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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 17, 2013

'Trance'

The central premise of Danny Boyle's latest, "Trance," is a guy involved in an art heist who gets struck on the head and then can't remember what he did with the purloined painting. This is clearly some sort of advanced conceptual prank, a cheeky allegory for the amnesia the film itself will produce...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Oct 17, 2013

Rihga Royal opens new restaurant; Yona Yona Beer Kitchen on tap

Rihga Royal opens new restaurant
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2013

Exchange student who gave life hailed

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye praised exchange student Lee Su-hyon, who died 12 years ago Thursday attempting to save a Japanese man who had fallen off a Tokyo train platform onto the tracks.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2013

Emergency service hops language barrier

An emergency call for an ambulance could easily result in an unnecessary tragedy if the caller doesn't speak Japanese fluently.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 16, 2013

Missing the light at 'Roppongi Crossing'

I've always thought that the "Roppongi Crossing" exhibitions try too hard. They take themselves too seriously and usually end up missing the point. Held every three years at the Mori Art Museum, the shows bring together heavily curated selections of contemporary art in an attempt to take the artistic...
COMMUNITY / Issues
Oct 16, 2013

The wonderful world of Japanese law: Yōkoso to endless discovery

Having kindly published my intermittent ramblings on Japanese law and the occasional other subject over the years, The Japan Times has seen fit to give me a monthly column.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Oct 16, 2013

Nara's Chapman gets off to fast start for expansion team

Each season brings new standouts to Japan, what with nonstop expansion since the league's inception in 2005.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 15, 2013

Behind Washington's firestorm

The story behind the story of the U.S. budget showdown is that prolonged slow growth threatens historic changes to America's political and social order.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Oct 15, 2013

Some fear McConnell-Reid bitter rift could endanger U.S. fiscal deal

When Washington is in crisis and every other option has fallen to pieces — whether on rescuing Wall Street, rewriting national security rules or agreeing on a budget — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, are usually the ones who put it...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Oct 15, 2013

Pitched battle of perception surrounds Guantanamo prison

Weeds now grow where nearly two dozen kneeling and blindfolded men in orange jumpsuits were photographed as guards in fatigues looked on.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 15, 2013

NSA said collecting millions of email address books, 'buddy lists' daily

The U.S. National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Japan Times
TENNIS
Oct 13, 2013

Djokovic beats del Potro to retain Shanghai Masters title

Novak Djokovic defended his Shanghai Rolex Masters title with a stirring 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7-3) victory over Juan Martin del Potro on Sunday night.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 13, 2013

What we talk about when we talk about the Olympics

If you're lamenting the number of kōji (工事, construction works) clogging Tokyo streets and coating your lungs with toxic fumes, you can lump at least part of the blame on the Olympics, slated to happen in the summer of 2020. And take comfort in the fact that in the years leading up to the last time...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2013

The chilling biology of the debt-ceiling standoff

The showdown over the U.S. debt ceiling demonstrates that human beings are systematically incapable of understanding how precarious our currently familiar condition really is.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Oct 13, 2013

Chinese prison bars U.S. doctor from dissident

Moved by the plight and failing health of a Chinese dissident imprisoned for a few lines of poetry, a retired American doctor traveled from her quiet life in suburban Washington to the gates of his eastern China prison on Saturday and asked she be allowed to give him a medical evaluation.
BUSINESS / Tech
Oct 13, 2013

On the offensive in the cyberspace arms race

Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can launch a cyber "attack," even though the skills and tools needed to do real damage are still in short supply.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2013

Busan is still Asia's film-fest gem, but its sparkle is fading

During the Q&A session after the screening of his new film "Stray Dogs" at the 18th Busan International Film Festival, which ran Oct. 3-12, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang mentioned that not only was his previous film not distributed in South Korea, it wasn't even shown at BIFF. Tsai was one of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 12, 2013

Capturing Olivier in his contradictory essence

Laurence Olivier was the greatest British actor of his time, primus inter pares of the trio who dominated our theater from the early 1930s to the 1980s. His superiority to his chief rivals, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, resides in the role he played in the creation of the National Theatre and in...
Reader Mail
Oct 12, 2013

Veterans group sees last days

I have learned that the Japanese Disabled Veterans Association decided on Oct. 3 to disband because its members have aged. Few Japanese know that such an organization still exists in Japan, but it is something Japanese should remember.
Reader Mail
Oct 12, 2013

Limited time to learn essentials

Regarding Robert McKinney's Oct. 6 letter, "The kanji cultures pack a punch": The original debate was not about whether an "innovator" should be interested in literature or music in his spare time but about whether liberal arts courses in university programs for science, engineering and medicine can...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 12, 2013

Pynchon's multigenre novel loses itself in glib in-jokes and pop-culture references

Thomas Pynchon's new novel prompts a question relevant to him and to all contemporary artists, from writers to directors to choreographers: If the present day is atomized, paranoid, infantile, obsessive, can a work of art capture this without taking on these attributes itself?
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 11, 2013

Meet the man who plotted America's shutdown

As an appetizer before helping to send the U.S. government into famine mode, Ted Cruz railed against Obamacare on the Senate floor last month in a publicity-seeking speech that lasted more than 21 hours and included a Darth Vader impression and reading Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham" as a bedtime story...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2013

The U.S. Civil War continues

A big hoax of American history is that the Civil War ended in 1865. Unfortunately it continues — as a battle over redistributing shares of economic power in the clothing of cultural values.
EDITORIALS
Oct 11, 2013

Police must take stalking seriously

The murder of an 18-year-old Tokyo high school student underscores a failed police approach to stalking cases and the danger in giving out contact info to 'friends' on social networks.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2013

Wales set to restore Dylan Thomas' faded reputation as centenary nears

The little park where he played as a boy in Swansea, on Wales' south-west coast, has had a facelift, and a bronze statue is to be erected outside his childhood home. Manuscripts and rare photographs have been borrowed from an archive in New York, and his quotations have been liberally applied to council...

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