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JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 31, 2014

War memorials as varied as public's views

The controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a source of perennial tension between Japan and its East Asian neighbors, and the Peace Parks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well-known in and out of Japan as the country's representative war memorials, drawing millions of visitors each year.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 31, 2014

The Fukushima disaster: Three years on, who's fooling whom?

Japan's new Basic Energy Plan sees nuclear power as an important base load energy source. But whatever 'base load' means politically, the public is lulled — fooled — into a sense that, despite Fukushima, nuclear will remain a logistically viable long-term option.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Mar 31, 2014

Japan's 30-year building shelf-life is not quite true

In the past decade or so, certain claims about Japan's housing market have come to be accepted as facts. One is that Japanese houses are only meant to last 30 years.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 30, 2014

Chinese grabs $14.5 billion in assets linked to Zhou probe

Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of China's biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Mar 29, 2014

North Korea realty market soars

One of the world's fastest developing property markets is also in one of its least likely places: North Korea.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 29, 2014

Tatar leader urges autonomy referendum after Russia's seizure of Crimea

The leader of Crimean Tatars proposed Saturday that the 300,000-strong indigenous Muslim minority seek autonomy on the Black Sea peninsula annexed from Ukraine by Russia.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 29, 2014

Under the beat of the Taiko in Kyoto

Kyoto's long history has ensured that it has seen its fair share of giants. Yet few of these legends have marked the city's physical appearance to the extent of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, despite the man's reputedly smallish stature.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 29, 2014

Marcus Luttrell: a 21st-century war hero

Shake the hand of Marcus Luttrell, and there's no mistaking the grip of someone who spent many a year holding a weapon. A former U.S. Navy SEAL, Luttrell is your 21st-century war hero, with a book and movie deal relating his near-fatal experiences in Afghanistan. He was in Tokyo recently to promote "Lone...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 29, 2014

The truth is, we have gotten too used to lying

Philosophers love truth — that's a truism. What about the rest of us? Do we love truth or falsehood? Truth, we naturally affirm. So why are we swimming in falsehood?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2014

Just So Happens

It's a moment that many expats secretly dread: the unexpected phone call from home, announcing the death of a family member. For Yumiko, the protagonist of Fumio Obata's debut graphic novel, it's the demise of her father in a hiking accident that propels her back to Tokyo from her home in London. Leaving...
EDITORIALS
Mar 28, 2014

Epic miscarriage of justice

The prosecution should accept the Shizuoka District Court's decision to reopen the murder case of Iwao Hakamada.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2014

Suicide kills more Americans than gun violence

Being poor doesn't bum people out. Being poorer than other people — people whose relative wealth you personally witness — does.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 28, 2014

Mudslide kin warned death toll will spike

Rescuers searching for 90 people still missing five days after a massive mudslide in Washington state braced the public Thursday for an impending steep rise in the death toll even as they deflected criticism of the early disaster response.
JAPAN
Mar 28, 2014

Down Syndrome exhibit underway

Almost a year since the introduction of a controversial prenatal screening test, a photo exhibition is underway in Tokyo to dispel misunderstandings about children with Down Syndrome.
WORLD
Mar 28, 2014

Top Kenya MP: gays as bad as terrorists

Homosexuality in Kenya is as big a problem as terrorism, the ruling party's parliamentary leader said, although he argued against stepping up legal sanctions on the grounds that existing laws are tough enough.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Mar 28, 2014

TV personality Haruka Christine wants youth to get politically savvy

Regular viewers of Japanese TV may remember young Haruka Christine's first appearances on the variety-show circuit in early 2010, when she had her fellow entertainers and audiences in stitches.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 28, 2014

Spending decades in Japan has made a mascot out of me

Japan loves mascot characters, part of its unholy obsession with anything "cute."
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 28, 2014

Search for lost Malaysian jet shifts significantly after new lead

An international air and sea task force hunting for the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was re-directed on Friday to an area 1,100 kilometers (685 miles) north of where they have been searching for more than a week, after Australian authorities received new radar information from Malaysia....
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 28, 2014

Malaysian jet search resumes, U.S. sends second Poseidon plane

An air search of the remote southern Indian Ocean resumed Friday, seeking to confirm if hundreds of objects spotted by satellites are debris from a Malaysian jetliner presumed to have crashed almost three weeks ago with the loss of all on board.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health / FOCUS
Mar 27, 2014

Indonesian forest fires feed air pollution across Asia

High above the vast Indonesian island of Sumatra, satellites identify hundreds of plumes of smoke drifting over the oil palm plantations and rain forests.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014

'Parked'

They say people can endure having nowhere to live, but having nothing to drive is licking the very bottom of the barrel. That fate hasn't come to "Parked" protagonist Fred Daly (Colm Meaney), at least not yet. But he's inching closer, as he eases his Mazda into a parking lot on Dublin's east coast. This...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014

'Ain't Them Bodies Saints'

Comparisons to Terrence Malick are unavoidable with "Ain't Them Bodies Saints," which takes its Southwestern milieu and feckless outlaw couple from "Badlands" but filters it through the more mystical lensing and languid pacing of "Tree of Life." And just like Malick, director David Lowery's weak point...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2014

'Kashikoi Inu wa Hoezu ni Warau (Shady)'

Director: Ryohei Watanabe
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 27, 2014

Planes, ships race to beat bad weather in search for Malaysian jet

Aircraft and ships scouring the southern Indian Ocean for wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 were racing to beat bad weather Thursday and reach an area where new satellite images showed what could be a field of debris.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Mar 26, 2014

Japan's Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined

If Japan's unwritten constitution is already so flexible, why are Abe and his party so bent on amending the written one?

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