Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
On August 21, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reported that a rare document listing the names and ranks of members of the Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious wartime Unit 731 (the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army) had been discovered in Tokyo. It (...)
The major capitalist economies of Europe and North America have been experiencing low rates of economic growth and population increase. Japan has been in that position since the 1990s, and its experience offers some important clues about what the future holds.
During the 1980s, Japan seemed (...)
Satoko Kishimoto was elected mayor of Suginami last June - the district’s first-ever female leader, fighting Japan’s sexist attitudes.
Satoko Kishimoto returned to her native Japan in April 2022. She was 47, and for 22 of those years, she had been in Europe, most of them spent working for (...)
Sakai, Yoshichi: Born in 1937. Entered Kyoto University in 1956. Joined in 1959 the Japanese Fourth International (FI) group – the Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL), being its full-timer from 1963 to 1987. FI-International Executive Committee (IEC) member in the 1970s and 1980s, and (...)
I participated in the student movement right after entering Kyoto University in April 1956, but up to that point I had never been a leftist boy, though I was somewhat fiercely independent and rebellious. The first leftist book I read was the “Communist Manifest”, but this was just after I (...)
For the LGBT Understanding Promotion Act, three drafts were submitted: the ruling party LDP/Komeito bill, the CDP/JCP/SD bill [former bipartisan proposal], and the JIP/DPP bill. The JIP/DPP version was eventually merged into the LDP/Komeito bill, and the four-party amendment was passed at the (...)
One of the largest LGBTQI pride festivals in Asia was back again in full following a three-year hiatus after the COVID-19 crisis. (Last year saw a limited return with the restricted number of participants and international travel restrictions. Some events were held online because of limitation (...)
We oppose the proposed revisions to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, which were passed by the House of Representatives on May 9 with the support of the Liberal Democratic Party, New Kōmeitō, Isshin, National Democratic Party of Japan, and others, on the grounds that the (...)
In Japan, part-time and temporary workers account for nearly 40% of the workforce but have historically been ignored by the country’s trade unions. This spring, 16 unions came together to demand a collective wage increase for nonregular workers.
The Spring Offensive, an annual campaign in (...)
March 11 marks 12 years since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster which released radioactive caesium-137 equal to that of 168 Hiroshima (...)
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: (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)
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 (...)
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