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COMMENTARY
May 28, 2009

Words alone won't end torture

"We are going to smash your hands to pulp like the Chileans did to Victor Jara." Those were the words of the torturers in a Uruguayan prison spoken to my friend Miguel Angel Estrella, a pianist from Argentina. They were referring to the fate of the imprisoned Chilean singer and guitarist Victor Jara,...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 19, 2009

Weight of Imperial world on Princess Masako

Observers often liken Crown Princess Masako to Britain's Princess Diana. They both embody the fairy tale gone tragically wrong — women outside the royal circle wooed by the heir to the throne, only to end up clashing with the establishment and surrounded by controversy and speculation that has made...
EDITORIALS
May 10, 2009

World press freedom

In the middle of the Golden Week Holidays, newspapers around the world recognized their own special day on May 3: World Press Freedom Day. Officially established in 1993 by the U.N. General Assembly and organized annually by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), the day offers an annual report on...
JAPAN
Apr 17, 2009

Alcoholism remains a taboo issue

OSAKA — He seems to have it all. A tenured university professor in the Kansai region, fluent in English and partially conversant in Chinese, he is consulted by senior local business leaders seeking advice on doing business in the United States and Europe and has served on local government committees...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Apr 11, 2009

Hiddink a good bet to remain with Chelsea

LONDON — For reasons best known to the Dutch, Guus Hiddink is knows as "Lucky Guus" in Holland.
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2009

Yosano says aggressive public spending needed

Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said Sunday that aggressive public spending on a scale of possibly ¥20 trillion will be needed to wrest the economy out of recession.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2009

Afghanistan's drama set for stage

A high-ranking Afghan diplomat and a British dramatist are meeting a lot these days to discuss their common agenda: staging a play about violence-racked Afghanistan.
Reader Mail
Feb 19, 2009

Kyoto got what it asked for

Regarding the Jan. 13 article "Respect 'maiko' privacy, don't act like paparazzi, Kyoto tells tourists": All of Kyoto has aggressively promoted tourism to the international community. The city.kyoto.jp Web site provides a pamphlet that dedicates two pages to the maiko (apprentice geisha), the same amount...
COMMENTARY
Feb 17, 2009

Rumsfeld prosecution could set precedent

NEW YORK — There is now enough evidence to try former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, recently told "Frontal 21," a German television program.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2009

Getting Obama to focus on Pacific diplomacy

MANILA — Unlike his predecessor, U.S. President Barack Obama is popular from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He has reached out to the Muslim world and pledged to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without delay. The nations of Asia have a particular affection for him, owing to the years he spent...
EDITORIALS
Feb 7, 2009

American dream endangered

"The American dream in reverse." That is how U.S. President Barack Obama responded to news about the sinking American economy. His remarks are no exaggeration. One major U.S. company after another has announced job cuts and layoffs. And the evidence is more than anecdotal: According to the Commerce Department,...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 4, 2009

No respect for Love from assistant coaches

NEW YORK — Stumblebum that I am, I have stumbled across a situation whose level of egregiousness falls somewhere between Bernie Madoff and Bernie Goetz.
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2009

MSDF antipiracy mission gets LDP go-ahead

A team from the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling bloc gave the green light Thursday to a proposal to dispatch the Maritime Self-Defense Force to protect Japanese vessels from Somali pirates off Africa.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2009

Tsukiji reopens tuna auctions to the public

The Tsukiji fish market, one of Tokyo's most popular tourist attractions, reopened its early morning tuna auctions to the public Monday after a monthlong ban.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jan 16, 2009

Japanese wine: unadulterated and ready to go abroad

The image most people have of Japanese wine is of the ¥500 plonk sitting next to the synthetic beer and sickly sweet chu-hi cocktails on the shelves of their local convenience store; of the cheap and decidedly dismal stuff of lost weekends and discarded personal dignity.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 11, 2009

Orioles did homework before deciding on Uehara

So Koji Uehara is going to sink his forkball in the major leagues and his fork into a plate of crab cakes from Chesapeake Bay, having agreed, according to all reports, to a two-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 7, 2009

Israel's response to Hamas' zero-sum game

MELBOURNE, Australia — Imagine your next-door neighbor — with whom you have had a long and bloody feud — pulling out a gun and shooting into your windows, from his own living room, which is densely packed with women and children. In fact, he's holding his daughter on his lap as he tries to target...
JAPAN / THE MANY FACES OF CITIZENSHIP
Jan 4, 2009

Multinationalism remains far from acceptance in Japan

Third in a series
COMMENTARY
Dec 27, 2008

Is the end of oil in sight?

Worried about "peak oil?" The International Energy Agency's annual report, "The World Energy Outlook 2008," admits for the first time that "although global oil production in total is not expected to peak before 2030, production of conventional oil . . . is projected to level off toward the end of the...
BUSINESS
Dec 26, 2008

Megabanks face global monitoring

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and three other financial institutions will come under international surveillance as part of a global plan to prevent future financial crises.
SOCCER
Dec 20, 2008

Fergie sees red over Real's Ronaldo claim

YOKOHAMA — Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson has rubbished Real Madrid's claims to have reached a deal with Cristiano Ronaldo over a summer move to the Bernabeu, saying he "wouldn't sell them a virus."
Reader Mail
Dec 4, 2008

Don't write off trips to India

Regarding the Nov. 30 article "Tsuda's body arrives; Japanese recount terror": I am writing this from India. Here we have lost national pride, honor and, more importantly, a lot of lives. Only now a semblance of normality seems to be returning to Mumbai. I am saddened that Japan, too, has lost one of...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 30, 2008

Shades of the BBC in NHK's own 'The Office'

Two months ago I heard about a comedy sketch that appeared last May on the American show "Saturday Night Live." Actor Steve Carrell was the host and he and the cast of regulars did a parody of his own show, "The Office," an American version of the famous British sitcom about white-collar workers. SNL...
EDITORIALS
Nov 23, 2008

Recession at the people's level

Admitting trouble has never been a strong point of the Japanese government, nor has planning ahead, but the failure to promptly and directly confront the current recession will have serious long-term effects. As news from abroad pours in, it is equally clear that Japan, one of the world's largest economies,...

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers