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COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2009

Opening a regulated market for kidney sales

PRINCETON, N.J. — The arrest in New York last month of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman whom police allege tried to broker a deal to buy a kidney for $160,000, coincided with the passage of a law in Singapore that some say will open the way for organ trading there.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 25, 2009

One pocket knife, nine days' lockup

Following are a selection of readers' responses to the July 28 Hotline to Nagatacho column headlined "Pocket knife lands tourist, 74, in lockup."
EDITORIALS
Aug 24, 2009

Promoting renewable energy

To combat global warming, the government has a middle-term goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. To achieve this goal, it will be important to spread the use of renewable energy. As part of this effort, the government plans to increase solar power generation...
Reader Mail
Aug 23, 2009

American off-color humor is rare

I am grateful to have Rick H.'s Aug. 13 letter, " 'Sexcentric' jokes abound in Japan," and agree with him that Japan, like any other nation, is far from pure. Space in my recent Counterpoint articles did not permit going into a host of other forms of humor, such as rakugo and manzai, which are still...
Reader Mail
Aug 23, 2009

An astonishing sense of denial

What a ludicrous interpretation of World War II history. If Satsuo Matsumoto wrote such a letter about Germany and Adolf Hitler's war to "liberate" Europe, he might be arrested and sent to prison for Holocaust denial. Germany can't change its dark and hellish Nazi past, but at least it won't tolerate...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 23, 2009

Obama hails Lincoln — but is he on course to fail the LBJ way?

"Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people's funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. . . . It was the government's job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible, and the job...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2009

Rich material found in penury

It is 1995, that defining year of the Kobe earthquake, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the year a man in Osaka confesses to dismembering the bodies of three women at his home in Osaka; the year a Buddhist priest is arrested for raping over 100 women. The times are out of joint, and the author...
Reader Mail
Aug 23, 2009

Letter from an alternate universe

I have great admiration for Satsuo Matsumoto's Aug. 20 letter, "Left keeps trying to disgrace Japan," because conceiving and executing such a piece of writing that is so obtuse is almost a work of art. No, it is a work of art! It is a work of brilliant surrealism that I will frame for my wall.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 23, 2009

Japan's creeping natural disaster

In October 2010, government officials from almost every country in the world will meet in Nagoya for the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP10). The aim of the Convention, which came into effect in 1993, is simple but momentous: To maintain the richness of life on...
COMMENTARY
Aug 23, 2009

Scrutinizing the Chinese threat to Taiwan

LOS ANGELES — In the United States we refer to it as the Powell Doctrine. And it helps unravel a bit of mystery about what China is up to these days. Remember Colin Powell? Before Barack Obama rode into the U.S. scene on his white horse, Powell was America's most admired black public political figure....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2009

Japan's H1N1 cases at flu epidemic stage

On the basis of substantially increased hospitalizations, the H1N1 swine flu outbreak was declared an epidemic by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases on Friday.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2009

Funding for scientific research

The ¥14 trillion supplementary budget for fiscal 2009 has a problematic feature. It allocates as much as ¥4.36 trillion — about 30 percent of the budget — to 46 funds, 30 of them newly established. Money in the funds can be used "flexibly" for more than a year, raising the possibility that bureaucrats...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 22, 2009

The right word and the right to choose it

If you are a foreigner living in Japan, odds are high that language learning has played a key role in your residency.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2009

Japan, Brazil sow seeds of hope in Mozambique

Prime Minister Taro Aso's list of diplomatic accomplishments may be short but Japan's latest aid project in southeastern Africa could eventually become a key resource to support the nation's food security.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2009

Traveling through a symphony of art

Several weeks ago at the Fuji Rock music festival, I realized that I might be in the wrong game. The art world is about the object: You look at a work, often something inert, and attempt to discern from it an emotion, a meaning or a truth. But music irresistibly moves you, it mysteriously reaches through...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 21, 2009

Indie hardman opens the tear ducts

Sion Sono is Japan's edgy indie director par excellence, whose internationally acclaimed films expose social ills and challenge taboos in a variety of genres and moods, from the death-trip chills of "Jisatsu Circle" ("Suicide Club," 2001) to the black-comic laughs of "Ai no Mukidashi" ("Love Exposure,"...
Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

Omiyage ritual has been difficult

Regarding Kris Kosaka's Aug. 15 article, " Surviving a Japanese summer boils down to the art of omiyage": As the wife of a Japanese man since 1974 and as a Paris resident, I enjoyed reading about the "omiyage pleasure-nightmare." Since 1974 I have bought thousands of travel gifts for my husband's visits...
EDITORIALS
Aug 20, 2009

Mr. Kim's legacy lives on

South Korea has lost a great political leader. Former President Kim Dae Jung died Tuesday of multiple organ failure in a Seoul hospital at the age of 85. The 2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who tirelessly promoted the cause of reconciliation and cooperation between the North and South and played a critical...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / TAKING A CHANCE
Aug 20, 2009

Starting up Net portal for women turns into lifetime career choice

Kikuko Yano was searching for a job she could do her entire life, and found it in the Internet firm she started on her own.
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2009

Suzuki sides with DPJ, sees dual polls in '10

SAPPORO — Muneo Suzuki, leader of Hokkaido's New Party Daichi, said elections for both chambers of the Diet could be held simultaneously next year if the opposition camp secures a huge win in the Aug. 30 House of Representatives poll.
COMMENTARY
Aug 19, 2009

A greater role in relief work for armed forces

Will Asia-Pacific armed forces find their role in national defense and security shifting significantly in the future as the effects of climate change caused by global warming intensify? If so, how quickly will it happen?
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Aug 19, 2009

Sharp rides the Blu-ray; iPhone catches up

More bang from the Blu-ray: Sharp aims to beat a storage restriction problem with its second-generation Aquos DX series of LCD televisions. Notable for combining a built-in Blu-ray recorder with an LCD TV, the key improvement for the new range is a 7× extended HD recording mode. Sharp claims that this...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years