Search - article

 
 
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Mar 7, 2013

Uniqlo not as different as its workers thought it would be

Japan's most coveted work environment isn't what it's cracked up to be.
EDITORIALS
Mar 7, 2013

A blow to the weapons exports ban

The Abe administration's decision to let domestic firms participate in producing the U.S. F-35 fighter violates the spirit of Japan's weapon exports ban.
Reader Mail
Mar 7, 2013

'Remorse' shouldn't be a factor

Two articles printed in The Japan Times in less than a month show a very troubling feature of the Japanese criminal justice system.
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013

Skip the reference to James Bond

The Feb. 28 Kyodo/AFP article "125,000 lethal doses of sodium cyanide leaked in Iwate" mentions writer Ian Fleming's fictional secret agents who were issued cyanide capsules to kill themselves if they were captured. Referring to James Bond in an incident that endangered the lives of thousands of people...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 23, 2013

Women see, touch war-era paper again

Three former students who were involved in making paper balloon bombs at a Nagoya school during the war saw and touched the "washi" (traditional Japanese paper) used to make the balloons for the first time in 68 years on Feb. 16.
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Celebrate Japan's diverse look

Regarding the Feb. 28, 2008, article "Why's Japan grown so ugly?": I was struck by how amazingly naive this article seems; this approach to town planning is part of why I fled Britain.
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

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 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.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 17, 2013

Judo scandal casts doubt on Olympic bid

News stories don't exist in a vacuum. What often makes them "news" is a confluence of factors that provide a context of interest. Though the public thinks the current story about 15 female judo athletes (jūdōka) demanding fundamental changes to the way the national team is structured and run is a self-contained...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 8, 2013

Japanese attorneys throw their nets farther out

Big city lawyers are moving to the sticks to drum up business.
Reader Mail
Feb 7, 2013

Qualified to ride on the road?

As a daily cyclist in the suburbs of Tokyo and as a regular cyclist when I lived in England, I can comment on the Feb. 5 Japan Times article "Cyclists who flout the law face charges."
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 7, 2013

Abe presses ahead on collective self-defense

Japanese corporate executives doing business with China as well as diplomats stationed in Japan and neighboring countries are probably breathing a sigh of relief now that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has dialed down his hawkish stance from the campaign trail in December and has instead focused on stimulus...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Feb 3, 2013

Hidetoshi Masunaga: making revolution through the Constitution

On Dec. 14, 2012, two days before the Lower House election in which the Democratic Party of Japan headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was eclipsed as the conservative Liberal Democratic Party swept back to power in a landslide, a one-page advert with a huge banner headline appeared in a vernacular...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 3, 2013

Celebrity bloggers not required to disclose paid endorsements

In December several celebrities were forced to apologize publicly for stating on their personal blogs that they had "won" items on so-called penny auction websites when, in fact, they hadn't.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 1, 2013

Abe says he feels war sex slaves' pain

Facing questions from an opposition lawmaker Thursday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe refused to comment on the government's position on wartime sex slaves, but he did say he feels "heart-breaking pain" when he thinks of how their human rights were violated.
EDITORIALS
Jan 30, 2013

Mr. Abe's strategy

A s the 150-day ordinary Diet session kicked off Monday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered his first policy speech since becoming prime minister following the Liberal Democratic Party's victory in the Dec. 16 Lower House election. He said Japan is facing crises with regard to the economy, damage from...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 28, 2013

Blame it on the hara: harassment vocabulary makes us all victims

Japan has a new hara. No, the nice couple down the hall didn't just have a baby; according to recent news, yet another form of harassment is supposedly becoming a social problem.
Reader Mail
Jan 26, 2013

Sober critique of American ideals

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison's Washington Post article, "Building a better U.S. drone policy," which was printed in The Japan Times on Jan. 17, is a sober, elegant and erudite critique of the "drone wars." That it is written by an American congressman is both encouraging and depressing.
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jan 22, 2013

Readers' views: Skype's downside for teachers; Senkaku and the ICJ; Arudou's ageist attack on Keene; Abe's nuclear folly

Do we really need to know ages? Re: "Osaka: What are your hopes for yourself, Japan and the world in 2013?" (Views From The Street, Jan. 1):
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LABOR PAINS
Jan 22, 2013

AKB48: Unionize and take back your lost love lives

They started performing on stages in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, and today their ubiquity is unrivaled. The current flavors of the month pepper the TV schedules and covers of weekly magazines all year round. In Tokyo, you can't swing a carrot without hitting a giant poster of one or a bunch...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 19, 2013

So many small things Japan should be proud of

The new Tokyo Skytree has enjoyed immense popularity and is being credited for giving Japanese people hope for the future. Yes, having with the tallest tower (634 meters) and the second tallest structure in the world, we are all filled with a renewed sense of confirmation that — taller is better!
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2013

Violence lurks below the veneer

It was interesting to see that The Japan Times happened to publish three directly connected items in the Jan. 13 edition. On the front page was the Kyodo article "High school coach tries to justify abuse of boy" plus a photograph of Japanese Shinto devotees enduring a self-purification test in which...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Jan 14, 2013

Advising Abe on the wisdom of a nuclear restart

Readers offer some advice to the new prime minister on the contentious issue of nuclear power in post-3/11 Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2013

Sign of the Financial Times: Will it sell independence?

Too many years ago, this young reporter was about to move from one of Britain's biggest newspaper groups to a paper with a daily sale of fewer than 200,000 copies. A hard-bitten veteran, who had spent years reporting for the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph pleaded with me over farewell drinks not...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 13, 2013

Magazines struggle to maintain relevance

The print edition of venerable U.S. weekly news magazine Newsweek is no more. From the Jan. 4 issue it relaunched as a digital-only publication.
Reader Mail
Jan 10, 2013

Risk of losing food autonomy

Kudos to Philip Brasor for his illuminating Jan. 6 Media Mix article, "Japan's farming could be going to seed." Too often Japan's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) dilemma is made out to simply be an industry versus agriculture problem, with the former to gain much and the latter to possibly lose something....
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jan 9, 2013

Energy conservation isn't just for summers any more

More Japanese homes are using electricity for heating purposes.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 8, 2013

U.S. imagination goes wild regarding Iranian 'threat'

Reading the text of a bill that was recently signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama would instill fear in the hearts of ordinary Americans.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building