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Japan Times

CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013

Jul 25, 2013

Storify: Fuji Rock Festival 2013

The Fuji Rock Festival's pre-show matsuri kicked off tonight. Over the next three days, we'll be curating the related tweets and images coming from social media.

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

Increasing migration pressure

Regarding Gwynne Dyer's July 1 article, "Preposterous population forecasts in Africa": As someone who lives in the United States, I find the outlook for us very troubling. Some have made the argument that a sustainable U.S. population would be around 200 million people. We certainly are not doing particularly...

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

Heed the writing on the wall

Regarding the July 16 article: "World court hearings on Japanese whaling draw to an end": It has taken awhile for this case to be heard in the Hague, and a ruling isn't expected before yearend.

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

The other side of self-sacrifice

In her July 18 letter, "Deserving of a medal of honor," Nico Roehreke writes that Tokyo Electric Power Co. manager Masao Yoshida deserves a posthumous national medal of honor [for his relentless efforts to deal with the effects of the meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after the March 11,...

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

Asian aptitude for dysfunction

Regarding Dipak Basu's July 18 letter, "Western work ethic is wanting": Basu is right that I am a Western man, but that alone does not disqualify my observations. In fact, one reason I live in Japan and have done so for so many years is that my personal values seem to be so out of sync with the prevailing...

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

Racism, police budgets, reports

Regarding LukeCorrigan's July 14 letter, "Fueling a sensationalist pitch," from The Japan Times Online: Corrigan (in response to Debito Arudou's July 8 Community Page article, "Police 'foreign crime wave' falsehoods fuel racism") seems to be of the view that racists and people who oppose racism are as...

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

Myth of the 'virtuous' worker

Professor Dipak Basu is a shining example of someone who expresses his views on a variety of topics seemingly from his soul, and I respect him for that. He brings his faith into his arguments while casting the odd aspersion on "Western Christianity." He does so again in his July 18 letter, "Western work...

Reader Mail

Jul 24, 2013

'Academic society' disappoints

I read with both great interest and deep disappointment the July 11 article "Okinawans explore secession option": interest because of the subject matter, and disappointment because of factual and interpretive problems with the article itself and because of the nature of the "academic society" introduced...

Reader Mail

Jul 20, 2013

A labor market contradiction

I feel that Grant Piper's July 11 letter, "Abnormal way to run a workday," has vividly depicted a current contradiction in the Japanese labor market.

Reader Mail

Jul 20, 2013

Myanmar isn't out of the woods

Regarding the July 17 front-page AFP-JIJI article "Myanmar leader vows to free all political prisoners": It's ironic that history's biggest perpetrators of human rights violations — the erstwhile colonial powers — have today become the biggest advocates of human rights. This becomes all the more...

Reader Mail

Jul 20, 2013

The more inspiring dystopia

I'll have to disagree with Christopher Taylor's assertion in his July 14 letter, "Alternative muse for video game," that P.D. James' novel "Children of Men" would have been a more inspiring dystopian novel for the recently released video game "The Last of Us" than would Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."...

Reader Mail

Jul 20, 2013

'Cool Japan' meme a nonstarter

The Chubu Connection article published in The Japan Times on July 12, titled "Students dealt real-life problems to broaden outlook," describes Tatsuo Hirase, head of the business promotion office of the Chubu branch of Mitsui and Co., leading a two-day marketing seminar at Aichi Prefectural University....

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Police action distorted as racist

Debito Arudou, with his July 9 article, "Police 'foreign crime wave' falsehoods fuel racism,'" manages as ever to confuse apples and oranges. Anyone knowing anything about Japan realizes that the large majority of foreigners in Japan are law-abiding, if only because they do not want to lose their visas...

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Battling the language in Japan

I would like to comment on the July 14 editorial "More people studying Japanese." Around the world more people are studying the Japanese language for various reasons, which is good news for us Japanese. And I fully support proposals to encourage Japanese-language teachers and Japanese students to study...

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Hope for a thinking politician

In his July 9 column, "Revolution and democracy, " Hugh Cortazzi mistakenly attributes an oft-quoted remark to Chinese politician Deng Xiaoping. It was Zhou Enlai who, back in the early 1970s, is supposed to have commented that it was too soon to tell when asked about the effects of the French Revolution....

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Deserving of a medal of honor

Regarding the July 9 AFP-JIJI article "Man who battled Japan nuke disaster passes away": I am profoundly saddened by the news of the death this month of Masao Yoshida, 58.

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

The limits of radioactive waste

According to the July 10 AP article "Tepco safety drive hires foreign advocate," Lady Barbara Judge believes that Tokyo Electric Power Co. has changed enough under a new president to begin restarting its reactors. Has it really? Is she not saying these kinds of things simply to please Tepco, Keidanren,...

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Tribute to people like Snowden

Regarding Daniel Ellsberg's July 9 article "Leaker Snowden made the right call": Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg are heroes. More than that they are true patriots. They love America and its fundamental values so much that they were willing to sacrifice their careers and, if necessary, their freedom...

Reader Mail

Jul 17, 2013

Western work ethic is wanting

In his July 11 letter, "Abnormal way to run a workday," Grant Piper raises a philosophical doctrine that is very Western: We live not to work, but we work to live. Indeed, this supports the utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, two British philosophers of capitalism who promoted...

COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO

Jul 15, 2013

Bumps in the road that we can afford

Dear Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Akihiro Ota,

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

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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