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November 21, 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
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 30, 2016
Is Japan ready for the LGBTQ revolution?
This past spring, at a restaurant in Tokyo's upscale Omotesando neighborhood, I encountered something new in Tokyo: a prominent sign written in English on the door of the communal WC declaring it "gender-free."
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 23, 2016
Asia's new normal — now made in China?
As China's President Xi Jinping asserts a new normal in Asia — one featuring a more belligerent Chinese presence — he is digging a deep diplomatic hole. The backlash in Asia may have been guarded, but the region's minnows are getting feistier.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 16, 2016
China: more hegemon than bogeyman?
Jeffrey Wasserstrom's perceptive new book, "Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies," presents some unlikely comparisons that are designed to challenge perceptions about China. Wasserstrom, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, acknowledges flaws in his analogies...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 9, 2016
How rights and liberties may be downsized under the LDP
During a recent TV program, the vice president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Masahiko Komura, insisted "there is zero possibility" that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would revise war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution even if the ruling coalition wins a two-thirds majority in the upcoming Upper...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 2, 2016
What are Shinzo Abe's real three arrows?
In his campaign for the upcoming Upper House elections, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pussyfooting around his plans to revise the Constitution. He is keeping his cards close to his chest because polls have shown that voters oppose constitutional change. Instead, Abe is calling on voters to keep the faith...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 25, 2016
Shinzo Abe's bait-and-switch campaign strategy
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is doing it again: campaigning on Abenomics while distracting voters' attention away from his real agenda. When he got elected in 2012, Abe ran on Abenomics and kept his revisionist political and historical agenda under wraps, knowing that it does not resonate with voters. He...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 18, 2016
Culture of fear lingers in war-traumatized Sri Lanka
Civil war engulfed Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009, with a death toll estimated by the U.N. at up to 100,000. The war was fought between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, aka Tamil Tigers, and the Sri Lankan state.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 11, 2016
Abenomics' failure and the curse of 'Japanization'
The word "Japanization" refers to Japan's prolonged stagnation — a malady that was on everyone's mind at the recent G-7 summit. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the right call in postponing the planned tax hike, but the feeble opposition can be forgiven for pouncing on his abrupt volte-face, which is...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 4, 2016
Under Abe, Japan gets left behind at G-7 summit
For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the best thing about the recent G-7 Ise-Shima summit was that it gave him cover to wriggle out of a planned tax increase. He could pretend postponing the tax increase is a statesman-like concession to boosting global growth, rather than a way to pander to voters in the...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 28, 2016
Understanding anti-base sentiment in Okinawa
The recent murder of a 20-year-old Okinawan woman by a civilian employee of the U.S. Kadena Air Base on Okinawa has inflamed local antipathy toward the U.S. military's presence. Sadly, this horrific crime fits into a larger pattern of sexual violence that has become all too familiar to Okinawans and...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 21, 2016
Japan's cybersecurity upgrade — too little, too late?
The Internet facilitates rapid data-sharing and increased communication between individuals, firms and government entities. This generates significant risks but, for most of the 2000s, Japan did not take commensurate countermeasures. The complacent attitude toward information technology security has...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 14, 2016
G-7 venue preparation shouldn't deter Mie tourists
With world leaders gathering at the G-7 Ise-Shima summit on May 26 and 27, the international spotlight will briefly focus on picturesque Mie Prefecture and its considerable charms. For residents of the prefecture, however, this moment in the spotlight apparently won't be brief enough; a recent Kyodo...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 7, 2016
Diabetes emerges as Japan's hidden scourge
Reading a review of British writer Bee Wilson's "First Bite: How We Learn to Eat" in the London Review of Books, I stumbled on an astonishing figure: 4 million people in the U.K. have diabetes. An unhealthy diet and increasingly sedentary lifestyle have taken their toll, causing a 65 percent surge in...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 30, 2016
Japan's meek media kowtows to the government
Last week I compared the Catholic Church in Boston and Japan's "nuclear village" of atomic-power advocates — two powerful institutions that stifled embarrassing revelations for some time. The Oscar-winning film "Spotlight" depicts the comeuppance of the church hierarchy after investigative reporters...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 23, 2016
Ebb tide for press freedoms in Shinzo Abe's Japan
A perfect storm is descending on freedom of the press in Japan: The country just sank to No. 72 in the global press freedom ranking issued Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders, down from No. 11 in 2010. And David Kaye, the U.N. special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 16, 2016
Obama has unfinished business in Hiroshima
Barack Obama will attend the G-7 Ise-Shima summit of leading industrial nations in Mie Prefecture next month, sparking speculation that the U.S. President might venture to Hiroshima to pay respects at the Peace Memorial Park.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 9, 2016
Are Japan's counterterrorism forces really ready?
When an escaped zebra was chased down by police in Gifu Prefecture last month and died after being shot with a tranquilizer and falling into a pool, I couldn't help but think of the drills Tokyo's Ueno Zoo has conducted depicting the escape scenario.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 2, 2016
Japan's inescapable 'comfort women' problem
Tokyo and Seoul may believe they have resolved the "comfort women" problem after signing a joint agreement in December, but it's wishful thinking and confronts mounting evidence that this diplomatic deceit is already unraveling and falls short of the grand gesture needed to restore dignity to these victims...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 26, 2016
Tepco executives get a taste of citizens' wrath
Three Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives are now facing criminal prosecution for negligence in failing to anticipate a monster tsunami that cut off electricity and inundated back-up emergency generators, causing a cessation of cooling in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant reactors that precipitated three...
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.
Ishiba delays meeting with Trump, citing legal restrictions
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waves upon arrival for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Callao, Peru, on Friday.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
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.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’
SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’

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