On the Record

by Robert Whiting (reprinted with permission) TOKYO — Over a recent early weekend, there were a series of threatening calls made in English and Japanese to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club…

ince then, the show has grown to offer an inclusive venue to comedians of all kinds, but especially to those who know what it's like to be treated as "the…

Nara, once the capital of Japan, is a city known for its greenery, rolling hills, ancient Buddhist temples, friendly residents, slow-paced, languid, and peaceful life. It’s the last place one…

This coming Sunday (May 15, starting 10am), sees a unique event at the Yokohama campus of Meiji Gakuin University and online via Zoom, called THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, marking the…

Any competent journalist here knows that the civil servant laws here (公務員法) and the State Secrets Law make it a crime for government officials to divulge confidential information to third…

"1. Write the truth by any means possible. 2. Protect your sources. 3. If you can't write the story, without protecting your sources, find new or different sources or drop…

Ishihara hated outspoken women and liberal men; he had no kind feelings for the US and refused to be enthralled or intimidated by western culture. Ishihara reserved his most acidic…

And now a Japanese movie is saying we could have been the perpetrators of the world's first nuclear bomb attack? That's an incredibly heavy load to process, and still more…

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases (Tokyo) reported the first finding of the highly infectious Lambda variant of COVID19 here to an international database three days before the Olympics Opening…

So ashamed. I feel good that I'm no longer performing at the Tokyo Olympic Opening Ceremony...Though I’ve been contributing to the Japanese music industry since 1995...They completely violate the Olympic…