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David McNeill

David McNeill is a Tokyo-based writer from Ireland. He writes for several international publications and teaches political science at Sophia University. His new co-authored book is "Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster."

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP

Dec 3, 2006

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Japan’s expat rebel with many causes blends music and a wider world view

Former Japanese pop heart-throb and musical pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto talks about music, the state of the planet — and why he still reluctantly lives in New York City.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 12, 2006

Telling another side of the story

James Bradley wrote the book “Flags of Our Fathers,” on which one of Clint Eastwood’s new films is based. “Flags” tells the true story of what is arguably the most famous photo in warfare, taken as his father and five other marines raised the Stars and Stripes on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima in 1945.

Japan Times

LIFE

Aug 13, 2006

His Emperor’s reluctant warrior

Samurai-born and steeled in Japan’s harsh military culture, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had lived five years in North America but was largely unknown to Washington’s leaders when he was ordered to defend Iwo Jima “at all costs.” The U.S. would pay dearly for underestimating him.

Japan Times

LIFE

Aug 13, 2006

Iwo Jima: ‘A futile battle’ fought without surrender

August 15 is the 61st anniversary of Emperor Hirohito’s capitulation speech that ended World War II. Yet even in a world assailed ever since with ghastly images of conflicts, few rank with the ferocity both sides showed in the battle for a remote Pacific islet in the spring of 1945. That islet’s name...

Japan Times

LIFE

Aug 13, 2006

‘Even the dead were being forced to fight’

Satoru Omagari was a 23-year-old mechanic and a sub-lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force when he was ordered to the defense of Iwo Jima in 1944. Before he was drafted into the military he was a university student. Here, published for the first time in English, are some of his horrific recollections...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Aug 8, 2006

Japan media focus blurred on big issues

All the pain of the tragedy that has befallen their family is etched in the crumpled faces of Shigeru and Sakie Yokota.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

May 30, 2006

Japan ready to battle ‘culinary imperialists’

Earlier this year I was commissioned by a British newspaper to research a Japanese company called Hakudai, which was reputed to be putting whale meat into dog food.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

May 9, 2006

Local fury at Hardy perennial

Last month, as they have every year for decades, a small crowd of people gathered under fat cherry blossoms in Tokyo’s Aoyama Park, carrying red lanterns, placards and peace symbols.

Japan Times

LIFE

Apr 23, 2006

Imelda Marcos: Still angry after all these years

The beautiful half of one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictatorships, Imelda Marcos has spent two decades fighting attempts to jail her and trace a reputed fortune of billions. On the 20th anniversary of the revolution that ousted her and Ferdinand Marcos from power in the Philippines, she talks...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Apr 18, 2006

Musical match for Japan Goliath

Tetsuo Tanaka has been protesting his dismissal from an electronics company for a quarter of a century. Now his struggle, one of the longest one-man campaigns in Japanese history, is to be the subject of a documentary

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Apr 11, 2006

Sick, desperate Japanese turn to booming Chinese organ trade

When Kenichiro Hokamura’s kidneys failed, he spent four years on dialysis before going online to check out rumors of organs for sale.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Mar 21, 2006

The doomsday doctor

Japan is officially shrinking. Last October’s census found 19,000 fewer Japanese than the previous year; the first time, barring the catastrophic year of 1945 that the population has dropped since censuses began in 1920.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Feb 14, 2006

Enemy of the state

Is Toshiyuki Obora a threat to society? The Japanese state certainly seems to think so. The police arrested the 47-year-old elementary school worker and held him in detention for 75 days.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Jan 31, 2006

Hospital death exposes ‘tip of malpractice iceberg’

Loyd Cummings tried to ignore his headache when it began on Aug. 7, 2003. But the electronic technician, who was working in Japan on U.S. Navy radars, eventually collapsed from an aneurysm -- a bulge in a vein in his head.

Features

Dec 11, 2005

The ‘undigested other’: Koreans in Japan

Few parents would voluntarily send a son to live in North Korea; Kongsun Yang sent all three of his. In the early 1970s, Yang waved goodbye to his young Osaka-born boys, who later married and started families in Pyongyang. Poor and unhappy, the sons survive today only thanks to support from their parents...

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Nov 1, 2005

After nearly a decade of stalling and prevarication over the replacement of Futenma Air Station in Okinawa, a solution has finally emerged from the dusty halls of power in Kasumigaseki and Washington.

Japan Times

Features

Oct 9, 2005

Building a bridge to forgiveness

Takashi Nagase still breaks down when he remembers the young British man he helped torture. “I couldn’t bear his pain,” he says, choking back tears. “He was crying ‘Mother! Mother!’ And I thought: What would she feel if she could see her son like this? I still dream about it.”

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Sep 20, 2005

Brought to heel

The watchdog role of journalists in Japan is on trial in several cases with enormous implications for freedom of the press here

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Sep 6, 2005

The empire strikes back

Venerated by militarists and marinated in over a century of militarism and war, Yasukuni Shrine may well be Japan’s least friendly venue for a demonstration by pacifists.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

Aug 23, 2005

Earlier this year, journalists from the Okinawa Times and the Ryukyu Shimpo were stunned to learn that they would not be allowed to cover the return of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit from Iraq.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.

What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival

By Alex K.T. Martin

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