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Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 13, 2014

Brazil wins, comes alive for World Cup despite protests

Brazil exploded with street parties as its soccer team won the opening game of the World Cup on Thursday, but scattered violent protests were a reminder that many locals remain angry over the billions spent to host the tournament.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jun 9, 2014

Le Pen hits dad for Holocaust pun

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front (FN), rebuked her father and former party head on Sunday for remarks reviving allegations of anti-Semitism after a major poll victory.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 3, 2014

Abbas swears in Palestinian unity government

President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a Palestinian unity government Monday in a reconciliation deal with Hamas Islamists that set Israel on a collision course with Washington over U.S. pledges to work with the new administration while Israel shunned it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 31, 2014

Modern cat tale echoes former feline fiction

That the Japanese are great cat-lovers should come as no surprise: a taste for the elegant, the mysterious and the quirky leads in a feline direction, after all. There are paintings of cats from the classical period of the imperial court and prints from the more popular ukiyo-e of the Edo Period (1603-1867)....
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 27, 2014

Nationalistic sentiment keeps Abe's popularity ratings high

The Abe Cabinet continues to enjoy an approval rating of more than 50 percent, according to a recent survey, because of the knock-on effect of 'Abenomics,' the dearth of other viable leaders and, like it or not, nationalist sentiment.
JAPAN
May 26, 2014

Journalist repeats assertion that Nanking Massacre didn't happen

A British journalist quoted rejecting historians' accounts about Japan's actions after occupying Nanking has restated that he believes the 1937 Nanking Massacre did not occur, after saying he was "shocked and horrified" by his Japanese book's conclusion, which said the Chinese government fabricated the...
Japan Times
WORLD
May 25, 2014

Soccer's crown jewel can't hide Brazil tensions

Brazil, by both area and population, is the fifth-largest nation on Earth. Its economy is perhaps the sixth- or seventh-largest and will soon surpass those of France and Britain. Yet this great state has barely registered its presence globally. In the complex flux of globalized popular culture or the...
Japan Times
WORLD
May 25, 2014

'Fort Kill the Jews': Spanish village votes on fate of controversial name

At 4 p.m. Friday, it's eerily quiet in this tiny Spanish village. The blinds on the stone houses are drawn and there's not a person to be seen wandering the few streets that make up Castrillo Matajudios.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 24, 2014

Will Japan be a country that welcomes all?

"A nation of immigrants." Japan? The leading proponent of that vision has been Hidenori Sakanaka, former head of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau, current executive director of the private think tank he founded in 2007, the Japan Immigration Policy Institute.
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
May 24, 2014

Tiananmen Square stokes patriotic education

Last week, I discussed the prelude to the Tiananmen Square uprising and the ruthless government crackdown on June 4, 1989. The slaughter of students and their supporters who gathered in Beijing in the spring of 1989 and occupied Tiananmen Square for seven weeks made the world recoil in horror and isolated...
EDITORIALS
May 23, 2014

Reflect on Fukui nuclear ruling

The Fukui District Court's ruling that prohibits the restart of two nuclear power reactors run by Kansai Electric Power Co. challenges the Abe administration's energy policy of relying on nuclear power as a key source of the nation's electricity supply.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
May 19, 2014

No time to rest as Cepeda hits ground running in Japan

Frederich Cepeda has had quite the week.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 17, 2014

Insufficient Direction

Moyoco Anno's manga "Insufficient Direction" is the, perhaps, inevitable result of what happens when a legendary anime director marries a well-known manga artist.
EDITORIALS
May 16, 2014

Abe takes aim at Article 9

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will try to change a long-standing constitutional interpretation so that Japan can exercise the right to 'collective self-defense.' His move would gut the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution without going through the amendment procedure.
COMMENTARY
May 16, 2014

Media's one-sided Yemen spin

According to the Western narrative, Yemen exists for one purpose and nothing else: maintain Western interests in that part of the world. When these interests are threatened, only then does Yemen matter.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 10, 2014

Kiev to east Ukraine: Rebel vote for self-rule would be catastrophe

Ukrainian acting President Oleksandr Turchynov told eastern regions gripped by a pro-Russian uprising that they would be courting catastrophe if they voted "yes" in a separatist referendum on Sunday.
CULTURE / Books
May 10, 2014

Bringing the wisdom of samurai into the modern world

The astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously called writing "perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs." "Books," he said, "break the shackles of time." In that sense, reading "Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai" lets the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2014

'Momose, Kocchi wo Muite (My Pretend Girlfriend)'

First love, or hatsukoi, is a big topic in Japanese teen films, as well as almost everywhere else in popular culture. It's attractive because of its innocence and purity, as well as the almost inevitable fleetingness of the relationship — if indeed, it is one; someone is often far more besotted than...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 7, 2014

Republicans dredge up Benghazi controversy in bid for election-year ammo

Benghazi is back.
EDITORIALS
May 4, 2014

The U.S. balancing act in Asia

U.S. President Barack Obama sailed rough waters during his recent trip through four Asian countries, trying to reaffirm Washington's security commitments in the region without antagonizing Beijing.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 3, 2014

Pop star gaffes no sweat to Cool Japan

Whatever you want to say about Justin Bieber's lack of common sense, as either a pop star or a mortal, you have to admit he has incredible timing. He managed to capture the attention of the world with his impromptu visit to Yasukuni Shrine by posting photos of it the day after more than 100 Japanese...
Japan Times
WORLD
May 2, 2014

Satan, Faust, Walpurga vie for human souls on German 'devil' peak

Pity St. Walpurga, an English nun from Devon. A night of "devil worship" atop a German mountain is not how she would have wanted to be remembered.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2014

Third Obama disappointment seems imminent

In the trivial case of the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu isles, there was no cause for President Barack Obama's recent warning to China that the U.S. considers the islands as falling under protection of its Security Treaty signed with Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War. A polite reference to the matter as one for peaceful settlement would have sufficed.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2014

Palestinian accord elicits refrain of hope and gloom

Scenes in Gaza tell of much hope and rejoicing over the unity accord between Fatah and Hamas, but it is a refrain of past agreements that have failed.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 27, 2014

Social media gives new voice to Brazil protesters

When the battered body of a young Brazilian professional dancer, Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, was found in the Pavao-Pavaozinho favela in Rio de Janeiro, locals refused to believe the police statement — that his injuries were "compatible with a death caused by a fall."

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami