Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
On the afternoon of October 16 last year a brawl erupted between two groups of gangsters in a restaurant on the 58th floor of the Sunshine 60 high-rise building in Ikebukuro, a central neighbourhood of Tokyo. A group of around 70 people crashed a private party and fighting broke out, resulting (...)
The eyes of the world turned briefly to Japan on July 8, 2022, following the lethal shooting of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker and former prime minister Shinzo Abe while he was campaigning in the ancient city of Nara. Reactions of shock, disbelief, and anger at what at first appeared (...)
About six months have passed since Japan’s late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot. On 28 December last year, the office of Abe was closed. It looked like the end of the longest post-war disturbing nationalism and populist demagogy. The chairperson of the Abe support group said:
“The (...)
In May last year 28 German intellectuals published an open letter in the feminist journal Emma calling on Chancellor Gerhard Scholz to refrain from sending heavy weapons to Ukraine, and to help negotiate a ceasefire in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The letter expressed anti-war convictions dear to (...)
In the early decades of the 20th century, people grappled with the sounds modernity wrought. Some heard only noise. Others found great beauty.
Cash machines, elevators and escalators that talk. Jingles in department stores, train stations, supermarkets and shopping arcades. Loud speaker (...)
US welcomes doubling of military spending but critics express unease over abandoning seven decades of pacifism
Japan has approved its biggest military buildup since the second world war, warning that China poses the “greatest strategic challenge ever” and outlining plans to develop a (...)
On November 12, Tokyo Trans March 2022 and related events, organized by Trans Gender Japan (TGJP) , were held to mark Transgender Awareness Week which runs November 13 to 19. This year’s Trans March was the second in Japan. In recent years, Trans March has also been held in Japan’s neighboring (...)
Delivery workers in Japan are fed up with Amazon Japan’s practices that make accidents and injuries more likely by increasing delivery volume and speed. They are now organising unions to take on Amazon. Here is their story.
In his 40s, Susumu Adachi (not his real name) has been delivering for (...)
President Vladimir Putin
Russian Federation
In a televised address to the Russian people on September 21, you threatened the member states of NATO with the use of nuclear weapons, saying, “When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will use all the means at our disposal… (...)
Japan to Stop Training Myanmar Military Officers
Japan’s Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday that it will suspend the training of Myanmar military officers from next year.
The decision to stop accepting Myanmar military personnel as students follows the junta’s execution of four (...)
Kohei Saito’s book Capital in the Anthropocene has become an unlikely hit among young people and is about to be translated into English
The climate crisis will spiral out of control unless the world applies “emergency brakes” to capitalism and devises a “new way of living”, according to a (...)
Tokyo high court rules that child born after woman’s legal gender change should not be recognised as her daughter
A Japanese court has ruled that a child born after a transgender woman went through her surgical and legal transition should not be recognised legally as her child, according to (...)
The latest military exercise exacerbates the patriarchal and racialized defense cooperation between Washington and Tokyo.
In its Article 9, the Japanese constitution promulgated in 1946 under the U.S. post-war occupation renounces war as a means of resolving international disputes and (...)
A scholar of Japanese religion explains the connections that Japan’s political parties have with several religious groups and how religion is tied in with the legacy of Shinzo Abe.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s alleged shooter, Tetsuya Yamagami, told the police that he was (...)
On July 8, Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was killed by a man who told police that he had a grudge against a “certain religious group”, the Unification Church. This event incident revealed a facet of Abe’s past as a right-wing nationalist that has never been told in Japan.
On July 8, (...)
As efforts to revive him faltered in the crucial hours after he was shot by a gunman last Friday, the world began taking stock of the sizable influence that former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe wielded in many areas of public life. Even as he resigned in 2020 for health reasons, after (...)
Shinzo Abe’s murder is the latest political attack in Japan, a country which has strict gun laws.
Our reaction upon hearing the news of the shooting of former prime minister Shinzo Abe was one of shock and incredulity in equal measure. What followed was a frenzy of trying to piece news reports (...)
Seventy-five years ago today, Japan adopted a constitution that ruled out ever using war as a tool of state policy. The country’s conservative leaders now want to ditch that commitment as they embrace the dangerous role of a militarized US client state.
Uniquely among the world’s constitutions, (...)
Covid-19 crisis that has spread worldwide since 2020 had various impacts on Japanese society. Under the crisis, the power of the Japanese left/centre-left parties weakened. On the other hand, the power of far-right parties and the right-wing opposition parties has increased. Under the (...)
In World War II, the Japanese Army forced women and girls into sexual slavery. With ‘Me too’ gaining momentum, it’s time to reckon with the past
On 23 January 2012, I sat in front of the Japanese Embassy in London, my skin and kimono coated entirely with a thick layer of bronze water-based (...)
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