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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 12, 2013

And the top toy for girls: chameleon Licca-chan

Takara Tomy's Triple Color Change Licca-chan doll, whose hair color changes with the temperature, won the girls' toy category of the Japan Toy Prize on Tuesday, preceding the 52nd Annual International Toy Show that kicks off Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2013

Syria bleeds as West watches

The only proper response to those who fret about 'where do you stop?' if the international community intervenes in the Syrian conflict is 'when do you start
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Jun 12, 2013

Monitoring scandals unite left, right

A late spring storm of Washington controversies has created a rare event in these partisan, polarized times: a shared I-told-you-so moment for the left and the right.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 12, 2013

Preserving a classic Japanese art form: tokusatsu magic

Our monster is scaly, spiky, reptilian — a cross between a dinosaur and an irradiated insect that shrieks like an angry bird. Our hero is lean, faintly muscular in a rubbery skintight suit with inscrutable praying-mantis eyes. They face one another, stomping left to right like sumo wrestlers, posing...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2013

Why Turkey's revolt will fail

In recent years, mass protests in authoritarian states have succeeded only where the rioters had little or nothing to lose. That isn't the case in Istanbul.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2013

U.S. intelligence is too dependent on technology

The National Security Agency, now constructing a massive data-storage facility that presumably will chew through everything we say, needs to be reined in.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 11, 2013

Japan's Nigerians see symbol of change in masquerade

Anyone wandering the back streets near Omiya Station at 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, might have passed a particular office building, unremarkable except for two African men standing on a 2nd floor balcony, rope in hand, lowering a car-sized Ugo (eagle) costume down to the parking lot. One of them was...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 11, 2013

Can brain scans explain crime?

University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Adrian Raine, author of "The Anatomy of Violence," believes that advances in brain imagery are helping to explain the biological roots of crime. American Enterprise Institute scholar and psychiatrist Sally Satel, co-author of "Brainwashed," is wary of the seduction...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 9, 2013

Sifting through the rubble of Hashimoto's political ambitions

In 1995, the late University of Illinois professor David G. Goodman observed that when serious disagreements arise between Japanese people and foreigners, the former invariably internalize the debate among themselves.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 9, 2013

U.S. scientists find true 'Lizard King'

Jim Morrison famously wrote in the poem "Celebration of the Lizard" that he was "the Lizard King," a name that stuck. So when a paleontologist who happens to be a Doors fan came across a fossil of a giant lizard, one of the largest ever to tread the planet, he named it Barbaturex morrisoni, after the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 9, 2013

Gray wolf to lose U.S. endangered species status

The government moved Friday to end endangered species protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 states, contending that the population of the apex predator has recovered from decades of hunting that drove it to virtual extinction.
Reader Mail
Jun 9, 2013

Cooperation among past enemies

The June 4 AFP-JIJI article "South Korean president gets baptism by fire" is interesting for many reasons. I lived in a small town in North Korea until the end of 1950. I remember colonial life before 1945.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 8, 2013

Encouraging, not comparing, accomplishments

Aging Japan. We hear this phrase all the time. The question is, what are they talking about — the infrastructure? The people? Four Roses whisky?
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 8, 2013

Why the Turks are rebelling

The protests in Turkey raise the question of whether a developing country can sustain rapid economic growth if the same government is undermining basic liberties.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013

'To Rome With Love'

Woody Allen rarely laughs, least of all at his own jokes. But in his latest, "To Rome With Love," in which he acts as well as directs, he breaks down from time to time to suppress a giggle and the movie gets an almost imperceptible lift. If Allen is laughing (kind of) then it's surely OK for the audience...
WORLD
Jun 7, 2013

Thousands evacuated in Europe as levees break

Dresden Germany AP
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013

'Olympus Has Fallen'

This latest bit of Hollywood "propatainment," "Olympus Has Fallen," is basically "Die Hard" in the White House, with Gerard Butler's disgraced former Secret Service agent trying to save the president (Aaron Eckhart) from a team of crack North Korean commandos who plan to pry America's nuclear launch...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013

'Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir'

Laurent Bouzereau's documentary on one of cinema's greats is pretty simple in structure: Producer Andrew Braunsberg, an old friend of director Roman Polanski ("Chinatown," "Tess") visits him for a long conversation about his life and career. The subtext is that this takes place in 2009, when Polanski...
WORLD
Jun 7, 2013

Afghan attacks soldier pleads guilty

A U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, many of them women and children asleep in their villages, pleaded guilty to murder and acknowledged that there was "not a good reason in this world" for his actions.
BUSINESS
Jun 6, 2013

Abe's growth strategy hit for lack of details

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reveals his set of structural reforms to boost the economy, ranging from creating special economic zones to easing rules to set up international schools, but fails to impress market players.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 6, 2013

Hashimoto is Horie's kind of guy

Takafumi Horie, 40, the recently paroled founder of Internet firm Livedoor Co., said Wednesday he wants embattled Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto to become prime minister one day, citing his "ability to challenge" and "alter the status quo" of politics.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 6, 2013

Moscow mayor to quit in poll ruse

The mayor of Moscow said Tuesday he will resign two years early so that elections can be held in September. He intends to run in those elections and is likely to be named acting mayor until then. He is also expected to win.
WORLD
Jun 6, 2013

Vegetarians live longer, study suggests

A vegetarian diet may help people, particularly men, live longer than those who regularly eat meat, according to a study of more than 70,000 Seventh-Day Adventists.

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