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Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian independence movement with an unshakable faith in nonviolence that arguably dovetailed with Zen philosophy in some respects.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Jul 19, 2025

Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence — and Zen?

The Indian nationalist’s beliefs hewed close to certain aspects of Zen thought, particularly his fearlessness in the face of death.
A drone view shows turf from Derryrush bog left out to dry after being harvested from the blanket bog in Derryrush, Ireland, in April 2024. Ireland's bogs were formed over thousands of years as decaying plants formed a thick layer of peat in wetland areas.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Jul 16, 2025

World risks up to $39 trillion in losses from vanishing wetlands: report

Some 22% of wetlands, both freshwater systems and coastal marine systems, have disappeared since 1970, the report says.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron hold a news conference in London on July 10 after wrapping up a joint military visit.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2025

France and U.K. tighten nuclear ties amid questions over U.S. commitment

While France and the U.K. are taking a positive step for European security, the announcement is both more and less than it seems.
Since the Sino-U.S. trade conflict began in 2018, China has used it to strengthen self-reliance, sharpen its strategies and turn Donald Trump’s tariffs into fuel for its long-term global resilience. 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 17, 2025

China is winning Donald Trump’s trade war

While China does not want a trade war or to decouple, it is willing to risk a trade war that the United States may lose — and it would rather decouple than kowtow to Trump.
A board announces that no works were awarded the Akutagawa and Naoki literary prizes on Wednesday evening in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2025

Akutagawa and Naoki award decision marks rare absence of literary prizewinners

Selection committee members were disappointed by the lack of a majority vote in the second round, insisting that the nominated works moved many readers and were worth reading.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on June 26. The Donald Trump-ordered strikes on Iran, said to be an example of the “Trump Doctrine,” ignore decades of failed U.S. attempts to force adversaries to back down through short bursts of military power. 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 2025

The 'Trump Doctrine' is wishful thinking

The Donald Trump-ordered strikes on Iran, claimed to prove a unique “Trump Doctrine,” ignore decades of failed U.S. attempts to force adversaries to back down.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (left) and Donald Trump during their meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 8, 2024
WORLD / Politics
Jul 21, 2025

'Trump before Trump': Orban's illiberal model on show

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been accused of silencing critical voices from the judiciary, academia, media and civil society, and of restricting minority rights.
Modern global politics, marked by personal rivalries, nickname-driven rhetoric and apocalyptic religious fervor, resembles a “re-medievalization” that challenges the ideals of the Enlightenment.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2025

The Middle Ages are making a political comeback

Increasingly medieval language from the world’s leaders does not bode well for the rest of us.
In an era of fierce technological and geopolitical competition, especially in AI, true scale combining size, efficiency and cooperation with allies has become an urgent strategic necessity the U.S. and the West must master to counter China’s growing advantages.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2025

The AI arms race with China demands scale. The West must think bigger.

The race to create scale is critical amid the sizzling geopolitical competition over leadership in new technologies.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to London earlier this month to meet with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer shows how a changing Europe and shifting global threats could let Britain move past Brexit and help shape a new European security order.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 23, 2025

Britain and Europe are changing together

Britain can help shape the continent’s new security order, so long as it banishes the Brexit mindset.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is unable to satisfy his supporters’ demands for answers he can’t deliver, is now trapped by the very Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy he once promoted.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2025

Trump can’t put the Epstein genie back in the bottle

Trump now finds himself in the unusual position of trying to stuff the Epstein genie back into a bottle that he helped uncork.
London’s worsening disorder — from soaring petty crime to reckless delivery riders and rising drug use — reflects a decades-old pattern of authorities and citizens normalizing lawlessness.
COMMENTARY
Jul 23, 2025

What turning a blind eye to deviant behavior is doing to London

The city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, needs to take growing disorder on the streets more seriously.
Before multiplexes entered the Japanese theatrical market in the early 1990s, moviegoers frequented “roadside theaters” — cinemas located in central urban areas near train lines. The Marunouchi Toei, which will close July 27, is the last of such theaters in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 24, 2025

Marunouchi Toei closes as Japan’s cinema landscape evolves

As audiences gravitate toward the luxury, tech and varied lineups of multiplexes, Tokyo’s last "roadside theater" closes after 65 years, marking the end of an era in moviegoing.
Manhattan Beach on the California coast
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jul 25, 2025

‘Unprecedented’ ocean heat waves in 2023 suggest climate tipping point

The world’s oceans experienced a staggering amount of warming in 2023, as vast marine heat waves affected 96% of their surface.
U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he plays golf at the Trump Turnberry Golf Courses, in Turnberry, on the southwestern coast of Scotland, on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 27, 2025

Trump golfs in Scotland as Epstein questions persist

After visits to his golf properties, the U.S. president will meet with British PM Keir Starmer, Scottish leader John Swinney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
A woman casts her vote during parliamentary elections in Qom, Iran, in March 2012. Regime change in the Islamic country is harder than many think, but it has the institutions needed for democracy if it happens.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2025

Iran is more prepared for democracy than many realize

Some commentators, like the economist Nouriel Roubini and the Stanford political scientist Abbas Milani, see regime change as plausible or imminent.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to punish Brazil with tariffs to protect former President Jair Bolsonaro is just one sign that the far right is shifting from rhetoric to real cross-border solidarity that undermines democratic norms.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2025

Trump is trying to build a far-right international alliance

There has been a lack of concrete solidarity among populist leaders. But Trump is changing that in his second term.
A soldier from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA)  and his comrade cross a stream toward the front line in Laiza, Kachin state, in 2013.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 29, 2025

Trump team hears pitches on access to Myanmar's rare earths

If the ideas are ever acted upon, Washington may need to strike a deal with the ethnic rebels controlling most of Myanmar's rich deposits of heavy rare earths.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Washington in January.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 30, 2025

As China advances and the U.S. retreats, Japan-India ties grow stronger

Located on two ends of the Indo-Pacific region, India and Japan anchor a stable counterweight to China and a mercurial Trump.
Hun Sen speaks at a press conference at the National Assembly after a vote to confirm his son, Hun Manet, as Cambodia's prime minister in Phnom Penh on August 22, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 31, 2025

Cambodia's Hun Sen at the helm in border conflict with Thailand

The former leader played an outsized role in events leading up to the deadliest fighting between Thailand and Cambodia in over a decade.
Despite topping physical health rankings, Japan’s children face a worsening mental health crisis due to limited early education, inconsistent counseling support and poor awareness of their rights.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 3, 2025

It’s time to take children’s mental health seriously

Given these disparities, it is clear the government needs to build a consistent school system with appropriate emotional support mechanisms
Incumbent Yokohama Mayor Takeharu Yamanaka won a second term on Sunday.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 4, 2025

Yokohama Mayor Takeharu Yamanaka wins second term

Takeharu Yamanaka, an independent who had the backing of three parties, pledged to enhance child-rearing support for households and strengthen disaster reduction measures.
U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands following the announcement of a new U.S.-EU trade deal on July 27 in Turnberry, Scotland.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2025

The EU’s economic surrender only deepens its dependence on the U.S.

The European Union’s tariff deal with U.S. President Donald Trump highlights the bloc’s inability to present a united front.
Demonstrators protest U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on Brazilian products at a rally outside the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2025

Trump’s tariffs defy the doomsayers — so far

Despite nearly uniform predictions of doom and disaster, the global economy has largely ignored the Trump trade revolution.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Economic Revitalization Minister Ryosei Akazawa. Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator, is returning to the United States for another round of trade talks.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 5, 2025

Akazawa returns to U.S. for more talks as tariff deal looks shaky

Japan is urging the United States to cut the tariff on cars as soon as possible.
A carrier-based Type 52 Zero fighter marks the entrance foyer of Yasukuni Shrine's Yushukan, a museum that tells a more nuanced story of Japan's experience in World War II than the controversies around the shrine might suggest.
LIFE / Travel
Aug 8, 2025

Tokyo’s WWII museums hold diverse views on war and peace

From detainees in Soviet labor camps to last-ditch efforts to develop miracle weapons, the capital’s war museums tell a multitude of stories of a country in crisis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin views Tu-160M strategic bombers at the Kazan Aviation Factory in Kazan, Russia, in February 2024.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2025

Stagflation is hitting Russia’s war economy

Putin apparently does not think his popularity could withstand devoting much more of the budget to the war effort.
Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 8, 2025

The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person

At 17, Koichi Tagawa survived Nagasaki’s atomic blast and recording two months of grief, destruction and the loss of his mother in a diary he kept for life.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade delegation, comprising Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, meets with Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang and Vice Premier He Lifeng in Geneva on May 10 to discuss tariffs and trade issues.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2025

Trump’s transactional approach shapes U.S.-China rivalry

There are intense debates about how the U.S. can prevail in that struggle but there are no signs that a single strategy guides the administration.
Kimi Ozawa, who lost her husband in the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet, prays in front of his memorial marker on Tuesday in the village of Ueno, Gunma Prefecture.
JAPAN / History / FOCUS
Aug 12, 2025

Controversial theories continue to swirl around 1985 JAL jet crash

Some bereaved family members and critics who subscribe to the idea of possible SDF involvement say the initial probe left too many loose ends untied.

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