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November 24, 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.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 4, 2014
Back and forward: Asia in 2013; predictions for 2014
Crystal-ball gazing is a notoriously inexact science, so before getting to that, let's lessen the potential exposure to ridicule by starting with a roundup of the last 12 months' key trends and events in Asia.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 28, 2013
Incredible India and the New Delhi Dissensus
On a recent visit to New Delhi, I met an activist promoting the rights of dalits (untouchables), who quipped, playing off a current national-branding campaign: "India is indeed incredible . . . but only in paradox."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 21, 2013
Terrorists unite: All you have to lose is your freedom
Everyone had been wondering when the real Shinzo Abe would bare the dark recesses of his political soul. There had been some glimpses, but with Abenomics in a swoon amid growing skepticism about its sustainability, Japan's prime minister finally ripped off his mask as he rammed secrecy legislation through...
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 14, 2013
Indonesia's challenges — from poverty to Papua
On a recent trip to Jakarta, I experienced firsthand what an infrastructure bottleneck feels like. My driver told me the city is only third in global traffic-jam rankings, trailing Mexico City and New Delhi, but what was a 40-minute ride when I lived there in the mid-1980s took a dispiriting 2½ hours....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 7, 2013
Pearl Harbor: The Day of Infamy that won't go away
Dec. 8 (Japan time) is the 72nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the infamous attack launched by Imperial Japanese forces against the United States that continues to reverberate in the popular imagination.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 30, 2013
Imagining post-nuclear Japan
Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has sent shock waves through the political establishment by calling for the end of nuclear power generation in Japan. "There is nothing more costly than nuclear power," Koizumi was quoted as saying during an interview with Tokyo Shimbun — something Japanese taxpayers...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 23, 2013
Rookie trio make for a leadership deficit in East Asia
With three new leaders taking power over the past year — in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing (and a fourth in Pyongyang two years ago) — 2013 was never likely to be a banner year for regional diplomacy. But I didn't expect it to get quite this bad.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 16, 2013
Nationalism, Tibetans and Uighurs in today's China
Nationalism arouses solidarity and generates identity politics that threaten ethnic and religious minorities. Defining the "we" also defines the "they" — and the latter is inexorably marginalized.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 9, 2013
Pan-Asian dreams: The Greater East Asia Conference
Seventy years ago, on Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, 1943, Japan hosted a meeting of Asian leaders in Tokyo, hub of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere — the name it gave its wartime empire under the guise of Pan-Asian liberation.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 2, 2013
Japan and Korea slide down gender-index ranking
The Swiss-based nonprofit World Economic Forum recently released its Gender Gap Report for 2013, in which Japan ranked 105 out of 136 countries — a plunge of 25 places from its ranking when the report was inaugurated in 2006. South Korea rates even worse, coming in at 111 in 2013, down from 92nd place...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 26, 2013
Branding Japan: Not always onward and upward
Branding is not an exact science. Take for example the recent campaign by Fukushima Industries to launch a new consumer-friendly corporate mascot.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 19, 2013
Abe ought to show a red card to hate speech now
Last week I ended this column by noting that Myanmar (also known as Burma) can ill afford bigotry and intolerance. Neither can Japan. The outpouring here of hate speech targeting ethnic Korean residents is a disturbing development even if it is not representative. And certainly, it is encouraging that...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 12, 2013
Myanmar takes helm of ASEAN while sectarian violence persists
Myanmar last week took the baton from the Sultan of Brunei, assuming the rotating chair in 2014 of Asia's most important regional organization, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 5, 2013
Abe promotes secrecy, sidelining transparency and open government
Norika Fujiwara, a TV celebrity who serves as goodwill ambassador for the Japanese Red Cross, recently caused a media sensation when she came out against the government's proposed secrecy legislation, saying it would adversely affect citizens.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 28, 2013
Japan and Korea: Reconciliation and redress for wrongs remain elusive
On the eve of the International Olympic Committee's decision to award the 2020 Summer Games to Tokyo, Seoul's abrupt import ban on all fisheries products from Fukushima and seven other Japanese prefectures was clearly a response to public concerns about radiation spewing into the ocean.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 21, 2013
Rokkasho: nuclear white elephant or yen sucking black hole?
As one approaches Rokkasho, a small town of 11,000 on the remote, windswept coast of Aomori Prefecture at the very north of Japan's main island, Honshu, one sees dozens of power-generating windmills spinning away. Aside from this ambitious renewable energy project, Rokkasho also is the site for a national...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 14, 2013
National humiliation: China still vanquishing, suppressing ghosts of past
Sept. 18 is unofficially National Humiliation Day in China, a day when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commemorates Japanese aggression and atrocities. It is a time for wallowing in the national obsession with a century of indignities inflicted on a weak China until the CCP came to power in 1949. But...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 7, 2013
Don't worry: Team Abe is tackling the nuclear crisis at Fukushima
Even if the public remains overwhelmingly skeptical about nuclear safety in general, and anxious in particular about the impact of the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on the environment, there is reassuring news that we can now rest easy.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 31, 2013
Tepco's follies, reactor restarts and awkward plutonium stockpiles
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) is deservedly slagged as the Keystone Cops of nuclear power, and conjures up images of Homer Simpson, the iconic nuclear safety inspector in "The Simpsons." Perhaps it ought to adopt as its mascot Ocnus, the Greek god who personifies futility.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 24, 2013
Gay marriage in Japan? Only over the reactionary LDP's cadaver
Tokyo Disneyland is an odd place to make a political statement, but the theme park now hosts same-sex wedding ceremonies.
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
Japan will spend ¥325 million in government funds on Princess Yuriko's funeral
Princess Yuriko waves during the New Year's public greeting at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in January 2019.
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.

Podcast

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

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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