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BASKETBALL
Aug 25, 2006

Spain overwhelms Japan in rout

HIROSHIMA -- Team Japan suffered its second loss in as many days Thursday night.
BASKETBALL
Aug 22, 2006

Battle of NBA stars a big draw

HIROSHIMA -- Pau Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki provide the headline attraction for Monday afternoon's 4 p.m. game here.
BASKETBALL
Aug 22, 2006

Japan downs Panama for first win at worlds

HIROSHIMA -- By now you know that Carlos Santana didn't record "Smooth" -- his chart-topping duet with Rob Thomas -- with the Japan National Basketball Team as his inspiration.
BASKETBALL
Aug 21, 2006

Argentina cruises in romp of Lebanon

SENDAI -- Reserve forward Walter Hermann scored 23 points as Argentina grabbed the early lead in Group A on Sunday afternoon, scoring an easy 107-72 victory over Lebanon to improve to 2-0 in the first round of the FIBA World Championship.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 20, 2006

Notes on Yasukuni and a week that will live in infamy

Following his historic visit to Yasukuni Shrine last Tuesday on the 61st anniversary of Japan's surrender, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi spoke to the media. As usual, his comments had the bland quality of safely scripted pronouncements, but at one point he paused significantly: "I prayed for those...
COMMENTARY
Aug 19, 2006

Tokyo sends Beijing a signal

NEW DELHI -- No place of homage has generated more political heat between countries in recent years than the eye-catching Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. At the center of the storm has been a dark horse who became Japan's prime minister more than five years ago and who leaves office next month, having fashioned...
BASKETBALL
Aug 18, 2006

Big names rolling in for showdown in Sapporo as worlds set to tip off

SAPPORO -- The world's best have finally found their way to northern Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2006

Intelligence works better than bullets

The British police, acting closely with intelligence agencies in the United States, Pakistan and perhaps elsewhere over many months, have foiled a major terrorist plot of blowing up numerous planes between Britain and America.
SUMO
Aug 15, 2006

Trips north, south, east and west -- oh, and unwanted amateurs!

While the dust was flying during the should they/shouldn't they (make Hakuho yokozuna and Miyabiyama ozeki) promotion debate that blew up following the Nagoya Basho, the sumo powers that be did what they so often do best and ignored the fuss.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

His Emperor's reluctant warrior

Samurai-born and steeled in Japan's harsh military culture, Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi had lived five years in North America but was largely unknown to Washington's leaders when he was ordered to defend Iwo Jima "at all costs." The U.S. would pay dearly for underestimating him.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 13, 2006

Iwo Jima: 'A futile battle' fought without surrender

August 15 is the 61st anniversary of Emperor Hirohito's capitulation speech that ended World War II. Yet even in a world assailed ever since with ghastly images of conflicts, few rank with the ferocity both sides showed in the battle for a remote Pacific islet in the spring of 1945. That islet's name...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2006

Facing the past, embracing the future

To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future. We thus owe it to the youthful generations of the 21st century to communicate the hatred of war, the commitment to peace, that was engraved in so many lives on Aug. 15, 1945.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 6, 2006

JPBPU should consider rich history of Nichi-Bei Yakyu

You may have heard the Japan Pro Baseball Players Union has voted to end participation in Nichi-Bei Yakyu, the series of post-season all-star games between the best players in Japan and their counterparts from Major League Baseball. The apparent final good will event is scheduled to be played in Japan...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 6, 2006

Shu Uemura: A life in pursuit of beauty

Hailing from a conservative family of businessmen and bankers, as a young man in occupied Japan, Shu Uemura dreamed of becoming an actor. But, fearing that his weak constitution would hamper his chances of success, he instead enrolled at Tokyo Beauty Academy -- the only man in a class of 130.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 6, 2006

Japan's baroque theater

KABUKI: Baroque Fusion of the Arts, by Toshio Kawatake, translated by Frank and Jean Connell Hoff. I-House Press, 2006, 358 pp. with 78 illustrations, 1,905 yen (paper). This is the new enlarged and revised edition of an important book on the Kabuki, originally published by the University of Tokyo Press...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 6, 2006

A blue mood for poetry

POEMS OF DAYS PAST / ARISHI HI NO UTA, by Nakahara Chuya, translations by Ry Beville. The American Book Company, 2005, 81 pp., $19.99 (paper). RIGHT EYE IN TWILIGHT / MIGI-ME NO BYAKUYA, by Ban'ya Natsuishi, translations by Ban'ya Natsuishi & Jack Galmitz. Wasteland Press, 2006, 58 pp., $12 (paper). Both...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 1, 2006

Island travel and Mac help

Airport on Ogasawara? J and partner have heard that there is an air service to Ogasawara (the Bonin Islands) -- described in my book Insider's Tokyo (2001) as "Tokyo furthest flung outpost."
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 31, 2006

America: a democracy and an empire

NEW YORK -- One thing that has receded from public debate as a consequence of the disaster that is America's war against Iraq is talk of the United States as an empire. During the onrush to the invasion and for some time afterward, one popular comparison was with the Roman Empire. Another, of course,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 30, 2006

New horizons beckon legendary sailor

This story is part of a package on "Growing old healthily." The introduction is here
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2006

Containing chemical weapons

Recent events from the Middle East to Northeast Asia have once again highlighted the unsatisfactory state of affairs with respect to the tool kit available to the international community for responding to the challenge of weapons of mass destruction. This makes it all the more curious as to why more...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 18, 2006

Gold value, dogs and carpentry

Gold, gold, gold Andrew in San Francisco has come through with some very helpful advice on gold (Lifelines: July 4).
EDITORIALS
Jul 17, 2006

A guy, a paper clip and the Internet

It's tempting to forget about finding a larger meaning in the story of Kyle MacDonald and to just sit back and enjoy it. Mr. MacDonald is the 26-year-old Canadian blogger who has rocketed from Internet cult figure to mainstream news item since he pulled off a remarkable bartering feat recently, trading...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 16, 2006

Fractured families bode ill for Japan's gray army

The late actor Kiyoshi Atsumi, who played Tora-san in all of the movies with that title, was a compassionate man of the old Japanese school.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 16, 2006

For Fumiko Hayashi, not every cloud has a silver lining

FLOATING CLOUDS by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 328 pp., $27.50 (cloth). Toward the end of her life Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) said that she did not think her work would outlive her. Happily, she was quite wrong: She remains one of Japan's most...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2006

Britain to get new Japanese studies center in September

Efforts by Japan experts in Britain to boost Japanese studies in the country will bear fruit this September with the opening of the National Institute of Japanese Studies in the new White Rose East Asia Center.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 15, 2006

Zidane -- a bit of the old cow

Many people have been left perplexed by the performance of French soccer player Zinedine Zidane in the 110th minute of the World Cup final. Provoked by Italian Marco Materazzi, Zidane turned around and head butted the Italian so hard, he knocked him down.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past