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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 21, 2011

Media grasp for words to sum up post-3/11 grit

The disaster was "divine retribution (tembatsu)," proclaimed Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara just days after the Tohoku earthquake. "The Japanese have become a selfish (gayoku) people. We need to use the tsunami to wash away this egoism."
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Apr 19, 2011

Who pays for nuclear nightmare?

Dear Prime Minister Naoto Kan,
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 17, 2011

Japan's immense challenge

HONG KONG — Prime Minister Naoto Kan rightly called it the worst disaster to hit Japan since World War II. But the question now for Japan is whether the massive earthquake and tsunami that smashed the country on Friday can prove to be the earthmoving event that wakes up Japan's politicians to set the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Mar 12, 2011

Smoke gets in your eyes

"If you could pick five great places to smoke a cigar, where would you choose?"
EDITORIALS
Mar 2, 2011

New way of cheating

Somebody posted questions in Kyoto University's Feb. 25 and 26 entrance exams on an Internet site and third persons gave answers while the exam was going on. A similar thing also happened during the entrance exams of Doshisha, Rikkyo and Waseda universities. Cheating is suspected. What has happened undermines...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 27, 2010

Asahiyama's natural touch

Ivan the polar bear has been having relationship problems recently.
COMMENTARY
Oct 26, 2009

Paranoids feast on China's 'peaceful rising'

LOS ANGELES — Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only — not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing — that we raise concerns about China. So here's the paranoid's question: Just what is China really up to?
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2009

Moving from financial crisis to debt crisis?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Everyone from the queen of England to laid-off Detroit autoworkers wants to know why more experts did not see the financial crisis coming. It is an awkward question.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2009

Tourist's 10-day detention rapped

It all started when an American tourist asked a police officer for directions to the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo.
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."
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Aug 18, 2009

Weighing the nuclear option

In his 2008 New Year's speech, Japanese political doyen and former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone warned that without a clear-cut national vision and objective, Japan might tread a path toward ruin like the ancient city-state of Carthage, which was defeated and destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2009

Historic first: Lay judge quizzes witness

Day two of the first lay judge trial saw another historic first when one of the six citizens on the bench posed questions to a murder victim's son as he took the stand at the Tokyo District Court.
LIFE
May 24, 2009

Traders' plans pay off in Motomachi

What was supposed to be a day spent savoring the delights of Motomachi Shopping Street for our Timeout Yokohama feature soon took on the nature of a quest.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 3, 2009

Manabu Miyazaki: Outsider looking in

Born the son of a yakuza boss in Kyoto, Manabu Miyazaki is now a best-selling author. His life may read like fiction, but he raises social, political and media facts in a manner that's as frank as it is hard-hitting
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 29, 2009

Make room in the scrapyard of history for those quaint TV sets

When regular television broadcasts in America started in 1939, the intrinsic evils of the medium were already being discussed, and by the '50s the term "idiot box" had been coined.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 22, 2009

Our mantra of continuous growth has left us on ecological brink

If print media are any indication, change is in the air. Readers are sourcing news in new ways, and newspaper sales are declining as a result.
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Mar 3, 2009

Authors get up close and personal in monthly bookshop lectures

Stephen Kott describes himself as the "chief coffee maker" at Good Day Books in Tokyo's Ebisu district. He says it with self-deprecating humor, but it's not a bad metaphor for one of his real duties, which is to serve up an engaging brew of knowledge, opinions and humor in the store's monthly author...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2009

Lots of blame to go around for 'losing' Turkey

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — "Who lost Turkey?" That question, often raised in the past, has been heating up in the aftermath of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's emotional outburst during the recent World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos, when he abruptly left a panel he was sharing with Israeli President Shimon...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 31, 2008

Can poetry in translation ever be as poetic in its new language?

A friend who was visiting recently from Germany posed me a difficult question: How can poetry be translated?
Reader Mail
Mar 4, 2008

Right thing for America to do

.5 In his Feb. 25 article, "Fuel to the fire in Okinawa," Kiroku Hanai stated that he was interested in how Americans view problems related to U.S. military bases in Japan. Here's how I see it.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2008

Peace, prosperity come at a price

It is self-evident that international peace is the foremost prerequisite for national security and prosperity. This is the common recognition of all advanced nations, but Japan, with regard to national interests.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 28, 2007

And the government says: Let them eat rice

When I tuned in to NHK's "Nihon Kore Kara (Japan From Now)" on Oct. 20 to watch a live citizens' debate about Japan's food-security crisis, I felt the issue was a no-brainer. Who could argue against the importance of food security, meaning the self-sufficiency of a country to feed itself? And given the...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 9, 2007

Act of missionary hypocrisy

The ordeal of the women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Armed Forces during the 1930s and 1940s is beyond dispute, as is the responsibility of the Japanese state for these deeds.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2007

Somewhere between history and the imagination

David Mitchell is one of Britain's most influential novelists. "Ghostwritten" (1999), his first novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction, his second novel, "number9dream" (2001),...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 14, 2007

Brain-scanning gets closer to reading minds

Is the world inherently good or bad? You might believe that people are essentially good. Then again, you might believe that most people just pretend to be good -- and some don't even bother to conceal that they're not. You might complain that it's a stupid question in the first place.
EDITORIALS
Jan 1, 2007

A political showdown year

Mr. Shinzo Abe's administration at first seemed to have smooth sailing. By visiting China and South Korea and holding summits with their leaders, the prime minister managed to improve Japan's relations with the two neighbors. The relations had soured as a result of his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 3, 2006

Your money's no object for Ishihara and his 'fourth son'

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara is the most transparent politician in Japan, which is good in that transparency is always welcome in matters of public policy and Japanese politics is prominently lacking in it.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 5, 2006

Chizuko Ueno: Speaking up for her sex

In the United States today, it is no longer radical to suggest that the next president could be a woman. In Nordic countries, no husband would rail at a pregnant wife who expected him to share child-raising duties. And female heads of state are now found the world over.
EDITORIALS
Oct 2, 2005

Theory, antitheory and folk tale

A t the end of "A Brief History of Time," his 1988 best-seller about the latest scientific thinking on the cosmos, the British physicist Stephen W. Hawking posed a tough question in deceptively simple terms. "Why," he asked, "does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji