Interesting article from September 2009 and still relevant to today (2016)


The Japan Times recently covered the suspended sister city relationship between the coastal towns of Broome in Western Australia and Taiji, in Wakayama prefecture, Japan. Their ties date back at least 100 years to the pearling industry in Broome. At that time, Broome was the biggest pearling center in the world, and many Japanese worked there as divers. Diving deep below the surface was...

A whale and a calf being loaded aboard a factory ship, the Nisshin Maru. The sign above the slipway reads, "Legal research under the ICRW". Australia released this photo to challenge that claim.

Tony Press, University of Tasmania and Indi Hodgson-Johnston, University of Tasmania


Japan’s whaling fleet will leave port today to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean as part of its new scientific program, NEWREP-A.

Under the...

Naohiko Omata, University of Oxford

After an online outcry, a Japanese manga artist has been forced to take down a rendering of a Syrian refugee girl she posted on Facebook. Based on a photo of a real girl, the cartoon came with a caption sarcastically suggesting the girl was grasping for refugee status to grab herself a cushy, luxurious existence in an affluent host nation.

This may seem like par-for-the-course anti-refugee sentiment, the kind of casual...