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CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 24, 2011

Dramatization of Mukoda's 'Kurumi no Heya'; value-savvy celebrity special; CM of the week: Fanta

The late writer Kuniko Mukoda was famous for her teleplays, which portrayed Japanese family life in a more realistic light than almost anyone else's TV scripts. This week, NHK starts a six-part dramatization of one of her novels, meaning a story that she didn't write directly for the small screen.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

March 11: nation transformation?

REIMAGINING JAPAN: The Quest for a Future that Works. Edited by McKinsey & Company; executive editors Clay Chandler, Heang Chhor and Brian Salsberg. VIZ Media, 2011, 464 pp., $38.99 (hardcover) Read any business report on Japan of recent times and there is a familiar theme: economically eclipsed by China,...
BUSINESS
Jul 23, 2011

Top '08 hedge fund plans comeback via stock futures

Kingo Tanaka, who ran Japan's best-performing hedge fund in 2008, plans to start offering a new strategy that invests in Nikkei 225 options and futures.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 22, 2011

The nostalgic and sweet life of Kyoto

The world of wagashi, traditional Japanese confectionery, can be a little difficult to decipher. Not a few people are rather underwhelmed by their first taste of a typical wagashi such as daifuku, a sticky rice dumpling filled with an, sweet adzuki bean paste. Even if you can get over the strangeness...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2011

BOJ ready to take 'decisive' action

The Bank of Japan will make "decisive" policy decisions when needed by examining movements in the yen and the economy as the nation recovers from the March disasters, Deputy Gov. Hirohide Yamaguchi said in Nagano on Wednesday.
COMMENTARY
Jul 20, 2011

Murdoch's moral rise and fall

Recent U.K. phone-hacking revelations have made the Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch a symbol of all that is wrong with U.K. tabloid media — scoop mania, rampant political bias, sex, sensationalism and trivia. But it was not always like that. The Rupert Murdoch whom I knew many years ago...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 19, 2011

All reactors off by spring — a once unthinkable scenario

As the crisis continues at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and thousands of people remain evacuated due to radiation fears, public sentiment has turned against allowing reactors idled for regular checks at power stations nationwide to be restarted.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2011

Murdoch's malign empire

The resignation of two key lieutenants of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his own full-page signed apology in British newspapers — "We are sorry for the widespread wrongdoing that occurred" — is clearly a desperate attempt to save his News Corporation group from being incinerated in the firestorm...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jul 19, 2011

Japan's incompatible power grids

Dear Alice,As Japan sweats through this summer of inadequate power, many more people now know that there are different electrical supply systems in eastern and western Japan, and that the two systems are incompatible. This is such a crazy situation that I'd really be interested to know the history behind...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 18, 2011

Nadeshiko Japan obviously doesn't do it for the money

Will victory mean more money for women's soccer in Japan?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 18, 2011

Goodbye summertime blues, hello summer proper

The late, great rock musician Kiyoshiro Imawano covered Eddie Cochran's classic "Summertime Blues" back in the 1980s, and the lyrics were prophetically brilliant.
Reader Mail
Jul 17, 2011

Bold renewable energy initiative

Regarding the July 14 Kyodo article "Son starts national energy initiative": I, for one, welcome the brave and very timely action of Softbank Corp. President Masayoshi Son to promote the production of renewable energy on Japan's idle farmland.
Reader Mail
Jul 17, 2011

Mindful of pesky value judgments

The Japan Times runs opinion articles written by current and retired Japanese bureaucrats. Professor Takamitsu Sawa's July 12 article, "Advantage of taking notes," was a waste of space even though Sawa sounds more like a journalist than a bureaucrat.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 17, 2011

When Sanma goes, so may the laughs

The tabloid Tokyo Sports has reported that one of the longest-running shows on Japanese TV, "Waratte Ii to mo" ("It's OK to Laugh"), may go off the air next spring due to sagging ratings. Hosted by the sunglass-sporting comedian Tamori since its inception in 1982, the noontime show's mix of celebrity...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEK 3
Jul 17, 2011

Films focus on Japan's nuclear flashpoints

The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 has revealed the danger posed by the storing of spent nuclear fuel in pools at the plant, because after the pools drained partly or wholly the fuel heated up and discharged radiation.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jul 17, 2011

Imperial work ethic; Electric Society's defiance; the 'Flat Tire Bandit'; the state of AIDS

100 YEARS AGOThursday, July 20, 1911
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jul 17, 2011

Tezuka on iPad represents shift in manga biz

Manga is an integral part of the entertainment industry in Japan, and has been for decades. There are numerous weekly and monthly manga anthologies. Series carried in those magazines often become bestsellers in paperback form and are adapted into anime, live-action TV shows and films. However, with fewer...
JAPAN / WEEK 3
Jul 17, 2011

Volunteering with three teens in Tohoku

Many people want to go to the Tohoku region to help in the colossal clean-up following the magnitude-9 Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 and the resulting tsunami that hit some 400 km of the coastline.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 16, 2011

What a waste! A human waste

Meet Ususama Myo-ou. He purifies the unclean. He hangs out in bathrooms. He's the guardian deity of the toilet. I'm thinking of inviting him to do a residency. Here's why.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2011

Key players got nuclear ball rolling

How did earthquake-prone Japan, where two atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II creating a strong antinuclear weapons culture, come to embrace nuclear power just a few decades later?
BUSINESS
Jul 16, 2011

Buyers warned of 'illegal' Geiger counters

In Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, a Geiger counter sold under the brand name of Shanghai Ergonomics Detecting Instrument Co.'s DP802i costs ¥65,000.
BUSINESS
Jul 16, 2011

Fast Retailing profit off on higher material costs, quake

Fast Retailing Co., Asia's biggest clothing chain, had a decline in fiscal third-quarter profit as prices for cotton rose and the March 11 diaster disrupted business at some stores.
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2011

Japan's power-short economy

The Bank of Japan's tankan economic survey for June, released in early July, shows that the economy was in bad shape that month but expects that it will rebound in September.
JAPAN
Jul 14, 2011

Japan must ditch nuclear power: Kan

Japan should gradually become a society that does not have to rely on atomic power, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday amid the continuing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past