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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2012

Remix Film Festival questions the future of copyright law

Sampling, mashups, ripping and remixing — in an age of infinitely accessible and increasingly malleable digital audio, the question of who's allowed to do what with someone else's original music is becoming ever more heated. If you use a piece of software such as Traktor to ironically suture "Singing...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2012

Shortcut to success: Four little films that could

Short films are often regarded as test runs for directors, but that doesn't mean they have to look shoddy. Here are a few examples of shorts that not only launched careers, but remain as good as anything their creators have made since:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2012

Film fest keeps it short

Once upon a time, short films actually played in cinemas, as an opening act for the feature presentation. But as feature films got longer and cinemas tried to squeeze in ever more screenings, the shorts eventually fell by the wayside. As a result they lost their position as the traditional calling card...
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2012

Christianity perceived as threat

Regarding Dipak Basu's June 7 letter, "What need for missionaries?": I would like to add a few comments. Catholicism was brought into Japan, in exchange for the trade of guns, by the Portuguese after 1543. In many cases, daimyos who converted to Christianity in exchange for trade deals with the Portuguese...
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2012

Article 9 has stood by Japan

As a member of the Sagami Group to Protect Article 9, I am appalled by Andreas Kolb's June 10 letter. Kolb says Article 9 did not protect Japan from the Cold War and won't protect Japan from terrorists and fascists. But if Japan keeps its war-renouncing Constitution and refrains from suppressing other...
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2012

Vital artery of the Constitution

Regarding Andreas Kolb's June 10 letter, "Scuttle the useless Article 9": Does a foreigner have a right to suggest anything about another country's constitution, much less say that part of it must be scuttled? Suppose I said the U.S. Constitution was useless because it contained misspellings such as...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Jun 14, 2012

Bolt hungry to take star to new level during Olympics

Has anyone, anywhere, had a greater love of the camera than Usain Bolt? Maybe Marilyn Monroe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 14, 2012

"Marc Chagall 2012: The Love Story"

Marc Chagall lived through the hardships of both world wars. Because of this life and his Belarusian-Russian-French roots, he moved many times — from Vitebsk in Belarus, where he grew up, to traveling between St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris — until he was forced to flee German-occupied France for...
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2012

Undoing foreign stereotypes

Foreigners in Japan have been grumbling for years about assumptions that Japanese people sometimes make about them. As a long-term resident, I can sympathize to a degree; however, they should remember that some of the stereotypes they face have been perpetuated by foreigners themselves.
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2012

Ospreys add to Okinawa grievances

For nearly 30 years, Ginowan resident Eisho Nakandakari has had periodic trouble sleeping at night. It's not insomnia that keeps him up, but the roar of jets from U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, just a few hundred meters from his home.
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Jun 14, 2012

Mainali case exposes flaws, bias in judicial system

Facing retrial, exoneration and freedom after spending 15 years in prison for the 1997 murder of a Tokyo woman — a crime for which he was initially acquitted — Govinda Prasad Mainali could be a case study in the flaws in the nation's judicial system.
EDITORIALS
Jun 14, 2012

Bottom line of welfare

A weekly magazine in April reported that the mother of an entertainer earning an annual income of ¥50 million has been receiving public livelihood assistance known as seikatsu hogo (literally livelihood protection). Through a blog of a Diet member and other media, the entertainer was identified as TV...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jun 13, 2012

Gadgets and games to keep you dry in the washroom

It's not the classiest of topics, but here I go touching on the taboo — toilets. We all visit the bathroom several times a day, and what a relief that we do! The experience can conjure a curious mix of emotions: pleasure, pain, anxiety, boredom, impatience, pride. Japan famously produces toilets with...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 12, 2012

'Flyjin' feel vindicated, worry for those left in Japan

Although more than a year has passed since the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku on March 11, 2011, Ivan Stout's memory of the moment when the Shinmarunouchi building in Tokyo's Chou Ward began to tremble is as vivid as ever.
Reader Mail
Jun 10, 2012

Great need for Christian witness

Contrary both to common parlance and to what Dipak Basu writes in "What need for missionaries?," I think that rather than describing Christianity as "Western," it is more accurate to describe all three of the main monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — as Asian religions. Mesopotamia,...
Reader Mail
Jun 10, 2012

Scuttle useless Article 9

Regarding Craig Martin's June 6 article, "LDP's dangerous proposals for amending antiwar article": Article 9 of Japan's Constitution has never protected anyone. There are plenty of people who go on about how important Article 9 is, but I think these people are either lying or willfully ignorant.
Reader Mail
Jun 10, 2012

The definition of nonviolence

Regarding Dipak Basu's June 7 letter: Basu conveniently omits to tell us of the backlash against Christianity in Edo Period Japan, in which "nonviolence as the supreme principle" manifested itself in the form of crucifying Japanese Christians, a process in which the Buddhist temples were wholly complicit....
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 10, 2012

It's not that easy to quit

"If you don't like it, quit."
CULTURE / Books
Jun 10, 2012

Okinawa: a long history of hardship

THE OKINAWAN DIASPORA IN JAPAN: Crossing the Borders Within, by Steve Rabson. University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 312 pp., $55.00 (hardcover) Okinawa, mainland Japan's subtropical playground, is no paradise to Okinawans. Ryukyu, the archipelago's original name, means "circle of jewels." Lush appearance...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jun 10, 2012

The Marshall Islands: Tropical idylls scarred like Tohoku

With all its American, European and Asian cultural influences, it's easy to forget that Japan is also an island nation in the Pacific.
Reader Mail
Jun 10, 2012

Osaka mayor should be watched

In my understanding of human nature, most of us have a hidden agenda in our dealings with the world at large — private thoughts and desires often not shared with those nearest to us. I believe this is even more true of politicians. Assessing the depth and width of their humility and humanity is usually...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 10, 2012

The self-styled 'Land of the Free' nurtures yet another facet of hypocrisy

Last month, two members of the U.S. Senate vilified Eduardo Saverin, the cofounder of Facebook Inc., for doing something that Americans are apparently coming to consider a punishable sin.
Reader Mail
Jun 10, 2012

Pejorative use of 'homophobic'

Philip Brasor's June 3 Media Mix column, "Homophobic joke goes awry for 'Beat," shows just how far prejudice has permeated the media. But not the way most readers think.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2012

Wanted: round-trip freedom for China's dissidents

Western media describe my friend and colleague Chen Guangcheng as a blind activist who made a flight to freedom when China allowed him to journey from Beijing to the United States. What is essential about Chen is neither his blindness nor his family's visit to the U.S., but the fact that he upholds a...

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?