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Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Feb 27, 2013

Seniors forced to go it alone as ranks swell, housing eludes

Itoko Uchida, 82, was counting on the nephew she raised to support her in old age. He refused, forcing her to pay for a sponsor to join the 420,000-long line of Japanese waiting for a nursing home bed.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Dec 16, 2012

Frailty rising as a medical condition

As a medical resident 30 years ago, Ava Kaufman remembers puzzling over some of the elderly patients who came to the primary-care practice at George Washington University Hospital. They weren't really ill, at least not with any identifiable diseases. But they weren't well, either.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 28, 2012

Revival eludes nation's birthrate

It sounds like a broken record: Japan is beset by a low birthrate and an aging society.
LIFE
Aug 12, 2012

Japan's Paralympians overcome adversity by leaps, bounds and innovative design

When Oscar Pistorius made his dramatic debut in the men's 400-meter race in London last Saturday — becoming the first double amputee to compete alongside able-bodied athletes in Olympics history — some people might have wondered if the South African's artificial legs gave him a competitive edge over...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 27, 2012

Detainees' families fighting for dignity — and hugs

The East Japan Immigration Center, more commonly known as the Ushiku detention center, stands in the middle of sleepy countryside in Ibaraki Prefecture, 50 km north of Tokyo. With one of the world's tallest standing Buddha statues less than 3 km away, the center could have made a nice country getaway...
JAPAN
Nov 10, 2011

Teachers bolt jobs over mental angst

The number of first-year teachers who left their job for health reasons has increased twentyfold over the past 10 years, with most citing apparent emotional issues, an education ministry survey has found.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2011

Tamura residents challenge hot zone for short trip home

Residents of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, were allowed to visit their homes in the nuclear no-go zone for two hours Sunday.
EDITORIALS
Dec 20, 2010

Questionable insurance revisions

A new health insurance system that covers people aged 75 or over started April 1, 2008. It was unpopular at first because, in principle, premiums are withdrawn from people's pensions at the source. Participants also felt that they were segregated from younger people.
JAPAN / Q&A
Sep 22, 2010

How did the missing elderly slip through the cracks?

The Justice Ministry announced this month that it can't confirm the whereabouts of 230,000 centenarians listed in "koseki" family registers.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 12, 2010

Japan's mighty whale mountain

It's enough to make members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society choke on their tofu burgers. Stocks of frozen whale meat in Japan have reached 4,000 tons — that's 4 million kg.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 16, 2010

Reality check, 2010: 'Smoking doesn't cause cancer' (Japan Tobacco)

Every generation has its theme song.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 11, 2010

Language sets high hurdle for caregiver candidates

Since the first batch of Indonesian nurses and caregivers arrived in 2008 under a new bilateral economic partnership agreement, 570 have come to Japan, as have 310 Filipinos under another EPA that took effect two years ago.
COMMENTARY
Feb 2, 2010

Cities robbing their people

NEW YORK — When observing the chaotic growth of the modern city, the more erudite of urban planners will reminisce wistfully on how different it is from its ancient Greek counterpart, the polis, which Italian architectural historian Leonardo Benevolo once described as "dynamic but stable, in balance...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 29, 2010

A bully pulpit for Obama's financial reforms

BERKELEY, Calif. — President Barack Obama has not had an easy first year economically. He inherited a financial system on the verge of collapse. He was bequeathed an economy in recession and an unemployment rate destined to rise. And he faced a Congress and an economics profession with a tendency to...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 29, 2009

Cute kittens out to kill you

Cats are easy targets, which is why Shukan Asahi took such a cheap shot at them in the banner headline of its print ads for the Dec. 4 issue: "New-type influenza being spread by cats!?" In the subhead, cat cafes were cited as "hotbeds of infection."
Reader Mail
Oct 4, 2009

How Americans spend tax money

I read pediatrician Alex Blum's Sept. 26 article, "America's broken health care breaking lives" (reprinted from the Los Angeles Times) with great interest. On television and in newspapers, I have seen reports of many Americans protesting against President Barack Obama's health care plan. Don't they care...
COMMENTARY
Aug 26, 2009

Drawing key lessons from the failure of Obamacare

"What worries me: time and time again," writes Brendan Skwire in the Philadelphia Weekly about the circuses that are currently passing for Democrats' town hall meetings on health care, "[is that] the needs of the stupid and disingenuous are not only treated as valid concerns, but as the greatest concerns."...
JAPAN
May 19, 2009

H1N1 flu surges in Kansai

KOBE — The number of domestic swine flu cases reached 140 in Hyogo and Osaka as of Monday evening, prompting fears of an epidemic and leading to calls from the two governors to shut down all schools in the prefectures and for the central government to do more.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Feb 17, 2009

Kanagawa Prefecture can be Japan's clean-air trailblazer

Dear Kanagawa Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa,
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2009

Wii gives seniors therapeutic kicks

Blanche Betten, a 76-year-old retired restaurant owner, hammered Bob Warner, 85, with a flurry of punches, sending the World War II and Korean War veteran sprawling to the ground.
COMMENTARY
Dec 9, 2008

America's chance to change course on Cuba

NEW YORK — The new political landscape in Washington and Havana offers a chance to change a foreign policy decision that has caused considerable, and unnecessary, suffering for almost half a century — the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
JAPAN
Nov 26, 2008

Was wrong bureaucracy targeted?

Double-murder suspect Takeshi Koizumi may have held a grudge against Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry bureaucrats because the system had euthanized a pet of his 34 years ago, but actually the Environment Ministry is responsible for destroying unwanted animals.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2008

A doctor in the house? Do you feel lucky?

After being turned away by eight Tokyo hospitals last month, a 36-year-old woman died of brain hemorrhage after giving premature birth by Caesarian section. A month before, a 32-year-old pregnant stroke victim was bounced among six hospitals before one finally accepted her for treatment. She is currently...

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