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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2006

Bombings demonstrate what Bombay is made of

MADRAS, India -- A day after maximum terror struck India's financial capital, Bombay, the city of 17 million people was back on its feet. Even London took four days after last July's explosions to get over the shock and trauma.
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2006

'Yukata' enjoying sales boom thanks to affordable pricing, flashy colors

The "yukata," or summer kimono, is enjoying a sales boom among women thanks to drastically reduced prices and bold designs inspired by Western clothing.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 18, 2006

Preventing suicide and axing overtime pay is a risky mix

More than 30,000 people kill themselves each year in Japan, bestowing the country with the shameful honor of the highest suicide rate in the developed world. To deal with this reality, a group of lawmakers from across the political spectrum pushed an antisuicide bill through the Diet last month to force...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 16, 2006

AFN changes may augur trends for other sports media

Recent news items indicate big changes are coming for the traditional form of broadcasting baseball games in Japan and the end of the line for baseball -- and other sports -- on Armed Forces Network radio in our world of high-tech, satellite and cable communications.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 16, 2006

Up close . . . and virtually personal

When the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan characters fell in love via the virtual world of Web chat in the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail," it seemed a classic case of something that could only happen in the movies, not in the real world.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 16, 2006

The difference gaman can make

THE ART OF GAMAN: Arts and Crafts From the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946, by Delphine Hirasuna. Berkeley/Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 125 pp., 2005, $35 (cloth). In Japanese, the word "gaman" means the display of calm forbearance and poise in the face of adverse circumstances beyond one's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 16, 2006

For Fumiko Hayashi, not every cloud has a silver lining

FLOATING CLOUDS by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 328 pp., $27.50 (cloth). Toward the end of her life Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) said that she did not think her work would outlive her. Happily, she was quite wrong: She remains one of Japan's most...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 16, 2006

Dental 'charm school' puts bite on competition

The Omori Group is a booming dentistry franchise company that doubled its sales to 1.07 billion yen last year and now aims to double them again to 2 billion yen this year.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2006

Britain to get new Japanese studies center in September

Efforts by Japan experts in Britain to boost Japanese studies in the country will bear fruit this September with the opening of the National Institute of Japanese Studies in the new White Rose East Asia Center.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 14, 2006

Summer's door

"Natsu no Tobira (Door to Summer)," a play by Osaka-based theater company Ishinha, premiered at the Cervantino Arts Festival in Mexico in October 2005 before touring Brazil. Ishinha is now back in its homeland for its Japan debut -- limited to five performances in Osaka only.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2006

Guantanamo: shame on U.S.

David Hicks is a young man from Adelaide who was corrupted by al-Qaida propaganda and volunteered to train with them in Afghanistan. He left Afghanistan without having committed any terrorist or criminal act, then decided to go back to collect his meager belongings. Rather stupidly, that was after the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 13, 2006

Antiestablishment for all

Founded in 1970 by director Sho Ryuzanji, the Engekidan company was a natural bridge between two major theatrical movements in postwar Japan: the 1960s underground scene of dramatists such as Shuji Terayama and Juro Kara and the so-called "small-scale theater movement" started in the 1980s by the likes...
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2006

Osaka activist's arrest lays bare yakuza ties with 'burakumin'

On the night of Jan. 26, 1985, four hit men from the Ichiwa-kai crime syndicate drove up to an apartment complex in Suita, Osaka Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2006

Racism plagues Western media coverage

GAZA -- Racism is "the belief that one 'racial group' is inferior to another and the practices of the dominant group to maintain the inferior position of the dominated group. Often defined as a combination of power, prejudice and discrimination."
JAPAN
Jul 12, 2006

Horie key in takeovers: ex-CFO

Former Livedoor Co. Chief Financial Officer Ryoji Miyauchi told the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday that Livedoor founder Takafumi Horie played a key role when the Internet company decided whether to take over other firms.
SOCCER / World cup
Jul 11, 2006

Italy beats France, wins 4th World Cup

BERLIN -- Italy beat France 5-3 on penalties to win the World Cup final on Sunday night after Zinedine Zidane was sensationally sent off in his last game.
EDITORIALS
Jul 11, 2006

Independent judgment in doubt

The public controversy over Bank of Japan Gov. Toshihiko Fukui's 10 million yen investment in a fund led by maverick fund manager Mr. Yoshiaki Murakami, revealed in mid-June, has yet to die down. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party take the position that Mr. Fukui...
EDITORIALS
Jul 11, 2006

Japanese icon to leave the field

Mr. Hidetoshi Nakata, a key playmaker for Japan's national soccer team, has announced that he will retire from the sport as a professional. This international midfielder and national superstar has contributed much to the upsurge in popularity of soccer among Japanese since the mid-1990s.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 11, 2006

Yoshiko Sakurai

Yoshiko Sakurai, 60, is known as Japan's bravest and most responsible journalist. Her in-depth investigations have unnerved members of the establishment for decades. After 16 years as the nation's top newscaster, she quit television in 1996 to dedicate herself to writing. Sakurai has published more than...
SOCCER
Jul 9, 2006

New life ahead for Nakata

When Hidetoshi Nakata announced his retirement on his Web site July 3, it shocked the soccer world.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 9, 2006

Japan fashions a menswear coup d'etat

For a week in July, Paris becomes an outpost of Tokyo as Japanese designers and buyers throng the catwalks, parties and cafes where business is done at the biannual men's clothing collections
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jul 9, 2006

Wild times in the Lost World

The scene looks straight out of Jurassic Park. Huge vehicles thrash through the churned earth burdened with winches and cranes, steel crates and giraffes. Tough guys in uniforms bellow instructions or saunter about holding guns, netting, ropes to restrain buffalo, and all sorts of other neat "boys' toys"...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 8, 2006

On the train, the English teacher is 'out'

I often hear foreigners complain that Japanese people will not sit next to them on the train. The perception is that this is some form of discrimination, or perhaps more simply, that we just plain smell bad. Or maybe foreigners feel this is a form of ostracizing, leaving them feel all alone.
COMMENTARY
Jul 8, 2006

A Germany not ashamed to wave the flag

BERLIN -- It was clear from the taxi ride into town from Hamburg airport that something was different: Most buildings had a German flag hanging from a balcony. More remarkable still were the cars with small German flags protruding from windows. By the time I got to Berlin, it seemed that every third...
Japan Times
SOCCER / World cup
Jul 7, 2006

Zidane fires France into final

MUNICH -- Zinedine Zidane made sure his last game as a professional will be the World Cup final.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’