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Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
May 27, 2013

Sibling spy case spotlights North Korean defectors

Earlier this year, one of the most prominent North Korean defectors, Yoo Woo Sung, walked out of his apartment building in Seoul and found four South Korean government vehicles waiting for him.
COMMENTARY / World
May 26, 2013

Inaction during 'scandal' will undo a presidency

Few, if any, similarities exist between the redactions of the Benghazi e-mails and the deletions and distortions made by Richard Nixon in his taped conversations.
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
May 25, 2013

Moriwaki enjoying challenge playing for Urawa brings

The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
May 22, 2013

Injuries gave marathon runner Noguchi valuable lessons about training

Lightly laughing, Mizuki Noguchi insisted that aging isn't necessarily so bad.
COMMENTARY / World
May 22, 2013

Clock is running out for some key Asian reformers

Voters in the Philippines appear to have delivered a resounding victory to President Benigno Aquino in midterm elections. The son of former President Corazon Aquino looks set to control both houses of Congress, giving him a mandate to continue his reform policies. His biggest worry now is making them...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues
May 21, 2013

Fear and incarceration, from Kampala to Nagoya

"I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, where two men lay. I couldn't tell if they were dead or alive. They had been...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 21, 2013

Ambivalent Japan turns on its 'insular' youth

Japan's decision to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations shows that at least some in government have accepted the fact that 'opening up' Japan is in the nation's best long-term interests.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 21, 2013

Outsider art that comes from within

'Outsider art' is relatively new in Japan and, as a genre, works made by self-taught Japanese artists are still not very well known on the category-delineating, label-loving international art scene.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 19, 2013

Surviving dangerous encounters

In "The Lion's Game" (2000) and "The Lion" (2010), Nelson DeMille's character NYPD Detective John Corey battles and defeats Asad Khalil, a brilliant Libyan terrorist who infiltrates the U.S. to extract revenge for the deaths of family members killed in a U.S. air raid on Tripoli.
JAPAN / Society
May 19, 2013

Incentives needed to lure students to U.S., experts say

Incentives are needed to reverse the decline in Japanese enrollment at U.S. universities as Japanese companies compete harder and earlier to recruit new graduates, experts said at a symposium.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
May 18, 2013

A glimpse inside the minds of sex slavery predators

The annals of criminal history are writ large with ordinary streets that hide dark secrets, but even so the peculiar horror believed to have been perpetrated by Ariel Castro on Seymour Avenue in the rust-belt city of Cleveland stands out.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 18, 2013

Minds traumatized by disaster heal themselves

One of the largest earthquakes ever recorded hit on Boxing Day 2004. The resulting tsunami devastated huge swaths of the Indian Ocean coastline and left an estimated quarter of a million people dead across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. Aid agencies quickly arrived to help battered and traumatised...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013

'Gambit'

When is a Coen Bros. film not a Coen Bros. film? I can imagine The Dude poring over this koan for hours, but the answer's quite simple: when it's "Gambit," the neo-screwball comedy directed by Michael Hoffman, working off a script by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 2013

The comedy and drama of Takashi Fujii

At age 41, Takashi Fujii has quite the resume. In 2000 and 2001, he appeared on national broadcaster NHK's annual top-rated New Year's variety show, "Kohaku Utagassen" ("Red and White Song Battle"); he toured abroad as a pop singer in 2004, including shows in Los Angeles and Shanghai; and in 2009 he...
JAPAN / Politics
May 16, 2013

Iijima's North trip ups hope for progress on abductions

Tokyo authorized and is in charge of the surprise trip to Pyongyang by special adviser Isao Iijima, a senior government official indicated Wednesday, while Cabinet members all remained tight-lipped in public amid speculation the government hopes to resume direct talks with North Korea to resolve the...
Reader Mail
May 16, 2013

Secondhand smoke is the enemy

In Joseph Jaworski's May 9 letter, "Limits of planning good health," he admits making the assumption linking a decrease in smoking to an increase in obesity. He then says I made an "unsupported assumption" that the decrease in smoking was from smokers dying and fewer people taking up the habit.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?