Tag: Japan

At Camp David Summit, Japan, South Korea and U.S. Present a United Front

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President Biden plans to cement a newly fortified three-way alliance with Japan and South Korea during a landmark summit at Camp David on Friday, bridging generations of friction between the two Asian powers to forge mutual security arrangements in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Biden will host Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the presidential retreat in Maryland, the first time he has invited foreign leaders there and the first time the leaders of the three countries will…

US promises ‘new era’ as Biden prepares to host first summit with Japan and South Korea

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The US has promised to usher in a “new era” in relations with its most important allies in Asia, as the region struggles to address the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. Joe Biden is expected to take advantage of a recent thaw in ties between Japan and South Korea – home to tens of thousands of US troops – to announce new collaborations on missile defence and technology, when he meets the countries’ leaders on Friday. Biden will host the South Korean president,…

Why Cash Is an Appropriate Gift at Asian Weddings

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When I received a wedding invitation from my friends Jiyeon Kim and Olof Norlander this year, I knew exactly where I would pick up their wedding present: the bank. The two had already married in Uppsala, Sweden, where they live, but Ms. Kim’s father wanted the newlyweds to have a second ceremony in Changwon, South Korea, where he had spent years attending the weddings of his friends’ and colleagues’ children. As is tradition, he gave the marrying couples envelopes of cash known in Korean as chug-ui-geum, or congratulatory money. Having…

Seiichi Morimura, 90, Who Exposed Japanese Wartime Atrocities, Dies

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Seiichi Morimura, who wrote a searing exposé of the Japanese Army’s secret biological warfare program in occupied China, describing how it forcibly infected thousands of prisoners with deadly pathogens, died on July 24 in Tokyo. He was 90. The announcement of his death by his publisher, Kadokawa, was cited in Japanese media. Mr. Morimura detailed the atrocities committed by the Japanese program — called Unit 731 — in a widely sold book, “Akuma no Hoshoku,” or “The Devil’s Gluttony” (1981). Among the horrors he described were vivisections performed without anesthesia…

Japan Defense White Paper Affirms Stronger Military Strategy

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China is the “greatest strategic challenge.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a “serious violation of international law.” North Korea is an “imminent threat.” And Japan needs to “fundamentally” strengthen its military and work more closely with countries like South Korea to preserve regional stability. The tough assessment comes from Japan’s annual defense white paper, approved by the cabinet office Friday amid growing security concerns that have pushed Tokyo to rethink its decades-long commitment to pacifism. The document, which borrows much of its language from the national security strategy released in…

What Japan’s Economy Can Tell Us About China

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I hope that at least some of my readers are too young to remember this, but in the early 1990s many Americans — especially pundits, but also business leaders and a fair share of the general public — were obsessed with the rise of Japan. Two of the best-selling books of 1992 were Michael Crichton’s novel “Rising Sun,” about what he imagined to be the growing, sinister influence of Japanese corporations, and Lester Thurow’s “Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America.” It’s easy to forget…

Brutal heat and heavy rain: a week of extreme weather

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52.2C in China A remote township in the north-western region of Xinjiang set a Chinese record of 52.2C (125.9F) on Sunday – in a country that was battling -50C weather six months ago. Sanbao is in the Turpan Depression, an arid basin of sand dunes and dried-up lakes where 50.3C was recorded in 2015. Beijing topped its record for high-temperature days in a year on Tuesday, with 27 days above 35C. The temperature in its southern suburbs soared even higher on Wednesday to 36.3C. 53.3C in the US Temperatures at…

From Kawasaki to Phoenix: tracking a day of extreme heat around the world

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20 July 2023 10.30am: Kawasaki, Japan Shota Nagasaki, 30, a builder laying concrete I’ve been doing this work for 12 years – since I left high school – and it’s got hotter even over that time. This year is kind of crazy. I mean, there are years that are not so hot, but over time the temperatures are rising. I don’t live nearby the work site so I picked the truck from the company as usual and drove here; with the air conditioning on of course. But I don’t like…

Nato appears to shelve plans to open Japan liaison office in Tokyo

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Nato appears to have shelved plans to open a liaison office in Tokyo, a proposal that had been discussed as part of the western military alliance’s plans to deepen cooperation with partners in the Asia-Pacific but which was strongly opposed by China. The idea to open an office was first discussed after Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, visited Japan earlier this year. It reportedly involved opening a civilian office in Tokyo in 2024, as a means of facilitating Nato’s dialogues in the Asia-Pacific. It was expected progress would be made…

UN report on Japan’s Fukushima water plans fails to placate opponents

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The publication this week of the UN nuclear watchdog’s positive assessment of Japanese plans to pump more than 1m tonnes of water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean has failed to placate opponents. China is fiercely opposed to the plans, despite a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) backing the scheme, while the support of the government of South Korea has failed to quell widespread public opposition to the idea in the country. The government in Seoul said on Friday that it “respected…