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WORLD
Aug 26, 2014

Happiness study draws frowns from critics

A high-profile 2013 study that concluded that different kinds of happiness are associated with dramatically different patterns of gene activity is fatally flawed, according to an analysis published on Monday that tore into its target with language rarely seen in science journals.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Aug 25, 2014

Use them or lose them: There's more at stake than language in reviving Ryukyuan tongues

With the last speakers of the Ryukyuan languages dying out, an identity is vanishing too.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2014

Kiwanis campaign helping to stamp out tetanus

Around the world, a baby dies every nine minutes from tetanus.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Aug 25, 2014

Ferguson's lone black councilman keeps low profile amid protests

In many ways Dwayne James is a beacon of hope in Ferguson, which has been torn apart by racially charged riots. The only black councilman in a predominantly black town, James is widely respected even by political opponents and talked of as a candidate for mayor.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Aug 24, 2014

Brazil denies Japan World Grand Prix title

Brazil retained its title with a three-set (25-15, 25-18, 27-25) victory over Japan on the final day of play in the FIVB World Grand Prix Finals at Ariake Colosseum on Sunday night.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 24, 2014

New buildings can take the sunshine out of life

As residents of Japan, most of us probably expect that our right to sunlight is protected by law. However, as reader Y found, that isn't really the case.
WORLD / Society
Aug 24, 2014

U.K. Muslims lash out at 'jihadi cool' after beheading

A British Muslim leader has called for action to tackle a jihadi subculture after an Islamic State video showed a suspected Briton beheading U.S. journalist James Foley in Syria.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 23, 2014

Cheap train to the north with Basho

On July 19, the Yamagata Shinkansen debuted a luxury ashiya (foot bath) service. A ticket from Tokyo to Yamagata City, in Tohoku Prefecture, costs around ¥11,000, but 15 minutes in the foot bath car is extra. If Matsuo Basho, Japan's most well-known poet, were to retrace his 156-day-long trek through...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Aug 23, 2014

Yoshimoto Kogyo's role in creating a real-life robot with a sense of humor

With big, round, smiling eyes and a shirt and bow tie displayed on the screen on his chest, humanoid robot Pepper is ready to entertain his guests. Music begins to play, and Pepper shows off his moves to the 1960s hit song "The Loco-Motion" as a crowd of onlookers laughs with pleasure.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2014

Wena Poon on life and death in occupied Kyoto

As a child living in a tiny apartment in Singapore, Wena Poon listened to radio plays broadcast in a variety of languages and watched TV — everything from Chinese sword-fighting operas to popular American series such as "M*A*S*H." "There was nowhere to go outside," Poon says, "so I just sat around....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2014

A Great Valley Under the Stars

A vibrant collection of subdued observation, the poems in this small volume, "A Great Valley Under the Stars," contemplate meaning everywhere — from a truck-stop toilet, over stones in the New Mexican desert and under the great expanse of sky referenced in the title.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2014

Death and the Flower

When Koji Suzuki wrote "Ring," the novel behind the film that brought the J-horror genre to the world, he apparently had a baby in his lap, and he went on to write not only horror fiction but also parenting books. "Death and the Flower" brings these two sides together nicely.
EDITORIALS
Aug 23, 2014

Homeless risk attack in Tokyo

A new survey by a nonprofit organization finds that about 40 percent of homeless people in Tokyo have had the experience of being attacked or threatened on the street.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: GAMES
Aug 22, 2014

New games and Japan's Xbox One launch

Xbox One launches in Japan — finally!
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Aug 22, 2014

Tan's revenge spells end for Mackay

If revenge is a dish best served cold, Vincent Tan's retribution on his former Cardiff City manager Malky Mackay came straight from the freezer.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2014

Was U.S. ransom policy a factor in Foley's death?

Hostage-taking by extremist groups is now so pervasive that at least one major aid organization has stopped sending U.S. workers to areas where they might be abducted. Instead, they are sending citizens from European countries — with governments that will pay ransoms.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Aug 22, 2014

Zero fighter pilot to offer 'food for thought' in upcoming documentary

Nagoya Katsudo Shashin, a film group in Nagono, Nagoya, is making a documentary about Kaname Harada, a former fighter pilot who flew the Imperial Japanese Navy's Type 0 Carrier Fighter, known simply as the "zero" or "zerosen" in Japanese.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health / FOCUS
Aug 22, 2014

Refracking brings 'vintage' oil and gas wells back to life

A fracking boom isn't enough for U.S. oil and gas producers — they're now starting the re-fracking boom.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 22, 2014

Some South Korean ferry mourners tire of activists seizing their cause

South Korean families who lost loved ones in April's ferry disaster are demanding accountability from the government, but some have grown weary of strident activists adopting their cause for political ends.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 21, 2014

Israeli airstrike kills three Hamas commanders in Gaza

Israel killed three senior Hamas commanders in an airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the clearest signal yet that Israel is intent on eliminating the group's military leadership after a failed attempt on the life of its top commander this week.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2014

Sukiyaki Meets the World ... and the world gets to meet Toyama

In June of 1963, Kyu Sakamoto's "Ue wo Muite Aruko" — better known as "Sukiyaki" overseas — became Japan's first, and only, No. 1 hit single in the United States.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health / FOCUS
Aug 21, 2014

The search for new antibiotics turns to insect guts and genome mining

Pampering leafcutter ants with fragrant rose petals and fresh oranges may seem an unlikely way to rescue modern medicine, but scientists at a lab in eastern England think it is well worth trying.
WORLD
Aug 21, 2014

Islamic State video purportedly shows conversion of hundreds of Yazidis

Islamic State, a militant group that witnesses and officials say has executed hundreds of members of Iraq's Yazidis, has released a video that seeks to show it enlightened hundreds of members of the religious minority by converting them to Islam.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

In the ethnographic realm of the senses: An interview with Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

You may think you know what a documentary film is — "Life as it is," as Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov once put it — but you probably haven't seen any documentaries like the ones being produced by the filmmakers at Harvard University's experimental Sensory Ethnography Lab.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

Lee Daniels' The Butler (originally released as "The Butler)

Director: Lee DanielsLanguage: English

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo