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Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH
Feb 20, 2014

'Kantai Collection': Social game of warships sets course for big money

Casual online games based on military themes and with a kawaii (cute) twist are currently a surprise hit in Japan. Is this related to the recent rightward tilt in national politics, or just part of Japan's creative desire to "cutify" everything.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 19, 2014

NHK chief tells board 'comfort women' remarks no big deal

The controversy swirling around NHK shows no sign of simmering down, with Chairman Katsuto Momii reportedly playing down the explosive nature of the remarks he made at his first news conference in January over the wartime brothels used by the Imperial Japanese military.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 15, 2014

Stem-cell leap defied Japanese norms

It's not surprising that last week Haruko Obokata issued a plea for privacy. On Jan. 29 she published a scientific paper on stem cells that could revolutionize medicine, and overnight the researcher based at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe became a domestic and international...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 15, 2014

Samuragochi scandal shows that tin-eared classical music fans can be suckers for stories

What makes Mamoru Samuragochi's story interesting is not that he got away with his subterfuge for so long, but that the media, the public and even professional musicians accepted the story as being proof of his value as an artist.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 10, 2014

Tamogami finds some support in younger generation

He may have lost the Tokyo gubernatorial election Sunday, but Toshio Tamogami appears to have won over younger voters who favored the hawkish former Air Self-Defense Force general more than middle-aged and elderly voters did, according to media exit polls.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 8, 2014

Blast from the past: Lucky Dragon 60 years on

Sixty years ago, on March 1, 1954, a Japanese fishing boat named Lucky Dragon No. 5 was doused by radioactive fallout from a U.S. hydrogen-bomb test, codenamed Castle Bravo, on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Although the bomb was over 1,000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 3, 2014

National or not, nuclear issue ranks high with Tokyo voters

Nuclear power is one of the top three issues in the Tokyo gubernatorial election and experts say the winner will be able to indirectly influence national energy policy.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jan 28, 2014

Abe's deceptive rice reform

On Dec. 9 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared that his government has abolished the subsidy system for reductions in rice acreage, yet subsidies for growing rice as animal feed will greatly increase.
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2014

Automakers gird for Super Bowl

From the Muppets to James Franco, Hollywood will be working hard for carmakers at the Super Bowl.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jan 24, 2014

Don't let ANA off the hook for that offensive ad

If ANA had really wanted to 'change the image of Japan,' it should have avoided racializing its product. Instead, it's just business as usual.
COMMENTARY
Jan 17, 2014

The whitewashing of Sharon

Ariel Sharon, the late former Israeli prime minister, was not called the 'the Bulldozer' for being a fearless leader. Nor do Arabs call him 'the Butcher of Beirut' for simply overseeing the invasion of Lebanon.
WORLD
Jan 13, 2014

How affairs of the heart became fair game for the press

Twenty years ago, a French president could carry on extramarital activity in the knowledge that privacy laws and a respectful press would keep his secret. Editors and politicians colluded to ensure the public would never know. Love lives were strictly off limits to the media.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jan 10, 2014

Educator with a mission sends out support from Hiroshima

Some people seem to have a knack for turning their hand to anything that comes along and, moreover, making a success of it. This is certainly the case with Hiroshima-based Adam Beck. Over the years, the American has been a children's theater director, an English teacher, a newspaper columnist and the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Jan 9, 2014

A lost year for new technology? Look beyond 2013's gadgets

Writing the other day in Quartz, an admirable sister publication of The Atlantic magazine, the experienced technology watcher Christopher Mims struck a gloomy note. Under the headline "2013 was a lost year for tech," he lamented that "all in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2013

A terrible year for Syria and Egypt

Even with the most optimistic assessments, the Syrian conflict is unlikely to be settled in 2014. As for Egypt, nearly 20,000 people have been sentenced or are now facing trials for belonging to or supporting the 'wrong' political camp.
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 30, 2013

Papa Obama laments time slipping by

When they vacationed in Hawaii just before President Barack Obama's first inauguration, Malia and Sasha were little girls doting on their dad — holding his hand on the beach, taking in a dolphin show and nuzzling up to him at the shave-ice shop.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 21, 2013

A confused future for our baby boomers

No generation in the history of mankind is more reviled than that of the baby boomers, who grew up during the age of mass media. Raised on TV and glossy magazines, they connected to a world their parents knew almost nothing about, and with that experience turned from youthful explorers of expanded possibilities...
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Dec 19, 2013

Cairo zoo beset by tales of 'giraffe suicide' and 'bear riots'

A giraffe committed suicide, an Egyptian newspaper reported, and the government pulled a former zoo director out of retirement to deal with the resulting media storm.
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
Dec 14, 2013

China's ADIZ steals show at Japan-ASEAN celebratory summit

The special session of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that took place in Tokyo on Saturday was designed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Japan's diplomatic relations with the Southeast Asian countries.
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Dec 7, 2013

Akita making run for title

The stars have aligned for a special basketball season in Akita.
Japan Times
Figure Skating / ICE TIME
Dec 4, 2013

Mao has much at stake in Grand Prix Final in Fukuoka

With only two months to go until the Sochi Olympics, two-time world champion Mao Asada heads into this week's Grand Prix Final as a prohibitive favorite while skating on home ice.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 20, 2013

Yoji Sakate celebrates in style

To celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, the Tokyo-based Rinkogun theater company determined to present four original plays by its founder, the renowned playwright and director Yoji Sakate.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 16, 2013

Amano: tracing Japan's arc through its ads

Though Yukichi Amano's field of expertise was advertising, he used his weekly newspaper columnsto comment on popular culture in general, and frequently provided other media outlets with his personal take on social trends.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ADVANCES IN PROGRESS
Nov 11, 2013

Fujitsu labs in touch, ahead of the curve on the tech road

Whether in stores, schools or cars, futuristic and convenient technologies made by Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. are just around the corner.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 8, 2013

Nuclear power: India shouldn't buy what Japan is trying to sell

Despite the Fukushima disaster, Japan remains at the center of the global nuclear-industrial complex, ready to sell demonstrably dangerous technology to wannabe nuclear powers.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB / NOTES ON A SCORECARD
Nov 5, 2013

Valentine unfairly left out in cold after Red Sox capture World Series

I wonder what Bobby Valentine thinks about the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 5, 2013

One Direction takes the J-pop path to success

By the group's standards, it was a low-key finale. When One Direction completed its eight-month Take Me Home Tour at the second of two Makuhari Messe shows last Sunday in Chiba, it was in front of a relatively compact audience of 12,000 Japanese fans, whose adoration seemed good-humored rather than hysterical....
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2013

Lawmaker under fire for letter to Emperor

The repercussions continued Friday after independent Upper House lawmaker Taro Yamamoto the previous evening handed an apparently politically inspired letter to Emperor Akihito.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 28, 2013

Smashing ideas on future design and technology

While contemporary art is still transfixed by its own reflection, veteran Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa has focused her cultural microscope on something quite different. "Bunny Smash Design to touch the world," the current group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, is a hit-and-miss...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 26, 2013

Saudi driver's license protest kick-starts nation's women's rights movement

Women's rights activists in Saudi Arabia were set to get behind the wheel en masse Saturday to protest their government's refusal to allow women to have driver's licenses — a demonstration that comes just two years after a similar push. While the earlier effort was not successful, it did kick-start...

Longform

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