Japan
Biden and Kishida to Bolster U.S.-Japan Alliance Amid China’s Growing Power
The littoral regiment will have battalion-size units, about 2,000 troops total, and have long-range fire abilities that can hit ships. Mr. Austin said the change would lead to a presence that is “more lethal, more agile, more capable.” How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff […]
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China Sends Ships and Planes Toward Taiwan Despite Rising Criticism
China sent more warships and aircraft into waters and airspace near Taiwan on Friday, defying international criticism of its military exercises and demonstrating the country’s confidence, as well as its growing appetite for confrontation. In addition to its muscle flexing, China also threw several diplomatic punches aimed at laying out the global cost of what […]
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The Japanese Author Behind ‘Bullet Train’ Is OK That the Film Isn’t So Japanese
SENDAI, Japan — Kotaro Isaka, one of Japan’s most popular crime thriller writers, is a self-described homebody. He rarely leaves Sendai, the city in northeast Japan where he lives, and many of his books are set there. Yet when his 2010 novel “Maria Beetle” was adapted into “Bullet Train,” a Hollywood action film starring Brad […]
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In Japan, Abe Suspect’s Grudge Against Unification Church Is a Familiar One
TOKYO — The day before Shinzo Abe was assassinated, Tetsuya Yamagami sent a letter saying that the Unification Church had ruined his life, “destroying my family and driving it into bankruptcy.” Mr. Yamagami’s mother had been a member of the church for over two decades, making prodigious donations over her family’s objections. “It’s no exaggeration […]
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Shinzo Abe’s Party Triumphs in Parliamentary Vote, Extending Legacy
TOKYO — Two days after Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down at a campaign stop on Friday, his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies swept to victory in a parliamentary election that gave them a chance to pursue Mr. Abe’s long-held ambition of revising Japan’s pacifist Constitution. It was the clearest sign […]
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Assassination of Shinzo Abe Shatters Image of Gun-Free Japan
The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a campaign rally in western Japan was especially hard to fathom because it involved a gun — a type of crime that is extremely rare in a country with some of the most stringent laws on buying and owning firearms. Gun violence is almost unheard-of in […]
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Shinzo Abe’s Influence Was Still Evident Long After He Left Office
WASHINGTON — In his record-breaking run as prime minister, Shinzo Abe never achieved his goal of revising Japan’s Constitution to transform his country into what the Japanese call a “normal nation,” able to employ its military to back up its national interests like any other. Nor did he restore Japan’s technological edge and economic prowess […]
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Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister, Dies at 67
Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, who made it his political mission to vanquish his country’s wartime ghosts but fell short of his ultimate goal of restoring Japan as a normalized military power, was assassinated on Friday in the city of Nara, Japan. He was 67. His death, from injuries sustained in a shooting […]
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The Lessons of Nothingness From Maverick Zen Monks
WASHINGTON — When the country heaves, when the stress levels spike, a little nothingness goes a long way. “Mind Over Matter: Zen in Medieval Japan,” at the Freer Gallery of Art (an arm of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art), is a show of ravishing absence: a stark and beautiful exhibition where form is […]
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