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COMMENTARY / World
Nov 14, 2010

Erasing the stigma for sufferers of leprosy

At its 15th session, which ended at the beginning of October, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution encouraging governments to eliminate discrimination against people affected by leprosy — and their family members. As the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination,...
JAPAN / ORGAN TRANSPLANTS
Nov 12, 2010

Transplants set to increase

Japan boasts highly skilled surgeons, universal health insurance coverage, well-equipped medical facilities — and few organ transplants.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 11, 2010

Aiai founder Chieko Awata

Chieko Awata, 68, is the founder of Aiai, a nonprofit organization that provides art education to autistic children and adults. For the past 46 years she has been teaching drawing, painting and social skills to children as young as 2 years old. Some of her students have remained with her for as long...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 7, 2010

Color me upbeat despite the pessimism now sweeping this land

As the year 2010 approaches its end, if I were to express the mood of today's Japanese nation in color it would be gray bordering on charcoal.
COMMUNITY
Nov 6, 2010

Canadian loves keeping Fukuoka informed

Nick Szasz, a native of Toronto, has published the free bilingual magazine Fukuoka Now since 1998. He says he launched the publication out of love for the biggest city in Kyushu and his sense of mission to provide information for non-Japanese living in the area.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 4, 2010

CrossFit pushes exercise buffs to their limits

The grunting gets louder the further I walk down the path. It's somewhat synchronized, and suddenly I hear a buzzer and everything is quiet — for 10 seconds.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 2, 2010

Small schools offer hope amid eikaiwa slump

The collapse of the Geos eikaiwa (English conversation school) chain earlier this year came as a cruel blow to an industry still struggling to restore its credibility years after Nova's high-profile implosion.
EDITORIALS
Nov 2, 2010

Unclaimed pension benefits

Usually retired company employees are entitled to basic pension benefits as well as an additional pension benefit, the latter a corporate pension benefit that has accrued from the management of part of the premiums they have contributed. The management of the premiums is done by employees pension funds...
EDITORIALS
Nov 1, 2010

Shoplifters getting older

A sad trend is emerging with the all too common crime of shoplifting. Although the total number of crimes recognized by authorities declined to 1.7 million in 2009 from a peak of 2.85 million in 2002 — with shoplifting leveling off at 140,000 to 150,000 cases yearly — more and more elderly people...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2010

Playing it for laughs the understated way

It is 3 p.m. in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Tokyo. A lady in a red dress stands by the side of a narrow street in front of a house, her hair held back and her face shielded from the sun by a woman holding a parasol.
EDITORIALS
Oct 26, 2010

Law revision boosts transplants

The revised Organ Transplant Law, which went into force July 17, permits organ transplants from brain-dead people if there is no record that they had ever objected to such a procedure and if their family approves. Since the revision, organ transplants from brain-dead people have been taking place at...
JAPAN
Oct 22, 2010

Salarymen feeling pressure of elderly care

For Itsuo Kandatsu, cooking three meals a day is a task he performs for his wheelchair-using mother and disabled brother. But the 49-year-old Tokyo resident isn't a house husband.
EDITORIALS
Oct 20, 2010

Japan's poverty problem

Poverty in Japan is deepening. The welfare ministry announced last month that as of June, 1,907,176 people in 1,377,930 households were on welfare, receiving livelihood assistance (seikatsu hogo). This is the first time that the number of people on welfare has topped 1.9 million since fiscal 1955, when...
EDITORIALS
Oct 19, 2010

Standing against the ebb tide

As newspapers promote themselves during Newspaper Week (Oct. 15 to 21), they face a shrinking readership. They must make strenuous efforts to make their pages attractive to people while faithfully carrying out their duty of digging for the truth and contributing to people's right to know.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Oct 18, 2010

Lawyers' livelihoods to get needier

Six years ago, the LDP raised the bar of number for the number of practicing lawyers in Japan but is passing the bar still that attractive?
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Oct 12, 2010

Don't blame JET for Japan's poor English: responses

A selection of readers' views on "Don't blame JET for Japan's poor English" (Just Be Cause, Sept. 7) by Debito Arudou:
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2010

Don't count Thai Prime Minister Abhisit out

BANGKOK — For a man who has faced seemingly endless efforts to oust him by both parliamentary ballot and by bullet, by the slippery devious machinations that are meat and drink to Thai politicians and by street protesters who took over the commercial heart of Bangkok for more than two months, Prime...
COMMENTARY
Oct 11, 2010

Is Japan's disease curable?

Since the 1990s, often called Japan's "lost 10 years," many parts of Japanese society have been disintegrating. Japan's influence has been in decline in the international community and on the global economic scene.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2010

'Friendly diplomacy' gaffe

The Sept. 7 collision between a Chinese fishing boat and the Japan Coast Guard patrol vessel Yonakuni in Japanese territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands resulted in the arrest and detention of the fishing boat captain on suspicion of obstructing the coast guard's official duty. He was released last...
COMMENTARY
Sep 29, 2010

The pope and the atheists

LONDON — The best defense is a good offense. A less worldly pope, making a state visit to Britain as the revelations about Catholic priests and bishops abusing the children in their care spread across Europe, might have been reduced to shame and silence. But Benedict XVI knows about the uses of power...
LIFE
Sep 26, 2010

The return of Lafcadio Hearn

I came to Japan in '90 — 1890, that was — died 14 years later, and here I am again after more than a century, exploring my old haunting ground just like in the good old days.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 24, 2010

Kanagawa to open language center

The Kanagawa Prefectural Government is opening a language and cultural institute in Yokohama in January to help foreign residents learn basic Japanese, while assisting schoolteachers and local government officials as they try to deal with foreign residents.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2010

Reducing poverty, empowering women in an uncertain world

WASHINGTON — The drive to overcome extreme poverty and hunger has been at the heart of global efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) since their adoption a decade ago. Up until the food, fuel and financial crises in the past two years, developing countries were making progress in...
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2010

Scarred lay judges battle stress

In late November last year, Iwao Takasu, 55, became one of the first six people in Ibaraki Prefecture to serve as a lay judge in a criminal trial.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 15, 2010

Petition project lets Web surfers make their mark

As of Tuesday, 84,512 people were united in their call for laws banning restrictions on manga / anime content, at least 8,984 people had endorsed same-sex marriage, and 1,609 individuals wanted Panasonic to keep a speech aid for the physically impaired on the market.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 14, 2010

Is racism coloring debate on Japanese whaling?

Following is a selection of readers' responses to the Aug. 17 Zeit Gist columns headlined "Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric" by Dougal McNeill and "Appeals to culture, tradition ignore the historical facts" by Chris Burgess:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 7, 2010

Readers offer their thoughts on jettisoning JET

Following are a selection of readers' responses to the July 27 Zeit Gist column headlined "Ex-students don't want JET grounded" by Eric Johnston and Kanako Nakamura:
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 5, 2010

Masumi Kuwata: Pitching for change

Masumi Kuwata has spent most of his life in the spotlight of stardom and publicity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 3, 2010

From 'Dawn of the Dead' to the live-and-kicking golden 'oldies'

Shu Matsui's innocent smile is familiar. He's always beaming on TV ads, whether he's plugging a washing softener, playing a gentle new father or promoting mobile phones in the guise of a young doctor. But if you were to see any production by Sample, the theater company Matsui founded in 2007, you'd be...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 27, 2010

Perceptions of space, from Japan to the world

"I'm a kind of iguana. But I'm the kind of iguana that travels."

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan