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JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 2, 2012

Unwanted pregnancies need to be discussed

Two weeks ago a 17-year-old girl collapsed in a shopping mall in Hiroshima and was rushed to the hospital. At the same time a dead fetus was found on the floor in the corner of the mall's food court. The girl eventually admitted that she had just given birth to the child. On Aug. 9, a cleaning person...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012

Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage

Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
COMMENTARY
Aug 22, 2012

Brother of Thai leader upholds a feisty profile

Thaksin Shinawatra is undoubtedly the most controversial politician ever to become prime minister of Thailand, an oft-ignored country in Southeast Asia with a population and landmass greater than Britain or Italy. (But who besides a Thai knows this?) Elected several times in national elections deemed...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 15, 2012

Despite flaws, Rakuten is 1-0 against Amazon in Japan's e-book wars

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall — and a head-to-head rival of Amazon Japan that also hopes to expand its business globally — launched its first e-book reader, the Rakuten Kobo Touch, on July 19, getting the jump on the long anticipated Japanese release of Amazon's Kindle.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 12, 2012

Osaka trial highlights Japan's deficient mental-illness facilities

On July 30, the Osaka District Court sentenced a 42-year-old man to 20 years in prison for killing his sister. That's the maximum term for the crime, but it's also four years more than what prosecutors demanded. The reasoning behind the decision of the court, which included lay judges, has provoked an...
EDITORIALS
Aug 7, 2012

Tepco's actions unacceptable

Tokyo Electric Power Co. has started showing to media groups and journalists 150 hours of teleconference footage recorded during the first days of the nuclear crisis at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. It is deplorable that Tepco did not volunteer to show the footage earlier. At first it refused...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Jul 22, 2012

Shisaku

Shisaku is a homophone meaning essay, a meditation upon a subject, a policy or measures a government takes. A fitting title for analyst Michael Cucek's blog which provides insight and opinion on Japanese politics, with a distinct hint of satire. In the eight years he's been writing the blog, Shisaku...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 15, 2012

Better late than never for Japan's first, "slowest" Olympian

Have you heard the one about the Japanese runner who took 54 years to finish the Olympic marathon?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 21, 2012

The photographs that leave a paper trail

In today's complex world, in which we are routinely overburdened with data, intuition and a visceral response to imagery is increasingly trumping rational discourse, according to Thomas Demand. But this is something the German artist, whose work is the subject of a major solo show at the Museum of Contemporary...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jun 20, 2012

Online crowdfunded tuition service entangled in controversy

Crowdfunding, a method that enables projects to raise money over the Internet, has become one of the hottest trends in the world of Web-startups. The most successful of these is Kickstarter.com, which has hosted more than 45,000 projects.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 15, 2012

England must end jinx against Sweden

It seems to be an unwritten law in football that in competitive matches England does not beat Sweden. In seven meetings at the World Cup and European Championship there have been five draws and two Swedish victories.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 10, 2012

The public shame of crying poor

Public acts of contrition don't get any more dramatic than comedian Junichi Komoto's May 25 press conference, where he apologized for allowing his mother to collect government welfare payments even though he's made good money himself as a TV personality. Josei Seven, the women's weekly that broke the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 9, 2012

Fugitive hid in city, in plain sight

Police have been hunting Katsuya Takahashi since Aum Shinrikyo waged its nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, mobilizing thousands of officers over the last 17 years.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 8, 2012

Why Japan is so down on British food

Ask any Japanese person what they think of British food, and the common reply will be, "I've heard it's terrible." This universal disdain for British cooking is a result of the usual media prejudice, exacerbated by a confidence among Japanese in their native ability to discern epicurean excellence.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 5, 2012

Rumors, lies fill void left by police in Furlong case

It is one of the more ugly tasks in journalism: trying to extract a quote from a bereaved family after a violent death. By the time I called Nicola Furlong's mother on May 25, she had learned that her 21-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted and probably throttled by a stranger in a city 10,000...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 3, 2012

Homophobic joke goes awry for Beat

On the May 12 edition of the TBS current affairs variety show "Newscaster" comedian "Beat" Takeshi Kitano made a joke about homosexual unions during a discussion of U.S. President Barack Obama's recent comment in support of same-sex marriage. Kitano's mission as the program's resident chief commentator...
CULTURE / Music
May 31, 2012

AKB48 'election' shows marketing brilliance

The biggest event of the year for AKB48, the 48-member pop group that's the most popular music act in Japan today, arrives next Wednesday.
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
May 31, 2012

Perfume needs to walk a fine line on its path overseas

As Japanese pop culture is increasingly dominated by insular subcultural groups with little interest in what's happening outside Akihabara's otaku haven or Shibuya's gyaru mecca, the news that electro-pop trio Perfume had moved to major label Universal and made its music available online to overseas...
JAPAN
May 25, 2012

Group seeks Web-based campaigning

An Internet campaign directed at young voters played a significant role in Barack Obama's election in 2008 as president of the United States.
JAPAN / ANALYSIS
May 17, 2012

Kansai power crunch just political rivalry?

The confrontation between the central government and Kansai area leaders over the restart of two nuclear reactors in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, has more to do with the growing power struggle between Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda than with safety or objective attempts to determine...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 15, 2012

Readers vent over 'Bread and becquerels'

Some readers' responses to the April 17 Zeit Gist column by Gianni Simone, "Bread and becquerels: a year of living dangerously":
COMMENTARY
May 10, 2012

Signal honor from the lord of clips

I wanted you to be the first to know. It has just been revealed by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy in the United States that I am on a very short list of journalists (eight in Western countries and seven others in India, Pakistan and Arab countries) to whom Osama bin Laden...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 6, 2012

'Hidden children' of politicians no hurdle to success

Democratic Party of Japan kingpin Ichiro Ozawa was acquitted last week of conspiring to file false financial reports for his political group. He can now return full-time to the job he was elected to do, but the sense you get from the mainstream media is that he's through as a politician. The press has...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Apr 11, 2012

Evessa claim star Washington has decided to 'retire'

Osaka Evessa power forward Lynn Washington has been the most recognizable player in bj-league history.
Reader Mail
Mar 22, 2012

Big risks without nuclear power

Since March 11, 2011, there has been a backlash against nuclear power among the public. Many people now equate nuclear power with danger. I, however, feel that the Fukushima nuclear accident was more of a human/managerial problem than a nuclear one.
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Mar 21, 2012

How The Man is following you online — and even on the train

Hatena is a Kyoto-based company that has run several web services since 2001. Similar to Digg, Delicious or Reddit, it has grown a web-savvy, tech-oriented community around a Q&A service (from which its name, Japanese for "question mark," is gleaned), free blog-hosting, and so on.
EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2012

Painting a target on Mr. Kony

Mr. Joseph Kony is a nasty piece of work. The warlord is the founder of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an insurgent group that has been battling the government in Uganda for over two decades. Founded in 1987, the group was formed as a rebel group that fought for power and spoils against southern Ugandans...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 18, 2012

Yu Darvish under the magnifying glass

Barring a major natural catastrophe, war or government upheaval, the vernacular news headlines for the next several months are almost certain to be dominated by baseball. Specifically, former Nippon Ham Fighters hurler, Yu Darvish, who on April 8 is scheduled take the mound in his first start for the...
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2012

Noda makes international pitch for tax hike plan

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Saturday that his government "cannot sidestep" a controversial tax hike that has turned into the leader's highest priority and largest potential stumbling block.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 4, 2012

Japan's lonely people: Where do they all belong?

In recent weeks, three cases of kodokushi, or "lonely deaths," have been covered extensively in the news. One involved a Saitama Prefecture family of three whose bodies were found in their apartment several months after the electricity and gas were turned off for nonpayment. Police assumed they had starved....

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