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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 13, 2016

Art Place Japan: The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Vision to Reconnect Art and Nature

In an era of relentless urbanization, global travel and weightless images, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale has pioneered a ground-breaking model of place-based art curation that aims to cast a little edifying rural grit into the oyster of contemporary urban affluence. Centred on a declining, depopulating...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS / OLYMPIC NOTEBOOK
Dec 19, 2015

Shearman details life behind sporting lens

Mark Shearman has achieved extraordinary success as a sports photographer, specializing in track and field. He has a remarkable portfolio — containing images of Olympic legends such as Edwin Moses and Carl Lewis, Usain Bolt and Sebastian Coe — that few can ever hope of compiling. But, he admits without...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2015

No-sweat risk-taker Arora lets ¥60 billion ride on SoftBank's future

It's a fall evening in Tokyo, and Nikesh Arora is supposed to be in two places at once.
Japan Times
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Nov 25, 2015

U.S. developing new tools of economic war against the Islamic State

Since last month, U.S. warplanes have struck the Islamic State group's oil infrastructure in Syria in a stepped-up campaign of economic warfare that the United States estimates has cut the group's black-market earnings from oil by about a third.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 12, 2015

Putin's daughter and Russia's second-generation elite

Since Vladimir Putin began cementing his grip on Russia in the 1990s, many of his friends have grown famously rich.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2015

Big science now faces big problems in China

Under the government's heavy hand, the Chinese scientific establishment has long suffered from cronyism, corruption and pervasive fraud.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 19, 2015

Democratic donors urge Biden to challenge Clinton in presidential race

A group of prominent Democratic Party fundraisers on Friday began circulating a letter to encourage a hesitant Vice President Joe Biden to enter the 2016 race for president.
Reader Mail
Jul 30, 2015

Honda on the right track with English drive

Before retiring three years ago, I spent 40 years of my life trying to teach Japanese students real communicative English. Now, when I switch on the TV and hear NHK come up with phrases like "Catch Insight," or see Hitachi, for example, using the advertising slogan "Inspire the Next," and many other...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 13, 2015

Is a two-tiered Europe next?

The euro crisis is providing Europe with some tough Greek lessons.
Japan Times
TENNIS / MATCH POINT
Apr 14, 2015

Expert says hiring Nishikori would boost American companies in Japan

His meteoric rise in the rankings over the past two seasons has made Kei Nishikori both a superstar on the court and a valuable commodity off it.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS / OLYMPIC NOTEBOOK
Apr 4, 2015

Olympic channel set to innovate, inspire

The evolution of Olympic TV coverage mirrors technological changes that have transformed broadcast media — and society — over the past 50-plus years.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 20, 2015

A stitch in time does much more than save nine

One of Tokyo Dome's most attended annual attractions might come as a surprise to some. Aside from being home to baseball games and big-name concerts, the huge stadium also hosts a number of fairs, including the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival — which is the largest of its kind.
Japan Times
SPORTS / NOTES ON A SCORECARD
Jan 30, 2015

No reason for fans to despair over Nishikori's defeat

What a difference three years makes.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Dec 9, 2014

Sake specialists give a lesson in culture

In Saijo, Hiroshima Prefecture, the largest room in the home of Hisao Maegaki, president of the sake brewery Kamoizumi Shuzo, is set for a feast.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 29, 2014

Stretch your fright nights right into the weekend

This year, many people in Japan celebrated Halloween early. Last weekend saw parades, parties and trick-or-treating at special events across the country, but for those who grew up in places that historically celebrate the holiday, Oct. 25 may have been a bit too soon to get spooked.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 22, 2014

TIFF Critic's Picks: Films from countries famed for unrest and oppression

According to TIFF's visual programming director Yoshihiko Yatabe, the semiofficial theme for this year's festival is "People on the Edge." They may be pursued, stuck in a rut, in dire trouble or just plain confused, but their stories are some of the most compelling at this years festival. These films...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 19, 2014

Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential

"Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential" was first published in 2010, offering readers a rare insight into a growing global fascination with the image of the Japanese schoolgirl. This revised edition features eight new sections that focus on developments on the subject, including an analysis of the fall and...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2014

The Tank Man's defiance

Chinese Communist authorities largely spared the student protesters of Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, though many leaders went to prison. It was ordinary citizens like the famous man who stood down the tank — along the streets to the square — who suffered the most.
EDITORIALS
May 9, 2014

Putting the squeeze on Russia

As the West struggles to come up with a response to Russia's creeping annexation of Ukraine, recent meetings among officials from both sides of the Atlantic — at which the prospect of stepped up sanctions were discussed — have been described as tense.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2014

Russia's big bet on 'Putinomics'

Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he can enjoy political and military freedom in dealing with Ukraine without experiencing crippling economic costs from sanctions or the exit of multinational firms from Russia.
LIFE / Digital
Nov 26, 2013

What's Twitter's real value?

A national economy is an unimaginably complex system. And yet we compress all its complexity into a single measure, and then focus obsessively on that. If you want a metaphor for this, think of King Kong spending most of his time staring at a pinhead, worrying about whether it is moving or not. That...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 26, 2013

Pink Globalization

Pink Globalization, by Christine R. Yano, Duke University Press
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2013

Deflating the hype on big data

Big data holds the promise of harnessing huge amounts of information to help us better understand the world. But the hype is causing contrarians to fall into hyberbole.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 28, 2013

Breakneck NSA growth fueled by insatiable demand for its product

Twelve years later, the cranes and earthmovers around the National Security Agency are still at work, tearing up pavement and uprooting trees to make room for a larger workforce and more powerful computers. Already bigger than the Pentagon in square meters, the NSA's footprint will grow by an additional...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013

'Stanley Ka Dabba (Japanese Title: Stanley no Obentobako)'

The politics of the bento (lunch box) are embedded in the Japanese DNA and most of us have an ingrained sense of the power play brewing inside one's lunch. Which is why "Stanley Ka Dabba" (international title: "Stanley's Tiffin Box") will strike a chord."Stanley Ka Dabba" hails from Bollywood, but it's...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 2, 2013

Language no barrier to multimedia Jon Kabira

With a long rousing cry of “Goooooooood Mooooorning Tooookyoooooooooooo!” Jon Kabira launches into his weekly radio show “JK Radio — Tokyo United” every Friday at 6 a.m. on J-Wave.
MORE SPORTS
May 30, 2013

Swimmers Hagino, Yamaguchi draw positives from below-par performances

Even in a post-Olympic year, the spotlight is still there on the swimming pool.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 24, 2013

A strong Japan can help the United States in Asia

China's continuing dispatch of ships and aircraft to the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands previews the future Japan faces if Beijing keeps rising and Tokyo keeps falling.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 10, 2013

A Japanese poet's whale elegy

If some Japanese advocates of whale hunting could commune with their ancestors, they'd feel the past dismay at the impious waste of whales' lives.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 30, 2013

Summly highlights how smartphones are upending media models

Many this week celebrated the latest tech wunderkind, a British teenager who made a fortune selling an app that boils down news reports, no matter how important or complex, into a pithy 400 characters. But for some of those who prefer heartier servings of news, the development carried at least a whiff...

Longform

Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?