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WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 25, 2016

California legislature passes climate change bills

California lawmakers voted to extend the state's climate change fighting efforts to 2030 on Wednesday, giving a new lease on life to the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction program in the country.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2016

'Black Widow Business': Never too old for the marriage con

"There's no fool like an old fool." Yasuo Tsuruhashi's comedy "Black Widow Business" is a feature-length illustration of this venerable saying, though it also reflects present-day trends in an aging Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2016

'Lights Out': A cliched glow in the dark

Being afraid of the dark is a familiar childhood anxiety that has exploited in terrifying proportions in the horror genre. "Lights Out" knows how to cash in on the panic that can assail the mind when the lights go out. Bad things happen in darkness and "Lights Out" lays it on thick, even though the story...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2016

Inventions changed our genetic code

When humans invent technology, we also reinvent ourselves.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2016

Seafloor gold rush could have alarming impact

The seafloor is home to priceless mineral deposits, but mining them could wreak havoc on the marine environment.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 20, 2016

How to teach moral education in a relative age?

The wartime moral ideal was blind obedience and self-sacrificing devotion to the nation. Could the upgrading of moral education be a first step on the road back to that?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 20, 2016

An awakening gives birth to modern medicine

Illness we share with our ancestors. Diagnosis and remedies set us and them apart.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2016

The thrill of victory, the agony of another snub

The refusal of an Egyptian athlete to shake his Israeli counterpart's hand is symbolic of the Arab street's continuing rejection of the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 17, 2016

Koike can help Japan get serious about gender gap

Japan's efforts to promote gender mainstreaming have fallen short. Hopefully new Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike can give this vital concept a jump start.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2016

Is Donald Trump a Democratic Party plant?

Who in the end really gains from Donald Trump's paranoid, fact-free campaign style. A lot of people are saying it's Hillary Clinton.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2016

Brazil's partisans go for the Olympic gold

Brazil's fueding parties lost no time in trying to politicize a judoka's gold medal performance.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Aug 14, 2016

After 30 years in Japan, teacher from Zambia is still learning

Globe-trotting son of Zambian envoy thought he'd seen it all until he arrived on these shores.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 13, 2016

A world gone mad? That's quite absurd!

Real life is getting too absurd for absurd theater — or so reckons one absurdist playwright. Does he have a point?
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2016

The strategic logic of the Islamic State militants

To understand how to defeat IS once and for all, we first need to comprehend its strategy.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2016

One path to leadership in China is now closed

Instead of sharing power across factions as his two predecessors did, Xi Jinping is consolidating power for himself.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2016

Missile spat can't diminish China's K-pop love

In the war for Chinese hearts and minds, South Korean soap stars are clearly the winners.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 10, 2016

Japan's Crown Prince ready for throne, but no fairy tale for his unhappy Crown Princess

When Crown Prince Naruhito proposed to a reluctant Masako Owada, he promised to protect her with all his might, a vow that may get tougher to keep if, as expected, his father Emperor Akihito abdicates, and the woman who has struggled to adjust to royal life becomes the empress.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2016

Understanding America's electoral college

Thanks to America's Electoral College, in presidential elections it's not who wins the most votes nationwide that matters in the end, but who wins in which states.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2016

Military voters say no to endless wars

The least militaristic U.S. presidential candidate, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, has the most support among U.S. active duty service members.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2016

Free trade losing its luster

The years since 2005 have shown globalization to be a double-edged sword.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB
Aug 8, 2016

True meaning of Ichiro even greater than 3,000-hit milestone

There were a lot of people in Japan who awoke early April 3, 2001 (the night of April 2 in the U.S.), with a mix of anticipation and wonder as they watched new Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki's first game in the major leagues. Ichiro was hitless after three at-bats. Then, in the seventh, he...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Aug 7, 2016

Japan's Minor Offenses Act has major untapped potential

Law has the teeth to tackle everything from peeing and posters to more serious matters.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2016

This is the world that the invasion of Iraq left behind

The Chilcot report detailing British culpability in the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq reminds us that we're still dealing with the terrible consequences of that reckless decision.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Aug 6, 2016

Reading Zen in the Rocks

The powerful ambiguities of dry landscape arrangements, the inevitable questions they raise in relation to what constitutes a garden, the profundity of concepts and principals, many of them deriving from Taoism and Zen, never fail to baffle the uninitiated. Francoise Berthier, a professor of Japanese...
WORLD
Aug 6, 2016

Thaw could release Cold War-era U.S. toxic waste buried under Greenland's ice

Global warming could release radioactive waste stored in an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. military camp deep under Greenland's ice caps, scientists said on Friday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EARLY START
Aug 5, 2016

Start your morning with a serving of tradition at these breakfast joints

The Japanese breakfast provides a healthy start to the day. It's rich in vegetables — from both land and sea — often includes fermented foods such as miso soup and pickles, and is rounded out with rice and grilled seafood. Though, it hasn't always been this way.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2016

Australia's China policy adrift

Australia's joining with the U.S. and Japan to oppose China's efforts in the South China Sea has incurred the wrath of Beijing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2016

'High-Rise': J.C. Ballard adaptation topples on screen

In 1955, the city of St. Louis finished construction on the Pruitt-Igoe housing estate, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki (who would later build New York City's Twin Towers). A raw-concrete sprawl of 33 tower blocks, it was meant to halt the spread of slums by building up, and to give residents parks,...

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami