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CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2010

Shock-rock act Dir En Grey snub cartoons for cred

It's no secret that, in recent years, certain styles of Japanese music have benefited massively from a surge of interest in anime and manga in the West. J-pop acts such as Puffy and AKB48 and visual-kei artists including Miyavi and L'Arc-En-Ciel have enjoyed exposure where before there was none. That's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 12, 2010

Kabuki's golden boy knocked off his pedestal — for now

TBS's Dec. 4 edition of "Newscaster" aired a long report on the run-in that kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo had with a man at a Tokyo bar in the wee hours of Nov. 25, a dustup that resulted in Ebizo's hospitalization with a fractured cheekbone and broken teeth. Elaborating on the principle of "it takes one...
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Dec 10, 2010

Time for league to get wise, promote names

Here's a brilliant idea: Expose the masses to the bj-league's most prized assets, its former NBA players — Kyoto Hannaryz guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Tokyo Apache center Robert Swift and Saitama Broncos guard Kenny Satterfield and Apache coach Bob Hill, a veteran bench boss of four NBA teams — during...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2010

Kabuki star apologizes for drunken brawl

Kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo, injured during a midnight brawl in a Tokyo bar late last month, apologized Tuesday for disappointing his fans and promised to keep away from alcohol.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 5, 2010

A relaxed approach makes news understandable for young and old

Two weeks ago, NHK announced that its popular half-hour series, "Shukan Kodomo no News" ("Weekly News for Children"), will be ending on Dec. 19. According to an article in the Sankei Shimbun, an executive at the public broadcaster explained the cancellation by saying that the show, which was launched...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Nov 28, 2010

Nakanishi draws on vast experience to help Rizing

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players and other individuals from the bj-league. Rizing Fukuoka guard Jun Nakanishi is the subject of this week's profile.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 28, 2010

Trans-Pacific Partnership for a cheaper bowl of beef and rice

The APEC summit in Yokohama earlier this month was a key event by any standard. Leaders of 21 countries came to discuss how to integrate the world's most dynamic region in terms of trade.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 28, 2010

Journalist wants Ashikaga murder case reopened

In June 2009, this column mentioned a TBS news report about the DNA testing method that resulted in the 1992 conviction of Toshikazu Sugaya for the 1990 murder of 4-year-old Mami Matsuda in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. Sugaya was sentenced to an indefinite prison term but was released last year after...
COMMENTARY
Nov 21, 2010

To fold on rights is not an option

LONDON — In his recently published self-justifying and self-congratulatory memoir "Decision Points," former U.S. president George W. Bush declared that the waterboarding of al-Qaida suspects, which he had authorized, was justified because the information obtained from the suspects had been instrumental...
JAPAN
Nov 13, 2010

Leaked video raises secrecy-law questions

It was Wednesday when a coast guard officer dropped a bombshell on his skipper and sparked a national sensation.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Nov 9, 2010

Japan must end the scourge of parental child abduction

To the government of Japan:
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2010

Not so gentle on his mind

HONG KONG — Democracy in America — what a fine show it is, great television, wonderful speeches, some weird and wacky candidates, an opportunity for The People to make their views count.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 3, 2010

Taiji-activists showdown staged

OSAKA — Members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and other animal rights activists met Tuesday morning for the first time with the mayor and other officials of Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, in a carefully stage-managed discussion of the port's contentious annual dolphin hunts.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 26, 2010

Rationing miracle rescues

HONG KONG — Surely the picture of the month was of Chilean miner Mario Sepulveda thumping the air like a 2-year-old in jubilation that he was free after 68 days in a dank, dark dungeon more than 600 meters below the Atacama Desert.
JAPAN
Oct 25, 2010

Underfunded NGOs raising domestic issues

NAGOYA — The United Nations COP10 conference is focusing on how to reduce biodiversity loss globally. In addition to formal negotiations, there are hundreds of seminars on everything from protecting marine life to accessing genetic resources on land occupied by indigenous people.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 17, 2010

New Russia's political maneuvering harkens back to the U.S.S.R.

If I had to choose the event in my adult lifetime with the greatest historical import it would be, hands down, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2005, then president of Russia Vladimir Putin was not exaggerating when he called it "the greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century."
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 2, 2010

Wenger needs to turn Wilshere loose against Chelsea

LONDON — Arsenal has the chance to prove it is ready to mount a serious Premier League title challenge when it takes on champion Chelsea on Sunday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 22, 2010

TGS industry parties offer special treatment to chosen few

Far from the chaos of the Makuhari Messe exhibition center, which was filled with tens of thousands of gamers plus noisy games and event stages, members of the press, privileged bloggers and select VIPs saw a different side of the Tokyo Game Show.
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2010

Prada countersues plaintiff claiming harassment

A countersuit by the Japan unit of Italian fashion house Prada got under way in the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday against a former senior retail manager, demanding she pay ¥33 million for harming the firm's image by falsely claiming to the media that the firm engaged in sexual harassment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2010

Japan's first film nude still radiant decades after getting skirty

Arranging an interview with Michiko Maeda took nearly a month — she has long been media-shy — but when she finally agreed to meet film writer Yoshiaki Suzuki and me at a Tokyo beer hall, she epitomized kimonoed grace and charm, while saying this would be her final interview.
EDITORIALS
Aug 17, 2010

Redressing rights violations

In mid-June, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba and two lieutenants at her ministry — both Diet members — disclosed in an interim report the idea of creating a new commission to redress human rights violations. The report calls for setting up a new human rights protection commission as an extra-ministerial...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 17, 2010

Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric

Sea Shepherd's Web site describes him as "the first New Zealander to be taken as a prisoner of war from the Southern Ocean to Japan," and there is no doubting Peter Bethune's popularity in this country. His trial in Tokyo earlier this year for interfering with Japan's annual whale hunt dominated New...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2010

Sexual empowerment with a large dose of Grey matter

Sasha Grey is not the sort of movie star you normally see discussed in these pages. With a resume that includes "Oral Supremacy" and "Sex Toy Teens," Grey has risen to become one of the top porn stars in the United States, appearing in more than 180 films in a three-year period starting when she was...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Jul 7, 2010

Nagoya Basho 2010 — a tournament that will live in infamy

For two months sumo has been rocked to its core by evidence of illegal gambling on baseball games, involvement with the Japanese underworld, and more recently claims by the man on the street that those in positions of power within the sumo association did precious little to stop this.
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2010

World's tweet is Japan's 'mumble' on hit Twitter

Twitter is a hit in Japan, succeeding where other social networking imports like Facebook have foundered as millions "mumble" — the translation of tweet — and give miniblogging a distinctly Japanese flavor.
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Jun 22, 2010

'Hafu' draws viewers into world of Japanese identity

"Hafu," the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese, takes on a more intricate meaning through the unfolding of mixed-race Japanese lives in the documentary "Hafu." Those starring in the film and those behind the project identify themselves as a newly emerging community.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 13, 2010

Few TV surfers ride 'Korean wave' series 'Iris'

Two weeks ago, cast members of the South Korean TV drama series "Iris" appeared in concerts at Osaka Castle Hall and Saitama Super Arena. Some 60,000 fans of the star Lee Byung Hun bought tickets, but 1,400 at one of the Saitama events found themselves shut out after the organizers decided that the stage...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 13, 2010

Synthetic life zaps 'the soul'

I remember a couple of years ago the Vatican made a curious announcement about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Clearly,the Roman Catholic Church was getting worried that any discovery of evidence of life on other planets would undermine its authority on Earth. It wanted to head off the impact...
JAPAN
Jun 12, 2010

Child sex in 'manga' — art or obscenity?: Graphic but healthy, free speech

The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly is deliberating stronger regulations on sexual images of minors in "manga" comic books, animation and video games.

Longform

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