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Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 9, 2008

Toyako businesses seek long-term benefit

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — Takuji Okamoto, 69, has run a tiny noodle shop with his wife, Chieko, for 23 years at the Lake Toya hot springs resort area.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 8, 2008

How green are Japan's urbanites?

The Group of Eight summit began Monday at the Windsor Hotel Toya, an exquisite, maximum- security resort in Hokkaido. There, the world's top leaders are holed up in conference rooms, trying to strike last-minute deals on various global issues, the most disputed of all being climate change.
Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jul 4, 2008

NGOs worried Africa will get short shrift

When the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama drew to a close May 30, Sayaka Funada-Classen, leader of a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization, felt the years of engagement with the government had partly paid off.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 1, 2008

Society's role in Kato's crime

'The clicking sound of my cell phone echoes emptily in my room. . . . If only I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't have to live so miserably.'
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jul 1, 2008

Do you think that it's easy to make close friends in Japan?

COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 29, 2008

286 reasons to reflect on a Japan long gone, but worthy of reflection

I recently gave a talk on Japanese culture to a group of foreign students at Tokyo Institute of Technology. They hailed from a variety of places, including Scandinavia, the United States and Asian countries. I began by asking them to give me a keyword or two that they thought characterized Japanese life...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 24, 2008

Women's shoe designer Moe Enomoto

Moe Enomoto, 28, is a women's shoe designer whose Sellenatela brand is carried by exclusive stores in Tokyo's Ginza and Daikanyama districts, and in San Francisco's hip Venus Superstar Boutique. Fascinated by beauty and driven by a desire to empower women of all lifestyles, Moe hopes that her shoes give...
EDITORIALS
Jun 23, 2008

Reducing disaster-related deaths

The 2008 government white paper on disaster prevention points out that communities' capability to cope with disasters is in decline mainly because of the aging population and a drop in the number of people who work as community-based volunteer firefighters. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, in his October...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

The many different ways Japan spells 'nationalism'

A HISTORY OF NATIONALISM IN MODERN JAPAN: Placing the People, by Kevin M. Doak. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 292 pp., $93 (cloth) There is no shortage of writing about nationalism in modern Japanese history. Nonetheless, the object of investigation has not always been clear, and until recently the term "nationalism"...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 18, 2008

Neither blatant benevolence nor silent giving

PRINCETON, New Jersey — Jesus said that we should give alms in private rather than when others are watching. That fits with the common-sense idea that if people only do good in public, they may be motivated by a desire to gain a reputation for generosity. Perhaps when no one is looking, they are not...
JAPAN
Jun 17, 2008

Akihabara attack threat lost in message deluge

To most of Japan, the deadly stabbings in Tokyo on June 8 were an incomprehensible act of sudden and indiscriminate violence.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2008

Shared goals, IT connect Polish-Japanese couple

Jacek Strakowski from Poland and Mai Usami from Tokyo have information technology to thank for bringing and keeping them together.
COMMENTARY
Jun 10, 2008

A shift in priority to 'happiness'

Per capita gross domestic product is a highly valued as yardstick for measuring the degree of "affluence" enjoyed by the citizens of each nation. The figures of various countries are usually converted into U.S. dollars to determine how countries rank internationally.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 2008

Experts ponder whether Kato felt disenfranchised from society

The deadly stabbing rampage Sunday in Tokyo's Akihabara district stunned the nation, but experts said the carnage was just another example of a young man unhappy with his lot in society.
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2008

Health-care tangle

A political battle has heated up over a new health insurance plan covering 13 million people aged 75 or over and introduced April 1. Opposition forces Friday passed a bill through the Upper House to abolish the unpopular plan on April 1, 2009, and reintroduce the previous plan, but the ruling bloc-controlled...
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Jun 5, 2008

Donald Richie's memories of life in Japan after the war

On Dec. 7, 1941, a 17-year-old high school student named Donald Richie was fixing the fence at his house in Lima, Ohio, when his mother ran out on the porch to tell him and his father that she just heard over the radio that Japanese forces had attacked Pearl Harbor.
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Jun 5, 2008

Donald Richie offers history lesson

18th in a series
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 3, 2008

Bad public manners irk Bushido proponent

Sokichi Sugimura, 72, feels elements of Japanese society have lost their moral compass to the point of being downright rude and he and his associates want to put them back on course, and in the process embrace samurai values.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 31, 2008

Eroticism as a means of development

Several months ago, at an exhibition titled "Matsuri," I purchased a print by American photographer Vincent Morris.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 27, 2008

Home alone

When Web designer Soko Hirayama moved to Tokyo five months ago, she did not expect to be living solo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 27, 2008

Osamu Miyawaki

Osamu Miyawaki 80, is the founder of Kaiyodo, a world-famous maker of collectable figures and tiny statues that are the epitome of Japanese monozukuri ("making things," signifying superb manufacturing). Kaiyodo's super-deformed characters, many from manga and anime, are easily recognizable for their...
EDITORIALS
May 24, 2008

A 'full-scale' gray society

A government white paper on the graying of the population says Japan has become a "full-scale gray society." As of Oct. 1, people aged 75 or over numbered a record 12.7 million — up 540,000 from a year earlier — and accounted for a record 9.9 percent of the nation's population, a 0.4 point increase...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2008

Ainu press case for official recognition

Hundreds of Ainu from all over Japan and their supporters staged a protest Thursday in Tokyo's Nagata-cho political district, demanding the Diet and the government recognize them as indigenous people.
JAPAN / Q&A
May 22, 2008

New insurance plan ups burden on 'later-stage' seniors

Following are questions and answers about the new health insurance plan the government introduced in April for people aged 75 and above:
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 21, 2008

Twitter launch in Japanese a boon for microblogging

Twitter is the Web site and service on a lot of lips in the technology world right now. It is a service that serves one very simple function by letting its users answer a simple question, "What are you doing now?" Users then subscribe to these answers by "following" the accounts of other users. The result...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
May 19, 2008

Does Emperor pose hurdle to forming a common Asia market?

The slowing United States and its subprime-mortgage woes are promoting the need for economic interdependency in Asia, but various hurdles must be overcome before the widely diverse economies can further solidify regional ties.

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