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COMMENTARY
Mar 20, 2014

Failure to pool information haunts saga of missing flight

The apparent failure of the emergency services of all countries to pool their information, in real time or at least within a day, haunts the saga of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2014

'Lone Survivor'

The French have Camerone, the British Isandlwana, the Greeks Thermopylae, but Americans seem particularly enamored of heroic last stands, from the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand through the "Black Hawk Down" debacle in Somalia. Add a new name to that list: Operation Red Wings, where four Navy SEALs operating...
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Mar 19, 2014

Shinshu's Gibson brings valuable March Madness experience to playoff contender

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. Xavier Gibson of the Shinshu Brave Warriors is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 19, 2014

Genders revel in Bausch's iconic 'Kontakthof'

To watch "Kontakthof," Pina Bausch's masterpiece of dance theater, is to be like a voyeur peering from behind a one-way mirror into the everyday battlefield of male-female interaction.
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

Fukushima's history of struggle

One victim of Fukushima's nuclear disaster has been quoted as saying: "Our present anti-nuclear movement is similar to the one for democracy that our ancestors waged during the Meiji Era. While their dream for democracy didn't come true, their will has been handed down to us."
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

Job hunters present a sorry sight

Recently we've seen a lot of young job hunters in new suits, and many of them seem not to have gotten accustomed to wearing them yet. It is a pity that some of them behave so clumsily under pressures they have never experienced before.
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

Putin's 'red line' trumps Obama's

Gregory Clark's March 11 article, "Contradictions over Crimea," and Kevin Rafferty's March 12 article, "Ukraine batters a broken world," are like two sides of the Crimea coin and very helpful to the reader for showing a three-dimensional picture of the crisis rather than the single dimension filtered...
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

Shorter patent exam is welcome

As an intellectual property counsel, the March 13 Jiji article titled "Japan aims to cut patent exam lengths in half" caught my eye. Unfortunately the on-line article did not link to an underlying copy of any press release or to a synopsis of the related bill that the Abe administration has presented...
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

The desire to end a horrible war

I must respectfully disagree with Yoshio Shimoji's March 13 letter, "Few American casualties" (which was a reply to my March 6 letter ("Japan wouldn't even save its own"). His facts are a bit off, but as only a brief reply is allowed here, I'll provide the following outline:
Reader Mail
Mar 19, 2014

Worst lay ahead for much of Asia

In the March 13 letter "Expansionism allied with racism," Faith Bach refutes my claim that the often-made comparison between German and Japanese World War II aggression has flaws in that the war in Asia was between imperial powers while the war in Europe was between sovereign states.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / ANALYSIS
Mar 18, 2014

Long road to hold Kim, North Korea liable for crimes

Western and Asian powers will begin pressing this week for North Korea to be held liable for crimes against humanity documented in a United Nations report, but concede that their chances of influencing the isolated country are slim.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2014

Is it any wonder students turn to porn to pay college costs?

Writers for American high-end publications are busy slamming and shaming the Duke University freshman who became an adult film actress to pay for the horrendous costs of going to college.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 18, 2014

Geskia, Cuushe team up on impressive Neon Cloud side project

Neon Cloud was a mysterious entity when it first surfaced a little more than two years ago, but with the release of its second EP some of that mystery is starting to clear.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 18, 2014

West has the moral authority to criticize Putin

Vladimir Putin, like Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, is a hard-eyed realist, more than willing to trade an evanescent moral authority for the reality of actual authority. His bet is that the West is made of words when it comes to its criticism of Russian intervention in Ukraine.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2014

Government, industry bodies take part in first broad cybersecurity drill

Japan faces a full-on cyber-attack across government departments Tuesday in a drill aimed at bolstering national security as the country gears up to host the 2020 Olympics.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 18, 2014

Gravitational waves following universe's expansion after Big Bang seen

Astronomers announce that they have discovered what many consider the holy grail of their field: ripples in the fabric of space-time that are echoes of the massive expansion of the universe that took place just after the Big Bang.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2014

Japanese ex-dolphin hunter says slaughter is not centuries-old tradition

Dolphin activist and former Flipper trainer Ric O'Barry joins hands with his former rival, ex-dolphin hunter Izumi Ishii, as both dispute the government's stance that drive hunting is a national cultural practice spanning hundreds of years.
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2014

Ueno Zoo to put panda pair back on view after failed mating attempt

Following a failed attempt to get the pair to breed, Ueno Zoo announced Monday it will put its popular giant pandas back on display Wednesday after keeping them out of the public eye for almost two weeks.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Mar 17, 2014

New-look Deers put hopefuls through their paces

The Lixil Deers, formerly known as the company-owned Kajima Deers, are taking their first steps forward as a new club team. The Deers, one of the X League power houses, on Saturday held their first tryout to look for new talent outside of Kajima Corporation.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 17, 2014

Conservatives' insular mindset doesn't fit today's global reality

Japan has moved well beyond its islands, but in many respects, it has retained elements of an island mentality that is no longer compatible with its modern reality.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 17, 2014

Impoverished Haiti manufacturing its own Android tablet

Better known for producing poverty and political mayhem, the Western Hemisphere's least developed country has made a surprising entry into the high-tech world with its own Android tablet.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Mar 16, 2014

Joho powers Grouses past Evessa

Masashi Joho's arrival in Toyama before the start of the 2011-12 season was a clear sign that the Grouses had decided to raise the stakes for a franchise that had struggled to win games since its inception in 2006. Clearly, this signing signaled the following: The Grouses wanted and valued title-winning...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 16, 2014

Did climate — or man — kill off megafauna?

They were some of the strangest animals to walk the Earth: wombats as big as hippos, sloths larger than bears, four-tusked elephants and an armadillo that would have dwarfed a VW Beetle. They flourished for millions of years, then vanished from our planet just as humans emerged from their African homeland....
JAPAN / FUKUSHIMA FILE
Mar 16, 2014

New and improved radiation detectors headed for Fukushima

Starting in April, Fukushima Prefecture will introduce easy to use radiation detectors for food produce at municipalities so that residents will no longer have to cut up items into small pieces to check cesium levels.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Mar 15, 2014

Bilingual skills useful tool for baseball players

The ever-increasing internationalism and players from many nations joining professional baseball ranks in whatever countries where the game is played has inspired sports news articles regarding the way teammates communicate.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Mar 15, 2014

JBA reveals plan for pro hoops circuit, restructuring for 2016-17 season

In 2016, the Japan Basketball Association will launch a new professional men's basketball league, it announced on Saturday evening.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2014

Portrait of the assassin as a young man

Sometime in the 1970s, as more Americans began to rally against the Vietnam War, an unknown cynic parodied the U.S. Army's promotional recruitment tagline with the slogan, "Join the Army! Travel to unusual places. Meet interesting people, and kill them."
COMMUNITY / Voices / OVERHEARD
Mar 15, 2014

Too hot to handle

What was that hot drink they served us last night?

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person