How Japan’s wartime history haunts its popular culture
In two new blockbusters – Godzilla Minus One and The Boy and the Heron – Japanese filmmakers grapple with atomic…
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Is China’s economy turning Japanese?
The country’s economic travails have echoes in history.
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Why G7 climate leadership is on the line in Japan
Fossil fuel use could decline as soon as next year, but G7 proposals risk slowing the green transition.
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The Bank of Japan’s new governor has the hardest job in economics
Ueda Kazuo faces a more extreme version of the challenge facing the UK: the end of cheap money in a…
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Asia’s dangerous new arms race
Russia’s war and China’s military build-up are provoking an unprecedented change in Japan’s approach to its defence.
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The global ageing crisis is becoming unignorable
As Japan’s prime minister Kishida Fumio has warned, low birth rates will revolutionise society – and it is a worldwide…
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What is the meaning of North Korea’s nuclear opportunism?
With the West distracted by the war in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un may have decided now is the time to…
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The assassination of Abe Shinzo
Japan’s former prime minister will be remembered as its most consequential modern leader.
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Shinzo Abe: The political legacy of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister
On 8 July, Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot during a campaign speech at an event in the…
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Biden tours Asia to reassure allies he is still focused on China
The US president will visit South Korea and Japan to reaffirm America’s regional policy in Asia.
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With Russia tied down in Ukraine, other frozen conflicts are thawing
From the Caucasus to the western Pacific, Russia’s opponents are eyeing their chances of redressing the balance of power.
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“Picturing the Invisible”: Ten years on from the Fukushima disaster
A new exhibition provides a photographic portrait of communities living with radiation and trauma a decade after the Japanese earthquake,…
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Japan out of sync with Cop26 coal phase-out push
While 23 countries signed on in Glasgow to end coal, Japan is finding it hard to break its addiction to…
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Japan’s new prime minister enjoys the upper hand as elections loom
The omens are good for Fumio Kishida but the newly united opposition is determined to deny him an easy ride.
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Who is Japan’s new prime minister, Fumio Kishida?
The leader has been described as a moderate in a Liberal Democratic Party dominated by its right wing.
Fumio Kishida: Why Japan’s new prime minister has his work cut out
He’s loved by his party’s old guard, but Fumio Kishida wants to prove he’s different from his predecessors. Are voters…
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Yukio Mishima’s dark fantasies of imperial Japan
Before Mishima committed ritual suicide on 25 November 1970, he delivered a speech from a balcony in the garrison in…
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Shinzo Abe and the rise of Japanese nationalism
As a new emperor takes the throne, prime minister Abe is consolidating his ultranationalist “beautiful Japan” project. But can he overcome…
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