Saudi Foreign Minister Al-Jubeir
Dr. Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Foreign Minister, addresses Japanese journalists in Tokyo on September 2, 2016. Topics included diplomatic issues with Syria and Iran.
Dr. Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Foreign Minister, addresses Japanese journalists in Tokyo on September 2, 2016. Topics included diplomatic issues with Syria and Iran.
The ruling party makes belated and unconvincing efforts to legislate against the rise of hate speech.
The issue of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s fringe views on wartime history has become a global topic whenever contemporary Japanese diplomacy is discussed, but the problem of selective, self-serving narratives of the past has also infected his coalition partner, Komeito.
The Japanese economy has emerged from recession, helped along by low oil prices and a surging stock market. But at a household level optimism remains elusive.
The Nikkei, Japan’s most important stock index, hit a 15-year high last Friday with closing figures above the 19,000 mark. The advance of the stock market, which is largely owed to multinationals operating overseas profiting from Abenomics’ policy of monetary easing, along with a stable increase in demand from the United States, is a welcome success for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose hesitance to implement or clearly define the crucial “third arrow” of his economic policy has been criticized by politicians and economists alike.
The history of Japanese war crimes committed during the Pacific War, and who should take responsibility for them, is a very involved one. It took numerous expert historians and years of research to come to the conclusion that Japan was guilty of abducting Korean and Chinese women to use them as prostitutes for the Japanese Imperial Army: the so-called comfort women issue.
There’s a whole lotta shaking going on in Tokyo.
The script has all the right drama: Two former Japanese prime ministers, deeply disappointed by their bungling successors, rise from comfortable retirement to do political battle once more. And, yes, there is good cause too.
Reporters Without Borders, an organization founded in Montpellier, France, in 1985 for the purpose of preventing attacks on press freedom worldwide, has issued the following statement on the Designated Secrets Bill, just passed by the House of Representatives and now under consideration in the House of Councillors.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ) has spoken out in opposition to the “Designated Secrets Bill” which is now under examination in the House of Representatives. The following statement has been released by FCCJ President Lucy Birmingham to the public, the media, and all of the major political parties, on November 11, 2013.