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COMMENTARY
Jul 4, 2012

Reforming Japan's universities

Media reports say Japan's education bureaucrats are considering allowing students with "stellar" academic records to graduate from high school before they turn 18. In other words, the required three-year stint at high school might be cut to two.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 2, 2012

After 15 years, Mainali is a free man

Freed June 7 from 15 years' imprisonment for a murder he apparently never committed, Govinda Prasad Mainali declared himself full of gratitude. Speaking through his lawyer, he said, "Mujitsu, shinjitsu wo shinjite kureta saibankan ni deaete yokatta. Kansha no kimochi de ippai desu," (「無実、真実を信じてくれた裁判官に出会ってよかった。感謝の気持ちでいっぱいです"」"It's...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 1, 2012

The land where sex fears to tread

No love, no sex, no marriage, no kids — such, in glum outline, is Japan today. It's too bleak a picture, it can't be true! But it can't be false either. If it were, people would be marrying, making babies and having love affairs. Instead, statistics reflecting everything from marriage and childbirth...
COMMENTARY
Jun 30, 2012

Mexicans ready for a change

There's no point in talking about who's going to win the Mexican presidential election on July 1. Enrique Pena Nieto is going to win it. What's more interesting is why he's going to win it.
COMMENTARY
Jun 26, 2012

Demographic threat shadows a world power

For the last two decades, demographics and its effect on Russian society and future development prospects have been at the center of discussions on that country.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 26, 2012

Cremation finds favor even with royal clan

Cremation has been the norm for dealing with the deceased in modern-day Japan — where communities are crowded and land is scarce.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 24, 2012

Mutombo using stature to make a difference in world

Dikembe Mutombo commands attention, and it's not because he towers over people at 218 cm, or the fascinating fact that he speaks nine languages (including five African dialects) or blocked 3,289 shots during his 18-season NBA career. Simply put, the big fellow has lived a remarkable life.
EDITORIALS
Jun 22, 2012

Heed sentiment on Osprey

The government is trying to persuade local governments concerned in Okinawa and Honshu to accept a U.S. plan to station 24 MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to replace the same number of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters stationed there....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012

'One Day'

They say that the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. "One Day" is all about that need, and how two people (subconsciously and otherwise) hold on to that for 23 long years.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2012

Innovative data delivery firm e-Parcel takes on the big boys

When e-Parcel Corp., an online data delivery service provider, last year sued 13 U.S. Internet-related service firms, including Yahoo Inc., Google Inc., AOL Inc. and Akamai Technologies Inc., for patent infringement, the action meant more than just protecting its intellectual property.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 20, 2012

How Jordan kept Isiah off Dream Team

Ironic how last Thursday was Flag Day and here we are, draped in drool over the 20th anniversary of the narcissistic 1992 Dream Team.
JAPAN
Jun 16, 2012

Fight against Aum's mischief goes on

The final three Aum Shinrikyo fugitives are now in custody, but groups working to rescue brainwashed followers from its main successor group are continuing their fight against the cult.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2012

Film fest keeps it short

Once upon a time, short films actually played in cinemas, as an opening act for the feature presentation. But as feature films got longer and cinemas tried to squeeze in ever more screenings, the shorts eventually fell by the wayside. As a result they lost their position as the traditional calling card...
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2012

Ospreys add to Okinawa grievances

For nearly 30 years, Ginowan resident Eisho Nakandakari has had periodic trouble sleeping at night. It's not insomnia that keeps him up, but the roar of jets from U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, just a few hundred meters from his home.
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2012

China's demographic crunch

Just four years from now, China will pass a milestone. Its huge workforce will peak and start shrinking. This will make it more difficult for the world's second largest economy to continue the turbo-charged growth that has played a key role in the rise not just of China, but also its Asia-Pacific trade...
EDITORIALS
Jun 12, 2012

Don't delay justice any longer

The Tokyo High Court on June 7 decided to retry a Nepalese man serving a life sentence for the 1997 robbery-murder of a 39-year-old woman in Tokyo on the strength of new evidence and he was released at the court's order. But the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office immediately filed an objection. The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012

'We Bought a Zoo (Japan title: Shiawase e no Kiseki)'

The latest on the Japanese dating-scene bulletin says ikumen are it. And what exactly are ikumen? These are men (perhaps the first in the history of this nation) willing to nurture and raise children, and actually profess to enjoy it. Coming from a family whose male members would have all chosen ritual...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 4, 2012

Ramirez still learning, producing on baseball diamond

History has seen lots of baseball players play for long periods of time — Chunichi's Masahiro Yamamoto, in his 29th season, and Jamie Moyer, still pitching in the U.S. at age 49, to name a pair — but no one has yet figured out how to play forever.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 2, 2012

Japan's great outdoors becomes Oregonian's office-cum-playground

Gliding through powder across Mount Hakkoda in Aomori Prefecture or scanning the surfers at Shonan Beach in Kanagawa Prefecture, Gardner Robinson's life and work merge so completely that on the clock and on the slopes are one and the same.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012

Remembering Kaneto Shindo

When Kaneto Shindo died Tuesday at age 100, he was not the world's oldest active director — that honor belongs to Portugal's Manoel e Oliveira, at 103 — but he had had an amazingly productive and celebrated career, which started in 1934. Among his best-known films abroad are 1960's "Hadaka no Shima...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 1, 2012

Shizuoka eyes theatrical bridge over to Avignon

Stranger things have happened, and in the near future a vibrant cultural bridge across Eurasia may be built between the city of Shizuoka in the beautiful foothills of Mount Fuji, and ancient Avignon in the artists' mecca of Provence in the South of France.

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