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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 11, 2015

Misono Universe: Screaming from the gutter to the stars

Amnesia is one of those medical conditions that might have been invented for the movies. For scriptwriters, it's a godsend — one bump on the hero's head and the story is rolling.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 9, 2015

Retiring boomers make their last stand on the real estate market

An increasing number of retirees are opting for high-rise living in their twilight years.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 7, 2015

In violent times, young Japanese just shrug

The weekly Shukan Kinyobi discerns a "new fatalism" among young people. Meaning what? A feeling that effort reaps no rewards and so is not worth making; that the world is what it is and cannot be changed — at least not by me, even if I felt like changing it, which I don't; that luck or inborn talent...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 7, 2015

Natural strategies to cope with winter

Jan. 19 is officially the coldest day of winter. Called daikan (major cold), the day coincided with some truly bitter weather in northern Japan this year. The mercury plummeted to minus 27.3 in Furano, central Hokkaido, and minus 31.3 in Esashi in the southwest, and remained cold for at least a week....
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2015

Facebook diplomacy on the Ukrainian front

Dramatic dispatches of diplomacy from a Ukrainian tank officer underscore social media's ability to keep soldiers and their commanders on Ukraine's eastern battlefield in touch with friends and families.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Feb 1, 2015

App maker on quest for unique, crowd-pleasing products

Daisaku Yamamoto, an up-and-coming Web services creator, recounts being an attention-seeker as a child, always trying to differentiate himself from everyone else.
Japan Times
SPORTS / NOTES ON A SCORECARD
Jan 30, 2015

No reason for fans to despair over Nishikori's defeat

What a difference three years makes.
WORLD
Jan 28, 2015

Putin could lose key support from pensioners hurt by Russian crisis

For Boris Lisitsyn, Russia's financial crisis means less meat, cheese and sausage — hardships the 86-year-old says won't kill him anytime soon.
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2015

Radio report, voiceprints muddy waters as officials deliberate over hostage crisis

After the Islamic State group reportedly confirmed via radio that it had killed Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa, both Japan and Jordan were saying little Monday about how they might respond to its demand that a suicide bomber jailed in Jordan be exchanged for the second hostage, Kenji Goto.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 24, 2015

Mika Mifune gets ready for some serious 'me' time

Historian Daniel J. Boorstin once defined a celebrity as someone who is "known for his well-knownness" — a person famous for being famous. Though many celebrities have talent and other attributes that draw attention, it is easier to gain notoriety passively by being related to someone who already has...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2015

Democrats fine-tune gaffes with homemakers

American Democrats have a knack for saying stupid things about full-time homemakers. And two of President Barack Obama's recent proposals with regard to tax credits reflect this weakness.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 23, 2015

Making babies makes a comeback in Japan

The slight rise in Japanese fertility since 2005 — despite the sharp recession and natural disasters that happened in the meantime — suggests there is hope that work-life balance will help to stabilize the populations of developed nations after all.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 22, 2015

On the Internet, opinion swings against hostages

As the lives of two Japanese appeared to hang in the balance Thursday, their plight touched off a range of responses on the Internet, with many sniping at them for choosing to go to a war zone and others urging understanding.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015

French triumph frees SPAC pioneer to be bolder still

Following on Olivier Py's comment in the accompanying story that "everybody" at last year's Avignon Festival loved Satoshi Miyagi's "Mahabharata — Nalacharitam," which Py, as the festival's director, had awarded the honor of opening the event, I rolled up to Shizuoka Performing Arts Center to find...
JAPAN / Society
Jan 17, 2015

Home away from home: the plight of refugees in Japan

On a cold winter's day in December, an African man sits in a meeting room at the Japan Association for Refugees, a nonprofit organization in Tokyo. The man, whose name and country of origin have been withheld to protect his identity from those who wish him and his family harm, has been seeking refugee...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 17, 2015

Longevity, genetics and the whale

The oldest person in the world — and the oldest ever Japanese person — is Misao Okawa. She lives in Osaka and is 116. She'll be 117 in March.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2015

Cat Town

Modernist 20th-century writer Sakutaro Hagiwara redefined Japanese poetry with his free-style verse and daringly common subject matter; he reached sublime heights by examining the mundane.
EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2015

The Kobe quake, 20 years on

A new generation has grown up since the Great Hanshin Earthquake of Jan. 17, 1995 — the first mega-quake to hit a large metro area in postwar Japan — and we still have much to learn from the experience.
JAPAN
Jan 13, 2015

Japan's rising economy results in fewer suicides, but recession might reverse that

The slide into recession last year wasn't just a blow to "Abenomics," as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's fiscal policies are known.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 7, 2015

Passion and prejudice in 1930s Ireland

"Jimmy's Hall" is a glimpse into Ireland in 1932 when the country was in a relative lull between wars, turmoil and strife. Director Ken Loach has consistently worked to bring the lives of the United Kingdom's working class to cinema screens. "Jimmy's Hall" is his second foray into Ireland following "The...
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 7, 2015

Fukuoka police hand out anti-yakuza manga to school children

Police in Fukuoka Prefecture are distributing a manga booklet that aims to steer schoolchildren away from becoming a yakuza member.
Figure Skating / ICE TIME
Jan 2, 2015

Machida's decision to quit both selfish and untimely

Tatsuki Machida's sudden retirement at the Japan nationals in Nagano last week came as a shock to just about everybody.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 1, 2015

Samba: 'chemistry between an immigrant and his caseworker'

In "Samba" the French writer-director duo of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano try to rekindle the magic and phenomenal box-office success of their 2011 film "The Intouchables," with the same leading man burdened by the same kind of problems against the same backdrop of a Paris unkind to African immigrants....
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jan 1, 2015

Readers' letters: Roppongi, Ferguson, 'Massan,' Julien Blanc and more

Some emails received in response to Community articles at the tail end of 2014.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 27, 2014

Learning to love robots

With half the decade complete, we examine an industry that has significantly changed the way we think about ourselves.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Dec 25, 2014

Japan Times Advisory Board serves up brickbats, praise for newspaper's coverage

Ichiro Fujisaki, who formerly served as Japan's ambassador to the United States, praised the paper for its "readability." He said he senses that the editors try to choose phrases and words that are easy for Japanese readers to understand.
EDITORIALS
Dec 23, 2014

Protecting sexual minorities' rights

A Japanese civic group survey has the ruling Liberal Democratic Party standing out from other parties in its failure to view issues involving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people as human rights problems.

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