Changhua is a county of contradictions. It’s Taiwan’s largest by population but doesn’t have a single department store. It’s full of farms and conservative values, and will also be home to Taiwan’s only legal red-light district if local councilors get their way.
This SNA Speakeasy features Nithin Coca on the theme of “China, Japan, and Indonesian Railways.”
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of March 2020.
There’s an oft-used expression in Japanese: sekinin tenka. Best translated as “passing the buck,” it’s a reflex of dodging blame for one’s own actions by transferring responsibility to others. For too long, Japan has done so on the world stage with impunity—even when it affects the world adversely.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of November 2019.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the second half of September 2019.
The Indonesian coal mining conglomerate Adaro Energy, which is allied with the Japanese companies J-Power, Itochu, as well as a number of public and private Japanese banks, has been avoiding local taxes for more than a decade, depriving the Indonesian government of about US$125 million in income from 2009 to 2017, and has even been accused of provoking human rights abuses in the country.
The World Health Organization estimates that there will be a shortage of 18 million healthcare workers by 2030. This equates to a 20% gap in the global capacity to provide healthcare services. Japan, which is already grappling with an aging society and its attendant problems, is at the forefront of this crisis.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the first half of July 2019.
In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono made the most full-throated admission and apology acknowledging that Japan had coerced women across Asia into being sex slaves—euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women”—for the Japanese military during the Pacific War. More recently, however, conservative politicians such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura have engaged in a campaign that is less about carving out a path toward reconciliation than to overwrite memories of an unsavory past.
