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Reader Mail
Oct 2, 2013

Rights to our body after death

I usually enjoy Ted Rall's opinion essays, but I didn't fancy his Sept. 27 article "Mandatory organ donation." Even though he writes as he usually does, provocatively and tongue in cheek, there are serious people among us who seriously propose this dystopian stupidity.
JAPAN
Oct 1, 2013

WEF ranks Japan 15th in worker development

Japan ranks 15th among 122 countries in the World Economic Forum's first Human Capital Index report on countries' abilities to develop and deploy healthy, educated and able workers, the forum said Tuesday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Sep 30, 2013

Russia anti-gay law casts shadow over Sochi Olympics

Let other mayors fret about potholes, taxes and sewers. This is an Olympic city, and here is the jeans-clad mayor striding into his office on a recent afternoon, fresh from a landslide, and not the electoral kind. When Sochi won the 2014 Games, life went epic.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Sep 29, 2013

American Dream fading for many in wake of financial crisis

Four years into an economic recovery in which most of the benefits have flowed to the top earners, a majority believes that the American Dream is becoming markedly more elusive, according to the results of a Washington Post-Miller Center poll exploring Americans' changing definition of success and their...
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 28, 2013

Camera artist casts new light on Jomon millennia

The Jomon Period of Japanese history is so shrouded in the mists of time that any bid to fathom its secrets stretches even the usual bounds of prehistoric archeology. Yet as amateurs and experts alike have continued unearthing examples of Jomon pottery and stone tools for more than a century, the pieces of the puzzle are gradually coming together.
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 27, 2013

The violent, thuggish world of the young Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach is arguably the greatest of all composers, with the "St. Matthew Passion" and the "Mass in B Minor" among the most sublime masterpieces in classical music. But biographers over the past half century have "sanitised" his life, in the belief that only a saintly man could have written...
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 27, 2013

Lord Byron to Russell Brand: timeless appeal of the bad boy

When the singer Katy Perry spoke recently about her relationship with British comedian Russell Brand, not so long after their whirlwind courtship and immediately after their whirlwind divorce, she refrained from putting the boot in, despite Brand having ended the short marriage by text.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 27, 2013

'There will be people who walk out of the cinema, I'm sure'

In a drab building in central Scotland, one afternoon in the armpit of winter, an actor who looks a lot like nice-guy James McAvoy is persuading a room full of blokes to — I'm paraphrasing here — Xerox their cocks.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 26, 2013

Suede plays it anew with 'Bloodsports' album

Ten years ago, Suede was in the process of fizzling out to a backdrop of apathy. For a band whose initial brilliance inadvertently help kick-start Britpop in the 1990s, it all seemed unedifying.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Sep 24, 2013

Pussy Riot member on hunger strike

In the Soviet era, female political prisoners who were sent to labor in Russia's Mordovia region described their privations in tiny words written on cigarette papers, which took months to reach the world. Today, an inmate can hand a real letter to a husband, and it is posted on a blog, emblazoned on...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Sep 23, 2013

Why are so many Nepalese in Japan taking their own lives?

Dear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Minister of Education Hakubun Shimomura and Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Norihisa Tamura,
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Sep 22, 2013

Pacman, Peso and Pyongyang

A few weeks ago, a Kickstarter project was posted on the Internet featuring two young men who went by the names of Pacman and Peso.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 21, 2013

Crossing the Himalayas through memory to Ladakh

I'm in a small van careering along a rough and narrow road beside a rushing river with brightly painted temples along its banks and craggy peaks towering overhead. We're traveling in the prescribed Indian fashion — drive as fast as you can and hope for the best or, better still, pray.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 18, 2013

'Sengai and the World of Zen'

During his life as a monk, Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) was admired for not only his artistic ability but also his modesty and simplistic way of life. Despite his social status, he chose to don an everyday black robe instead of one of distinguished purple silk, and his beliefs were reflected in what is now...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013

'Hyde Park on Hudson'

For all intents and purposes, "Hyde Park on Hudson" should have you on hello. Instead, it may leave you feeling the tiniest bit revolted. Focusing on the events of a weekend in the life of 32nd U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, arguably the best-loved commander-in-chief of the 20th century after...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2013

Photographer 'faces future' with portraits of centenarians

The idea of getting old scares most of us. We don't want to think about getting wrinkles, becoming bedridden or succumbing to Alzheimer's disease. Still, we must come to terms with the fact that growing old is a reality for all of us lucky enough to live long lives.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Sep 7, 2013

Ballet prodigy gets a big lift from mom

Sixteen-year old ballerina Miko Fogarty may be an American teen prodigy, but despite hailing from that land steeped in stardom culture, she seems to have none of the usual celebrity trappings — or to be particularly interested in them.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Sep 2, 2013

Housing loans: Nothing is 100 percent easy

The government has yet to confirm the timing of the approved consumption tax increase from 5 to 8 percent. It's slated to take place next April but there is still fear that the economy is too frail to withstand the effect the added tax might have on actual consumption. Consequently, the government is...
EDITORIALS
Sep 1, 2013

New disaster warning system

The Meteorological Agency on Aug. 30 started a system to use a 'special warning' designation for natural disasters that are very likely to cause heavy damage.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 31, 2013

Married or single, Japan is a desolate country

"The past century is a history of sexual distortion," social psychologist Hiroyoshi Ishikawa told Time Magazine in 1983.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Aug 31, 2013

Nearly 50 years after epic win, Mills backs Tokyo for 2020

Billy Mills' rise to prominence began nearly 50 years ago. Now, as he looks back on his highly successful career as a distance runner, author, humanitarian and motivational speaker, he reflects on how significant a role the 1964 Tokyo Olympics played in his life.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 30, 2013

Cory Booker: hope, hype — and heir to Barack Obama?

If Cory Booker were a television character you might think the writers were over-egging things a bit. Tall, athletic, handsome, he is an ambitious politician with a flair for drama. He rescues a woman from a burning building, saves a freezing dog, chases a scissor-wielding mugger, invites hurricane victims...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2013

'Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)'

First published in 1963, Jakucho Setouchi's "Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)" was the "Fifty Shades of Grey" of its day: a best-selling novel written by a woman that viewed the unconventional love life of its 38-year-old heroine with the sort of matter-of-factness then considered daring. But the story,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2013

Oliver Stone warmed to Okinawans, fired up base foes

On Aug. 13, a dozen anti-base demonstrators scuffled with police outside the gates of U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa, as marines watched from behind the fence cracking jokes and laughing.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Aug 18, 2013

¥100 store recipes; the 33 steps to Freemasonry; CM of the week: Nihon Seimei Hoken

The government continues to chip away at the welfare state, reducing benefits for poor families and forcing them to find new ways of saving what little money they have. Luckily the variety show "Ikinari! Ogon Densetsu" ("Suddenly! The Legend of Money"; TV Asahi, Thurs., 7 p.m.) is always there to help....
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 17, 2013

Shock-and-awe art fills festival streets with fun

"Are you tourist?" asked the man seated beside me on the early afternoon flight from Tokyo's Haneda airport to Kochi in Shikoku. He spoke in hesitant English.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 16, 2013

What being a minority allows us to see

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before — many times. Someone called your child hafu (half) and you take offence. Or your contract is only one-year renewable, whereas your Japanese coworkers have "lifetime employment." Or maybe someone called you a gaijin as you walked by. I've heard these stories dozens...
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

Reformers set sights on Scotland's immense private estates

On bleak Scottish moors and soft, mossy hills, the oldest and grandest theme park in the world rose on Aug. 12. The vast and sprawling sporting estates that possess most of Scotland's surface thrummed with the frantically beating wings of grouse and echo to the gunshot, bravo and jolly well done. The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 14, 2013

Jeté-ing from ballet to kitchen-sink drama

Though she's moved from elegant arabesques to doing the washing up, former prima ballerina Tamiyo Kusakari is stealing the show in "Ani Kaeru (The Older Brother Returns)," a kitchen-sink drama playing every night through Sept. 1 at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro.

Longform

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Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years