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COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2006

Facing the past, embracing the future

To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future. We thus owe it to the youthful generations of the 21st century to communicate the hatred of war, the commitment to peace, that was engraved in so many lives on Aug. 15, 1945.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 10, 2006

Kyogen meets contemporary theater

For the past 20 years, Kazuhiro Morisaki has promoted the comical performing art form of kyogen, but that doesn't make him a purist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 10, 2006

There's an art to saving country life

Just a few hours north of Tokyo's seemingly endless sprawl is the mountainous region of Echigo-Tsumari in Niigata Prefecture. Like so many other rural parts of northern Japan, it is a rugged, isolated, aging and economically stagnant place where elderly men and women can be found doubled over in terraced...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 10, 2006

Looking beyond the West

Art historian Dr. Charles Merewether is the artistic director and curator of the 2006 Biennale of Sydney (established 1973). Merewether has worked and taught in Mexico, Spain, Australia and the United States and is the author of a number of books on art, including "Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations...
BUSINESS
Aug 8, 2006

JAL pares loss but plots fare hike as fuel soars

Japan Airlines Corp. on Monday reported narrower losses for the first quarter of fiscal 2006, but it faces tough times ahead as it struggles to deal with soaring fuel prices and falling domestic passenger numbers, and thus may hike international fares possibly by year's end.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2006

Abortions up in China as taboos weaken

NEW YORK -- Parallel to the economic revolution in China is a sexual revolution, particularly among youth, which is having far-reaching consequences on their health and quality of life. Since feu- dal times, sex has been a taboo subject in China. Even today, despite progress in many areas, many Chinese,...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Aug 7, 2006

From Poland to Japan: a contrasting tale of two central bankers

Two central bankers have been catching intense media attention over the past couple of months. One is Bank of Japan Gov. Toshihiko Fukui. He is in a bit of a dog house for his investments in the now notorious Murakami Fund, as well as for some of the other ways he has been moving his money about.
BASKETBALL
Aug 6, 2006

Wily coach Pavlicevic building Japan team block by block

His shoes have trudged across countless hardwood courts from Spain to Japan.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 6, 2006

JPBPU should consider rich history of Nichi-Bei Yakyu

You may have heard the Japan Pro Baseball Players Union has voted to end participation in Nichi-Bei Yakyu, the series of post-season all-star games between the best players in Japan and their counterparts from Major League Baseball. The apparent final good will event is scheduled to be played in Japan...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 6, 2006

Many happy returns to my Tokyo village past and present

As readers of this column last week may recall, I wrote there about a period in the early 1980s when my wife and I lived in the western Tokyo suburb of Soshigaya in Setagaya Ward. Three of our four children were born in the local hospital, and we have only the fondest memories of the old neighborhood....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 6, 2006

Shu Uemura: A life in pursuit of beauty

Hailing from a conservative family of businessmen and bankers, as a young man in occupied Japan, Shu Uemura dreamed of becoming an actor. But, fearing that his weak constitution would hamper his chances of success, he instead enrolled at Tokyo Beauty Academy -- the only man in a class of 130.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2006

Japan's zeal for eel translates into a drastic decline in supply

. The decrease in the number of eels in Europe is believed to be strongly related to the huge consumption of eel in Japan. Large numbers of eels caught in Europe have been imported here through China since the late 1990s.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 5, 2006

BOJ repeating history, board exec from 2000 warns

When the Bank of Japan ended its "zero-interest-rate" policy at its two-day Policy Board meeting last month, Nobuyuki Nakahara recalled the last time the central bank made the same move, when he was a board member in August 2000.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 3, 2006

Discuss Yasukuni after LDP poll: lobby

The Japan War-Bereaved Families Association, the most powerful lobby for relatives of Japan's war dead, will forgo discussion of politically sensitive issues related to Yasukuni Shrine until after the Sept. 20 Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, an executive of the group said Wednesday. ...
EDITORIALS
Aug 3, 2006

A positive form of punishment

Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura has asked the Legislative Council to discuss the introduction of social service as a way for certain types of convicts to make amends for their crimes. He also asked the advisory body to discuss housing for parolees and convicts who have served their time under a certain...
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

Licensing rights to players' images belong to baseball teams, court rules

The Tokyo District Court ruled Tuesday that the right to license the names and likenesses of professional baseball players belongs to their ballclubs.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 2, 2006

Perfect storm brewing in Horn of Africa

LONDON -- It has the makings of a perfect storm extending right across the Horn of Africa. The 15-year war of all against all in Somalia is threatening to morph into an international war bringing chaos and disaster to the rest of the region, and the al-Qaida-obsessed "securocrats" in Washington are the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 2, 2006

Cider and Spots in my haunts of old

It was my first month of living in Tokyo, and I had just about gained enough courage to go into a little restaurant and order all by myself. I had come to Japan to study karate, and had just finished a hard training session at the Kodokan. I was thirsty, and so was delighted to see that not only did...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 1, 2006

Staffing companies find market in helping retired athletes

When international midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata recently announced his retirement from soccer, people wondered what he would do in the next stage of his life -- business, sports, or a combination of both?
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2006

Photographer captures essence of elderly full of life, near death

As a freelance photo journalist, Munesuke Yamamoto has witnessed numerous deaths in war zones around the world, but he is now focusing on the living, specifically elderly people in Japan.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 1, 2006

Island travel and Mac help

Airport on Ogasawara? J and partner have heard that there is an air service to Ogasawara (the Bonin Islands) -- described in my book Insider's Tokyo (2001) as "Tokyo furthest flung outpost."
EDITORIALS
Jul 31, 2006

Sympathy for a racehorse

The world's compassion is notoriously quirky. Just consider where it has been directed over the past couple of months, a period as replete with tragedy and disaster as any in recent memory. Another lethal tsunami struck Indonesia. The sectarian slaughter in Iraq worsened, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 30, 2006

Time-capsule Tokyo along a street where I lived

In the early 1980s, my wife and I lived in a tiny flat in Soshigaya on the Odakyu Line in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward. The eldest three of our four children were born then, and I have only the fondest memories of pushing a pram up and down the kilometer-long shotengai (shopping street) between the station...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 30, 2006

Working for and beyond the call of hospitality

WELCOME TO SAWANOYA, Welcome to Japan, by Isao Sawa. Omega-Com Inc., 2006, 203 pp., 1,200 yen (paper). It seems at times as if, by common consent for the other's altering tastes, that East and West are exchanging positions. The West's love of the subtle side and back lighting, in the spirit of Junichiro...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 30, 2006

And in the Japanese corner is . . . Morita-san

Christina Morimoto is sitting in the office of the Tokyo modeling agency she works for, answering questions about her first acting job in the new movie "I Am Nipponjin."
JAPAN
Jul 28, 2006

JCJ awards Tokyo Shimbun for stories on conspiracy bill

The Japan Congress of Journalists said Thursday it will award its grand prize this year to Tokyo Shimbun for its investigative report on crimes of conspiracy.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?