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Japan Times
WORLD / EXPO MILANO 2015
May 3, 2015

Wide variety of events welcome Milan visitors

From May 1 through Oct. 31, Italy will host the Expo Milano 2015, a global event bringing together 145 countries, three international organizations, 13 nongovernmental organizations, many corporations and citizens to address issues related to the global food challenges, nutrition, the culture of food...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 2, 2015

Giving parents credit where rent is due

We choose our friends but we don't choose our parents. Nor do they choose us. It's a pretty fraught relationship, sometimes, that between parent and child. Perhaps "love-hate" best describes it — hopefully with love dominant.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 29, 2015

Takeshi Kitano's gang of nursing-home yakuza

Takeshi Kitano has had some of his biggest critical and commercial successes with gangster films, beginning with his 1993 international breakthrough "Sonatine" and continuing through to his 2012 hit "Outrage Beyond" ("Beyond Outrage"), which screened in competition at the 2012 Venice Film Festival.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 27, 2015

Why North Europeans are the happiest people

What are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark and Norway doing that make them the world's happiest countries?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 25, 2015

Fighting to recover from the ocean's wrath

On April 11, Wataru Takeshita, the minister for reconstruction of the areas most seriously affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, met in Kamaishi with local government representatives to discuss the budget for Iwate Prefecture. After the meeting, the mayor of Kamaishi spoke to the press and said...
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 20, 2015

Migrant crisis continues: Two more boats off Libya send distress calls

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi says Italian and Maltese ships are responding to two migrant emergencies near the Libyan coast.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2015

Excavating Japan's buried baseball history with Masanori Murakami

Sometimes historical analysis can't compete with a good personal story, as Robert K. Fitts — a baseball expert and former archaeologist — proves with his newest book, "Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2015

'North Korea Confidential' shows how citizens flirt with consumption in their everyday lives

What is life really like for the more than 24 million citizens of Asia's so-called hermit state — the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 31, 2015

Prosecution rests; Boston bombing jury hears of grisly deaths; defense calls first witness

Two of the people killed in the Boston Marathon bombing were torn apart by one of the blasts that ripped through runners and onlookers at the finish line, medical examiners testified on Monday as prosecutors wound up their case against accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and defense attorneys began calling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 25, 2015

Top bunraku artist ensures his master's name lives on

Traditional Japanese puppetry, known as bunraku, has its roots in 17th-century Osaka, but in the following century a variant emerged in which, rather than a puppet being handled by just one person, three performers working together operated each puppet in a play's cast.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2015

Poll finds fictional TV presidents are more popular than Obama

Whether it's the earnest Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" or the manipulative Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," Americans prefer television presidents to their real-life POTUS, President Barack "No Drama" Obama.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 21, 2015

Ghostly Japanese shipwrecks at the bottom of Chuuk Lagoon

When most people think of scuba diving, they usually envision colorful coral reefs, turtles and countless schools of fish. At Chuuk Lagoon in the Federated States of Micronesia, however, the star attraction is not the abundance of life that exists beneath the waves, but rather the "ghost fleet" of Imperial...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2015

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

It isn't the greatest of franchises but that doesn't make it any easier to say goodbye to "Night at the Museum." The third and final installment, "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb," of the zany, entertainment-for-all vehicle also marks the last screen appearance of Robin Williams, who died last...
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 11, 2015

Police shooting of unarmed, naked black Georgia man sparks fresh outcry

The shooting death of an unarmed, black, naked man by a white police officer in an Atlanta suburb prompted a social media outcry on Tuesday over what many people deemed to be unnecessary force against someone who may have been in mental distress.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 6, 2015

How to make girlfriends and influence followers

For many, social media is a place to show off milestones in life: vacations, weddings, families. But what if you don't have any of those things?
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Mar 5, 2015

YouTube's #DearMe campaign looks back to look forward

YouTube's #DearMe campaign asked women in Japan to post video messages with advice to their younger selves.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2015

Whips, chains and capitalism: what 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is really about

'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a romance for a particular kind of age — a time of growing inequality.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 3, 2015

Two kamikaze pilots, two late reprieves, one pacifist view

Hisashi Tezuka knew his life had been spared when he heard the Emperor's voice crackling through the wireless.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 28, 2015

China inadvertently promotes Islamic extremism

March 1, 2014, was China's 9/11. That was the day Islamic Uighur terrorists slashed their way into the collective consciousness of the country's ethnic Han majority.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 25, 2015

Waking up and smelling the roasted coffee

Thomas Wolfe's posthumous novel "You Can't Go Home Again" was published in 1940, and critics and readers have been debating the truth of its title ever since. Wolfe himself had no doubt: His autobiographical writings, with their biting, thinly disguised portraits, made him persona non grata in his hometown...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 24, 2015

Nujabes’ friends to pay tribute to the soulful hip-hop producer on the fifth anniversary of his death

When a traffic accident on Feb. 26, 2010, claimed the life of independent hip-hop auteur Jun Seba, who recorded and DJed under the name Nujabes, even some of his closest collaborators didn't find out until a few weeks later. The Japanese rapper Shingo Annen, better known by his professional name Shing02,...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Feb 18, 2015

Japanese basketball hurt by Robots debacle

The NBL, one of the two top men's basketball leagues in Japan, has endured a chaotic 2014-15 campaign, and the disarray reached its nadir with the management change of the Tsukuba Robots.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Feb 18, 2015

Time, gentlemen: When it's time to bid sayonara to Japan, what next?

I ask my departing friend the biggest question of all: After decades in Japan, just how does he plan to earn a living back home?
Japan Times
JAPAN / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Feb 15, 2015

Mainstream Japanese society slowly working to accommodate sexual minorities

When she was in her teens, Yumiko Higuchi was suicidal.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 14, 2015

Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army

Yoshiko Kawashima's life has been the subject of novels, soap operas and movies since the 1920s.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Feb 14, 2015

Doomsday fever spurs a religious revolution

Sometimes the world seems eternal; sometimes the end looms black and near. We moderns know the apocalyptic mood well, having survived Dec. 21, 2012, in spite of an ancient Mayan "prediction" of doom on that date, but, facing as we do numerous other portents of extinction — climate change, environmental...
JAPAN / View from Osaka
Feb 14, 2015

Winter offers a wake-up call for local revitalization drive

Kansai's corporate titans gathered in Kyoto earlier this month for their annual retreat, formally known as the Kansai Economic Forum. While there was no shortage of the usual slightly daft old men with slightly daft ideas, this year saw two important, positive changes.
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2015

Miserly use of vacation days

Japan may be the most miserly country in the world when it comes to getting workers to feel free to use their legally entitled number of paid holidays each year.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years