Search - life

 
 
BUSINESS
Jul 10, 2014

Approaching reactor restarts encourage utilities to sell bonds

The Nuclear Regulation Authority is moving toward the first reactor restart under its new safety requirements since the Fukushima disaster started, giving impetus to bond sales by utilities as borrowing costs plunge.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 10, 2014

North Korean nuclear and missile expert dies; more missiles fired

A former North Korean missile expert who was placed under sanctions by the United Nations for his role in the country's nuclear and missile weapons program has died, state media said on Wednesday.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 9, 2014

Both candidates in Indonesia election claim victory

Both candidates claimed victory in Indonesia's presidential election on Wednesday, suggesting there could be a drawn-out constitutional battle to decide who will next lead the world's third-largest democracy.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 9, 2014

Tokyo firm to launch DNA testing service for cancer, other conditions

Mobile video game provider DeNA Co. said Wednesday it will launch a DNA testing service in mid-August in partnership with a unit at a leading research laboratory.
Reader Mail
Jul 9, 2014

Selling out a postwar conscience

Japan's current prime minister is now officially the man who sold out Japan's postwar pacifist conscience. In his own personal second coming to the position of premiership, and surrounded by the most bellicose Cabinet in 70 years, Shinzo Abe has rammed through a pacifist-piercing package despite majority...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 9, 2014

Lessons of suicidal Cowra breakout remain unlearned

At around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 5, 1944, 1,104 Japanese soldiers and sailors armed only with knives, forks and a few baseball bats poured out of their huts at the Cowra prisoner-of-war camp 300 km west of Sydney in the Australian state of New South Wales. Charging through a hail of machine-gun fire,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2014

'Omoide no Marnie (When Marnie Was There)'

Since its start nearly three decades ago, Studio Ghibli has been dominated by the creativity of co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. But since the turn of the millennium, five of its 10 feature films have been made by other, younger directors.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2014

Before Midnight

Director: Richard Linklater
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 9, 2014

China's hottest app inspired by devotion to Japanese manga

Erick Guo left Asia's largest Internet company last year to build a team of artists and engineers who could create smartphone applications inspired by Japanese manga.
EDITORIALS
Jul 7, 2014

Not a solution for mental patients

The health and welfare ministry's plan to renovate some wards of mental hospitals into residences to reduce the official number of long-term in-patients will only prolong the 'former' patients' isolation from society.
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jul 7, 2014

Tokyo: What should be done about sexist heckling in the capital's assembly?

Tokyo residents offer their views on the sexist jeering of lawmaker Ayaka Shiomura in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly last month.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Jul 7, 2014

World's oldest man now a Japanese

The world's oldest man died at the age of 111 in New York on June 8, leaving a Japanese man, also aged 111, as the world's oldest.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 7, 2014

Poroshenko heeds Ukrainians' call to arms as Russia, EU talk truce

In a country torn between Russia and western Europe, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's decision to resume an offensive against pro-Moscow rebels has carefully ignored both neighbors to show an ear acutely tuned to Ukrainian domestic politics.
WORLD / Society
Jul 7, 2014

Cameron under pressure to launch child abuse inquiry

British Prime Minister David Cameron is facing calls to launch a full-scale inquiry into allegations that well-known politicians abused children in the 1980s, after an official said the government had lost files that may shed light on the matter.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 5, 2014

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

It is noticeable that the tales in "Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa change in tone and style alongside the mental state and interests of the writer. Akutagawa's most famed early works (including the titular story) are intricately woven setups for moral questions, whereas...
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014

Japan's voters seem apathetic to sexist pols

Regarding Philip Brasor's June 29 Media Mix column, "Sexist remarks seen through a clouded lens": I find it ironic and quite hypocritical that Tokyo assembly member Ayaka Shiomura, who spent most of her professional life perpetuating the marginalization of women, now plays the victim when that sexism...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 5, 2014

Is EU ready to actually change?

After six decades of relentless — if incremental — integration, might the European Union be about to go into reverse?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Jul 4, 2014

When should we make noise about loud neighbors?

In August 1974, a 46-year-old man living on the fourth floor of a public apartment building in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, forced his way into the unit below him and killed two little girls and their mother. After attempting suicide he was arrested, and he told police he had been driven to murder...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2014

Americans: born in an empire of contention

An historian reminds Americans this Fourth of July weekend that dynamic social and economic change, poisonous politics, bad policies and flawed leaders in an 'empire of contention' were all there two centuries ago.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2014

The return of the caliphate

Propagandists for the Sunni 'Islamic State' (aka ISIL) have produced a map in which this group of jihadis lay claim to Spain and Portugal — because they were once ruled by Muslim conquerors — Iran, most of India, the Balkans and half of Africa. So much for fantasy while it lasts.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 4, 2014

With one eye on Washington, China plots its own Asia 'pivot'

The Silk Road, an obscure Kazakh-inspired security forum and a $50 billion Asian infrastructure bank are just some of the disparate elements in an evolving Chinese strategy to try to counter Washington's "pivot" to the region.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2014

China's reach for leverage

China's random and sporadic acts of provocations over territorial disputes seem to fail to intimidate its opponents in the Asia-Pacific region, but each push and probe tests retaliatory assets and calls into question the U.S. capacity, and will, to come to the aid of a beleaguered ally.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2014

World-weary and resigned, yet the samurai spirit soldiers on

Since the emergence of conceptual art in the 1960s, artistic skill and superlative craftsmanship came to be derided as almost artistic embarrassment, a suspect accusation leveled at the supposed old guard who took pride in their technical proficiency. Think of Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, their artistic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2014

'Welcome to Edo! Children Depicted in Ukiyo-e Prints'

Though the most famous of ukiyo-e prints and paintings often feature women, actors and scenery, children were also a common subject. In fact, in Japan, images of children, usually depicted in everyday activities, were some of the top-sellers of the 17th to 19th centuries.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / DEALING WITH DEMENTIA
Jul 3, 2014

Early onset dementia poses special problems

Early onset dementia affects people younger than 65, but experts say the belief that dementia only strikes seniors obfuscates the plight suffered by younger patients.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society / DEALING WITH DEMENTIA
Jul 2, 2014

Dementia burden weighing on more families

Despite government efforts to improve the lives of people with dementia, the illness takes a heavy toll on patients and those who care for them.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Jul 2, 2014

Health studies explode the myth of the 'safe' nuclear power plant

There remains one final myth regarding nuclear power plants in Japan: Namely, that in the absence of a major accident, a normally operating nuclear power plant is safe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

'Nanpu (Riding the Breeze)'

Movies about women who fly off to foreign climes to reboot their lives are a thriving subgenre, though the heroines are mostly from well-off countries, Japan included. Women from the more troubled parts of the world may also cross borders to start new lives, but their motives are less often self-discovery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

'Ironclad: Battle for Blood' (Ironclad Blood War)

If extraterrestrials visited England in the year 1221, they would have taken one look and gone home. Life was horrible then — full of marauding, armored men, hell-bent on driving the pointy ends of swords into each others' midriffs. That's how "Ironclad: Battle for Blood" portrays medieval living among...

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers