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Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

The North Korean perspective

Regarding Ralph Cossa's Feb. 8 article "Breaking past the tired old plot with Pyongyang": Cossa rails against North Korea's attempt, in the face of U.S. threats, to enhance its security by conducting missile and nuclear tests. He then details North Korea's sins and, in one fell swoop, mocks the efforts...
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Government's words vs. deeds

As a Japanese citizen, I strongly deplore seeing the Japanese government contradict energy policy that has already been written. It is not natural to say that all nuclear plants will cease operation by 2030 after the trade and industry ministry has endorsed resuming nuclear power plant construction that...
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Balancing ideas about Tibet

Regarding the Feb. 14 AFP article "Tibetan in Nepal 100th to set self on fire since '09": I am sure that anyone who grew up with 20th- century values should be appalled by this continuing campaign of suicide and self-torture. However, I use the word "should." A great many people — Westerners in particular...
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

The North Korean perspective

Regarding Ralph Cossa's Feb. 8 article "Breaking past the tired old plot with Pyongyang": Cossa rails against North Korea's attempt, in the face of U.S. threats, to enhance its security by conducting missile and nuclear tests. He then details North Korea's sins and, in one fell swoop, mocks the efforts...
JAPAN
Feb 20, 2013

Writer Donald Richie dies at 88

Long-term Japan resident, writer and critic Donald Richie, who through dozens of books and articles published from the late 1940s until the last decade helped introduce Japanese film and culture to the world, passed away in Tokyo on Tuesday, according to his long-term editor, Leza Lowitz. He was 88....
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Feb 20, 2013

Digital capitalism produces few winners

Need a crash course in digital capitalism? Easy: you just need to understand four concepts — margins, volume, inequality and employment.
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 20, 2013

China's Tibet dam proposals raise eyebrows in India

Plans by China to build three dams in Tibet have rung alarm bells in next-door India, where fears are rising that the northern nation's thirst for power and water will one day affect the flow of the mighty Brahmaputra River, a lifeline for tens of millions of people.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 20, 2013

Japan's step toward normalcy

It's hard to understand why some elements in Japan and overseas argue that the Abe Cabinet is causing Japanese politics to swing dangerously right.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Feb 20, 2013

Language startup rises to cloud nine

Innovations in software coupled with the widespread availability of Internet broadband are transforming the once stodgy business of language education. Leading the charge in Japan are two Japanese-American brothers, John Hideyoshi Martyn and Billy Kosuke Martyn.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2013

The Chinese people have an alternative dream

Last month's controversy at China's Southern Weekly appeared to be about censorship. At a deeper level, it was about alternative national dreams.
EDITORIALS
Feb 19, 2013

Save Olympic wrestling

Japan should join the other countries that are opposed to the IOC's decision to possibly exclude wrestling from the 2020 Olympics and launch strong lobbying activities to save the sport.
EDITORIALS
Feb 19, 2013

NRA secretariat must halt collusion

In the past, collusive relations existed between Japan's nuclear regulation organizations and the power industry. The latest incident involving the NRA secretariat shows that such collusive relations have not been eradicated.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 19, 2013

Millions of dogs and cats coddled, 200,000 gassed each year in pet-mad Japan

Cast in bronze, Hachiko sits in a position of prominence befitting a storied daimyo or prime minister, right next to the busiest intersection in Japan, if not the world.
Japan Times
TENNIS
Feb 19, 2013

Azarenka tops Serena in final

Victoria Azarenka defeats Serena Williams to win the Qatar Total Open before handing over her world No. 1 ranking to the beaten finalist.
JAPAN
Feb 19, 2013

Takeshima ceremony to draw 18 lawmakers

Shimane Prefecture's annual ceremony Friday to commemorate Japan's 1905 annexation of Takeshima will draw at least 18 Diet members, but so far no one in the Cabinet has signaled plans to participate in the event, the prefecture said Monday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 18, 2013

Ad agency has NRA's back with hard-hitting PR

"Are the president's kids more important than yours?" the deep and dramatic-sounding voice intoned. "Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?"
Japan Times
TENNIS
Feb 17, 2013

Serena regains No. 1 ranking

Serena Williams secures her historic return to the top spot by rallying past Petra Kvitova in the Qatar Total Open.
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Shortsighted plan for languages

The Jan. 30 Kyodo article "U.K. plan to limit Japanese worries language teachers" reports on a plan to minimize the teaching of Japanese in U.K. schools. As a result, Japanese may disappear from GCSE exams (for 16-year-olds) by September 2014.
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Fitting education to the realities

Back-to-back tragedies for Japanese abroad, first from the terrorist attack in Algeria and now the stabbing spree in Guam, combined with an out-of-control yen devaluation, risk encouraging an already isolated and isolationist Japan to withdraw deeper into its domestic shell. In an age when Japan is losing...
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Let dreams live in championships

My opinion about organized sports is eccentric. I like sports as a recreation, but as soon as they are turned into an organized, competitive activity in which opposing teams play according to rules for the purpose of acquiring points in order to defeat opponents, then you lose me. Where's the fun in...
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Chinese public not convinced

Regarding the Feb. 13 article "U.S. agrees: Chinese frigates locked their weapons radar on MSDF units": This is a very dangerous situation. The Chinese public will be overwhelmingly convinced that Japan is showing lying and treacherous colors familiar to them and that the belligerent Americans are siding...
EDITORIALS
Feb 17, 2013

AKB48 and sexual politics

The tearful video from a 20-year-old female pop group member who 'broke the rules' was a disturbing reminder of Japan's troubling gender issues.
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Danger to Myanmar's reforms

In his Feb. 14 letter, "Japan Inc. a dubious liberator," Richard Wilcox criticizes my Feb. 10 Timeout feature package about Myanmar, but totally misses my main points and invents ones I don't make.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Vibrant novel offers rich pleasures

UNEXPECTED LESSONS IN LOVE, by Bernardine Bishop. John Murray, 2013, 378 pp., £16.99 (hardcover)
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 17, 2013

Bringing the love of short films to a local audience

If there was a birthday cake for the Brillia Short Shorts Theater, it would probably be an elegant, minimalist affair — no excessive decorations, nothing too calorific and five slim candles giving off a modest orange glow. One of just four movie theaters in and around Tokyo dedicated to short films,...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear