Despite Toyota claiming that the 86 will stick around for a while, everything points to the car being on its last legs. Fortunately, this is usually the point where a manufacturer starts rolling out special editions to retake the public’s interest. Normally, these cars aren’t much to write home about, but every so often one […]
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TOKYO — Carlos Ghosn, the embattled former Nissan chairman facing charges of financial wrongdoing, has tapped an attorney nicknamed “The Razor” who is famous in Japan for a string of high-profile acquittals. Mr. Ghosn said in a statement on Wednesday that he had named Junichiro Hironaka, a 73-year-old high-profile attorney in Japan, to his defense […]
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SEOUL, South Korea — Until recently, few had heard of PNR, a company in South Korea that turns sludge from steel mills into iron. Then a 94-year-old man named Lee Chun-shik tried to settle an old debt. Mr. Lee grew up during the Japanese occupation of Korea, and as a teenager, he was taken to […]
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Subaru’s sales in the United States effectively tripled in the past decade, making it the most important market for the brand by a wide margin. However, the automaker has had to expend quite a bit of energy in its home country of Japan to address recalls and regulatory scandals over the last few years. While the […]
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What smells like a “nightclub toilet,” evokes the feeling of “an underworld” and resembles a “working museum”? That would be the New York City subway, according to international readers who have experienced it. The subway runs around the clock and carries millions daily across a sprawling network. But when we asked riders of public transit […]
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TOKYO — As befits a director whose movies chart the untidiness of Japanese family life, the office of Hirokazu Kore-eda is cluttered with piles of papers, books, photographs, videocassettes and CDs. But it’s the dozens of Frankenstein dolls perched around the room that really capture his emotional point of view. “I love Frankenstein,” Mr. Kore-eda […]
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A fourth-generation Nissan 200SX surfaced previously in an edition of Buy/Drive/Burn, where its squared-off good looks went up against two other Japanese coupes from 1986. Today, we step back two generations and have a look at an 200SX from the Seventies. Maybe you can figure out if Datsun achieved what it was aiming for with […]
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PARIS — A lavish party at the Palace of Versailles to celebrate Carlos Ghosn’s second marriage and his new wife’s 50th birthday has come under scrutiny as Renault, the French automaker, questioned whether its former chairman and chief executive misused company funds to pay for the Marie Antoinette-themed bash. Mr. Ghosn personally benefited from “an […]
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TOKYO — The paperwork never ends for Yoshiko Nishimasa. There are the meticulous logs she must fill out every day, not to mention the pages of work she carefully checks and approves with a personalized stamp. She even keeps daily records of conversations, activities and meals. But none of this bookkeeping is for her job […]
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Image BEHIND THE BYLINE • MOTOKO RICH Feb. 1, 2019 The Reader Center has started a new series of short interviews, Behind the Byline, to introduce you to The Times’s journalists. Is there a reporter, photographer or editor you would like to get to know? Tell us in the comments section. Motoko Rich straddles two […]
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Depending who you ask, the November arrest of disgraced auto executive Carlos Ghosn was either swift justice or a coup d’etat — with some help from the Japanese government. Re-arrested in December and held ever since without bail, Ghosn faces breach of trust charges alleging the exec covered losses incurred through foreign exchanges with Nissan’s funds […]
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TOKYO — Carlos Ghosn, the embattled auto executive indicted on charges of financial wrongdoing, says he was the victim of “plot and treason” by other Nissan leaders who wanted to thwart his plans to bring the automaker closer to its alliance partners, Renault of France and Mitsubishi Motors of Japan. In an interview with Nikkei […]
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Alps Alpine has been working on an indoor navigation system that would enable a very precise location acquisition, good enough to let autonomous drones fly accurately and safely for monitoring missions, among other things. Indoor navigation is one of these technologies that have been promised but never delivered commercially to consumers, so anything that seems […]
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As cars become more packed with sensors, computers, and connectivity, the possibilities to enhance the driver’s experience expand exponentially. Alps Alpine looks at how future components and technologies can change the driver experience from end to end. Most people imagine that the driving experience starts when you get into the car, but Alps Alpine’s concept […]
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SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Bok-dong, a former sex slave for the Japanese military during World War II whose tireless campaigning helped bring international attention to the suffering that thousands of women like her endured, died on Monday in Seoul. She was 92. Ms. Kim had cancer. Yoon Mi-hyang, president of the Korean Council for […]
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Toshiba today unveiled a remote-controlled robot which it hopes will be able to probe inside one of the three damaged reactors at Japan’s ill-fated Fukushima nuclear power plant. The ultimate aim is to be able to grip chunks of the melted fuel, which is highly radioactive, with this robot. Some of you might be well […]
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Back in November, Japanese carrier NTT Docomo announced a $100 price cut for the iPhone XR on contract. Today, SoftBank has also announced a similar price cut for the handset. Being marketed as the “iPhone XR Happy Price Campaign,” the price cut will be applicable from January 30th. The Japanese carrier has reduced the price […]
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The iPhone XR represents Apple’s more affordable iPhone. However even at around $750, the iPhone XR is still not necessarily affordable, which some analysts believe could be the reason why iPhone sales aren’t doing as well, where the iPhone XS and XS Max are simply too expensive, but the iPhone XR isn’t particularly affordable either. […]
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Photo: Getty Japanese noodle company Nissin has pulled an ad egregiously whitewashing Haitian-Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka. In the animated ad, the tennis star—who has proudly and repeatedly claimed both sides of her mixed-race heritage—has essentially had her skin bleached of all its melanin. Osaka’s nose has also been narrowed, and her hair reduced to […]
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DAVOS, Switzerland — A month before President Trump is scheduled to meet for a second time with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan appealed to Mr. Trump to keep him in the loop as he seeks a disarmament deal with the North. Mr. Abe, speaking in an interview Wednesday at […]
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