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Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2016

Immigrants should be treated better

Regarding "Japan enacts law to prevent abuse of foreign trainees" in the No. 18 edition, having watched Donald Trump's offenses against Mexican and Muslim immigrants in the U.S. during the presidential campaign, I started thinking about how Japanese society will be in the next couple of decades from...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Dec 1, 2016

Shady work practices earn nominations for Black Company Award

Ad giant Dentsu Inc. and courier company Sagawa Express Co., where employees committed suicide, were among this year's nominees.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Nov 27, 2016

'Five-year rule' triggers 'Tohoku college massacre' of jobs

I have discussed the "five-year rule" several times before in this column — the revision of the Labor Contract Law (Rodo Keiyaku Ho) enacted in 2013. Under the amendment, any worker employed on serial fixed-term contracts (yūki koyō) for more than five years can give themselves permanent status....
JAPAN
Nov 24, 2016

Recruiter criticized over list ranking foreign trainees by nationality

The list named six different East Asian countries and scored them based on eight categories such as religion, fondness for Japan and Japanese language capability.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 16, 2016

Trump's lesson: You can lie your way to the very top

As the Republican victory in the U.S. threatens to undo eight years of progress, a silver lining in Donald Trump's success proves hard to pin down.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 12, 2016

LGBT-inclusive curriculum badly needed

For too long, Japanese LGBT students have faced verbal abuse, physical harassment and far worse because of homophobia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 22, 2016

Nationalism: a long shadow over Asia's precarious future

In 1945, year zero for "Nationalism in Asia", most of the region it describes was impoverished, backward and exhausted. After the calamitous Pacific War, China, India and Indonesia were in a final showdown with the great European colonial powers that had exploited them for decades. Korea had shrugged...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 26, 2016

Plan to fix day care crunch belies decades of pent-up demand

The shortage of day care facilities is a long-standing issue in Japan, where the ranks of working mothers keep swelling, both out of choice and necessity.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 24, 2016

Troika of female politicians under scrutiny

The media has been abuzz about the emergence of three prominent Japanese female politicians: Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, Defense Minister Tomomi Inada and Renho, the head of the Democratic Party. However, the significance of this development is limited. Overall, politics in Japan remains a man's world —...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 10, 2016

Filmmaker depicts father's slaying by 'war yakuza' in debut feature film

Shoichiro Sasaki, 80, never forgets Aug. 1, 1943 — the day he witnessed his father, a free-thinking journalist, die under extraordinary circumstances before his own eyes.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2016

FTAs easier said than done

The Britons who pushed for Brexit misled voters by telling them that free trade was an easy and speedy option.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 15, 2016

Akiko Yano reflects on how music has changed after 40 years in the business

What would a U.S.A. Day look like in Japan? There would need to be American food, like hamburgers, and some kind of technological wonder, like monster trucks! Now imagine Kate Bush shows up.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 9, 2016

G-7 foreign ministers to weigh nuclear future at Hiroshima meeting

The G-7 foreign ministers' summit taking place in Hiroshima carries a symbolic meaning as it offers an opportunity for world leaders to be reminded of the horrors of nuclear arms.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 3, 2016

Sentiment's role in politics

Japan's political class is doing a poor job of harnessing public sentiment in pursuit of meaningful reform.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 19, 2016

The pretext of counterterrorism covers many sins

The Japanese government's track record on respecting civil liberties and the rule of law is suspect, as I detailed in last week's Counterpoint.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 9, 2016

Challenging the '20 American historians'

The U.S. historians supporting a McGraw-Hill textbook's entry on 'comfort women' have shown a disturbing disregard for basic facts of history.
Reader Mail
Feb 26, 2016

Tokyo politician wrongheaded on LGBT issues

Regarding the story "Politician says being gay is 'personal taste' " in the Feb. 23 edition, being gay is based on "personal taste?" Yeah, and if you believe this nonsense, then you'd probably believe that having blue eyes is also based on personal taste.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 18, 2016

Lawmaker draws rebuke, silence after describing Obama as 'slave descendant'

A day after calling U.S. President Barack Obama a 'descendant of black slaves,' Diet member Kazuya Maruyama is accused by the black community, if not his party, of flirting with racism.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Feb 17, 2016

Third Japanese municipality recognizes same-sex unions

The city of Iga, Mie Prefecture, has announced it will start issuing certificates recognizing same-sex partnerships starting in April, Japan's third municipal government and the first outside Tokyo to take such a step.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Jan 31, 2016

NPO founder fights to reverse plight of Asia child sex victims

When Sayaka Murata visited Cambodia while in university, she was shocked to see a little girl around 5 or 6 years old among those who had been rescued after being tortured by electric shock and forced into the sex trade.
EDITORIALS
Dec 19, 2015

No place for Islamophobia

Donald Trump's comment to block all entry for Muslims is so blatantly discriminatory that it marks a new low in the worsening political atmosphere in the United States.
EDITORIALS
Dec 9, 2015

Misguided indictment by Seoul

South Korea's indictment of a professor with nonconformist views on the 'comfort women' issue is a wrongheaded and dangerous encroachment on academic freedom.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 7, 2015

Heart of darkness: Nostalgic Tokyo disappearing amid construction boom

The Shinagawa neighborhood of Musashi-Koyama — a vibrant maze of tiny alleyways that once housed dozens of small eateries, tapas restaurants and bars — is now a virtual ghost town.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 31, 2015

U.S. sea patrols fuel war of words in print

As this column went to press, the Japanese media had their collective attention focused on a potential hot-spot in the disputed South China Sea, where the destroyer USS Lassen, in a modern-day show of "gunboat diplomacy," took an in-your-face drive-by (or sail-by if you prefer) past Chinese encamped...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Sep 22, 2015

Site of 1930s activism, Kyoto cafe is steeped in heritage

Nestled away on a side street just south of the busy intersection of Shijo and Kiyamachi streets, the Western facade of the Salon de the Francois cafe stands out amidst the traditional machiya wooden townhouses.

Longform

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