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COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2014

Virgin Galactic crash won't deter space tourists

Grisly though it sounds, one strong customer market for comparatively high-risk Virgin Galactic space tourism flights of the future may be affluent people with a terminal medical diagnosis.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 4, 2014

Bovine voter registration in rebel-held Ukraine

A cow, literally, could have voted in the elections for rebel-held regions of eastern Ukraine on Sunday. Nobody really cared who would win.
COMMENTARY
Nov 3, 2014

Does being gay make Tim Cook a better boss?

Strange as it may seem in 2014, Apple's Tim Cook is the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to come out in public about being gay. Members of this exclusive club are still unsure whether that's wise.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 3, 2014

Redaction of a 'comfort woman' story

One of the Japanese stories sometimes mentioned in the 'comfort women' controversy was written by the late Taijiro Tamura in the spring of 1947. It depicted Korean 'comfort women,' but the U.S. Occupation 'suppressed' it.
Japan Times
JAPAN / AT A GLANCE
Nov 2, 2014

Tokyo Station's iconic brick building, witness to war, stands test of time

Approaching its 100th anniversary in December, the red brick building of JR Tokyo Station in the Marunouchi business district is a symbol of the capital that continues to defy the high-rises around it with its classical architecture and stately appearance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 1, 2014

Hello Kitty: still fabulous at 40

Who is only five apples high and has no mouth — yet is one of the country's biggest cultural ambassadors?
COMMENTARY / World / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 1, 2014

Commemorating wartime Soviet spy Sorge

Seventy years ago on Nov. 7, the Japanese authorities executed Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy who became a member of the Nazi Party and was operating as a journalist in wartime Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014

Fuminori writes noir, but not as we know it

Fuminori Nakamura has won many of the major literary prizes in Japan and is quickly making the same kind of impact in the English-speaking world. His third novel to be translated into English, "Last Winter, We Parted," is out now. It's a tense, layered story centered around a young writer commissioned...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014

The Sarashina Diary

The author known as Takasue's Daughter, or Lady Sarashina, kept a diary to mark her bold 11th-century journey from the east of Japan to the capital. So enthralled did she become with writing that she continued for 40 more years, producing an account that holds up fantastically for 21st-century readers....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 1, 2014

Commercial rockets go boom like NASA's

There's no risk-free way to launch 5,000 pounds of food, science experiments and equipment to the International Space Station. As Orbital Sciences found out last week, some ways are far more dangerous than others.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2014

Will Hong Kong go beyond self-flagellation?

Hong Kong and mother China should be working together on ameliorating the social and economic pressures threatening to pull Hong Kong down far more dramatically and dangerously than today's governance dispute.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 29, 2014

A hobbit won't help with your emergency oxygen

Placing a priority on entertainment in preflight safety videos may not be the best way to teach first-time fliers emergency procedures.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NATURE'S PANTRY
Oct 28, 2014

A dalliance with the granular world of salt production

I licked up a smidge and then a bit more. It was explosive, yet gentle and not hit-you-over-the-head salty. Lovely.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2014

Sykes-Picot drew lines that blood is washing away

The highly centralized authoritarian rule of Syria and Iraq has broken down, probably irrevocably. That doesn't mean both states will disappear; they are likely to stumble on for some years.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2014

Catholic bishops hail the fringe

If you'd told a Jesuit priest reporter a few years ago that a synod of Catholic bishops on the family would make the front page of almost every newspaper and be a topic of heated conversation among Catholics worldwide, he would have called you crazy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 26, 2014

Moderate defense of what they call extremism

Few words are less meaningless in political discourse than 'extremism,' as people are extremists only in comparison to what is mainstream at the moment. Today's extremism becomes tomorrow's moderation under a different system.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 25, 2014

Perfidia

This sprawling period piece from the prolific author of such works as "L.A. Confidential" and "The Black Dalia" takes place in Los Angeles and environs between Dec. 5 and 29, 1941. Central to the plot are the enigmatic slayings of a Japanese family of four in the suburb of Highland Park on the eve of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 25, 2014

In the footsteps of Isabella Bird

With a curiosity for exploring new lands and cultures in the late 1800s, British author, traveler and naturalist Isabella Bird blazed quite a trail, one that is followed lovingly by Kiyonori Kanasaka with his collection of photographs that capture Bird's heart and vision, replicating the images she witnessed...
OLYMPICS / ROBERT WHITING'S 1964 OLYMPICS RETROSPECTIVE
Oct 24, 2014

Negative impact of 1964 Olympics profound

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had a profound impact on the capital city and the nation. In the final installment of a five-part series running this month, best-selling author Robert Whiting, who lived in Japan at the time, focuses on the environmental and human impact that resulted from hosting the event....
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Oct 24, 2014

Disney's 'Big Hero 6' animates a bridging of cultures

This week's Tokyo International Film Festival is hot on animation, featuring screenings of the collected works of Hideaki Anno, creator of the epic franchise, "Neon Genesis Evangelion," and 3-D shorts directed by Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, producer of "Donkey Kong" and "Super Mario Bros." But the festival's...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2014

Kenny G runs afoul of Xi's artist crackdown

Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a Maoist campaign against art and artists whom he judges as having 'negative social impact.' Saxman Kenny G, who is super popular in China, ran afoul of the authorities this week when he tweeted images of himself visiting protesters in Hong Kong.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 24, 2014

Lone-wolf attacks on the rise in era of asymmetric war

Six needle-nosed CF-18 fighter jets took off from the Canadian Forces base in Cold Lake, Alberta, on Tuesday to join the coalition fighting the Islamic State group. The next day, a convert to Islam attacked symbols of the Canadian state, killing a soldier and riddling the parliament building with bullets....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 22, 2014

A Most Wanted Man: 'Philip Seymour Hoffman's final performance'

Much-loved character actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's sudden death due to a heroin overdose back in February this year was a shock, one of those things that no one saw coming. But look hard at his final performance in "A Most Wanted Man" and behind the role you can see it in his eyes — that funk, that...
BUSINESS
Oct 22, 2014

Casino bill delayed again, sources say

Japan's plan to open up to casino gambling has been delayed again, three people familiar with the process said, dealing a blow to one of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policy priorities and to hopes the first resort will open in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
OLYMPICS / ROBERT WHITING'S 1964 OLYMPICS RETROSPECTIVE
Oct 21, 2014

'Witches of the Orient' symbolized Japan's fortitude

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had a profound impact on the capital city and the nation. In the fourth installment of a five-part series running this month, best-selling author Robert Whiting, who lived in Japan at the time, examines the symbolism of Japan's gold medal-winning women's volleyball team.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 20, 2014

Big Pharma, world leaders not cut out for Ebola battle

Scientists at leading universities, rather than Big Pharma, are fighting the battle against Ebola and other tricky diseases, while the response of Western leaders has been to try to keep Ebola out of their backyards.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 18, 2014

Grave hunting in Tokyo's realms of the dead

The moon wasn't out, but a low bank of clouds refracted the city lights and recast them around me as a dingy glow. Only chirping crickets and the occasional hum of a passing car in the distance broke the silence.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 18, 2014

If you'd nuked a city, you'd feel guilty too

The author T.C. Boyle in the preface to his book "Stories II" published last year made a convincing argument that runs counter to the conventional wisdom to "write what you know." Boyle said: "A story is an exercise of imagination — or, as Flannery O'Connor has it, an act of discovery."
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 18, 2014

Getting to the heart of Murasaki's 'Tale of Genji'

"If any society in the world can be described as unique," wrote historian Ivan Morris, "it is that of Heian Kyo in the time of Murasaki Shikibu."
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 18, 2014

Electric jolt to the brain boosts memory: study

Electrically stimulating a portion of the brain that coordinates the way the mind works can enhance memory and improve learning, according to a study that may lead to a new way to treat cognitive disorders.

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