It’s difficult for me to root for Japan teams in general. It’s not an issue of nationality. It’s a matter of how Japan as a society approaches international sports; we take all the fun out of it.
Well over a year since its closing ceremony, the Tokyo Olympics continue to find a place among Japan’s newspaper headlines, this time in connection with a widening bribery scandal which has touched even a former prime minister.
Since 2008, I have always devoted my end-year columns to counting down the Top Ten human rights issues as they pertain to Non-Japanese residents of Japan. This year I’m moving this feature to the Shingetsu News Agency.
Japan’s decision to exclude most foreigners, including many foreign residents, from entering or reentering the national borders during the Covid pandemic has had a human and reputational cost which the mainstream media has tended to either ignore or to downplay.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now past. This is a postmortem.
Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz is being revered as the Philippines’ first Olympic gold medalist, but it has only been two years since she found her name “red-tagged,” or blacklisted, by the Duterte regime.
For most of the world, the Olympic Games serve as a point for celebration and national unity. This time, however, many Japanese are gripped by worries about how the Games may serve to intensify the pandemic, and the fact that some of these athletes are promoting anti-vaccination ideology only deepens these concerns.
Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori represents the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of June 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the first half of January 2020.
