Search - 2013

 
 
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
Feb 14, 2015

Eagles need young duo to soar in '15

Earlier this year, 24-year-old Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles pitcher Wataru Karashima said he'd retire if he failed to reach 10 wins this season. Karashima has pitched in NPB for five seasons, and was used out of the bullpen over the first two, making 14 appearances as a reliever. Since becoming a starter...
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2015

Author Sono calls for racial segregation in op-ed piece

A prominent author and former government adviser calls for Japan to adopt a system to force immigrants to live separately from Japanese in zones based on race.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 31, 2015

The 2016 White House race: a list of possible candidates

The calculus for the 2016 race for the White House has shifted after 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney decided not to run again. Here are a few of the possible contenders:
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Dec 25, 2014

Japan Times Advisory Board serves up brickbats, praise for newspaper's coverage

Ichiro Fujisaki, who formerly served as Japan's ambassador to the United States, praised the paper for its "readability." He said he senses that the editors try to choose phrases and words that are easy for Japanese readers to understand.
EDITORIALS
Dec 17, 2014

The skewed value of votes

Lawmakers must set aside their partisan interests and act fast to narrow the wide gap in the value of votes between rural and urban constituencies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 3, 2014

Looking Japan's film-industry myths in the eye

Who doesn't love a listicle titled "(X) surprising things you never knew about (Y)"? What surprises me about a lot of commentary on the Japanese film industry — from insiders and outsiders alike — is how it substitutes judgment calls (usually of the "Japanese films are crap" variety) for out-in-plain-sight...
BUSINESS
Dec 2, 2014

JAL Dreamliner battery fire triggered by Boeing design, NTSB probe finds

Inadequate design and testing caused last year's battery fire that led to the grounding of Boeing Dreamliner jets for more than three months, investigators concluded.
EDITORIALS
Nov 29, 2014

Shameful waste of tax money

Hundreds of billions of yen in taxpayer money was again wasted by the government and publicly funded organizations in fiscal 2013.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Nov 27, 2014

Shadowy Chinese agency woos Taiwanese to win island back

Ever since a civil war split the two sides more than 60 years ago, China has viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be absorbed into the mainland. To that end, the Taiwanese businessmen working in China form a beachhead in a war of hearts and minds.
EDITORIALS
Nov 24, 2014

Lowering the recidivism rate

The National Police Agency's 2014 white paper shows that the recidivism rate has been on a steady rise since 1997.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 23, 2014

Examining ASEAN up-and-comers

Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are among the least-developed, but growing nations of the Association of South East Asian Nations, or ASEAN.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Oct 2, 2014

Key questions entering 10th season

Japan's first men's pro basketball circuit tips off its 10th season with 10 games on Saturday.
BASKETBALL
Sep 13, 2014

Former NBA big man Ely joins Gunma Crane Thunders

Melvin Ely, the 12th overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, has accepted a contract offer to play for the Gunma Crane Thunders for the upcoming season.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 13, 2014

Waking up to child abuse

With reported cases of child abuse topping 70,000 per annum for the first time in August, Masami Ito examines the nation's changing attitudes toward violence at home.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Sep 6, 2014

O'Malley, Ramirez are worth a look as skippers

Now in the final month of the 2014 Japanese baseball regular season, the "A-Class" teams in the Central and Pacific leagues look forward to October's Climax Series of playoffs, while the three also-rans in both divisions begin thinking about next year.
BUSINESS
Aug 29, 2014

Yen at 120 needed to fuel inflation, UBS exec says

The new chief investment officer for Japan at UBS AG's wealth management division likens the nation to a man with $1.2 million in debt who is spending all his $53,000 salary and still borrowing $40,000 a year.
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 26, 2014

E-cigarettes may be tempting nonsmoking U.S. youths to try real thing: CDC study

Electronic cigarettes may be more tempting to nonsmoking youths than conventional cigarettes, and once young people have tried e-cigarettes they are more inclined to give regular cigarettes a try, U.S. researchers said Monday.
WORLD
Aug 26, 2014

Happiness study draws frowns from critics

A high-profile 2013 study that concluded that different kinds of happiness are associated with dramatically different patterns of gene activity is fatally flawed, according to an analysis published on Monday that tore into its target with language rarely seen in science journals.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Aug 21, 2014

Grouses remain in transition as preseason looms

Less than two weeks before the league's preseason schedule tips off, the Toyama Grouses roster doesn't resemble the one that soared to great heights last season.
EDITORIALS
Aug 20, 2014

Focus less on food self-sufficiency

The government should stop obsessing about raising Japan's food self-sufficiency rate and instead diversify food-import sources.
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2014

Tiny progress in interrogations

The National Police Agency says its investigators electronically recorded the entire interrogation process in nearly 1 percent of the cases set for lay judge trials in fiscal 2013. For critics of past investigative abuses that led to the filing of false charges, this is some progress.
EDITORIALS
Jul 23, 2014

Increasing FDI in Japan

Foreign direct investment in Japan remains sluggish even as FDIs increase in other industrialized economies.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 24, 2014

Ghosn to top executive pay scale again

Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn earned more than ¥1 billion last year, putting him on track to become the best-paid Japan executive for the fourth time in five years.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 23, 2014

Car industry struggles to solve air bag fiasco

As automakers hype self-driving cars, the industry's struggle to fix Takata's exploding, shrapnel-spraying air bags shows how much can still go wrong with the most established technologies.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 22, 2014

University is not a business

Members of the Industrial Competitiveness Council and others are headed down a dead-end road trying to remake the governance of Japan's universities after that of business corporations.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 14, 2014

Happy endings: foreigners working in Japan's film industry

Film is supposed to be a universal language, but the film business in any given country is usually run by the locals for the locals. The one great exception is Hollywood, which has been making films for the world since the silent days and is open to talent, preferably English speaking, from around the...

Longform

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.
Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.