In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.
When it comes to gender equality, Japan has never failed to disappoint.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Manchester United's Shinji Kagawa is back with a bang, becoming the first Asian player to score a hat trick in the English Premier League.
There is a general hospital and a public high school within easy walking distance of my central Tokyo home. Every morning when I walk to the local subway station to begin my daily commute, I pass a stream of handsome teenagers heading toward the ...
The Feb. 27 Bloomberg article “Seniors forced to go it alone as ranks swell, housing eludes” highlights some important issues, but overstates them. And by omission, it leaves the misleading impression that Japan is somehow behind other countries in providing for frail elderly people. ...
Regarding the Feb. 26 AP article “South’s Park slow to pick women for top positions”: As a Korean, I can say that it is true that discrimination against women in the workplace is a big issue in South Korea. And I’m looking forward to ...
The Feb. 28 Kyodo/AFP article “125,000 lethal doses of sodium cyanide leaked in Iwate” mentions writer Ian Fleming’s fictional secret agents who were issued cyanide capsules to kill themselves if they were captured. Referring to James Bond in an incident that endangered the lives ...
I live in Tasmania and would like to speak against the comments by Japanese fisheries minister Yoshimasa Hayashi that were quoted in the Feb. 28 AFP article “Japan will never stop whaling: fisheries chief.” Here in Australia, we hear that: There are thousands of ...
In his Feb. 28 letter tribute to the late movie critic and author Donald Richie, “Remembering Donald Richie,” Japanologist Karel van Wolferen recalls the weekly lunches that Richie and he had with literary translator Ed Seidensticker. What a magnificent and lively gathering that must ...
Regarding the Feb. 22 front-page article “Three murderers sent to the gallows“: These three committed barbaric crimes and there is no doubt about their guilt, it seems. However, not all cases are so clear-cut. No criminal justice system is perfect, and mistakes can result ...
I consider the headline for Philip Brasor’s Feb. 24 Media Mix article, “Japan’s vegetarians stay in the closet,” misleading. Most of the story is not about the vegetarian situation in Japan, but rather a discussion of animal rights. I have no idea what the ...
Regarding Joseph Jaworski’s Feb. 21 letter, “Cut the irrelevant gender data“: While the treatment of female pop stars is not specifically a factor in Japan’s low ranking of 101 out of 135 nations in The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, the low ...
Hisahiko Okazaki’s Feb. 20 article, “Japan’s step toward normalcy,” sounds like jingoistic bunkum. He suggests that Japan was left of center politically (during the Cold War), because less than 50 percent of the respondents surveyed were willing to fight to defend the country. According ...
It has been said by some who treasure the fact and very idea of human life that when someone dies who has lived it consciously for some time, an entire universe dies with him or her. A unique universe of thought, understanding and taste. ...
It is specious to keep conducting popularity polls within a mere two months of the return of the Liberal Democratic Party to power. The eagerness to push out these vacuous statistics is beginning to sound suspiciously more like a sponsored advertisement than a meaningful ...
