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JAPAN
Dec 2, 2010

Performers reach out to Iraq kids

A "rakugo" comic storyteller, a magician and a manga illustrator are visiting elementary schools and refugee camps in Iraq on a humanitarian mission, the philanthropist who arranged the trip said.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2010

Japan's leadership test in Sri Lanka

U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement last month that the U.S. would support an Indian bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council may reinvigorate the process of Security Council reform. Japan too has made permanent membership in the Security Council a high priority in its foreign policy....
LIFE / Digital
Dec 1, 2010

Lady Gaga goes offline for charity

Alicia Keys and Lady Gaga take charity work seriously, and they're going offline to prove it.
LIFE
Nov 28, 2010

Summiteering with Nobel peace laureates

Hiroshima is a beautiful city with cute trams cruising along its tree-lined streets.
CULTURE / Film
Nov 26, 2010

'Space Battleship Yamato'

The "Space Battleship Yamato" franchise, known abroad under such titles as "Star Blazers" and "Space Cruiser Yamato," began life in 1974 as a TV cartoon space opera, then generated a hit animated film in 1977. Two more TV series and four more films followed, concluding the saga with the 1983 feature...
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2010

Man admits killing professor, claims disorder

A 29-year-old Chuo University graduate on Wednesday admitted stabbing a college professor to death last year, but his lawyers said the Tokyo District Court should take into consideration that he has a delusional disorder.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 25, 2010

Showa Women's University President Mariko Bando

Mariko Bando, 64, is the president of Showa Women's University in Tokyo. She is also a best-selling author with more than 30 books under her belt, including "The Dignity of a Woman," which has sold over 3 million copies. An advocate of women's rights, Bando is director of the Japan National Committee...
EDITORIALS
Nov 23, 2010

Uncovering government waste

In a Nov. 5 report to Prime Minister Naoto Kan, the Board of Audit said that in fiscal 2009, ministries and agencies as well as other government entities wasted public money in 979 cases. The total reached a record ¥1.79 trillion — some 7.5 times the fiscal 2008 figure.
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2010

Japan hand Chalmers Johnson dead at 79

OSAKA — American author and scholar Chalmers Johnson, whose views on postwar Japan angered American academics and Japan experts in the late 1980s but influenced a generation of students studying the country, died Saturday in California at age 79.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 23, 2010

Performance art's expatriate players push the envelope

Exotic dancing. Nonsensical poetry. Harsh electronic noise. Doughnuts. These are just some of the manifold sights and sounds you'll find on the bill at Paint Your Teeth, a bimonthly performance art event in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 22, 2010

U.S. forecast from November

STANFORD, Calif. — November's midterm elections were a sharp rebuke to the vast expansion of government spending, deficits and debt in the United States. Elected in the midst of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership of Congress seemed surprised...
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 21, 2010

Heading for the hills — in style

One sunny Saturday a couple of weeks ago, this writer joined five women and three men who met up at Ikusabata Station on the JR Ome Line in the mountains of western Tokyo.
EDITORIALS
Nov 21, 2010

Particles from an asteroid

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Nov. 16 that it has determined that most of some 1,500 particles contained in the unmanned space probe Hayabusa (peregrine falcon), which returned to Earth in June from the asteroid Itokawa, originated from the asteroid orbiting Earth and Mars....
CULTURE / Music
Nov 19, 2010

Japanese pianist touts the sounds of Spain

Japanese pianist Shizuka Shimoyama and Slovakian cellist Ludovit Kanta will bring the culture of Spain to Tokyo next week.
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 19, 2010

Joan of Arc takes center stage

Though widely known in the West, St. Joan of Arc is an obscure historical figure for many people in Japan. Maki Horikita, who portrays the 15th-century French war heroine in the upcoming TBS stage production "Jeanne d'Arc," rises to the challenge of making Joan's tragic life story relevant for a Japanese...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 18, 2010

Kawasaki busy cleaning up its act

The sky over Kawasaki once was choked with smoke billowing from factories along its waterfront, giving the city at the center of the Keihin Coastal Industrialized Zone a reputation as one of the country's most polluted areas.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 13, 2010

Imperial Hotel maintains its pride, 120 years on

Charles Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and Babe Ruth, and in recent years U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev are among the many celebrities who have lodged at the Imperial Hotel, Japan's first grand Western-style inn, which opened as a state guesthouse during...
COMMUNITY
Nov 13, 2010

Dream becomes reality for Scottish manga creator

It sits in a place of beauty, incongruously bordered between Japanese stone art and a vivid blue ink painting: "2000 A.D.," a classic British comic book from the 1980s. The apocalypse orange cover shrieks "Revenge of the Warlock" but — muted by a plastic overlay to protect its condition — the sci-fi...
JAPAN / ORGAN TRANSPLANTS
Nov 12, 2010

Transplants set to increase

Japan boasts highly skilled surgeons, universal health insurance coverage, well-equipped medical facilities — and few organ transplants.
CULTURE / Film
Nov 12, 2010

'Spring Fever'

Director Lou Ye continues to prove he's one of the more daring directors working in China today with his latest, "Spring Fever." Or perhaps I should say, one of the more daring directors not working in China today, for Lou was placed on the government censors' blacklist in 2006 after his last film, "Summer...
COMMENTARY
Nov 11, 2010

Iraqi Christians: also victims of the invasion

On Sunday, Oct. 31, when a group of militants seized a church in Baghdad, killing and wounding scores of Iraqi Christians, it signaled yet another episode of unimaginable horror in the country since the U.S. invasion of March 2003. Every group of Iraqis has faced terrible devastation as a result of this...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2010

Seoul's opportunity amid economic change

SEOUL — Hubris usually gives birth to disaster. The root cause of the current global crisis was intellectual hubris in the form of the blind belief that markets would always resolve their own problems and contradictions. Thirty years after the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, the ideological pendulum has...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan