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EDITORIALS
Sep 1, 2011

Unsavory ties for an entertainer

Popular TV personality Shinsuke Shimada and his agency Yoshimoto Creative Agency Co. hastily called a news conference on the night of Aug. 23 to announce his retirement from the entertainment industry, effective immediately, because of his relationship with a gangster.
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2011

Panel confirms fix was in at nuclear public meetings

An independent investigation panel has confirmed that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency asked utilities in at least three cases to mobilize their employees for government-sponsored symposiums on nuclear power and express supportive or neutral opinions.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2011

Goodbye totalitarianism, hello elected strongmen

A month ago, I was sitting in a restaurant with Srdja Popovic, a democratic activist and leader of the revolution that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. We had met to discuss the revolutions ricocheting around the Middle East.
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2011

Noda pro-U.S. but past remarks may haunt Asia ties

While Japan-U.S. relations will remain the cornerstone of the nation's diplomacy under the leadership of Yoshihiko Noda, the Democratic Party of Japan's newly elected president and the nation's next prime minister, his past comments on war criminals could strain ties in Asia, analysts said Monday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 30, 2011

K-pop striking chord with the young

Korean pop groups began gaining popularity and media exposure in Japan last year, singing and dancing on TV shows and appearing in commercials.
BASKETBALL
Aug 30, 2011

Guard Takushi sets anchor in Oita

Well-traveled point guard Naoto Takushi has agreed to play for the Oita HeatDevils this season, the bj-league team announced on Monday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2011

Budget repair and liberal defiance

The residues of liberalism's Wisconsin Woodstock — 1960s radicalism redux: operatic lamentations, theatrical demonstrations and electoral futilities — are words of plaintive defiance painted on sidewalks around the state capitol.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 29, 2011

'Gratuitous' bombing of a defeated enemy

The International Center of Photography recently had an exhibition, "Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945," and I attended the panel discussion. This month 66 years ago the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
EDITORIALS
Aug 29, 2011

Mr. Kim goes to Russia

North Korea's reclusive supreme leader, Mr. Kim Jong Il, has ventured to Russia to meet President Dmitry Medvedev and discuss regional affairs. Mr. Kim repeated his readiness to return to the stalled Six-Party Talks "without preconditions" while Mr. Medvedev reportedly offered North Korea partnership...
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2011

Maehara admits he unknowingly got more donations from foreigners

Kyodo Former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who hopes to become the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's next leader, said Saturday he received a combined ¥590,000 in illegal contributions from four foreign nationals and a firm headed by a foreigner between 2005 and 2010.
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2011

Five face off over policies ahead of poll

Campaigning for the Democratic Party of Japan's presidential election officially kicked off Saturday, with five candidates vying to succeed Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 28, 2011

The best of his years . . .

This summer, my translator and I stood in Izumi Matsumoto's home-cum-office in Tokyo, where he had just been searching in vain for any original drawings from "Spring Wonder," which was, 27 years ago, the first manga serial he pitched to leading comics magazine Weekly Shonen Jump.
EDITORIALS / NOTES ON A SCORECARD
Aug 24, 2011

Japan-India agreement

The comprehensive economic partnership agreement between Japan and India went into force Aug. 1. It is Japan's 12th free trade agreement. In the field of FTAs, Japan is lagging its neighbor South Korea. The latter has already signed FTAs with the United States and the European Union. Its FTA with India...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Aug 23, 2011

Helping Brazilian kids master local life

Tetsuyoshi Kodama, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, became the first foreign national to pass the taxi driver test in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1991.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

New foreign policy for Obama

When President Barack Obama announced the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan last month, he offered a memorable justification: "America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 20, 2011

Fate's path led Canadian to Kamakura

Rarely does life offer a clear-cut crossroads, but Heather Willson, a 34-year resident of Japan, faced one squarely when she was 22 years old.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 19, 2011

Pitt, Penn heap praise on Malick's 'real world'

Terrence Malick kicks off his new film, "The Tree of Life," with a bang. The Big Bang, actually. Over the next 138 minutes, the viewer witnesses a journey through history that ends up in a small town in Texas. Critics seem to agree that you'll either love it or hate it.
EDITORIALS
Aug 17, 2011

Ray of light amid the nuclear gloom

The United Nations' latest renewable energy report is a ray of sunshine amid the gloom of Japan's nuclear disaster. According to the REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report, last year renewable energy accounted for 16 percent of global final energy consumption and close to 20 percent of global electricity...
Reader Mail
Aug 14, 2011

Innate keys to a bright future

One of the many interesting and unique aspects of Japanese culture that I experienced as a foreigner in Japan from 2003 to 2010 was jishuku. Jishuku refers to voluntary moderation in one's actions, typically after a terrible event or occurrence involving loss of life or human suffering. Jishuku is a...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 14, 2011

Blavatsky's Book of the Dead

THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Biography, by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2011, 175 pp., $19.95 (hardcover) In 2005 a journalist telephoned the eminent scholar of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., and asked him whether "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was the most...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Japan's unsung role in India's struggle for independence

Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be easy to mistake the bust of a bespectacled...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 13, 2011

Young dancers reap fruits of choreographer's expertise

Kimiho Hulbert danced before she could talk. Crawling backstage between dressing rooms of her Japanese mother and British father, both professional dancers in Belgium where she was born, Hulbert even disdained her first official ballet class at 2 years old as "too babyish."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2011

Agent Orange buried on Okinawa, vet says

In the late 1960s, the U.S. military buried dozens of barrels of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in an area around the town of Chatan on Okinawa Island, an American veteran has told The Japan Times.
BUSINESS
Aug 13, 2011

Fewer orders seen as warning sign

A four-month slump in foreign orders for Japanese machinery may be the latest sign that waning demand is threatening to derail the global economic recovery.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight