, 2013

Hunting for big-foot: Large shoes tough to track down in Tokyo

Buying large shoes in Japan is a bit like trying to find a prime-time TV show that doesn't feature at least one past or present member of AKB48: You know they exist, but it often takes perseverance and a measure of luck to track them down.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2013

Going gracefully into the No. 2 spot is not what Americans had in mind

If the era of American dominance in international affairs is indeed coming to an end, then the main question is how well the U.S. is prepared for the No. 2 spot.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Jun 3, 2013

Join Wall Street, save the world: The rise of the benevolent class

Jason Trigg went into finance because he is after money — as much as he can earn. The 25-year-old certainly had other career options. An MIT computer science graduate, he could write software for the next tech giant. Or he might have gone into academia in computing or applied math or biology. He could...
WORLD
Jun 3, 2013

In Britain, a debate over freedom of the tweet

After the recent slaying of a British soldier in a suspected Islamist extremist attack, angry social media users took to Twitter and Facebook, with some dispatching racially and religiously charged comments that got them quickly noticed on the busy boulevards of the Internet.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2013

Lessons on moderation from an 18th-century British conservative aren't applied easily today

The political career of Edmund Burke was mediocre. Still, his 18th-century perspective offers a way to understand modern currents of ethnic/ideological alliances.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 2, 2013

Severe sports training methods became taibatsu in time

The martial arts were the inspiration for the famous baseball team at the First Higher School of Tokyo, a late 19th century powerhouse that helped make yakyu, as baseball came to be known, the national sport of Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 2, 2013

British wave washes over U.S. media market

The British are coming — actually, they're already here. And they're running some of America's top media and entertainment companies and successfully peddling their shows, newspapers and magazines to the former colonies.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 2, 2013

Crony capitalism: corruption, disparities and stifled initiative

Crony capitalism is the scourge of contemporary Asia, lining pockets and diverting resources in ways that systematically undermine the public interest, accentuate disparities, sap innovative and entrepreneurial impulses — while also subverting governance.
Japan Times
JAPAN / NURTURING PARTNERSHIPS
Jun 1, 2013

Somalia seeks return to global fold

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has told Japan's and Africa's leaders that his country faces four challenges as it struggles to become a constructive member of the global community again after decades of civil war and anarchy.
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

Singer Misia help raise awareness about Africa

A powerful five-octave voice coming from a small frame is normally what describes Misia as a singer. The second hat she wears is as a philanthropic activist for Africa.
Japan Times
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

The evolution of TICAD since its inception in 1993

TICAD, or the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, has continuously evolved since the first conference in 1993.
Japan Times
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

JICA helps Africans develop their future

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), an independent governmental agency that coordinates official development assistance (ODA) for the government, has played an important role for the country in its relations with foreign nations. The following is the story of a JICA staff member who worked...
Japan Times
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

Zensho pursues fair trade with small farmers in Africa

Fair trade is a concept widely accepted in the world describing a business practice in which importers provide humanitarian benefits to exporters, who are usually in developing nations. Humanitarian benefits can mean anything from paying proper prices for high-quality products to helping the people in...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 1, 2013

Obama no friend of free press

Barack Obama's tendency to bypass the press for social media and friendly bloggers amounts to the White House reporting on itself, thus avoiding tough questions.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2013

Abe offer at TICAD: ¥3.2 trillion in aid

The fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development is set to kick off with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set to pledge up to ¥3.2 trillion in total aid over the next five years.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 1, 2013

Marines benefiting from ace Naruse's poise, maturity

Yoshihisa Naruse was the new kid on the block back in 2006, a fresh face in his first season pitching for a Chiba Lotte Marines team that had won the Japan Series the year before.
COMMUNITY
Jun 1, 2013

ASIJ student helping women rebuild community

Sophia Slater, 17, felt she couldn't just sit back and do nothing when the monster earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. So she tried to find a way a teenager like her could help, apart from giving money or donating supplies for Tohoku.

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