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COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2013

Does China's left turn indicate reforms ahead?

Some analysts believe that China's turn to the left and its crackdown on democratic ideas are tactical moves that foreshadow the launch of major reforms later this fall.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 6, 2013

Unique ginkgoes are living fossils

This fall, the fan-shaped leaves of the ginkgo tree will turn a golden yellow, and in the silence of the night, the tree will offer a little arboreal tremor and drop its entire canopy in a total release of its unique and primal foliage.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 6, 2013

Navy SEALs target top Somali terrorist leader

U.S. Navy SEALs raid the Somali home of a leader in the terrorist group al-Shabab but fail to catch him.
BASKETBALL
Oct 5, 2013

Aomori collects victory in bj-league debut; Nara falls to Osaka

The Aomori Wat's and Bambitious Nara, the bj-league's expansion teams for the 2013-14 season, experienced mixed results on Saturday.
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Oct 5, 2013

Kabaya looks past glory of title team, forward to new season

Masayuki Kabaya played a starring role in leading the Yokohama B-Corsairs to a championship in their second season in the bj-league.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 5, 2013

Sweet times on sugar-isle Kohama

In our minds, islands should be counter worlds, autarchies unsullied by continental concerns. We should arrive spellbound, leave anointed by their beauty.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 5, 2013

A history of Judaism

First the derision and the sorrows, then the years of exile. Kicked out of anti-Semitic Spain in the 1490s, Jews were among the first to arrive in the New World. They were Iberian immigrants or Sephardim (after Sefarad, Hebrew for Spain) in search of refuge.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2013

Gun-control advocates should listen to the NRA

U.S. gun-control advocates could find common ground with their National Rifle Association nemisis with regard to the need for mental health checks — if they would only listen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 5, 2013

Lahiri manages to finely balance the personal and political in second novel

The immigrant experience is always fertile ground for fiction, and Jhumpa Lahiri — born in London to Bengali parents and raised in Rhode Island — has built her literary career exploring this territory as it relates to characters of Indian origin in America, with all the attendant questions of identity,...
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013

Abe's economic house of cards

Regarding the Sept. 30 Kyodo article "Abe appoints more women, brother to senior government posts": "Inbred nepotistic cronyism" might be the initial reaction of anyone outside Japan upon reading the list of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's appointments.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 5, 2013

Is the honeymoon over for young, wedded bliss?

A visitor from another planet (a unisexual planet, let's say) would speedily infer that men and women are mutually hostile creatures. Marriage would puzzle her (the feminine pronoun is purely arbitrary) — all the more so if she stayed long enough to learn the language and hear how ancient and universal...
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013

Ambiguity turned off city voters

Regarding the front-page Oct. 1 article "Hashimoto's Osaka merger dream in jeopardy": I think it should come as no surprise that a candidate backed by the Japan Restoration Party was defeated in the Sakai mayoral election held last Sunday.
Reader Mail
Oct 5, 2013

The kanji cultures pack a punch

Economics must truly be the dismal science based on what professor Dipak Basu wrote in his Sept. 26 letter, "Questionable link to innovation." Did this economist really suggest that Japan's education system would be greatly improved if Japan abolished the Chinese kanji character system — which he says...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 4, 2013

Defense, diplomacy chiefs sidestep SOFA

Thursday's agreement between the United States and Japan to revise defense cooperation guidelines touched on a number of core issues, such as transferring U.S. Marines to Guam, building a contentious replacement in Okinawa for the Futenma base, and cooperating on ballistic missile defense and cybersecurity....
BUSINESS
Oct 4, 2013

U.S. regulators offer look at banks' 'living wills' for unwinding in crises

In the event of a catastrophic market meltdown or a plain-old company collapse, Wall Street's titans say they are prepared and won't need to turn to taxpayers for help.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2013

'R100'

The world premiere of Hitoshi Matsumoto's "R100" in the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section must be frustrating for all those Japanese auteurs out there who got rejection letters from North America's most important festival.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 3, 2013

German band to feature at Oktoberfest

In Japan, Oktoberfest tends to be a year-round celebration. Beer companies here will hold the traditional German party whenever they feel like a break. This month (or maybe we should say, this week) it's Yokohama's turn.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2013

'E no Naka no Boku no Mura (Village of Dreams)'

Director: Yoichi Higashi
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 3, 2013

High-def 4K taking center stage this year

Electronics makers are promoting their 4K, or ultra-high-definition, display technology in a big way at Japan's biggest electronics fair with the aim of stimulating some demand.

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped