Search - commentary

 
 
BUSINESS / Economy / ANALYSIS
Oct 11, 2015

China-backed trade pact playing catch-up after U.S.-led TPP deal

Lest competitor nations steal a march on export access, China and India approach talks for a huge Asia-wide equivalent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership with fresh urgency.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2015

Syria airstrikes leave Russia at risk of revenge attacks

President Vladimir Putin has taken a risk by launching airstrikes against Islamists in Syria because they could incite militants to seek revenge by attacking targets inside Russia.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2015

Russia passes the West in race across the Syrian minefield

Peace will remain elusive in Iraq and Syria until Islamic State is defeated. If Putin accomplishes this he will earn the world's gratitude.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 3, 2015

The long and short of male circumcision in Japan

For most of its history the Japanese archipelago knew nothing of circumcision. Contact with missionaries and merchants from Europe did little to raise awareness of the custom, and the procedure does not seem to have been a high priority for the promoters of Western ideas and technology during the Meiji...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 30, 2015

China's Xi struggles to show softer side during U.S. charm offensive

Before Xi Jinping flew to the U.S., his foreign minister promised a "people first visit" that would showcase the Chinese president's "extensive outreach to the American people."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 5, 2015

Briefly maligned, bilingual rappers gain visibility

English words and phrases have been a part of the Japanese MC's arsenal since hip-hop culture began making inroads here in the early to mid-1980s.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 31, 2015

China party says no disrespect meant with Jiang sign removal

The removal of a stone plinth sign written by former Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the entrance of a key Communist Party training center is not a sign of disrespect, a senior official said on Monday, after rumors of destabilizing party infighting.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2015

Asia should call a truce on the currency war

Asian policymakers need to understand that currency devaluations aren't a cure-all — and if they pursue trade-offs there's no avoiding their downsides.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 23, 2015

China wants great power, not responsibility

Beijing still believes money can buy the trust and soft power it craves, but as long as the government's pronouncements aren't seen as genuinely reliable, skepticism about the yuan will only grow.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / NOTES ON A SCORECARD
Aug 20, 2015

Fitness proving a continuing challenge for Nishikori

Kei Nishikori finally broke through against Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals of last week's Rogers Cup in Montreal. Nishikori routed the 14-time Grand Slam champion 6-2, 6-4 with an overpowering show to record his first win over Nadal in eight career meetings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Aug 19, 2015

Tale of Tuscan beekeeping and family breakdown has a sting

Italian drama "The Wonders" opens on Aug. 22 and it's well worth a look (or two or three).
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 18, 2015

Japan needs to break its addiction to exports

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs to recognize, as China already has, that Asia's old export model of economic growth no longer works.
Japan Times
TENNIS
Aug 18, 2015

Monfils accused of tanking in defeat

Ohio
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 31, 2015

China's Xi swats 'blood-sucking mosquitoes' as graft push goes small

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has likened his nationwide corruption purge to hunting tigers and swatting flies, is sending Communist Party graft-busters after an even more annoying pest: mosquitoes.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 25, 2015

Gunman in Louisiana theater rampage had history of mental illness

A 59-year-old man once hospitalized for psychiatric care was identified by authorities on Friday as the gunman who fatally shot two people in a rampage at a central Louisiana movie theater before killing himself as police closed in.
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 14, 2015

Debate over security bills masks clash of views on pacifist Constitution

Is Japan's Constitution a symbol of peace and respect for universal values or a reminder of humiliating defeat?
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Jul 14, 2015

Detained Chinese lawyer 'blabbered' about rule of law, human rights

China's state media last month accused Wang Yu, the country's most prominent female human rights lawyer, of "blabbering about the rule of law and human rights."
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 9, 2015

Repairing Japan-China ties

Are the domestic politics of Japan and China antithetical to continued peace between Asia's leading powers?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 8, 2015

China stocks nosedive as regulator warns of 'panic'

Chinese stocks dived on Wednesday, as the country's securities regulator warned investors were in the grip of "panic sentiment" and the market showed signs of freezing up as companies scrambled to escape the rout by having their shares suspended.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 1, 2015

Horror of 'Child 44' is bogged down by Soviet era bureaucracy

The recurring line in "Child 44" is, "there is no murder in paradise." It's a reflection of the political image projected in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era — these were a paradisal states, free from Western ills like poverty and crime, and there was nothing more to say about it. But the backdrop...
BUSINESS
Jun 28, 2015

57 countries set to sign on to China-backed investment bank AIIB

One of China's biggest foreign policy successes ever will take shape Monday when delegates from 57 countries sign an agreement on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2015

Hard questions for candidate Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's reticence is drowning out her message, which is that she is the cure for the many ailments that afflict America during a second Democratic presidential term.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 24, 2015

Turkey's master of slow-boil cinema keeps his characters simmering with tension in 'Winter Sleep'

This may seem an odd form of praise, but Nuri Bilge Ceylan does boredom awfully well. The Turkish director's last film, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (2011), was a police procedural that had been denuded of the drama you'd normally expect from the genre. Yet as its protagonists trudged fruitlessly from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 23, 2015

Young British directors take Tokyo by storm — but why?

This year it's quite noticeable how many non-Japanese are directing plays in Tokyo — not frequent and famed visitors such as David Leveaux, Robert Lepage and Simon McBurney, but relative unknowns here making their debuts at two leading large commercial theaters that almost always feature Japanese dramatists....
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jun 23, 2015

U.S. and China to seek patch of common ground as key talks begin

The U.S. and China will have no trouble filling the agenda as they meet this week for their seventh Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The challenge will be finding topics on which they can agree.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2015

What attracts people to white supremacy?

Supremacists offer disaffected whites someone to love and someone to hate, along with an assurance that the problem isn't in you, but in 'them.'
SOCCER
Jun 22, 2015

Report: Maradona to run for FIFA president

Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona has decided to stand as a candidate for the FIFA presidency to replace Sepp Blatter, Uruguayan journalist and author Victor Hugo Morales has said.
EDITORIALS
Jun 12, 2015

Erdogan rebuked — for now

Last weekend's elections in Turkey dealt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a stunning setback and herald a period of instability in Turkish politics.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 9, 2015

Irritated with Myanmar, China to woo opposition leader Suu Kyi

Chinese leaders will woo Myanmar's opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on her first visit to the country, a snub for the quasi-military government whose fighting with rebels along China's border has angered Beijing.

Longform

People in cities across Japan will pop into their local convenience store for any number of products they believe will help them with a night of drinking.
Hangover cures are everywhere in Japan — but do they work?