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November 08, 2025
 

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Signage outside the Capitol Hill visitors center in Washington notifies the public of its closure due to the government shutdown on Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 2, 2025

The U.S. government shutdown fight has life-or-death consequences

About 4.2 million people are expected to lose coverage if Congress fails to extend premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Kabuki has been trying for years to attract a new generation of fans. One way to do this has been to adapt manga and anime franchises, such as “Naruto,” for the stage. 
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 3, 2025

The summer kabuki came roaring back

A hit film and shifting demographics are drawing new audiences to kabuki, sparking hopes for a revitalized future.
Afghan soldiers stand guard at the gate of Bagram Air Base, Parwan province, Afghanistan, on July 2, 2021, the day the last American troops vacated the facility.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

Will Trump strike Afghanistan over Bagram Air Base?

For Afghans, the cost of another military conflict with the U.S. would be ruinous.
Bangladeshis celebrate in Dhaka on Aug. 5, the first anniversary of student-led protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

What Western media call insurrection at home, they call revolution abroad

Western media have perfected a seductive but dangerous narrative: the romanticized tale of youth-led “revolutions” toppling supposedly repressive, graft-ridden governments abroad.
Kuwait, despite its vast oil wealth, is facing worsening power outages due to political gridlock, underinvestment and climate pressures — highlighting the unsustainability of fossil fuel dependence in a warming world.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

Why the most oil-rich country can’t keep the lights on

Electricity was cut to 30 regions in April as temperatures soared and households cranked up the air conditioning.
Racehorse Oguri Cap, a superstar stallion of the late 1980s, is reimagined in anime form as a teenage schoolgirl who must perform upbeat idol-pop songs after every victory in “Umamusume: Cinderella Grey.”
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Oct 4, 2025

‘Cinderella Grey’ gallops past the other sports documentaries

Mixing real horse-racing history with idol-pop fantasy, “Cinderella Grey” proves anime can outpace today’s flat sports shows.
Fire engulfs Nepal's main administrative building in Kathmandu on Sept. 9, following a police crackdown on protests over government corruption and social media restrictions. This violent unrest is part of a larger pattern of instability in South Asia that threatens regional security and India’s strategic interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2025

India’s reckoning with its dangerous neighborhood

All these stories point to a larger worrying trend: Democracy in India’s neighborhood is in retreat.
Newly elected Liberal Democratic Party leader Sanae Takaichi is applauded after winning the party's leadership election in Tokyo on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 5, 2025

Will Sanae Takaichi be Japan’s Thatcher — or its Truss?

Takaichi is comfortably the most conservative choice the party could have made, if not the most right-leaning leader in recent history.
The Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field and an adjoining solar power farm in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in March 2021. Japan's forward-looking reforms are embedding climate risk management into the core of corporate decision-making.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 6, 2025

Japan’s blueprint for climate finance sets global standard

While no country has all the answers, Japan is demonstrating what sustained, organized action on mobilizing finance for the clean energy transition looks like in practice.
Remittance inflows to low-income countries have boosted welfare, reduced poverty and strengthened economic resilience, but the Trump administration’s 1% tax on the transactions threatens to undermine these critical benefits.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Trump’s beggar-the-poor remittance tax

America is now the world’s top remittance-sending country, with at least 134 recipient countries in 2021, the most recent year with reliable bilateral data.
Jane Goodall communicates with a chimp named Nana in June 2004 at a zoo in Magdeburg, Germany. She was the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Without Jane Goodall, chimps need new champions — us

Goodall revolutionized the way we see both great apes and ourselves. We can’t let her legacy fade away.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new Pentagon policy mandating pre-approval for unclassified information threatens to reverse nearly a century of First Amendment protections.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Hegseth tries turning back 94 years of press freedom

The history on his side has been discredited by the Supreme Court for a century.
Only a country with absolute indispensability in critical goods — like China — can withstand Donald Trump and America’s tariff onslaught.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Geoeconomic Briefing
Oct 7, 2025

Trump weaponizes American trade policy

The U.S. may have an indispensable domestic market for some trading partners, but China has indispensable goods and America cannot easily substitute for them.
Sanae Takaichi celebrates in Tokyo on Saturday with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba after winning the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 7, 2025

From radical to Rihanna: Myths about the new LDP leader

When Shinzo Abe returned as LDP leader in 2012, there was a similar flood of coverage attempting to cast him as a radical conservative.
The oil tanker Eagle S sails alongside a Finnish border guard ship and tugboat in the Gulf of Finland on Dec. 28. The vessel was seized by Finland on suspicion of damaging underwater cables in the area at the time.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2025

Russia’s hybrid war looks increasingly like the real thing

European officials are warning that Moscow appears to be “at war” with countries it hasn’t invaded yet.
As Russia's economy faces stagnation, high inflation, a growing fiscal deficit and a demographic crisis, President Vladimir Putin is not ready to give up on his war in Ukraine just yet.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2025

Putin doubles down on Ukraine as economic woes grow

Understanding that under the current economic model he will run out of cash in less than a year, Putin just announced a budget for 2026-2028 which includes substantial tax hikes.
Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister if appointed, will have her work cut out for her and face key diplomatic challenges with the U.S., China and South Korea, as well as persistent economic and demographic issues.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 8, 2025

Will Takaichi become the prime minister Japan needs?

An admirer of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Takaichi is an adherent to Shinzo Abe’s pragmatic yet conservative vision.
A crime scene technician prepares to document evidence at the site of a shooting in West Baltimore in May 2015. U.S. cities are seeing murder rates fall sharply from post-2020 highs thanks to local violence-reduction efforts and pandemic-era investments.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2025

What’s behind the great American murder decline?

Homicides are plummeting in many places. The explanation may be the sheer volume of different efforts to reduce violence.
Despite concerns over U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and global trade disruptions, the dollar remains dominant in global finance, with the Chinese yuan gaining ground but still far from challenging its supremacy.
COMMENTARY
Oct 8, 2025

Best evidence yet that the U.S. dollar isn’t close to being dead

The dollar was on one side of 89.2% of all trades, up a touch from the 2022 result.
A protester displays a poster featuring U.S. President Donald Trump at Incheon Airport on Sept. 12 after South Korean workers detained in a U.S. immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG plant in Georgia returned home.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2025

South Korea should turn the U.S. ICE raid into trade leverage

U.S. officials sought to justify the operation by saying the 300 South Koreans arrested were working illegally. But that logic now appears to be on shaky ground.
People celebrate on Thursday in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 10, 2025

A deal that might heal — or haunt — the Middle East

A recent American intelligence assessment warned that Tehran views the ceasefire as a “strategic timeout,” a chance to rearm its proxies while Washington celebrates diplomacy.
Then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and then-Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Sanae Takaichi mark a win by a party candidate in the July 2013 Upper House election. There is ongoing debate over whether Takaichi's economic approach will mirror the former prime minister's Abenomics.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 10, 2025

The 'Takaichi trade' isn’t Abenomics 2.0, and that’s OK

Party leader Takaichi has been left with one of the poorest positions imaginable. The LDP is a minority in both houses of parliament.
Despite heightened geopolitical tensions and escalating trade wars, the U.S. dollar’s global dominance is unlikely to fade in the near term, leaving Asian economies vulnerable to dollar shocks.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 10, 2025

How Asia can reduce its dollar dependence

While geopolitical tensions and the risk of sanctions have fueled diversification efforts, the greenback’s international dominance is unlikely to diminish in the near term.
Military and national security leaders across major Western countries and the world show dangerous overconfidence and cognitive biases, risking global conflict.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 9, 2025

Global war and the cognitive traps leaders don’t see

Even a cursory scan of today’s major military powers suggests that their leaders and policy elites are dangerously overconfident.
A giant inflatable basketball promoting NBA preseason games held at Venetian Arena in Macao on Friday.
BASKETBALL / NBA
Oct 12, 2025

Treading fine line, NBA money machine kicks into gear on China return

The preseason games heralded the NBA's return to China for the first time since being effectively frozen out of the country in 2019.
A screen outside a Tokyo securities firm shows the Nikkei 225 Stock Average on Oct. 6. As Japan's financial markets reacted to Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party presidential win, much of the media's focus was on the falling yen, downplaying the surge in equities to record highs.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 12, 2025

Sanae Takaichi gets 'the Abe treatment'

Given that she is frequently labeled a "Shinzo Abe protege," the media coverage of her so far reminds me of how they reported on Abe himself throughout his second term.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado speaks to supporters while holding up electoral records during a rally in Caracas in August 2024. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday she was the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2025

Machado receives the Nobel Peace Prize as Trump’s attempts to secure award fall short

Machado, as the committee put it, is known for her tireless work promoting democracy for Venezuelans and her struggle against dictatorship.
Europe must break its dependency on U.S. tech monopolies by investing in decentralized, open-protocol social media platforms that empower users, foster innovation and protect democratic discourse.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2025

Europe can build its own social media

Europe’s systemic dependency on Big Tech’s social-media platforms threatens the continent’s digital sovereignty.
Recent research shows obesity may be driven by ultraprocessed and hyperpalatable foods that disrupt fullness signals and lead to overeating.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2025

What if everything we think about obesity is wrong?

New research offers novel insight into the causes of overeating but it’s being lost to political posturing.
The tanker Boracay, part of Russia's "shadow fleet" suspected of involvement in drone flights over Denmark, is escorted by a French naval vessel on Oct. 1 off the coast of Saint-Nazaire, France.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2025

Putin is taking his hybrid warfare to the sea

Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to contest the Baltic, make no mistake.
The Toyota buyout is a major test for Japan’s reforms
Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor, speaks during a media preview at the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo on Oct. 29. Minority investors are challenging the carmaker's bid to take affiliate Toyota Industries Corp. private.
From France to Mali, a deportee's struggle far from home
Moussa Sacko, a Malian deported from France — where he had lived since he was a young child — stands on a street in Bamako, Mali, in December. Compared with his home in France, Bamako feels like a different planet, Sacko said.
New satellite images suggest 'mass graves' in Sudan's El-Fasher
A general view of a berm construction in Kinin Village near El-Fasher.
High-speed rail is expensive and difficult, but seen as a key to growth
Achal Khare, former managing director at India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation, gives a presentation during the IHRA Forum 2025 in Tokyo on Oct. 23.
SoftBank is said to have explored potential takeover of Marvell
SoftBank explored a potential takeover of U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology earlier this year, in what would have been the semiconductor industry's largest-ever deal.
These are the hottest lower-division rikishi to watch right now
Fukazaki (right) grapples with Enho at the IG Arena in Nagoya on July 13.
Across borders and screens, Tokyo film festival finds humanity in migration
“Mother Bhumi” takes place in a multiethnic rice-farming community where Chinese, Thai and Malay lineages intertwine.
Takaichi’s balancing act: Supporting Taiwan and stabilizing China ties
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi shakes hands with Lin Hsin-i, Taiwan’s presidential adviser, on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Saturday in this image posted to Takaichi's official X account.
From 1973 to 2025: A Japanese American skater’s long ride to recognition
Judi Oyama at Winchester Skatepark in San Jose, California, in January 1979. The Skateboarding Hall of Fame inductee and Guinness World Record holder still skates and hopes to inspire older women.
More Japanese universities pushing toward teaching in English
Waseda University in Tokyo

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons
Maruhachi never sleeps in quest for better futons

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