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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 27, 2015

Sri Lanka's memory wars thwart reconciliation

Six years after the end of the civil war that claimed at least 70,000 lives between 1983 and 2009, Sri Lanka appears to have made little progress on reconciliation between its ethnic Tamils and Sinhalese majority.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2015

Visualizing Japan's 'ugly' online desires with cultural critic Hiroki Azuma

In 2009, critic and philosopher Hiroki Azuma had a dream. It was a recurring dream (as befitting of someone well-versed in the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jacques Lacan), and riddled with complexities. In his own words, which open the introductory chapter of "General Will 2.0: Rousseau, Freud, Google,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 25, 2015

Julianne Moore takes on a role that her peers would avoid in 'Still Alice'

Julianne Moore says she was surprised to learn that people in some parts of the world have mistaken "Still Alice," her film about Alzheimer's disease, as "science fiction" and even "horror-comedy."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 25, 2015

'Ghost in the Shell' prequel fleshes out characters' origins

Internationally renowned sci-fi anime series "Ghost in the Shell" is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a new prequel, "Ghost in the Shell: The Movie."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jun 24, 2015

Story of Japan's industrial rise deserves to be told, forced labor and all

Proposed Kyushu UNESCO sites could be a showcase for East Asian cooperation or festering points of contention.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 23, 2015

China's Indian Ocean strategy

What are Chinese attack submarines doing in the Indian Ocean, far from China's maritime backyard?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2015

What attracts people to white supremacy?

Supremacists offer disaffected whites someone to love and someone to hate, along with an assurance that the problem isn't in you, but in 'them.'
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2015

Vladimir Putin in his bubble

Given Russia's economic performance, much of Vladimir Putin's speech at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum was first-class stand-up comedy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2015

Rise of the chest-thumping nationalist leaders

The leaders of India, China and Russia are promoting a nationalist ideology to hold their highly unequal countries together.
SOCCER
Jun 22, 2015

Report: Maradona to run for FIFA president

Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona has decided to stand as a candidate for the FIFA presidency to replace Sepp Blatter, Uruguayan journalist and author Victor Hugo Morales has said.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 21, 2015

China's the reason why U.S. needs the TPP

The Trans-Pacific Partnership will make the U.S. stronger in the cool war it's waging with China.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Jun 21, 2015

One year in, issues and inspiration are still driving Black Eye

Last week's killings in Charleston show that ignorance and fear over race are still driving people to violent extremes.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 21, 2015

Charleston shooting echoes 1963 Birmingham church murders that helped galvanize civil rights movement

Half a century ago in the deeply Southern city of Birmingham, a racially motivated attack on a black church left four young girls dead and helped galvanize a civil rights movement that changed voting laws across the United States.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jun 21, 2015

China extends reach into Hong Kong to thwart democrats

Hong Kong's democrats have won their battle to veto a Beijing-backed electoral reform package, but they now face an increasingly organized campaign by pro-Chinese government movements in the longer war over the democratic future of the former British colony.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 20, 2015

The true cost of fertility treatment in Japan

An increasing number of couples nationwide are relying on fertility treatments to conceive without adequately understanding the financial, physical and emotional toll such therapy takes on participants.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 20, 2015

In search of Japanese and American shared values

There is a good deal of blather about the shared values that are ostensibly the foundation of the alliance between Japan and the United States. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barack Obama invoked this mantra when they met in Washington to finalize new Japan-U.S. defense guidelines that hardly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 20, 2015

Can #socialmedia boost music sales in Japan?

Last week, Line Corp.'s, the operators of Japan's most popular messaging app, launched an in-app music streaming service called Line Music. Japan is the second-largest music market in the world after the United States, but its consumers have so far been global outliers, clinging to physical products...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2015

The new face of Japanese sci-fi chases an augmented world

Japanese science fiction has a long history. The genre could be considered to stretch back as far as the eighth-century tale of time traveler Urashima Taro or 10th-century story of moon-princess Kaguya-hime, but it was the rapid changes brought on during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) that generated one of...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2015

The secret to Lionel Messi's soccer success

Lionel Messi is widely considered to be one of the greatest soccer players of all time, but what is the secret to his success?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 19, 2015

Grasping the key to innovation

Japan should make 'new combination' innovation the nucleus of its growth strategy.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 19, 2015

8,500-year-old 'Kennewick Man' skeleton was likely Native American, not Ainu, DNA findings indicate

The much-anticipated results of a study of DNA taken from the hand bone of the so-called Kennewick Man, a 8,500-year-old skeleton discovered in Washington state in 1996, suggest the man was most closely related to Native American populations, a team of international researchers said on Thursday.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2015

Tragedy should prompt a zoo rethink

The Tbilisi zoo tragedy should make governments reconsider the rules for keeping wild animals in captivity.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2015

Oil is not inexorably fading from the world stage

The age of oil will endure for the forceable future.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 16, 2015

Nissan award echoes a maturing art world

The biennial Nissan Art Award isn't new now, and it wasn't really new when it began in 2013, either — something Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn is fully aware of.
JAPAN / History
Jun 13, 2015

Mercury rising: Niigata struggles to bury its Minamata ghosts

The first thing Koichi Hirota noticed about Komatsu Hoshiyama was that he could not walk in a straight line. As the young neurologist proceeded with his examination in the cramped, sparse ward inside Niigata University Hospital, other symptoms became apparent: The 55-year-old Hoshiyama's body tingled...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 13, 2015

Cultural historian James Vardaman reflects on his journey into Japanese publishing

Between two sips of coffee, Waseda University professor James M. Vardaman comes clean to me about his decades of addiction.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jun 13, 2015

Ian Fleming ensures no cliches about Japan go unexploited in his ethnocentric masterpiece 'You Only Live Twice'

This novel may come as a surprise if you mostly know of James Bond from the movie series. First published in 1964 — the same year that its author, Ian Fleming, died — "You Only Live Twice" adds elegiac gloom to the spy-thriller formula.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 13, 2015

China's boom in old-fashioned business

There's a reason direct sales have found fertile ground in China: Trust is still a relatively scarce commodity in the country's business world.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami