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August 15, 2025
 

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Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013
Compassion for real people
Regarding Michael Hoffman's March 3 article, "Solution to bullying lies in 'resetting' culprits": The views of the Catholic novelist and thinker Ayako Sono, which are cited in the article, are a classic example of the kind of anti-human thinking that seem all too common in the devout the world over....
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013
Nostalgia for the old language
In his March 3 Counterpoint article, "The days may be numbered for English as a universal second language," Roger Pulvers analyzes the status of English from a startling new angle.
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013
Cover welfare with military cuts
The Feb. 25 column by Hugh Cortazzi, "Reining in the welfare costs," was of interest. The costs involved in welfare are useful to society in general. Welfare helps keep people off the streets, it helps deliver medical care to everyone, and all of it is money that circulates and creates work for someone....
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013
Don't rely only on 'reputation'
Readers should be careful when evaluating the rather biased Times (magazine) Higher Education World Reputation Rankings of the world's top 100 universities, which were reported in the March 6 Kyodo article "University of Tokyo maintains reputation as top institution in Asia: survey." As stated in the...
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
Circle of life in the neighborhood
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 maw of the local school where their sports coaches are...
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
Japan doing well by its elderly
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.
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
More women for Seoul politics
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 seeing changes in this area just as we welcomed the election of the...
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
Skip the reference to James Bond
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 of thousands of people...
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
One Australian's view of whaling
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:
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013
Their likes won't pass this way
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 have been. It would...
Japan Times
CARTOONS / DAHL'S JAPAN
Mar 1, 2013
LDP Setsubun
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2013
In New York, the Guggenheim goes Gutai
By now, the looks, character and history of Gutai, the post-World War II Japanese art movement born in 1954 in Ashiya, between Osaka and Kobe, are familiar to regular viewers of modern-art exhibitions in Japan. Last summer's "Gutai: The Spirit of an Era," a survey of the movement's evolution and its...
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Vain hunt for national pride
Regarding the Feb. 20 Kyodo article "Japan asks Netherlands to clamp down on Sea Shepherd": Why is one more dead whale to fill the freezers of Japan such a source of national pride in the face of international condemnation?
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Common sense toward China
With regard to Hisahiko Okazaki's Feb. 20 commentary titled "Japan's step toward normalcy," I'd like to add my two pence worth.
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Too late for some American dads
Regarding the Feb. 15 article "LDP gets behind the Hague Convention": Good for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for pushing Japan into the Hague Convention. Unfortunately his act of courage comes too late for many American fathers whose ex-wives took advantage of Japan's exempt status and kidnapped children....
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Breaking wind at 12,000 meters
Regarding the Feb. 19 AFP article out of Wellington titled "Passengers get green light to fart on flights" (which cites a New Zealand Medical Journal report of a medical study's conclusion that changes in air pressure during flight result in the gut producing more gas): I'm never going to fly in economy...
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Keep students out of adult games
I'm very disappointed with the government's decision to exclude pro-Pyongyang high schools from its tuition-waiver program. It is clear that students attending these schools have nothing to do with the diplomatic problems between North Korea and Japan.
Reader Mail
Feb 24, 2013
Familiar North Korean hostility
The lamentably hostile language and conduct of the North Korean government remind us of the Japan that stood against the whole world in the 1930s and early '40s. Withdrawing from the League of Nations, invading China and other Asian nations, and then attacking Pearl Harbor, Japan's leaders told us we...
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013
Shortsighted plan for languages
The Jan. 30 Kyodo article "U.K. plan to limit Japanese worries language teachers" reports on a plan to minimize the teaching of Japanese in U.K. schools. As a result, Japanese may disappear from GCSE exams (for 16-year-olds) by September 2014.
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013
Fitting education to the realities
Back-to-back tragedies for Japanese abroad, first from the terrorist attack in Algeria and now the stabbing spree in Guam, combined with an out-of-control yen devaluation, risk encouraging an already isolated and isolationist Japan to withdraw deeper into its domestic shell. In an age when Japan is losing...
The indelible memory of being a part of Unit 731
Hideo Shimizu, 95, says he cannot forget seeing the prisoners' bloody wills scribbled on the walls of prison cells at Unit 731 in 1945.
Will Wakatakakage bring balance to the banzuke?
Wakatakakage during a ring entering ceremony in February 2020
Taiwanese drama 'Zero Day Attack' on Chinese invasion to stream in Japan
A scene from the Taiwanese television drama "Zero Day Attack," which will stream in Japan from Friday.
Ukraine war has transformed North Korean military: Kyiv’s military intel chief
An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over Kyiv during a Russian drone strike, on July 30. Moscow has dispatched military specialists to train the Korean People’s Army on how to use combat drones and air-defense systems.
1 in 55 Japanese middle schoolers abuse over-the-counter drugs, survey shows
Among the middle school students who admitted to abusing over-the-counter medication, the majority — around 64% — said they got them from pharmacies while a third said they had access to them in their own households.
The indelible memory of being a part of Unit 731
Hideo Shimizu, 95, says he cannot forget seeing the prisoners' bloody wills scribbled on the walls of prison cells at Unit 731 in 1945.
Will Ishiba's critics be able to garner enough support for a leadership race?
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's political survival likely hinges on whether a leadership race will take place within the Liberal Democratic Party following its decision to have its election committee canvass the opinions of party members and prefectural chapters on the subject.
Hidden rosters and the legacy of Japan’s germ warfare
Katsutoshi Takegami, 77, in his storehouse attic where he discovered his father's Unit 1644 documents
Osaka Expo highlights the challenge of holding events in Japan's scorching summer
People huddle near a large fan blowing icy-cold mist at the Osaka Expo on July 12. Amid Japan's relentless summer heat, organizes have put myriad measures in place in order to keep guests safe.
At Himawari Shokudo 2, Italian food with a Japanese soul
At Himawari Shokudo 2, chef Hozumi Tanaka serves Italian-inspired fare with a focus on Toyama produce, such as this appetizer of lightly blanched "hotaru ika" (firefly squid) served atop mixed wild plants and a crepe prepared from "yamato-imo" yam.

Podcast

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

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person
By Naoko Abe

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