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Reader Mail
Jun 24, 2012

If not one excuse, it's another

In June 1991, I noticed an interesting newspaper editorial titled "Worrisome decrease in births," which warned Japanese people that their hardworking ways as "corporate warriors" had led to a decreasing birthrate. More than 20 years ago, the Japanese mass media were already making much of this, yet the...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 23, 2012

England must step it up to advance

It was Jock Stein, the former Celtic manager, who said of tournament football: "You qualify in your boiler suit and then put on your tuxedo."
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 23, 2012

When generations pass on the street

I see him first. The new guy in town. He's just popped out of a convenience store and has turned in my direction. The walkway pinches in and the only way he can avoid me is to freeze in his tracks and spin around. We are destined to pass.
EDITORIALS
Jun 22, 2012

Heed sentiment on Osprey

The government is trying to persuade local governments concerned in Okinawa and Honshu to accept a U.S. plan to station 24 MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to replace the same number of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters stationed there....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012

'One Day'

They say that the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. "One Day" is all about that need, and how two people (subconsciously and otherwise) hold on to that for 23 long years.
Jun 22, 2012

Cold War shadows Serb's win of key U.N. post

Shadows of the Cold War returned to the United Nations in the recent elections for president of the General Assembly, where a previously agreed candidate from Lithuania was challenged and subsequently defeated by a Russian-backed contender from Serbia.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2012

Innovative data delivery firm e-Parcel takes on the big boys

When e-Parcel Corp., an online data delivery service provider, last year sued 13 U.S. Internet-related service firms, including Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., AOL Inc. and Akamai Technologies Inc., for patent infringement, the action meant more than just protecting its intellectual property.
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

Disposal of quake-tsunami debris

Regarding the June 12 Kyodo article "Gunma agrees to help dispose of Iwate quake-tsunami debris": I'm glad to hear this news. After hearing earlier that many people in a city of my prefecture had voted against accepting quake-tsunami debris, I was afraid that the number of areas willing to receive it...
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

Focus on Tepco's negligence

The "regrettable" aspect of the June 17 editorial "Regrettable 'go' on nuclear reactors" is the predisposition that nuclear energy is bad and must be eliminated. It turns our attention away from what the real problem was. Nuclear energy is as safe as humans make it.
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

New taxes are not the answer

Regarding the June 5 front-page article "Noda replaces censured ministers," what is Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda thinking? Japan doesn't have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. The last thing you want to do is raise taxes during a time of deflation — particularly a tax that will...
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

Anti-nuclear protest buried

Last week's arrest of Katsuya Takahashi, the last remaining fugitive wanted in connection with the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, captured the attention of the Japanese news media. Often during the first 48 hours after Takahashi's arrest, it seemed as if every news camera from every Japanese...
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

What 'international outcry'?

The June 17 Page 2 article "Oi decision draws international outcry" is very interesting with regard to the disparity between the headline and the body of the article.
Reader Mail
Jun 21, 2012

Back on the doomsday cycle

The biggest cartel in Japan, if not the world, has long involved the government and the utility companies. Is it any wonder, then, that Prime Minister Noda has taken the unilateral action of giving the go-ahead to restarting Japan's nuclear power industry, despite the common-sense reality that nuclear...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 21, 2012

The photographs that leave a paper trail

In today's complex world, in which we are routinely overburdened with data, intuition and a visceral response to imagery is increasingly trumping rational discourse, according to Thomas Demand. But this is something the German artist, whose work is the subject of a major solo show at the Museum of Contemporary...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2012

Japan also has stake in universal rights, says ex-Congo child soldier

Michel Chikwanine, a university student in Canada who was once a child soldier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has suffered things no ordinary Japanese child will ever have to.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 21, 2012

"Bernard Leach: Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of Leach's Career as a Painter"

While in his 20s, British potter Bernard Leach (1887-1979), who was brought up in East Asia, started to fraternize with some of Japan's most forward-thinking artists. His friendship with Soetsu Yanagi, the founder of mingei — a movement that advocated the "utilitarian beauty" of Japanese traditional...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Jun 20, 2012

Gunma selects forward Sugasawa with No.1 pick in bj-league draft

A pair of bj-league franchises took the first step toward building their rosters for the 2012-13 season during Tuesday's draft day event in Tokyo.
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Jun 19, 2012

Greek outcome only step in right direction

The yen fell against the euro and Asian stocks rose after proausterity New Democracy won the national elections in Greece on Sunday, but pundits warned that it is too early for Japan to breathe a sigh of relief.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 19, 2012

Seaweed salt

Dear Alice,
Reader Mail
Jun 17, 2012

Getting accepted as an equal

Regarding Donald Wood's June 14 letter, "Undoing foreign stereotypes": I have to admit that I have never met a foreigner who jokes about natto. The only natto humor I have ever encountered consists of Japanese people trying to force the stuff on foreigners for a laugh. This even included the compeer...
Reader Mail
Jun 17, 2012

Fruit of religious conversions

Regarding Olaf Carthaus' June 14 letter, "Desire to help not a delusion": If Christians go to other countries in Asia to help the poor without any ulterior motive, there cannot be any objection. But as the Tokugawa shoguns experienced from the beginning of the 17th century and as India experienced after...
Reader Mail
Jun 17, 2012

Myth of living without an army

Regarding the June 13 front-page Kyodo article "GSDF ranger unit marches through central Tokyo": It is strange that so many seem to truly believe that a country can defend its interests and territory without the need for an army. It seems that Japan's peaceful Constitution has brought about this odd...
Reader Mail
Jun 17, 2012

Sweet dream for Fukushima

Regarding the June 11 article "18% of Fukushima evacuees may be unable to return home even after 10 years": This figure is laughable; there is no way. The example is Chernobyl. Not one person has returned to Chernobyl because the hazard is still present in the soil.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Jun 17, 2012

Nakase out as Saitama coach; club brings in Williams

The Saitama Broncos have parted ways with head coach Natalie Nakase. The expected announcement was made official on Friday afternoon.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 17, 2012

Exoskeletons await in work/care closet

There are friendly smiles on the faces of the engineering students peering past their PCs and half-finished gadget designs in the Tokyo lab as I try to lift 40 kg of rice. Normally I'd worry about impending humiliation, but today I'm confident my ego will remain intact.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jun 17, 2012

Titanic survivor's tale; a whaler's arrival; Osaka-Tokyo in half the time; early cases of AIDS

100 YEARS AGOTuesday, June 4, 1912
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 16, 2012

Ryukyu's Newton named JT's top player for second time

With non-stop, nonsensical expansion since the first games were staged in the fall of 2005, the bj-league's ranks have swelled to include a growing number of solid players, including an abundance of former NCAA Division I performers.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic