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JAPAN
Jun 4, 2013

China’s leaders frequent visitors to Africa, unlike Japan’s

During the three-day fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development that ended Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made full use of a once in five years chance to bolster ties with African countries by vigorously holding bilateral talks with the leaders of about 40 nations from the continent....
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jun 4, 2013

By opening up the debate to the real experts, Hashimoto did history a favor

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto has been busy making headlines around the world with his controversial views on Japan's wartime sex slaves (or "comfort women," for those who like euphemisms with their history). Among other things, he claimed there is no evidence that the Japanese government sponsored the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Jun 4, 2013

From paperclip holders and cityscape planters to corner lights and sustainable cameras

Even though we are moving — forcibly — toward the paperless office, the reality is that we still at some point find ourselves with piles of physical documents to deal with, which usually means a desktop covered in paper clips.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 3, 2013

Technology already on table will drive economic future

Most of the writing you see about the economy speaks to narrow questions: What will growth be this year? When will the unemployment rate get back to normal? And so on. But the things that will determine standards of living a generation from now have almost nothing to do with this month's jobs report...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Jun 3, 2013

Join Wall Street, save the world: The rise of the benevolent class

Jason Trigg went into finance because he is after money — as much as he can earn. The 25-year-old certainly had other career options. An MIT computer science graduate, he could write software for the next tech giant. Or he might have gone into academia in computing or applied math or biology. He could...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 3, 2013

Projected baby boom needs immediate action

With one-third of the world's children in 2050 predicted to be born in Africa, the international community must invest in their parents now, not down the road, UNICEF's executive director said in an interview with The Japan Times.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2013

France takes notice, the Yanks aren't coming

The realization that Europe can no longer rely on America to fill the military gap has given France pause. It is taking its security responsibilities more seriously.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2013

Iran's nuclear games call for tougher approach

By offering Iran what its leaders have claimed to want — civil nuclear power — the U.S. could expose Iran's true intentions to the world, including its own people.
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 2, 2013

Abe to Africa: Use aid as you see fit

The fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development opens with a look back over the forum's past 20 years and discussions about its future.
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Jun 2, 2013

Sex gaffes and the voluble Osaka shyster

If the Japan Restoration Party — headed by Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka, and former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara — needs a new political slogan, the proverb Kuchi ga wazawai no moto (The mouth is the source of great trouble) would do nicely.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 2, 2013

Society no longer shuns solitary pursuits

"A solitary cloud wafted by the wind." Thus the 17th-century wandering haiku poet Matsuo Basho described himself. Not an ordained priest, he nonetheless wore priestly garb on his journeys and was steeped in the principles of Zen Buddhism, among which solitude ranks high. Japan's days as a Zen country...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 2, 2013

Language no barrier to multimedia Jon Kabira

With a long rousing cry of “Goooooooood Mooooorning Tooookyoooooooooooo!” Jon Kabira launches into his weekly radio show “JK Radio — Tokyo United” every Friday at 6 a.m. on J-Wave.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 2, 2013

Crony capitalism: corruption, disparities and stifled initiative

Crony capitalism is the scourge of contemporary Asia, lining pockets and diverting resources in ways that systematically undermine the public interest, accentuate disparities, sap innovative and entrepreneurial impulses — while also subverting governance.
Reader Mail
Jun 2, 2013

Wrong address on student letters

Regarding the May 29 Kyodo article "Nagasaki youths key to hibakusha message": Rather than sending their signatures to the United Nations Office in Geneva, the students collecting signatures for the abolition of nuclear weapons should be sending their petition to Washington.
Reader Mail
Jun 2, 2013

The American energy revolution

The oil and gas revolutions have become the cause of an emotional debate in the United States, and the debate grows more polarized by the day. Depending on which side of the media you follow, there are pictures of oil-slicked birds, communities in economic despair and mothers fighting for their children's...
Reader Mail
Jun 2, 2013

A history of political stupidity

The Japanese have a place in their hearts for politicians who say outrageous and stupid things. There is a long history of it. First, the Japanese seem to confuse constitutional freedom of speech with the freedom to say absolutely anything with impunity. Hence there is a disposition to admire leaders...
WORLD
Jun 2, 2013

FBI-killed Chechen lunged at agent

Ibragim Todashev, the Chechen acquaintance of one of the accused Boston bombers, was shot roughly half a dozen times in several seconds by an FBI agent after he twice lunged at the officer with a metal stick, according to senior federal law enforcement officials.
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

Singer Misia help raise awareness about Africa

A powerful five-octave voice coming from a small frame is normally what describes Misia as a singer. The second hat she wears is as a philanthropic activist for Africa.
Japan Times
WORLD / TICAD V SPECIAL
Jun 1, 2013

JICA helps Africans develop their future

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), an independent governmental agency that coordinates official development assistance (ODA) for the government, has played an important role for the country in its relations with foreign nations. The following is the story of a JICA staff member who worked...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2013

British resident missing in Tokyo

Police and the British Embassy are seeking a 40-year-old British CEO who vanished in Tokyo more than a week ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 1, 2013

Yoko Ono: 'I feel that I am starting a new life at 80'

Sitting at her kitchen table, sipping green tea, Yoko Ono looks much the same as she did when I met her 20 years ago. Dressed in black and peering intently over tinted spectacles, her face bears little trace of the passing of time and her diminutive form exudes utter calmness. Having crossed the famous...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 1, 2013

Everyone's own path to enlightenment

What is Buddhism?
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 1, 2013

Space radiation makes any Mars mission hazardous

Of all the hazards facing a human mission to Mars — something NASA and countless other space buffs would love to see at some point — one of the hardest to solve is the radiation that saturates interplanetary space.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013

Size doesn't matter: Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia celebrates 15 years

The short film gave birth to the cinema — the first narrative film, 'The Great Train Robbery' (1903), is all of 11 minutes long, but the format is now in the shadow of the full-length feature.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013

'Oldboy' director casts dark shadow on Hollywood

“Stoker,” a film so rich and chocolatey with nuance and innuendo you could eat it with a spoon, is, amazingly, directed by a filmmaker who doesn't speak English.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
May 31, 2013

Widow in farmer suicide sues Tepco

A Filipino woman whose Japanese husband committed suicide after his dairy farming business was decimated by the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is suing Tokyo Electric Power Co. for about ¥126 million.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013

'Kuchizuke (Angel Home)'

The Japanese film industry loves medical melodramas, but not much ones with intellectually disabled characters.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 31, 2013

Sony taps Apple alumni for board

Sony Corp. CEO Kazuo Hirai is trying to win back customers from Apple Inc. with new Xperia smartphones. Adding two former executives of the iPhone maker to Sony's board next month may help.
JAPAN
May 30, 2013

Flak dooms handbook pushing motherhood

A government task force discussing measures to boost Japan's low birthrate has scrapped an idea to give young women handbooks informing them of certain medical facts — including those pertaining to infertility — faced by some women in their late 30s.
Reader Mail
May 30, 2013

The power of ideas over time

In his May 23 letter, "Watching what the church does," Barry Ward cannot refute Jennifer Kim's comments (May 16 letter, "Catholic link to human rights"), which show the debt owed by modern human rights conventions to Judeo-Christian teaching. So, instead, Ward fumes over historical wrongs committed by...

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