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October 07, 2024
 

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Jeff Kingston
Jeff Kingston lives in Tokyo, teaches history at Temple University Japan and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 1988. "Contemporary Japan" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) is his most recent book.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / BEST OF BOOKS: 2008
Dec 14, 2008
Ready for a little Yuletide reading?
RIVALS: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade, by Bill Emmott (Allen Lane)
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 30, 2008
Splendors for all: the best of Asia
It's all subjective of course, but read on for this traveler's picks of the places to go for (almost) anything you might choose to do in this splendiferous and ever-fascinating part of the world.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 30, 2008
Gems of Asia: hotels worth the splurge
I admit to an incurable travel addiction, which I have been lucky enough to feed by journeying around Asia since 1980, driven by an abiding interest in the wonders and troubles of the region.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 9, 2008
Life in Burma: an expatriate's point of view
BURMA CHRONICLES by Guy Delisle. Quebec, Canada: Drawn and Quarterly, 2008, 208 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Over the past 20 years Burma has sunk ever further into an abyss of political oppression and economic malaise under a brutal military junta that shot monks on the streets of Yangon during the Saffron Revolution...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Nov 9, 2008
Wrestling with a guilty verdict
Kazuhiko Togo, a retired career official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to the Netherlands, is the grandson of Shigenori Togo, Japan's foreign minister at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Nov 9, 2008
From heroes to zero, and lasting scars
Nov. 12 marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, which in terms of judicial procedures is now widely regarded as having been fundamentally flawed and biased against the defendants.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 12, 2008
In territory and war, it's hard to apologize
TROUBLED APOLOGIES AMONG JAPAN, KOREA AND THE UNITED STATES by Alexis Dudden. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 167 pp., $40 (cloth) Alexis Dudden engagingly explores how the nexus of politics, war memory and apology shapes contemporary trilateral relations between Korea, Japan and the United...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 14, 2008
Troubled by ghosts of East Asia
EAST ASIA'S HAUNTED PRESENT: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Kazuhiko Togo. Westport, CT., Praeger Security International, 2008, 265 pp., $75 (cloth) Arguments over the past among nations are a sure sign of anxieties about the future. East Asia's...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 10, 2008
China remembers John Rabe, its own local Schindler
John Rabe (1882-1950), known as the Oscar Schindler of China, was an employee of Siemens and a Nazi party member when he helped establish the International Safety Zone (ISZ) toward the end of 1937 to provide a refuge for Nanjing's noncombatants.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2008
Nanjing now: philosophy, history and Jacuzzis
Nanjing is a bustling city of 7 million, about six times its population before the Japanese rampage of 1937, and looks like many of the other modern, gleaming urbanscapes that have mushroomed up across China.
Japan Times
Features
Aug 10, 2008
War and reconciliation: a tale of two countries
On July 7, 2008, officers of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force visited Nanjing, the ancient capital of China, for an artillery demonstration — a visit barely mentioned in the Chinese media, even though it was the first time Japanese soldiers returned to the scene of the crime — the Nanjing massacre...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 2, 2008
Truth, friendship and accountability in CFT
On July 15 in Bali the leaders of Indonesia and East Timor met and received the final report of the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) and issued a joint statement accepting the findings and recommendations. It was a display of harmony and friendship that reveals the main shortcoming of the CTF...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 2008
The way to better human rights?
PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS IN BURMA: A Critique of Western Sanctions Policy, by Morten B. Pedersen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, 297 pp., $75 (cloth) In the wake of Cyclone Nargis, people around the world are trying to understand the mind-boggling madness of Burma's military rulers. Why would...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 2008
The shrine of controversy
YASUKUNI: The War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past, edited by John Breen. London: Hurst Publishers, 2007, 202 pp., £25 (cloth) Yasukuni Shrine resonates powerfully in contemporary Asia, dividing Japanese and alienating regional neighbors. In April, some conservative Japanese politicians' criticisms...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 15, 2008
Stopping North Korea going nuclear
THE PENINSULA QUESTION: A Chronicle of the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis, by Yoichi Funabashi. Washington: Brookings Institution, 2007, 592 pp., $36.95 (cloth) NORTH KOREA ON THE BRINK: Struggle for Survival, by Glyn Ford with Soyoung Kwon. London: Pluto Press, 2008, 249 pp., £18.99 (cloth)
CULTURE / Books
Jun 1, 2008
Rivalry in Asia upsets the balance of power
RIVALS: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade, by Bill Emmott. London: Allen Lane, 2008, 314 pp., £20 (cloth) The United States and Europe are coming to understand that the rise of China and India means that there will be increasingly less scope for the status...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 20, 2008
The challenges of an aging society
POPULATION DECLINE AND AGEING IN JAPAN: THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES by Florian Coulmas. Routledge: London, 2007, 167 pp., $150 (cloth) Florian Coulmas, a longtime contributor to the Japan Times and director of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, packs a lot of information and insights into...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 16, 2008
Hope for Burmese reconciliation
PERFECT HOSTAGE: Aung San Suu Kyi and the Generals, by Justin Wintle. London: Arrow Books, 2007, 464 pp., £8.95 (paper) In January, Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, voiced her growing frustration with the lack of progress in "national reconciliation" talks with the ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 27, 2008
Modern Japanese women: dealing with sex, lies and the dried-flower syndrome
GOODBYE MADAME BUTTERFLY: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman, by Sumie Kawakami. Chin Music Press, 2007, 219 pp., $20 (cloth) Who wants to be a woman in Japan? Misery can't get much worse than the sexless relationships, dreary marriages, loneliness, patriarchal blues and stressed out women portrayed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 2007
Need something to read in the new year?
THE GIFT OF RAIN by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon)
Sure, Tokyo’s trains are amazing. But are they ruining your trip?
Walking through Tokyo's varied neighborhoods and the sub-communities within them can be the best way for a tourist, even one with limited time, to take the city in.
Tokyo passes nation's first customer harassment ordinance
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike speaks to a reporter on Sept. 27. Aggressive acts toward front-line workers, dubbed "customer harassment," have become a growing problem.
Rising sex tourism exposes loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution law
While financial misfortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic may have driven some women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or want to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
Japanese baseball fans flock to LA to see playoff-bound Ohtani
A giant mural of Shohei Ohtani on the side of a hotel in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles
LDP to endorse 'slush fund' lawmakers in general election
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba delivers his inaugural policy address to parliament in Tokyo on Friday.
The furry performance-enhancers that are sweeping the world of sports
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and his dog, Dekopin, who delivered the ceremonial first pitch prior to a game against the Orioles on Aug. 28
Sure, Tokyo’s trains are amazing. But are they ruining your trip?
Walking through Tokyo's varied neighborhoods and the sub-communities within them can be the best way for a tourist, even one with limited time, to take the city in.
Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence
Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.
Japan great Ayami Sato helps shine light on women's baseball in new documentary
Ayami Sato is one of the best female players in baseball history.
Tokyo passes nation's first customer harassment ordinance
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike speaks to a reporter on Sept. 27. Aggressive acts toward front-line workers, dubbed "customer harassment," have become a growing problem.

Podcast

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

Longform

Wozme, founded by dancer and choreographer Wakaba Kohei, is composed of Kana Kitty, Ami Ishii, Akane Watanabe and Natsuki. Its aim is to inject elegance and beauty, traits traditionally associated with femininity, into the sometimes grotesque art form of butoh dance.
Wozme, an all-women dance troupe, wants to move the needle in butoh
By Zoria Petkoska

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