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BUSINESS
Jan 16, 2015

Car costs to rise as deadly flaws lead to greater safety demands

Auto-parts suppliers are feeling the pressure as car manufacturers move to raise quality standards after last year saw a record number of vehicles recalled in the U.S.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jan 16, 2015

Nagoya museums on quest to track visitors' nationalities

The industrial tourism business in Nagoya will have a new mission in fiscal 2015. Museums and activity centers will begin tracking visitors' nationalities in order to target them better.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2015

Shaping China's influence

It is in the best interests of Japan, the U.S., South Korea and Australia to become members of the China-established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to join China in shaping the future.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 15, 2015

Woman held in Osaka for allegedly turning traffic signs into street art

A woman arrested in Osaka on Wednesday on suspicion of defacing traffic signs with artsy, humorous stickers has admitted to vandalism, police said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 15, 2015

Offbeat satire that finds the bizarre in the banal

Sometimes the pen really is mightier than the sword — not only when it is deployed to capture in words the loftiest philosophical ruminations, but also when, through pictures, it causes heroes to tremble and fall. For skilled satirists, trenchant humor is a potent tool.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 14, 2015

A longer look at the problems of 'Unbroken'

Why can't "Unbroken" — Angelina Jolie's hit World War II drama — catch a break in Japan? There are presently no plans to release the film here in theaters, on DVD or online, even though it has a strong Japan focus as well as a major role for popular local rock musician Miyavi (whose real name is...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 14, 2015

Jimmy. P: 'not one actual Native American could be found to play the lead role?'

Psychotherapy is a damn hard thing to build a two-hour film around. Static and talky by nature, the traditional Freudian "talking cure" tends to work best when there's some tension and antagonism in the relationship between doctor and patient, as in "Girl, Interrupted" or "Good Will Hunting." Even "A...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 14, 2015

The Judge: 'works better if you're a well-to-do, over-40 male'

There is a point in a woman's life — specifically, mine — when surprises in movies and in dates are just not all that welcome anymore. Which is why "The Judge" is a vehicle to like — very, very much. Robert Downey Jr. faces off with Robert Duvall in a patriarchal, angst-ridden mystery thriller...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 14, 2015

Rising stars of kabuki run new-year Asakusa gauntlet

One of the major sightseeing spots in Tokyo, and indeed in Japan, is the city's oldest temple, Sensoji, which was founded in 645 in the Asakusa district of present-day Taito Ward. Though perpetually thronged with people, its beautiful precincts attract staggering numbers at New Year's, when this is invariably...
SPORTS / MAN ABOUT SPORTS
Jan 13, 2015

New Year's resolutions Man About Sports hopes for

For an improved sports world, some better-late-than-never New Year's resolutions MAS would like to see made — and carried out:
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2015

Reagan played key role in U.S. war on inflation

There is common agreement that the decline of double-digit inflation in the U.S. was the big economic event of the 1980s. But to say that President Ronald Reagan had almost nothing to do with that is wrong.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 13, 2015

Now Abe must follow through

Three factors played important roles in securing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's extraordinary victory in last month's elections: falling oil prices, rising skepticism about China's peaceful intentions and Abe himself supplanting the role of labor unions by demanding that companies give pay raises.
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2015

Lecturer resigns after stripping on campus for student lover

A 55-year-old part-time computer science lecturer resigned from Taisho University in Tokyo on Thursday after being found naked in a corridor.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 13, 2015

Hollande wins top marks for crisis handling — for now

Somber, genuinely moved and attuned to the mood of the people, President Francois Hollande is set for a popularity boost after getting rare top marks from local media and analysts for his handling of France's worst attacks in decades. But there is no guarantee this will last.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 12, 2015

Filipinos in Japan call for acceptance with new film

Documentary presents stories of women helping in Tohoku, working in health and education — and putting down roots.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2015

Europe's unending crisis

The European economic crisis refuses to go gently into the night because of the danger that Greece and its creditors can't agree and because of meager economic growth in the eurozone.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2015

The campaign to glorify Gandhi's assassin

A strident new campaign by a radical Hindu group seeks to rehabilitate the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 as an Indian hero who was inspired by 'love of country.'
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / ADVANCES IN PROGRESS
Jan 11, 2015

AIST brings mind-reading technology closer to reality

Communicating via brain waves, by merely thinking, may seem like a notion out of the world of science fiction, but it would be a dream come true for people who are physically unable to express themselves.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jan 11, 2015

We need to talk about Japan — in English

What commentators who write about Japan in English are doing is not necessarily criticism and could instead be a genuine attempt to understand.
EDITORIALS
Jan 11, 2015

Private sector must do its part

On the campaign trail last month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he saw signs of a 'virtuous economic cycle' emerging, in which improved corporate earnings would create more jobs, leading to higher wages and increased consumption. Can his policies make that happen?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2015

Cataloging the creatures of the unknown

"Yokai dwell in the contact zone between fact and fiction, between belief and doubt ... Yokai begin where language ends," says Michael Dylan Foster in the introduction to "The Book of Yokai," summing up what words often fail to conjure. His book takes readers on a journey into the inexplicable, mysterious,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2015

The Iris Fan

With "The Iris Fan," Laura Joh Rowland draws to a close her long-running saga of righteous Edo Period lawman Sano Ichiro. From "Shinju" (1994), the saga has partially overlapped with the reign of fifth shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi — a superstitious eccentric who ruled Japan from 1680.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2015

Charlie Hebdo's cartoons aren't the issues

Those news outlets that chose not to publish Charlie Hebdo's cartoons — after 12 people were killed — might have done so out of principle rather than fear, but if so, their news judgment was off.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Jan 9, 2015

Kids can benefit from a little community spirit

Frowning with concentration at a low table, a clutch of overall-clad toddlers set about their task: stamping potatoes into paints to create rainbow-bright artworks.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2015

Paris' bloody sequel to provocative past

French novelist Michel Houellebecq couldn't have foreseen such a horribly swift real-life sequel to his latest literary provocation, 'Submission,' out this week. With the killings in Paris, he finds himself in the cross hairs again.

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