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Reader Mail

Feb 12, 2014

Career limits due to language

I have spent 14 years in Japan's academic/research fields. Every morning I get up with three questions in mind: How can I contribute to the science and technology of this country more efficiently? What can be my career path in this country? And what will become of my children after 10 or 20 years?

Reader Mail

Feb 12, 2014

Making a clear cut with the past

Concerning the Feb. 4 article "Yasukuni: It's open to interpretation": I would like to add a few historic facts. Yasukuni is barely understood in its historic context. It is not just a memorial for the war dead! In the middle of the 19th century the modern nation of Japan was modeled according to the...

Reader Mail

Feb 12, 2014

Contrary to the apologetic spirit

With regard to Franz Pichler's Feb. 6 letter, "Get on with a positive future," I'd like to add my two-pence worth. Pichler hopes that "people in Europe gain some information before starting to judge the Japan of almost 70 years ago." He also mentions that when China and Japan normalized relations, Japan...

Reader Mail

Feb 12, 2014

Close Futenma unconditionally

Both Washington and Tokyo threaten the Okinawan people when they make comments to the effect that if the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma is not relocated to Henoko (northern part of Okinawa Island), it will remain at the present site (Ginowan) permanently and as dangerously as ever.

Reader Mail

Feb 12, 2014

Let the Chinese see the real Japan

Regarding the Feb. 7 Kyodo/AP article "U.S. warns China over 'risky' activity near Senkakus": Some eminent Japanese scholars argue that China seeks to establish domination of the Pacific and won't stop expanding its military capability unless Japan restrains it. But do the Chinese people in general,...

Reader Mail

Feb 8, 2014

What's eating the protesters?

My question is why not [kill whales off Antarctica]? I ask the question respectfully because I do not yet have an answer. In an otherwise nicely balanced article with quite interesting historical background and devoid of the emotional hysteria that usually accompanies articles on this subject, C.W. Nicol...

Reader Mail

Feb 8, 2014

Saddest word in the language

For a while my least favorite Japanese word was gareki (debris), because for ages after the 3/11 tsunami, the talk was about cleaning up all the irradiated debris. The instant mental associations were pretty sad. Then, for a short time, my least favorite word was omotenashi (a term that expresses the...

Japan Times

LIFE / Japan Showcase / GREAT TAMBA AREA

Feb 7, 2014

Walking in the steps of samurai

There is no embellished castle tower to keep watch over Sasayama, a city ringed by the mountains of central HyogoPrefecture. Only thick stone walls mark the site where an early 17th-century fortress stood. Even in those days, the castle keep was a relatively unimpressive construction when compared to...

Reader Mail

Feb 5, 2014

Japan's democratic credentials

Regarding Hugh Cortazzi's Jan. 25 article, "Playing with fire is dangerous": With all due respect, Cortazzi seems misinformed about the history of Japan. In the interests of a balanced view, let me point out one crucial misunderstanding that prevails in English-speaking media: that after World War II...

Reader Mail

Feb 5, 2014

Let's not ban the fun at Zushi

Regarding the Jan. 30 front-page article "Zushi looks to tame its unruly summer beach": The people of Zushi and city officials point out that young beachgoers are too wild and out of control. Huh?

Reader Mail

Feb 5, 2014

Market skewed to anemic wages

Regarding the Feb. 4 Bloomberg article "Workers stumble while 'Abenomics' soars": Japan's wages are, and always have been, anemic. Among the many explanations for this, some say it is a hangover from Japan's extinct lifetime employment system, where lifelong job security compensated for lower wages....

Reader Mail

Feb 5, 2014

Atrocities in the name of tradition

There are hundreds of distressing images of Taiji that are being circulated worldwide in a growing wave of anti Japanese feeling.

Reader Mail

Feb 1, 2014

Don't make sports such a chore for kids

I want to respond to the Dec. 22 editorial "Students neglect physical exercise." I agree that children are playing more computer games and are less active outside. I have a child in elementary school and I see that children whose parents are physically active are also active. So, on one side, parents...

Reader Mail

Feb 1, 2014

Love for classical music came late

Regarding David Cozy's Jan. 19 article, "Chanelling Bronte to write a true classic," I agree with Cozy's review of Minae Mizumura's "A True Novel," except on one point. Cozy writes that Mizumura bungles her depiction of the upper class in Japan and that her citing their "snobbishness ... in their love...

Reader Mail

Feb 1, 2014

Anti-nuclear 'fad' belies the passion

Regarding the Jan. 26 AP article "Tokyo race focuses on nuke issue": I understand the strong public feeling against nuclear power that is a reaction to the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

Reader Mail

Feb 1, 2014

No complaints about tuna cull

Stefano Virtuani, in his Jan. 26 letter, "Little respect for the oceans," is "outraged by the annual brutal slaughter" of dolphins at Taiji. He seems to be unaware of the age-old practice at La Mattanza, off the coast of Sicily, where blue fin tuna are rounded up in a death chamber of nets and then killed...

LIFE / Japan Showcase / GREAT TAMBA AREA

Jan 31, 2014

Sightseeing off the beaten track in rural Kyoto

Mere minutes after the Sagano Scenic Railway train leaves its terminus in the popular suburb of Arashiyama just outside Kyoto, civilization abruptly falls away. Behind us lies a metropolis of at least a million people; out the windows, the only signs of life are a few Japanese macaques cavorting among...

Reader Mail

Jan 29, 2014

Can't go back so let's reconcile

I was tremendously interested in the Jan. 21 article "Korean who assassinated Japan's first leader honored" and a related article on Jan. 23, because I had a chance to visit the place where Hirobumi Ito was shot at Harbin railway station (1909). The places where Ito was standing and where Ahn Jung Geun...

Reader Mail

Jan 29, 2014

Duty-bound in a futile battle

Regarding the Jan. 18 article "Ambassador frets over Virginia's incursion into Sea of Japan naming row": Life is too precious to point out one's "duty" every time a politically controversial Kyodo article comes out. But the Japanese ambassador's fretting over the contents of Virginia's textbooks is an...

Reader Mail

Jan 29, 2014

Japan drives a dangerous road

I was disturbed but not surprised to read in the Jan. 27 front-page article "NHK chief gets with the program" that the new chairman of NHK (Japan's national broadcaster), Katsuto Momii [appointed to the position by the NHK Board of Governors after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had packed the board], states...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.

How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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