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March 11, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2010
Midterm losses hobble Obama on a global scale
By Steve Clemons
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama's political fortunes suffered a devastating blow at the election polls Nov. 2. Since then, whether on domestic policy or in the international arena, nations as well as American politicians have raised their price for cooperating with him.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2010
Japan's leadership test in Sri Lanka
By Craig Martin
U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement last month that the U.S. would support an Indian bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council may reinvigorate the process of Security Council reform. Japan too has made permanent membership in the Security Council a high priority in its foreign policy....
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2010
The N. Korea conundrum
By Gregory Clark
North Korea bombards the South Korean held island of Yeonpyeong in the Yellow Sea, killing and wounding a number of people there. The hawks call for the strongest possible response. The pundits warn of another Korean War.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2010
EU's sweeping defense cuts are shortsighted
By Uffe Ellemann-Jensen
COPENHAGEN — All over Europe, budgets are being pared as a new age of austerity takes hold. Defense expenditures are proving to be the easiest of targets. Even Britain under the Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has joined the rush to slash defense spending.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2010
Recalcitrant Indian state turns a corner
By Ramesh Thakur
WATERLOO, Ontario — Writing here on March 13, 2005 ("The deep end of Indian state democracy"), I noted descriptions of Bihar's first city Patna as the capital of hell on earth, its Hobbesian quality of life with large-scale kidnappings for ransom as the only growth industry, the destruction of infrastructure...
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2010
Beijing flubs art of ambiguity in Nobel affair
By Frank Ching
HONG KONG — The value of ambiguity in international diplomacy has long been recognized and widely practiced by such proponents as Henry Kissinger and by Chinese leaders.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2010
Aims of Britain and Japan
By David Howell
LONDON — This is a speech delivered by David Howell, minister of state in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to the Japan Society of London on Nov. 18. Before being appointed to his current post, Howell was a regular contributor to The Japan Times.
COMMENTARY
Nov 29, 2010
Trigger-happy Indian cops cut corners to deliver quick justice
By Gautaman Bhaskaran
CHENNAI, India — India's democracy is being increasingly tarnished by its police force, which uses brutally illegal methods to deal with crime. Some officers are staging incidents to murder people who have been arrested on suspicion of committing particularly heinous offenses.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2010
Airport security 'theater': dancing to terrorists' tune
By Kevin Rafferty and Sofia Horta e Costa
HONG KONG — With air travel peaking next month in Asia and Europe for Christmas and New Year after going into overload in the United States over the Thanksgiving weekend, governments should re-examine the costs and inefficiencies of security that add tens of billions of dollars to the cost of doing...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 28, 2010
It's time Japan shook off its past and stopped toadying to the U.S.
By Roger Pulvers
Allow me to introduce a Japanese word to those unfamiliar with it. It is the verb kobiru, which means "to flatter"; "to curry favor with"; "to play up to"; "to toady to." In more up-to-date parlance, it may be rendered as "to suck up to."
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 28, 2010
The Caucasus imperative in summit season
By Vartan Oskanian
YEREVAN, Armenia — Following the Group of 20 meetings in Seoul and the NATO summit in Portugal, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will hold its first summit in 10 years in Astana, Kazakhstan's spanking new capital city.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 28, 2010
Education profiteers and the public trough
By Hiroaki Sato
NEW YORK — A college or university, especially of a private variety, may not be "an eleemosynary institution," as Sen. Sam Ervin, of the Watergate hearings, might put it were he alive, but the American insistence on free-market notions has brought the matter to the other extreme in higher education....
As Trump hails taking back of Panama Canal, Hong Kong Inc. walks tightrope
Balboa Port, operated by Panama Ports Company, at the Panama Canal. Conglomerate CK Hutchison, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, has agreed to sell its ports network, including assets along the Panama Canal, to a U.S. consortium led by BlackRock.
Tokyo’s vinyl experts say overseas buyers are ‘sustaining the scene’
Rintaro Sekizuka runs a record store in both London and Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward.
Woman sentenced to 23 years over Asahikawa girl's murder
The bridge in the city of Asahikawa where a female high school student died after being pushed off in April last year
Bank of America CEO willing to hire in Japan amid revival
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
Ishiba vows all-out election fight at LDP convention
Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister and president of the Liberal Democratic Party, shakes hands with one of the party's candidates for the upcoming Upper House election during the party's annual convention in Tokyo on Sunday.
Tokyo’s vinyl experts say overseas buyers are ‘sustaining the scene’
Rintaro Sekizuka runs a record store in both London and Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward.
Cherry blossom season set to kick off on March 21 in Tokyo
A Weathernews forecast shows the cherry blossom season will begin on March 21 in Tokyo.
Grief ebbs and flows between two tragedies in 'The Place of Shells'
“The Place of Shells” takes place mostly in Gottingen, Germany, where both the author and the book's narrator live, while also jumping both geographically and temporally to Sendai, Japan, through memories of the 3/11 disaster and its aftermath.
‘Granny hobbies’ are the new self-care
Yarn shortages are a sign that hobbies like knitting and crochet are gaining in popularity.
Can Shiori Ito’s documentary open Japan’s black box?
Shiori Ito is the first Japanese director to have been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature film. "Black Box Diaries," which tells the story of her quest for justice following her rape in 2015, hasn't been released in Japan.

Podcast

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

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly
By Tomoko Otake

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