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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 30, 2012

Is juggernaut Japan being driven to destruction (and no one's to blame)?

Ryotaro Shiba, the great author of historical novels, was a student of Mongolian at Osaka University of Foreign Languages when, at the end of 1943, he was drafted into the army. Then aged 20, he received a "provisional graduation qualification" (the actual certificate was issued the following year) and...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 29, 2012

Silicon startup success wants to return favor

Seventeen years ago, Anis Uzzaman won an education ministry scholarship and left New York to study at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The American was excited by the chance to learn top-notch technology in Japan, where electronics giants Sony and Panasonic were leading the world.
BUSINESS
Dec 29, 2012

Mitsubishi UFJ to tie up with, advise key Myanmar lender

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. said Friday it will ally with Myanmar's Co-operative Bank Ltd. to tap growing demand for financial services in the Southeast Asian nation as it shifts to democracy.
CULTURE
Dec 28, 2012

Endure New Year's on TV with the rest of Japan

Last year, NHK's annual New Year's Eve song contest, "Kohaku Uta Gassen" (7:15-11:45 p.m.), enjoyed its first ratings boost in more than a decade. As the most hallowed tradition in Japanese broadcasting, the program offered some needed end-of-year holiday solace for a nation still recovering emotionally...
BUSINESS
Dec 28, 2012

Toyota sees sales boom in '13 on overseas demand

Toyota Motor Corp., poised to regain its title as the world's biggest carmaker this year, said its vehicle sales may rise 2 percent next year to a record, led by demand from overseas markets.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 28, 2012

Aso takes reins of shrinking economy with fiscal gusto

Taro Aso, son of a cement magnate and a champion of pork-barrel spending when prime minister, is Japan's sixth finance chief in three years, auguring expanded fiscal stimulus in the world's third-largest economy.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Dec 27, 2012

In Japan it's never too late to get in on the ground floor with stocks

Will the Japanese public, in particular women, finally start investing in the stock market?
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Dec 27, 2012

Pop embraced conservatism in 2012

The 2012 general election might not seem to have any bearing on the state of pop music in Japan, but there was an eerie similarity in the way both the electorate and the pop world turned back the clock and wrapped conservatism in a neurotic embrace.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 27, 2012

The rise of the attention economy

I was recently posed the following question: "The most important way in which the Internet and online social media are changing our world is [fill in the blank]."
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Dec 25, 2012

Stuck on a Good Design Award winner

The Good Design Award winners were announced last month and there are plenty of great ideas to take in — make sure to check out the GDA website to browse through all of the new ideas.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 25, 2012

Benshi Midori Sawato

Midori Sawato is a benshi, a unique kind of performer who provides live narration to silent films at the movie theater. The benshi brings the characters in films alive using different voices and vocal expressions. They sit to the side of the screen, watching the movie with the audience and using their...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 24, 2012

Rip van Winkle returns to government with trade war on his mind

Japan is about to get a new government and it's just like old times. Liberal Democratic Party leader Shinzo Abe, who is set to become prime minister, again sounds as if he has been spending his time out of office back in the 1960s.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Dec 24, 2012

Power industry outlasts DPJ

Nobody was more pleased than the electric power industry when Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda made the surprise announcement Nov. 14 that he would dissolve the Lower House and call a general election. The industry hoped that this would clear the way for terminating the rule of Noda's Democratic Party of...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 23, 2012

Journeying to the ends of the Earth ...

Travel is an addiction for which there seems no cure. Once under its sway, it is best just to ride out the alternating fevers and chills and see where they take you.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 22, 2012

Dutchman keeps paper-making traditions alive at his Shikoku studio

Rogier Uitenboogaart, who has been charmed by the world of washi (traditional Japanese paper) for the past three decades — especially its deep relationship with nature and people's everyday lives — is trying to help preserve both nature and the traditional craft in this country.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2012

Starbucks pours fewer drops of drip per cup

A cup of Starbucks coffee in Japan just got smaller.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 22, 2012

Abe's return could ease yen, aid exporters

The economy has shrunk almost 10 percent in the half decade since Shinzo Abe was last prime minister, as a soaring yen hollows out manufacturing. Abe's return may be exporters' best chance yet to halt the damage.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 21, 2012

Hatsune Miku goes highbrow

On her own, Japanese pop superstar Hatsune Miku can't sing. Nor can she rap, dance or DJ. She is drug- and alcohol-free because she can't indulge in either, and she can't have affairs or engage in offstage shenanigans fit for YouTube scandals or tabloid headlines. Now entering her sixth year as a beloved...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Dec 20, 2012

Old technology a threat to publishers' bottom lines

People who like reading books are increasingly getting over the need to own them.
Reader Mail
Dec 20, 2012

Mistake was taking job seriously

In his Dec. 13 letter, "Marching orders to the Japanese," Gregory Clark writes that "Former Olympus Corp. chief Michael Woodford ... was brought in to help a company in trouble, and failed."
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Dec 19, 2012

2012 has been a big year on the Japanese social-media scene

Twitter continues to ride high. Facebook has grown a lot, but newcomer Line seems set to overtake it. Social game companies Gree and Mobage have shifted their overseas expansion into high gear. And Mixi finally admits that it needs to try harder to understand what its members want. In this month's column,...

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic