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EDITORIALS
May 22, 2012

Back to Earth for Mr. Dimon

JPMorgan Chase recently posted $2 billion in trading losses. Mr. Jaimie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase chief executive and a man considered one of the savviest bankers in the world, has dismissed the losses as "a tempest in a teapot." Given the scale of his bank's business, he is correct — at least when crunching...
JAPAN
May 22, 2012

Rare eclipse delivers spectacle despite cloudy weather

Monday's rare annular eclipse wowed millions nationwide as they looked up in the morning sky to witness the astronomical event.
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2012

Rebalancing eurozone wages and productivity

The eurozone crisis unfolded primarily as a sovereign-debt crisis mostly on its southern periphery, with interest rates on sovereign bonds at times reaching 6 to 7 percent for Italy and Spain, and even higher for other countries. And because eurozone banks hold a substantial part of their assets in the...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
May 21, 2012

Golden Kings beat Phoenix for bj-league title

The Ryukyu Golden Kings withstood every challenge the two-time defending champion Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix threw at them Sunday evening.
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Without fluency, debate suffers

Regarding Natsumi Ando's May 13 letter, "Put priority on debating skills": I sympathize with Ando's obvious frustration over the lack of opportunities for debate in class. There is nothing more exciting for a teacher than an engaged and highly motivated student, and Ando is absolutely right that one...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Stupidity of planners and builders

I was distressed, but not shocked, to read in the May 14 Jiji article "Extra work jacking up disaster housing costs" that homes for tsunami victims were not being built with the cold in mind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / WEEK 3
May 20, 2012

Artist creates Yokohama bodhisattvas

Eleven bodhisattvas stand in formation, their heads crowned and their almond-shaped eyes and faces dusted with gold.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 20, 2012

The wonder of feathers

A soft flake of seeming sky falls, wafts and floats earthward catching the light. Lightly, and soft as gossamer, it lands to add a splash of color to the greenery of spring. It may be no more than a tiny feather that's fallen from a passing bird, but it carries with it a message of mystery and miracle...
BASKETBALL
May 20, 2012

Golden Kings set up final rematch

Superior teamwork and execution carried the Ryukyu Golden Kings to the Western Conference title and the best regular-season record (39-13) among the bj-league's 19 teams.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 20, 2012

Japan faces a long, hot, nuclear-free summer

Is Japan — and particularly the Kansai region — going to have enough electric power to get it through peak summer demand? The Meteorological Agency's three-month projection for May through July, posted on its website (www.jma.go.jp/jp/longfcst/000_1_10.html) hedges its bets. For the four main islands,...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Road for English-speaking robots

I agree with Natsumi Ando, but I'd like to stress the importance of the mother tongue. Without a rich experience of free discussion in the mother tongue, we will never be able to effectively debate in any language. Just witness the sad state of adults engaged in endless exchanges of meaningless words,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 19, 2012

The list of lists

They grace the Internet like snack foods at a cocktail party.
JAPAN
May 18, 2012

Osaka's Hashimoto puts municipal workers' tattoos into the limelight

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto caused another public stir recently when he asked all city workers if they have a tattoo and even suggested those who answered yes should quit the municipal government.
CULTURE / Music
May 18, 2012

Will the world soon wake up to the scent of Perfume?

When the Nippon Budokan was built in 1964, its architects probably never envisaged it one day resembling a massive nightclub filled with hundreds of laser beams in every shade of neon as three women in lightup minidresses danced like finely tuned robots to the sound of the bassiest bombast imaginable....
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

The discourse over 'liberation'

I share Donald Feeney's concerns in his May 10 letter, "Politically correct 'straw men," about modern political discourse, but it seems we are not reading the same letters. He implies that my May 3 letter accused him of claiming in his April 29 letter "that Western males were perfect with regard to their...
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Let international tribunal decide

The ongoing ruckus between Manila and Beijing over Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea exposes China's penchant for bullying and contempt for international law. This gives other countries that have territorial disputes with Beijing, including Japan, an idea of the standoffs they might expect with...
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Business entities do not qualify

Is Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s plan for returning to profitability — restarting nuclear power plants to raise enough cash to pay off the damage caused by their inability to properly manage nuclear power plants — supported by government officials?
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Unable to thwart China's might

Regarding Mark Valencia's May 14 article, "Philippines-China spat tests ASEAN solidarity": Thanks for a nice article. I appreciated it because I have doubts that coincide with the writer's as to whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the United States and other countries with close ties...
JAPAN / 40 YEARS AFTER REVERSION
May 17, 2012

Old deals sowed seeds of unresolved problems

Third in a series Forty years after the U.S. returned Okinawa to Japan after a 27-year occupation, the public agreement ensuring American bases would remain after reversion and the secret agreement allowing the U.S. to reintroduce nuclear weapons continue to create anger in Okinawa and problems for the...
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Whose nod will reassure us?

Regarding the May 15 front-page article "Oi assembly says yes to restarting reactors" and the rush to restart these idled nuclear reactors: The Oi municipal assembly's choice to preserve its local economy makes sense, especially in light of the lucrative measures of support promised by the central government...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / IN THE RECORD
May 17, 2012

A Taut Line

Tokyo-based British DJ/producer Matt Lyne, aka A Taut Line, coruns the record label Diskotopia, with Brian Durr, aka BD1982. A Taut Line's melodic broken house, garage and techno productions are just as influenced by the Chicago jazz and postrock scenes as by the 1980s Chicago house scene. Meanwhile,...
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Train lights wasting electricity

Regarding the serious shortfalls in electrical energy predicted for Kansai and other regions of Japan this summer, it troubles me to see obvious waste by those who should know better. At this time, all segments of society should be taking action to eliminate any extravagance in their use of electrical...
EDITORIALS
May 17, 2012

Argentina's old-school economics

Resource nationalism was supposed to be a throwback, a discredited school of economics that failed the governments that embraced it. Apparently, Argentine President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner never got the memo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 17, 2012

There is trouble on Kafka's shore

Seventy-six-year-old theater director Yukio Ninagawa is famed and honored the world over for his magnificently visualized stagings of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek tragedies — as well as modern Japanese plays.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 16, 2012

Satellite to monitor ice in Arctic Ocean shipping lanes

The forecasting company Weathernews Inc. unveiled a micro satellite Tuesday that it developed to monitor Arctic Ocean ice for purposes of guiding ships through the area in summer.

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?