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COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 23, 2013

Abenomics cure for Japan must be wiser and braver

Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is proposing a bold departure for his country's economy. He's mostly right. Japan continues to underperform, and bad macroeconomic policy has been the main reason. Abenomics isn't riskless or easy, however. The government will have to be wise as well as brave....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 21, 2013

The nations that make it easier for bands to leap overseas

At the end of last November, a flock of Canadians descended on concert venue Duo Music Exchange in Tokyo's bustling Shibuya district. It wasn't an attack of any sort; the Canuck invasion was only peppered with spirited calls to "Clap with us!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'Sado Tenpesuto'

Beginning with 2001's "Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu (Firefly Dreams)," a Yasujiro Ozu-esque drama about a friendship that develops between a rebellious teenage girl and an elderly former actress in the countryside, John Williams has been directing films in Japan with Japanese talent that do not proclaim...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 10, 2013

Abe's 'unpredictable past' runs counter to his people's remorse over wars

“They were remarks made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. But since then we have welcomed in the 21st century.'
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 4, 2013

Under fire

The video would be viewed more than 23 million times, making it perhaps the most watched footage of the Afghan war. It began last April when U.S. Army Pfc. Ted Daniels pressed the record button on his helmet camera.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 28, 2013

Anti-Japan propaganda has handcuffed Beijing

There is little doubt that rising nationalistic sentiments in China and Japan are being driven by Beijing.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 28, 2013

Blame it on the hara: harassment vocabulary makes us all victims

Japan has a new hara. No, the nice couple down the hall didn't just have a baby; according to recent news, yet another form of harassment is supposedly becoming a social problem.
WORLD
Jan 26, 2013

Iran reformists, hardliners debate 'free' elections

A heated debate about who will be allowed to run in Iran's presidential election has erupted five months before the vote, stoking concerns about a repeat of the protests that followed the contested 2009 poll.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jan 26, 2013

Mining gems in Okachimachi

On early maps of Edo, as Tokyo was known prior to 1868, Okachimachi is rendered as a town (machi) densely packed with the tiny dwellings of okachi — low-ranked, poorly paid samurai infantry.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 26, 2013

No room for subtleties when laying off workers

Thanks to a feature that appeared on the front page of the Dec. 31 issue of the Asahi Shimbun, oidashi beya is the first topical neologism of 2013 if you don't count "Abenomics." It's not clear if the term, which translates as "expulsion room," was coined by the newspaper, but since then the blogosphere...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jan 24, 2013

'Fasting guys' not interested in women — at all

Remember the herbivore men? Japan's 'fasting men' make them look ambitious.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013

Donald Richie on 'Koshikei (Death by Hanging)'

This review as originally published on Sunday, Jan. 28, 1968.
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Jan 6, 2013

Even gangsters live in fear of Japan's gun laws

It's almost impossible to get to a gun in Japan, and selling one or owning one is a serious crime. Fire the gun? Possibly life imprisonment. Gun-control laws are taken so seriously that police will pursue a violator all the way to the grave — and maybe beyond.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Dec 30, 2012

Jean Harris, jealous killer of Scarsdale Diet creator, dies at 89

With her regal bearing and patrician accent, Jean Harris seemed to be the very model of the classic girls' school headmistress. She was always the proper lady.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Dec 30, 2012

Time for 2013 resolutions for bj-league

It's time to look ahead to 2013 as each of the bj-league's 21 teams search for ways to improve.
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Dec 27, 2012

'Abenomics' gets off to a flying start

The very idea of big-spender Shinzo Abe's reappointment as prime minister was enough to send the yen falling against the dollar and spurred the Nikkei above the 10,000 mark for the first time in months.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2012

Five myths about U.S. gun control

After the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, a nation long resistant to gun control seems ready to act — or at least talk about acting.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / WEEK 3
Dec 16, 2012

Last Tokyo street view of Mount Fuji set to go

As the sun sets over a small patch of the Nippori district of Tokyo's northeastern Arakawa Ward, people can often be seen stopping to gaze to the West — something not so surprising atop a street named Fujimizaka, which means "Mount Fuji Viewing Slope."
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 16, 2012

An aging country learning to adapt

Occasionally in this space I refer to a financial writer called "Gucci-san" who contributes a weekly column to Aera. Apparently, he works for an investment consulting firm that does a lot of work in mergers and acquisitions. In a recent piece he said that some of his clients are involved in importing...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 15, 2012

Arsenal's descent becoming farcical

It was not just elimination, it was humiliation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 6, 2012

Surprisingly familiar photography

How do you continually surprise and shock when your work has become so familiar? What can you say with a photograph that hasn't been said before? Will making things bigger make them better? These questions niggle at the back of the mind while visiting Shinoyama Kishin's current show. "The people by Kishin"...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2012

How to fight in Afghanistan with fewer U.S. troops

Kimberly and Frederick W. Kagan's recent commentary in The Washington Post, arguing for a force of 30,000 or more Americans in Afghanistan after 2014, is fundamentally wrong. Although their goals are sound — preventing terrorist attacks from the region on the United States — the writers' logic and...
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Dec 2, 2012

Japan's 'life-less' anti-stalking laws are costing lives to be lost

"To build a Buddha image but not to put in the soul (仏作って魂入れず/ Hotoke tsukutte tamashii irezu)" is a well-known saying stemming from a folk belief that statues of Buddhist deities are meant to have a spiritual presence. In other words, it's a metaphor for making something that's structurally...
Dec 1, 2012

Making the case for Palestine

Nowhere are the grievances that perpetuate violence and war more evident than they are in Palestine today. But the world's politicians continue to dance around the problem rather than confront it. The recent deadly violence in Gaza is only the latest proof that people living under occupation and siege...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 16, 2012

Disaster looms large for artist 'genius' Makoto Aida

What to make of Makoto Aida? One day, he's filling a giant blender with thousands of naked young girls and whirring them into a bloody concoction. The next he's piling up dead salarymen into a great mountain — nay, several great mountains, which recede majestically into the foggy distance.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 4, 2012

Ishihara resignation a gift for the media

When Shintaro Ishihara announced on Oct. 25 that he was resigning as governor of Tokyo so that he could form a new political party before the next general election, some of the dailies printed gōgai (extra editions) to report it, thus indicating it was really big news that everybody needed to know about...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 4, 2012

Yoshiko Tatsumi: Cookery guru serves wisdom with her soups

"Never fight a war with Chinese people, because we would lose," Yoshiko Tatsumi sternly warned, "with absolute certainty," a 40-strong group of mostly middle-aged women gathered recently in her spacious three-story residence set in gardens in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture.
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Nov 4, 2012

Angry mobster looms large over politicians

In Japan these days, the political world seems to be mirroring "Beat" Takeshi Kitano's latest yakuza film, "Outrage Beyond," which depicts Japan's ruling party as being well and truly in bed with the mob.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’