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June 08, 2025
 

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Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Heroine seemed to act alone
Regarding the Oct. 2 Kyodo article "Woman killed by train after saving man": This was a heroic young lady. Sincere condolences to her family. I saw the report on TV. She (Natsue Murata, 40) was on the other side of the railroad tracks [between Kamoi and Nakayama stations on the JR Yokohama Line]. She...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Relieving environmental malaise
Regarding naturalist C.W. Nicol's Oct. 6 article, "Canadian sojourn helps to shake off Japan malaise": Wouldn't it be grand if Nicol's son-in-law, Don McCubbing, could travel to Japan and get to work restoring some of those salmon streams that the construction ministry has bulldozed under in the name...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Kanji requirement for daily life
Regarding Dipak Basu's Sept. 16 letter, "Questionable link to innovation" [in which professor Basu recommends that Japanese education abolish the kanji character system]: The kanji character system is only a problem for primary schoolchildren, who take longer to learn the needs of daily life. This difficulty...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Ultimate act of love and bravery
The whole world is reading about this story online. The pain for her family must be great, but over time they can be proud of her exceptional bravery. To give your life — intentionally or not — so that someone else lives is the ultimate act of love that one can show. Peace be with her and her family....
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Evidence of Mary's virginity
Regarding Reza Aslan's Oct. 6/7 article, "Separating Jesus from the legends": Aslan's accusations of irrationality notwithstanding, there is plenty of scriptural evidence to support the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Abe waiting for right moment
Regarding the Oct. 7 Kyodo article "Documents detail how Imperial military forced Dutch females to be 'comfort women’": To be made to wait seven decades for this fragment of truth to emerge about the sexual slavery of European women is a new war crime in itself, but the government's ongoing attempts...
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013
Activists who act like terrorists
The Oct. 4 Washington Post brief "Russia charges 14 Greenpeace 'pirates" made me think, "Good!" I am instinctively unimpressed by the more aggressive tactics of activist groups — Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherds in particular.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013
Abe's economic house of cards
Regarding the Sept. 30 Kyodo article "Abe appoints more women, brother to senior government posts": "Inbred nepotistic cronyism" might be the initial reaction of anyone outside Japan upon reading the list of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's appointments.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013
Ambiguity turned off city voters
Regarding the front-page Oct. 1 article "Hashimoto's Osaka merger dream in jeopardy": I think it should come as no surprise that a candidate backed by the Japan Restoration Party was defeated in the Sakai mayoral election held last Sunday.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013
The kanji cultures pack a punch
Economics must truly be the dismal science based on what professor Dipak Basu wrote in his Sept. 26 letter, "Questionable link to innovation." Did this economist really suggest that Japan's education system would be greatly improved if Japan abolished the Chinese kanji character system — which he says...
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
Suffering from the lack of satire
Regarding Noriko Fujita's Sept. 29 letter, "When cartoons don't go our way": Fujita seems to have absolutely no idea what satire is. This is not surprising in a country whose media habitually treat politicians with deference and where any kind of political satire is lacking. Consequently ordinary people...
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
The fear of appearing henpecked
As for Mike Wyckoff's Sept. 26 letter, "The men that lack 'life skills,' " from The Japan Times Online, let me tell you about my husband, who used to work for a general trading company. Since our married life began, he has helped me wash dishes after dinner so that we can enjoy the evening hours together...
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
Mindset trumps English ability
In his Sept. 23 article, "The communication skills for vying in the world," Sadaaki Numata expressed concern about Japan's ability to hold its own in international forums and negotiations.
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
U.S. interest in a Japanese affair
In the Sept. 26 Kyodo article "Abe tries to counter militant image in U.S.," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says that under the current interpretation of Japan's Constitution, Japan's warships cannot "come to the aid of U.S. warships operating around Japan in international waters if they are attacked from...
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
Rights to our body after death
I usually enjoy Ted Rall's opinion essays, but I didn't fancy his Sept. 27 article "Mandatory organ donation." Even though he writes as he usually does, provocatively and tongue in cheek, there are serious people among us who seriously propose this dystopian stupidity.
Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013
Playing 'softball' with an autocrat
Regarding Tom Plate's Sept. 23 article "The good side of Singapore icon Lee Kuan Yew": Plate seems obsessed with men like Lee, who has been described elsewhere as autocratic, arrogant, vindictive, vicious and just plain mean and nasty.
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013
Keep tabs on Lake Biwa water
It was with great distress that I read the Sept. 19 Kyodo article "Cesium-tainted wood chips found near (Lake) Biwa."
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013
A mass shooting turns personal
Regarding the Sept. 18 front-page AP story, "Motive for deadly rampage at (Washington D.C.) U.S. Navy Yard unknown": As an American, I feel it's a sad commentary that gun violence in America is the norm rather than the exception.
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013
Results don't match the bustle
Regarding Kevin Rafferty's Sept. 25 article, "The limits of multitasking": There was a time when I used to regret that I am pretty inept at multitasking. I tried to get with it, but not without sometimes hilarious and usually failed results. I grew out of trying to multitask all the time, although it...
Reader Mail
Sep 28, 2013
In the interest of human security
The Sept. 17 Bloomberg article by Dmitri Trenin, "Why the West misread Russia," provides deep insights into the thinking behind Russia's proposed arrangement to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons — without the use of force.
Foreign tourists with unpaid medical bills in Japan to be denied entry
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during ministerial meeting meeting on foreign residents in Japan on Friday at the Prime Minister's Office.
Japan eyes tougher rules for foreign residents and tax hike for tourists
A tax-free shop in Kyoto in April 2024. Last week, members of a Liberal Democratic Party study group drafted a proposal seeking to scrap the country's tax-free shopping system altogether.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.
Japan won’t wait for G7 summit for possible U.S. trade deal
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's top negotiator in tariff talks with the U.S. speaks to reporters at the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Friday.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.
What can Kenji Yanobe’s cosmic cats teach us about humanity?
Kenji Yanobe’s spacesuited cats are the main characters of “Ship’s Cat Island,” the inaugural exhibition at Hyper Museum Hanno in Saitama Prefecture.
From ridicule to redemption: Rice crisis returns Koizumi to the spotlight
Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi speaks to the media as he inspects a warehouse storing stockpiled rice in Kanagawa Prefecture on May 30.
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
Detail of Takashi Murakami, “Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP” (2023-25)
Japan’s prison reform focuses on rehabilitation
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Suzuki said preparations for the changes that will focus more on rehabilitation are being actively made at each correctional facility.
Accidents raise concern over how Japan vets foreign drivers
Keita Ueno (right), the owner of Kiki Driving School and an instructor who supports both foreign nationals and Japanese citizens returning from abroad in getting their foreign driver’s licenses converted, is worried about the current lax system for the process.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

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

Muji has been sustainable from the beginning
Muji has been sustainable from the beginning

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