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![]() The Asahi ShimbunThe Asahi Shimbun |
Two weeks have passed since Prime Minister Fumio Kishida effectively announced his resignation by saying he will not seek re-election as president of...
Atsushi Suzuki, who is 59 and runs a farm in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, was recalling a day about 30 years ago when a woman called on him out of...
The lingering evening glow turned the sky into a magnificent color gradient, dyeing the Arc de Triomphe a dark red. The images of the Opening Ceremony...
For reasons that have not been clearly explained, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike is once again ignoring a dark chapter in Japan’s history. She should...
A U.S. historian and political scientist warns that the United States and its allies may have less than a decade to keep China from triggering a...
Workers have started the challenging task of removing melted nuclear fuel debris at the ruined Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, operated by Tokyo...
A poem by Kazue Shinkawa, who died on Aug. 10 at age 95, goes to the effect: "Sometimes I feel crushed by anxiety. ... I can't help pacing aimlessly...
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida touted dramatically strengthening the nation's defense capabilities under his watch at his news conference announcing...
Amid the escalation of Chinese military activities in Japan’s vicinity, a Chinese military aircraft was confirmed to have intruded into Japanese...
When starting to learn French, the first stumbling block is dealing with the fact that nouns can be masculine or feminine in gender, and that the...
Even if they are fully integrated into their local communities, foreign nationals living in Japan still often face barriers to getting public service...
Exactly 80 years ago, on Aug. 27, 9-year-old Keiko Taira was on her sixth day of being adrift on a raft at sea, having survived a shipwreck. There had...
I met a refugee from Afghanistan in October 2001. After his home in Kabul, the nation’s capital, was destroyed in a U.S. military attack, he fled...
Work is under way to revise a business rehabilitation plan for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). The regional utility, which caused the 2011 disaster...
The rate of male employees taking paternity leave in Japan reached 30 percent last fiscal year for the first time, and there are signs of a further...
I was in elementary school when I became interested in school songs. It was the summer of 1976, and the school song of Oberlin Senior High School was...
She was six months pregnant. Her two toddlers, pressed tightly to her sides, were shivering in the cold. Couched down inside a train station in Tokyo,...
A Japanese executive of the Chinese unit of major drugmaker Astellas Pharma Inc. who has been detained in China on suspicion of espionage since March...
The leadership elections for Japan's first and second largest parties in the Diet are set to be held concurrently. An election for the Lower House,...
"Kodokushi" (literally, "lonely death") is an expression that came into widespread use when the Japanese population began to age rapidly in the 1990s....
It has been about one month since I first saw a sign in the rice aisle of my local supermarket in Tokyo that said, “The rice supply is unstable....
It has been 10 months since the current Israel-Hamas war began. We demand that the belligerents and mediators alike do their utmost to bring about a...
The ongoing assessment of areas to host a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants raises many questions...
“I never knew there’d be so many of them” was my first thought when I saw an array of mug shots of the Liberal Democratic Party members who are...
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe succeeded in winning over a wide range of supporters with his multifaceted political approach, according to a media...
It’s unbearably hot inside a mosquito net. In an essay from the late Meiji Era (1868-1912), the physicist Torahiko Terada (1878-1935) grumbled about...
We will never again allow ourselves to suffer the horrors of war. In the summer of 1945, 79 years ago, this sentiment resonated widely among the...
After a week of uneasiness following the Japan Meteorological Agency’s first-ever Nankai Trough advisory, which called for caution against a...
Liu Yanzi, 58, who lives in Osaka, published a book in Japan in May to mark the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. Titled...
“I’ll let you go for today” is the famous punch line of a popular slapstick “manzai” comedy act. It is intoned with the cool nonchalance of...
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s decision to resign by not running in the ruling party’s leadership election was probably more or less expected by...
Famed actor Hisaya Morishige (1913-2009) worked at a broadcasting station in Xinjing in the former Manchuria during World War II. When Japan’s...
Owl is "fukuro" in Japanese. Where did this word originate? There appear to be several theories. One is that its feathers are "puffed out," or...
There was a whooshing sound of something falling from the sky. Then came a deafening boom, according to a witness. On Aug. 13, exactly 20 years ago, a...
Was that ball in or out? Was there a foul on the play? Was the martial artist thrown by the opponent or did the athlete manage to turn the situation...
Annual ceremonies held in August in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to mark the 1945 atomic bombings of those cities are occasions to mourn the victims, recall...
In 1854, one year after the first visit to Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy, a Russian frigate named Diana anchored off Shimoda on...
After playwright and author Hisashi Inoue (1934-2010) completed “Chichi to Kuraseba” (Living with father), he resolved to someday write a play...
Suspicion is mounting that Hyogo Governor Motohiko Saito may have unfairly punished a prefectural government employee who charged him with power...
Children are geniuses at play. A crosswalk becomes a suspension bridge in the valley. Overstepping any of the crosswalk’s painted white lines means...
The Liberal Democratic Party has started preparations for its presidential election in September. The LDP’s leadership race marks a crossroads at...
Stock traders talk about "tatsumi tenjo" (literally, "dragon and snake ceiling"). According to the Chinese zodiac, the dragon and the snake soar into...
Against the backdrop of changes in both Japanese and U.S. monetary policies, the financial market remains in turmoil. On Aug. 5, Japan’s benchmark...
Jump back to 1990 for a moment. Japan’s falling birthrate is a long-familiar issue, but the country was in shock when the government initially...
Shockingly, it is estimated that 9,583 “active” nuclear warheads are ready to be used or deployed at any moment around the world. Seventy-nine...
“Chichi to Kuraseba” (Living with father) is a play by Hisashi Inoue (1934-2010) about a man who died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but comes...
People often imbue their names with what they take pride in. This may have been the case with a village named Ohinata-mura (Ohinata literally means a...
You cannot enjoy and dedicate yourself to sports unless you have proper physical and mental health. The rules and regulations of school sports should...
A national academic achievement survey was recently held in which 1.86 million sixth graders and third-year junior high school students across the...
On the third day of the Paris Olympics, Indonesian judoka Maryam Maharani, 24, executed a clean throw against her Mozambican opponent, 45 seconds into...