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Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2014

Shambolic Venezuela's biggest threat? Itself.

Late President Hugo Chavez used to call it "la revolucion bonita" (the pretty revolution), but the world looked at Venezuela last week and saw only ugliness. Protesters gunned down in the streets, barricades in flames, chaos. One of the dead was a 22-year-old beauty queen shot in the head.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2014

U.S. media losing credibility

The U.S. media's reduction of the recent diplomatic row between New Delhi and Washington to India wrong, America right, is an indictment of their professional integrity.
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2014

Legacy of carnage and ruin

This is probably, but not certainly, the year that sees the end to the United States' three-decades-long effort to establish permanent American strategic bases in the Muslim Middle East and in Muslim Asia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 20, 2014

McConaughey, Leto transform for roles in 'Dallas Buyers Club'

Acadamy Award nominee Jared Leto, who plays a transgender person with AIDS in the film "Dallas Buyers Club," says he was recently called a shape-shifter.
OLYMPICS
Feb 18, 2014

Kasai leads way as Japan takes bronze in large hill team jump

Japan captured the bronze medal in the large hill team jump at the Sochi Games on Monday night.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 16, 2014

Svante Paabo, prehistoric sleuth

Leipzig's Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology is a striking edifice.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 15, 2014

'The Fed' closing an end of an era

Of the many Western-style hotels that mushroomed across Bangkok in the 1960s, principally to accommodate large numbers of U.S. servicemen on leave from the Vietnam War (which was raging about 1,000 km to the east), the Federal Hotel was considered the granddaddy of them all.
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 12, 2014

Dance, Kobe — dance!

Whatever springs to mind when you think of Kobe, it's unlikely to be dance. Yet, from the fourth floor of a nondescript building in the port city's multiethnic district of Shin-Nagata there shines forth a veritable beacon called Dance Box.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2014

Welfare state taking over the U.S. government

The budget story that is largely missed by American political leaders and the public is that the welfare state is strangling government's ability to respond to other national problems, because the constituencies for welfare benefits are more powerful than their competitors for federal support.
EDITORIALS
Feb 9, 2014

Samuragochi's shameful deception

What are fans of the supposedly deaf composer Mamoru Samuragochi to make of the revelation that another composer has ghostwritten more than 20 classical music scores credited to Samuragochi for the past 18 years?
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 9, 2014

Water shortages leaving world high and dry

On Jan. 17, scientists downloaded fresh data from a pair of NASA satellites and distributed the findings among the small group of researchers who track the world's water reserves. At the University of California, Irvine, hydrologist James Famiglietti looked over the data from the gravity-sensing Grace...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 8, 2014

Yuichiro Miura: on top of the world

Ever wondered what it feels like to stand on top of the world? Eighty-one-year-old alpinist Yuichiro Miura should know: He's done it three times since turning 70. He became the oldest person to scale the world's tallest peak, Mount Everest, in May last year, a remarkable feat that spurred the government...
COMMENTARY
Feb 6, 2014

Asia's dangerous nostalgia

What gives with the nostaglia in some Asian countries for strongmen of the past? The yearning for yesteryear speaks to our disorienting times and a dearth of visionary leadership when it's most needed.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2014

Could 'Snowpiercer' be Bong's ticket out of Korea?

There's a scene in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic sci-fi fable "Snowpiercer" that turns the tables on how Western audiences perceive non-English-speaking Asian characters in what is — for all intents and purposes — a Hollywood production.
BASKETBALL / NBA
Feb 5, 2014

Herb Brown to receive NABC Lifetime Achievement Award

Herb Brown, a longtime fixture in the NBA and global basketball, has been tabbed for special recognition by the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 3, 2014

Torture happens when people are your export

It's simply easier for leaders of some countries to export their own people abroad and count the money than to take on vested interests and generate opportunities at home.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2014

Ministry official knocks down barriers to overseas study

The success of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's effort to internationalize Japan might depend on a young entrepreneur who runs his own educational business.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 28, 2014

Ten years on, Hyperdub finds that it pays to be weird

Most journalists hope to get a few decent quotes from an interview. Steve Goodman ended up getting a record label.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2014

Marijuana's sobering lessons from Prohibition

Like alcohol after the repeal of Prohibition, legal marijuana will be a profitable business kept on a tight leash. And we should expect the public health consequences tol be mixed, though hardly a disaster.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 27, 2014

War redress reversal in South Korea

Recent South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate Koreans who were forced to perform labor for them during the war have cast a shadow on already strained bilateral ties.
JAPAN / WEDGE
Jan 26, 2014

NISA a hit with old investors, not new

NISA, short for Nippon Individual Savings Account, in which individual investors will be eligible for tax exemptions of up to five years on their financial gains, has begun this month. Banks and securities houses are rushing to promote sales campaigns to encourage individual investors to open NISA investment...
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 26, 2014

'Masters' and 'dilettantes': The murky world of hit men in Britain

They are classified as novices, journeymen, dilettantes or masters. They are Britain's hit men — killers who ply their deadly trade in return for cash, and who for the first time have become the subject of a major academic study.
WORLD
Jan 25, 2014

'Abe-genda': nuclear export superpower

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is now in New Delhi to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Indian Republic. His presence speaks volumes about closer diplomatic, security and economic ties and, at least from Tokyo's perspective, a common agenda on responding to the rise of China. India remains...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 23, 2014

16 kick off Tokyo gubernatorial race

Campaigning for the Tokyo gubernatorial election officially kicked off Thursday with 16 candidates set to battle over national-level issues ranging from energy policy to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2014

Joze to Tora to Sakana-tachi (Josee, the Tiger and the Fish)

Director: Isshin Inudo

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’