Search - people

 
 
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2008

Hong Kong exports boost farmers

Japan's agriculture has long had a global reputation for protectionism and weak price competition for rice grown in its rural areas.
COMMENTARY
Dec 9, 2008

America's chance to change course on Cuba

NEW YORK — The new political landscape in Washington and Havana offers a chance to change a foreign policy decision that has caused considerable, and unnecessary, suffering for almost half a century — the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2008

Thailand turns: next stop Banana Republic

BANGKOK — "Thailand's future is up for grabs," proclaimed the eminent Thai scholar Thitinan Pongsudhirak last week just before the country's Constitutional Court ruled, in effect, that the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and its two smaller coalition partners are "illegal," and hence must disband because...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 9, 2008

Shinkansen about more than speed

Shinkansen stand as global symbols of Japanese technological innovation. Debuting just in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the bullet trains continue to carry people across the nation at record speed.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 7, 2008

A bend in time, disengagement and the life of the mind

BIRNBAUM: A Novel of Inner Space, by Michael Hoffman. Printed Matter Press, 2008, 321 pp., ¥2,000 (paper) In writing about the process involved in the creation of this novel, Michael Hoffman observed that "Often as I wrote, I had no idea where this was going." This sounds a little like the literary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 5, 2008

Indie's new black

A little over a year ago, no one knew Black Kids, a dance-pop quintet from Jacksonville, Florida, who many people mistake for being British. Now anyone with a passing interest in popular music has at least heard of them. They are the latest indie band to have become famous even before they released a...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 5, 2008

Airport with no customers ready to open

The $268 million Ibaraki Airport is on schedule to open for business in March 2010. The hard part will be persuading an airline to fly there.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 4, 2008

An audience with Miyazaki, Japan's animation king

Hayao Miyazaki says he doesn't like giving interviews, but the Oscar-winning, megahit-making animator has strong opinions he isn't shy about sharing, as a packed room of reporters learned when he appeared at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo on Nov. 20.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2008

Failed governance allowed attacks

MUMBAI — In most cities of South Asia, hidden beneath the grime and neglect of extreme poverty, there exists a little Somalia waiting to burst out and infect the body politic. This netherworld, patrolled and nourished by criminals who operate a vast black-market economy, has bred, in Mumbai, a community...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 3, 2008

Temps in manufacturing feel full brunt of slump

The deepening recession is worrying workers nationwide, particularly temporary employees in the manufacturing industry.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Dec 2, 2008

Hailing the tail end of Bush

Regarding Barack Obama's election as U.S. president, I welcome the groundswell of hope. It's about time. The past eight years have been, well, awkward for Americans overseas.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 1, 2008

Aso reveals more than wealth gap with kanji-reading blunders

So now we know. Aso the "manga" man cannot read Japanese. At least not when it is written in kanji. The newspapers have been full of revelations these past few weeks about Prime Minister Taro Aso's slipups in the art of kanji deciphering.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 30, 2008

Only alternative to Congo's war without end

HARARE — Some time ago, the head of the United Nations refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, said of the Democratic Republic of Congo: "Nobody in the outside world feels threatened, and so the international community is not really paying attention."
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 29, 2008

Festival takes cryptic turn

I was walking home when I saw, up in the distance, four Buddhist priests dressed in purple and gold robes. "Hey, Amy!" they called to me. "We hope you don't mind that we tied our boat up next to yours in front of your house," one said, pointing to their 30-foot (9-meter) motorboat tied to the dock. No...
COMMENTARY
Nov 28, 2008

Spoiling for a Tibetan fight

LONDON — The Dalai Lama spoke in his customary platitudes, and the Chinese regime responded with its habitual bluster, but a corner was turned in the China-Tibet dispute last week. From now on, it's likely to get worse.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2008

Rokkasho plant too dangerous, costly: expert

Japan's plan to reprocess and recycle spent nuclear fuel in a reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, will be a huge waste of electricity users' money and an environmental threat, according to a French atomic power expert.
EDITORIALS
Nov 24, 2008

Increase peacekeeping efforts

Two officers of the Ground Self-Defense Force have been dispatched by the government to join the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) peace support operation in southern Sudan. The decision to dispatch them was made in early October on the basis of the 1992 international peace cooperation law. The...
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2008

Deciphering the oil puzzle

What happens when the demand for oil flattens out or falls and the supply of oil continues as before or actually increases? The answer is economics at its simplest — the price plummets. And that indeed is what has occurred.
EDITORIALS
Nov 23, 2008

Tough lessons in drug use

Until recently, Japan has not needed much of a drug policy, but recent headlines about "university pot busts" indicate one is overdue. Outside of Japan, marijuana arrests no longer even get space in newspapers, since access and use of marijuana is an everyday reality, unhealthy and questionable as it...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 21, 2008

Juana Molina: 'Music overwhelms me'

On the cover of her latest album, "Un Dia," Juana Molina's face is distorted beyond all recognition; the effect is both intriguing and disturbing.
JAPAN
Nov 20, 2008

Vice ministers reformed pension system

Authorities have yet to determine if there is any relation between the fatal stabbings of a former welfare vice minister and his wife and the attack that left another ex-welfare vice minister's wife seriously wounded, but such speculation has inevitably arisen as both bureaucrats specialized in the pension...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 20, 2008

You and whose Ami?

When singer and actress Ami Suzuki appears in the TBS drama "Love Letter" this month, she'll finally realize the end of a remarkable comeback.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Nov 20, 2008

No bonds, at least for now

Despite growing calls for the government to spend more to stimulate the economy, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa reiterated Wednesday his ministry currently has no plans to issue deficit-covering bonds. But he also indicated the tax revenue situation may make them necessary.
COMMENTARY
Nov 18, 2008

Health as a bridge to Middle East peace

NEW YORK — For more than two decades several projects have been carried out between conflicting sides in several regions around the world that have improved public health as a common denominator in the search for peace.
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo / WEEK 3
Nov 16, 2008

Scrolling past

In early November, Kazuo Yoshihara, an antiques expert with a 30-year career in the field, carefully opened a scroll painting in a room at the 14th Yokohama Kotto World fair.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Nov 15, 2008

Drogba case: Punish the perpetrator not the victim

LONDON — The thug from the section where Burnley fans were seated who threw the coin which struck Chelsea striker Didier Drogba will probably never be arrested and charged.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2008

A doctor in the house? Do you feel lucky?

After being turned away by eight Tokyo hospitals last month, a 36-year-old woman died of brain hemorrhage after giving premature birth by Caesarian section. A month before, a 32-year-old pregnant stroke victim was bounced among six hospitals before one finally accepted her for treatment. She is currently...

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’