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Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place. The case concerns a 43-year-old ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Guitarist Dustin Wong hesitates for a split second. It’s a pause that would go unnoticed during most other sets, but Wong has spent the last 40 minutes seemingly in a trance while playing guitar and looping the notes via an array of pedals in ...
Tim Duncan saves the day as the Spurs hold off the Grizzlies in overtime
From July 18-26, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) will sponsor the 2nd International Refugee Film Festival in Japan. The program of 30 movies over nine days at four theaters includes feature and documentary films that focus on the lives, trials and triumphs ...
Sadako Ogata was the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991-2001, and has been President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) since 2003. Here, she talks frankly to The Japan Times about Japan’s attitudes to those who flee their homelands and seek sanctuary ...
Just 410 — the number of refugees accepted by Japan since 1982 — says a lot about government policy toward those who flee political persecution in their home countries. They wouldn’t fill more than a few cars on a rush-hour commuter train! Only 10 ...
THE POLITICS OF NANJING: An Impartial Investigation, by Minoru Kitamura. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2007, 173 pp., $28 (paper) Professor Minoru Kitamura of Ritsumeikan University raises important questions about Japan’s rampage in Nanjing in 1937-38, but sadly comes up with misleading, biased ...
PAN-ASIANISM IN MODERN JAPANESE HISTORY: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, edited by Sven Saaler and J Victor Koschmann. London: Routledge, 2007, 288 pp., £21.99 (paper) Pan Asianism, the notion of creating a fraternity of Asians, provides insights on how transnational perceptions and policies toward Asia ...
I was surprised when Jaime Xavier Lopez, the head of Sacred Heart, a notorious “martial-arts” group, told me to meet him at the government’s Office of Cadastral Surveys and Property, where he has his day job. Or that’s where he did work, since he ...
Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful. – Anarchis, 6th century B.C. ‘How can we talk of human rights in East Timor? Respect for ...
The ousted prime minister welcomed me to his spacious compound where I met his son and daughter, both home from studying overseas, and his muddy, wriggling puppies that quickly Pollacked my best chinos. The media image of Mari Alkatiri is of an unsmiling, severe ...
The violent troubles in 2006 drove many staff of Japanese nongovern- mental organizations out of East Timor. The NGOs I visited had modest offices and accommodations, and the staff lived frugally — unlike the “lords of poverty” I have encountered elsewhere in the international ...
East Timor is an ill-starred land that has endured more than its share of violence, neglect and deprivation. In 2006, only four years after it gained independence, violent clashes erupted yet again on the streets of Dili, East Timor’s capital. The troubles began in ...
Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories, edited by Paul Kratoksa. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006, 440 pp., $35 (paper) The Japanese and Chinese governments have announced plans to come up with a mutually acceptable shared history. Prime Minister Shintaro Abe recognizes ...
SHUTTING OUT THE SUN: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, by Michael Zielenziger. New York: Doubleday, 2006, 352 pp., $24.95 (cloth). The strength of this book lies in its sensitive and poignant portraits of hikikomori, Japan’s recluses. Their stories of withdrawal are etched ...