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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
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, ...
When speaking of Japanese art, people use words such as wabi and sabi, words that speak of a delicate sensibility and an ephemeral existence. Viewing the retrospective show of painter Toko Shinoda, the first word that comes to mind is "power."
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
The gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen in Japan, and one attendant development is the rise of hinkon bijinesu (poverty businesses), enterprises that are blatant attempts to take advantage of people who are already poor. The example most cited in ...
Because it offers few world premieres of high-profile films, the Tokyo International Film Festival is not the world’s most significant. European and American festivals get all the good premieres, and South Korea’s Pusan International Film Festival, the region’s best, has a wider selection of ...
Local favoritism is built into organized sports. At the macro level you have whole countries rooting for national teams at the Olympics or the World Cup. At the micro level you have fans cheering a hometown boy who plays for a team far away. ...
During a recent sojourn in the United States, I talked with friends and relatives about the housing situation, specifically the value of their homes in the wake of the subprime fiasco of 2007-08. Those who bought high just before the bubble burst are feeling ...
In July, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba signed execution orders for two death row inmates and then attended their hangings. Many people were puzzled because Chiba, an attorney, had been opposed to the death penalty. She said that she was under no pressure to sign ...
According to major media opinion polls, if the choice of who will lead the country was up to the populace, Prime Minister Naoto Kan would retain his position against fellow Democratic Party of Japan member Ichiro Ozawa’s challenge to the party presidency and the ...
Does Julia Roberts hate Japan? The local media were obsessed with this question prior to the Hollywood star’s first-ever trip here last month to promote her new film, “Eat Pray Love,” based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir about her journeys to Italy, India and ...
In 2004, Diet lawmaker Seiko Noda wrote a book titled “Watashi wa Umitai” (“I Want to Give Birth”), which chronicled her years of infertility treatments and the subsequent pregnancy that ended in miscarriage. Two years later she ended her six-year relationship with fellow politician ...
In April, China’s Culture Ministry fined two young women 50,000 yuan (¥625,000) each for lip-syncing during performances in the city of Chengdu last year. The authorities characterize this edict against “fake singing” as a kind of truth-in-advertising rule, but most people think it was ...
Though everybody saw it coming, the announcement last week that China’s economy supplanted Japan’s as the second largest in the world shocked many people. It matters little that China’s sheer size makes its dominance inevitable. What matters is that Japan’s 42-year run as the ...
The Japanese media are currently obsessed with the notion of old people disappearing from the face of the Earth without anyone knowing about it, including loved ones. The whole thing started when a public welfare worker in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward became suspicious of a ...
In May, Japanese Web site Netallica reported that advance tickets for two of the big rock festivals, Fuji and Summer Sonic, were not moving. Both feature foreign artists, and Netallica implied that the latter added the grand old man of Japanese rock, Eikichi Yazawa, ...