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JAPAN
Jun 21, 2011

Justice Ministry plans to ditch refugee role

The parliamentary secretary of the Justice Ministry said Monday that the Democratic Party of Japan-led government will aim to establish a new organization to deal specifically with refugee issues and eliminate that function from the ministry.
JAPAN / Q&A
Jun 12, 2011

Track record of coalition plans not always grand

Amid the chaos breaking out in Nagata-cho since Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced his intention to resign, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan is once again seeking to form a grand coalition with its long-time conservative foe, the Liberal Democratic Party.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 5, 2011

Amon Miyamoto: Globe-trotting dramatist seeks new horizons

Fifty-three years ago, Amon Miyamoto was born into a world in which he grew up listening to spirited exchanges between leading lights from the stage and showbiz in his father's coffee shop across from the modern-leaning Shinbashi Enbujo outpost of the venerable Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo's smart Ginza...
Reader Mail
May 26, 2011

Compassionate aid has strings

William Twaddell's May 19 letter, "Okinawa issue and aid don't mix," criticizes my May 8 letter ("Better use of the U.S. Marines"), saying that the issue of where to locate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa Prefecture, should not be conflated with the marines' relief operations after the...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 15, 2011

Media starting to tally the economic effects of foreigner flight

News reports immediately following the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant accident of panicked foreign residents lining up for the first flight home — in many cases advised to flee by their own governments — had the initial result of helping to feed the sense of angst among Japanese that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 25, 2011

Asian art challenges Western museums' way of thinking

Art from Asia has enjoyed increased global interest in the past few decades, which has brought major changes to the way in which the art scene now views this hitherto neglected region. In a special symposium, "How is the World Engaging with Contemporary Asian Art?," at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo on...
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2011

Economy is key to security

SINGAPORE — Gemba Koichiro, the minister tasked with devising ways to revive Japan's sagging international influence, recently drew a link between the economic power of a nation and the readiness of other countries to challenge its security interests.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2011

Long honeymoon over for Hashimoto

OSAKA — Three years into his first term, Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto continues to enjoy some of the highest ratings of any politician, with media polls showing 70 to 80 percent of the electorate approve of his job performance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 25, 2011

Waiting for the WikiLeak dam to break

Like a giant dose of salts to a bloated and constipated patient, "Cablegate" has scoured its way through the post-9/11 United States empire, exposing its internal workings to merciless scrutiny: In Iraq, U.S. forces and their Iraqi subordinates kill civilians and journalists while their commanders turn...
EDITORIALS
Jan 14, 2011

Social welfare unraveling

Personal consumption, which accounts for more than half the nation's gross domestic product and is an important locomotive of the economy, has been sluggish. Short-term factors behind the sluggish consumption are the termination of subsidies for the purchase of eco-friendly cars and the scaling down...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 28, 2010

It's time Japan shook off its past and stopped toadying to the U.S.

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."
COMMUNITY
Nov 6, 2010

Canadian loves keeping Fukuoka informed

Nick Szasz, a native of Toronto, has published the free bilingual magazine Fukuoka Now since 1998. He says he launched the publication out of love for the biggest city in Kyushu and his sense of mission to provide information for non-Japanese living in the area.
COMMENTARY
Oct 17, 2010

Time to let the neighbors deal with the North Korean problem

PARIS — North Korea has officially unveiled the youngest son and heir apparent of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. Yet again the impoverished dictatorship has captured the world's attention. But the United States should leave the problem of dealing with Pyongyang to the North's neighbors. The so-called Democratic...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2010

Don't count Thai Prime Minister Abhisit out

BANGKOK — For a man who has faced seemingly endless efforts to oust him by both parliamentary ballot and by bullet, by the slippery devious machinations that are meat and drink to Thai politicians and by street protesters who took over the commercial heart of Bangkok for more than two months, Prime...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 27, 2010

Deals with Bangladesh to help India burnish South Asian image

LONDON — India and Bangladesh have reportedly agreed in principle to swap each other's enclaves that are spread along the border areas and re-demarcate 6.1 kilometers of boundary — in effect resolving an issue that has bedeviled Indo-Bangladesh ties since independence.
EDITORIALS
Sep 23, 2010

Arrest of a public prosecutor

On Sept. 10 the Osaka District Court acquitted Ms. Atsuko Muraki, a former welfare ministry's bureau chief, of instructing her subordinate, Mr. Tsutomu Kamimura, to fabricate and issue a certificate that recognizes an organization as a group for the disabled, thus enabling it to use a postage discount...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2010

Dim outlook for Japan's muddled leadership

OSAKA — Having seen a new prime minister every year for five consecutive years, Japan has just narrowly avoided having its third in 2010. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been elected president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), surviving a challenge from Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ's most potent...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 7, 2010

U.S. Navy 'Friendship Festival' draws line at the French

Could it be that the Friendship Day festivals held at the U.S. Navy Negishi Housing Base are not as friendly as the name suggests?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 3, 2010

Dying to work: Japan Inc.'s foreign trainees

"The Industrial Trainees and Technical Interns program often fuels demand for exploitative cheap labor under conditions that constitute violations of the right to physical and mental health, physical integrity, freedom of expression and movement of foreign trainees and interns, and that in some cases...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2010

Lebanon's Hezbollah finds itself in a corner

BEIRUT — The future of Hezbollah, Lebanon's powerful Shiite political and paramilitary organization, has never looked more uncertain. Indeed, given rising tension with Israel and possible indictments of its operatives by the international tribunal investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2010

America's man from Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer, U.S. ambassador to Japan (1961-66), set the bar very high for all of his successors. Born and raised in Japan by missionary parents, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy called him into diplomatic service, he was already a prominent scholar who pioneered Japanese studies in the U.S....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 15, 2010

A light of hope for abused children

In the dock, Katsuyuki Okuno cut a strange figure as he listened baby-faced, chubby, graying, frightened and seemingly unable to understand what he had done.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 27, 2010

The long-range vision of Monocle

For a jet-setting, award-winning media, design and branding entrepreneur, Tyler Brûlé is pretty accessible. When he called last week, a few days before the opening of his highly anticipated Monocle Shop Tokyo within the new Francfranc Village building in Aoyama, he was at the site making last-minute...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 17, 2010

Political hazards follow the dissing of bureaucrats

Nearly eight months have passed since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power on a slogan of shifting decision-making power and processes from bureaucrats to elected politicians with a view to reducing or eliminating excessive reliance on bureaucrats. As a result of this shift, three distinctly different...
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2010

Middle East peace by any means available

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Something is happening with the Middle East conflict. A breakthrough appears at hand, though all the parties still seem to be clinging to their traditional positions.

Longform

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