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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 4, 2017

Do the memories of 'comfort women' matter?

It is clear that as mutual recriminations mount, the irreversible and final resolution of the 'comfort women' problem pledged at the end of 2015 remains elusive.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Feb 4, 2017

Japan Times 1942: 'Roosevelt orders aliens to abandon homes'

President Franklin Roosevelt's high-handed action ordering 10,000 aliens residing chiefly in the West Coast of the United States to abandon their homes has deeply shocked Christian circles in Japan, according to Domei.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 21, 2017

Melania Trump's blue Ralph Lauren outfit for inauguration 'very Jackie'

Incoming U.S. first lady Melania Trump stepped out in a Ralph Lauren baby-blue jacket and matching dress on Friday, choosing one of America's most iconic designers for Inauguration Day ceremonies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 10, 2017

Jochen Lempert: The photographic seer

Jochen Lempert's exhibition "Fieldwork" at the Izu Photo Museum has an ageless feel to it. The intentionally low contrast pictures of wildlife and natural phenomena almost look like they could be archive photos unearthed from the mid-19th century. However, they also have the cool nonchalance of 1970s...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jan 8, 2017

Japan's human rights issues fared better in 2016

Welcome back to JBC's annual countdown of the top issues as they affected Non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan. We had some brighter spots this year than in previous years, because Japan's government has been so embarrassed by hate speech toward Japan's minorities that they did something about it. Read...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 24, 2016

Tales from the cracks: 10 of the best books about Japan released in 2016

It's been a difficult year — one that felt like humanity was living on a fracturing ice shelf. That uncertainty came from our exposure to wars and natural disasters, and even our struggles with "truth" itself. The best Japan-related books released in 2016 seemed to channel this feeling of instability...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2016

The bad year that pervaded the screens

The past year has been a cursed one. It began with the death of David Bowie and proceeded to get worse on every level: political hysteria, impending ecological doom, the creeping encroach of net-connected tech into every corner of our lives, and a blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality now...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 20, 2016

Collier reviews the power of observation

To reframe Picasso's famously pithy remark "good artists copy, and great artists steal" for the contemporary art scene, appropriation can be used in an artist's work to borrow authority from history, or to subvert it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 13, 2016

Tokyo: photogenic to its very core

Care to take a guess what the new exhibition "Tokyo, Tokyo and Tokyo" at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum is about? In fact there are two exhibitions with the same name running concurrently, so it's "Tokyo, Tokyo and Tokyo" and "Tokyo, Tokyo and Tokyo."
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 12, 2016

Tokyo fashion show takes a modest approach to style

Modesty takes center stage
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 21, 2016

U.N. human rights panel is no place for abusers

A political Who's Who of authoritarian regimes are seeking seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Oct 5, 2016

Swedish silent movies worth talking about

The National Film Center has collaborated with the Swedish Film Institute to put together a silent-film festival, which kicks off on Oct. 11 and runs until Oct. 16. Screening seven re-mastered classics, "Silent Film Renaissance 2016: Treasures From the Archive of the Swedish Film Institute" is a showcase...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Sep 4, 2016

JBC marks 100 columns and a million page views

Column has been shining a critical light on issues affecting Japan's foreign residents since 2008.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 30, 2016

Subtle messages lie hidden in a corporate collection

Tokyo Station Gallery is showing a pick 'n' mix exhibition, "12 Rooms 12 Artists," comprising a variety of modern and contemporary art acquisitions from the UBS art collection. There is no explicit curatorial imperative to connect or compare the works, so you're free to enjoy the visual confections in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 12, 2016

The fall and rise of the Empire line

The Pola Art Foundation is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and as part of this, the Pola Museum of Art has organized an ambitious exhibition that aims to present a cross-disciplinary view of art, product design and women's fashion of 19th- and early 20th-century France.
JAPAN / History / OBAMA VISITS HIROSHIMA
May 24, 2016

Declassified U.S. cables reveal lead-up to Hiroshima A-bomb decision

On Aug. 6, 1945, Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves sent a top secret cable to his superiors in Washington, D.C.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2016

An exhibition of things that make you go 'hmm'

The subtitle of the Mori Art Museum's triennial "Roppongi Crossing" exhibition three years ago was "Out of Doubt." This year it's "My Body, Your Voice." In 2013, the group show was inflected by the destruction caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and scepticism about the handling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 15, 2016

Looking forward through photography

The spectacular landscapes left by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami have been used as source material by photographers to an extraordinary degree. Yes, using the words "spectacular" and "landscape" here may seem indecent, but this is one of many difficult issues that arise when photography...
Japan Times
JAPAN / 5-YEAR MEMORIAL OF GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE
Mar 11, 2016

Symposium examines disaster risk reduction

March 11 marks five years since the devastating Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and one year since the Third U.N. World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction was held in Sendai, the center of the disaster-hit Tohoku region.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Feb 20, 2016

In first, U.S. admits nuclear weapons were stored in Okinawa during Cold War

The Pentagon revealed Friday “that U.S. nuclear weapons were deployed on Okinawa prior to Okinawa's reversion to Japan on May 15, 1972.”
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...
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 30, 2016

New cat in town: Unpublished Beatrix Potter story found

A story by children's author Beatrix Potter, written more than a century ago, is to be published for the first time after its recent rediscovery. The tale featuressome of Potter's best-known characters such as Peter Rabbit.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / DAVOS SPECIAL 2016
Jan 20, 2016

Le Corbusier's Japanese ghost lives on in Ueno

The Swiss-French architect and artist Charles Eduoard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, was by any measure one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century.
EDITORIALS
Jan 18, 2016

Public access to government records

The principle of sovereignty resting with the people must be reinforced by improving public access to official documents.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 3, 2016

From a rare Florida tree, cuttings are taken to regrow forest of ancient giants

An experiment in regrowing forests of the world's oldest trees led environmentalists last week to climb a nine-story tall, 2,000-year-old cypress in central Florida known as Lady Liberty.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell