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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013

Two wide-ranging, informed compilations scrutinize the March 11 disasters

NATURAL DISASTER AND NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN, edited by Jeff Kingston. Routledge, 2012, 304 pp., £28.99 (paperback)
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2013

Asia's dammed water hegemon

China's announcement of three new dam projects on the Brahmaputra underscores the emergence of water as a new divide in Sino-Indian relations.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 8, 2013

Bite into the journals of a Japanese burger critic

Many Japanese foodies are enamored with the hamburger, in much the same way that their American counterparts are often besotted with ramen. The number of hamburger shops in Tokyo has exploded in the last decade, but there are also signs that the fascination runs deeper: There are books, magazines and...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2013

Are they watching? U.S. court says that's a secret

Think Big Brother is tapping your phone and reading your email? Want to go to court and make the government prove its surveillance program is constitutional?
SPORTS / NBA REPORT
Mar 6, 2013

Pacers best placed to challenge Heat

Donnie Walsh wasn't impressed. The former and longtime Indiana Pacers general manager had returned to his Indianapolis home for the 2011-12 NBA season.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2013

The Vatican needs a mystic to be the next pope

There's no need to rehash the recent disastrous track record of the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy. The sordid abuse of children by priests, the sinister coverups, the callous treatment of nuns, the deaf ear turned toward Catholics who happen to be gay or divorced — it's all on the front page. The...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2013

Power is increasingly fleeting

In 2009, during his first address before a joint session of Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama championed a budget that would serve as a blueprint for the country's future through ambitious investments in energy, health care and education. "This is America," the new president proclaimed. "We don't...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2013

Democracy votes to kill in Indonesia, Pakistan

The recent slaughter of Shiites in Pakistan is another grisly reminder of the perilous condition of its minorities. Indeed, in Pakistan and Indonesia, the two largest Muslim countries, both of which are in the midst of a fraught experiment with electoral democracy after decades of military rule, murderous...
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2013

Obituary: Michiko Otsuka

Renowned actress and Haiyuza Theater Company leader Michiko Otsuka died of heart disease at her Tokyo home on Feb. 26, the theatrical troupe said Monday. She was 82.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 5, 2013

In Lew of loopy corrections

New U.S. Treasurey Secretary Jacob Lew's, whose mastery of the nitty-gritty details makes him a tough negotiator and a difficult opponent, has won a reputation as unflappable.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Mar 5, 2013

Child's quibble with U.S. 'poverty superpower' propaganda unravels a sobering story about insular Japan

Last November, a reader in Hokkaido named Stephanie sent me an article read in Japan's elementary schools. Featured in a sixth-grader magazine called Chagurin (from "child agricultural green") dated December 2012, it was titled "Children of America, the Poverty Superpower" (hinkon taikoku Amerika no...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 3, 2013

A newspaper editor's year to master Chopin's First Ballade

PLAY IT AGAIN, by Alan Rusbridger. Jonathan Cape, 2013, 416 pp., £18.99 (hardcover)
Reader Mail
Mar 3, 2013

Their likes won't pass this way

In his Feb. 28 letter tribute to the late movie critic and author Donald Richie, "Remembering Donald Richie," Japanologist Karel van Wolferen recalls the weekly lunches that Richie and he had with literary translator Ed Seidensticker. What a magnificent and lively gathering that must have been. It would...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Mar 1, 2013

Iconic Iwojima photo: a survival story

The battle had raged for four days, and would continue for 31 more, a marathon of sand and heat and unrelenting death. But at that moment there was an order from the brass: Get a bigger flag up there. The small American flag fluttering atop Mount Suribachi, the volcanic peak on the island, was too small...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2013

In New York, the Guggenheim goes Gutai

By now, the looks, character and history of Gutai, the post-World War II Japanese art movement born in 1954 in Ashiya, between Osaka and Kobe, are familiar to regular viewers of modern-art exhibitions in Japan. Last summer's "Gutai: The Spirit of an Era," a survey of the movement's evolution and its...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2013

Leon Panetta: a legacy of the conventional wisdom

Leon Panetta's failure to accommodate a rapidly changing world will be his most important, and disappointing, legacy as U.S. secretary of defense.
Reader Mail
Feb 28, 2013

No meat to vegetarian story

I consider the headline for Philip Brasor's Feb. 24 Media Mix article, "Japan's vegetarians stay in the closet," misleading. Most of the story is not about the vegetarian situation in Japan, but rather a discussion of animal rights. I have no idea what the author really wanted to say with regard to vegetarians...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Feb 27, 2013

Seniors forced to go it alone as ranks swell, housing eludes

Itoko Uchida, 82, was counting on the nephew she raised to support her in old age. He refused, forcing her to pay for a sponsor to join the 420,000-long line of Japanese waiting for a nursing home bed.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2013

Top currency official eyed for ADB presidency

The administration is considering Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Takehiko Nakao, the nation's top currency official, as a candidate to lead the Asian Development Bank under the assumption that current ADB head Haruhiko Kuroda becomes the next Bank of Japan governor, Finance Minister...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2013

Afghanistan's partition might be unpreventable

Is Afghanistan in store for an Iraq-style 'soft partition,' with protracted strife eventually creating a 'hard partition,' after U.S. military forces go home.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2013

Five myths about picking a pope

Misconceptions abound about how 117 cardinals, gathering from across the globe inside the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, will elect a new pope next month.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 26, 2013

Everything you wanted to know about Western women (but were afraid to ask): No-holds-barred guide targets Japanese men

Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 24, 2013

Osaka: Japan's latterday second city forever breaks the national mold

They're funny, finicky and feisty, not to mention being full of wicked mischief, with their own way of talking, too. Outside of Japan, think of Liverpool, not London; or Munich, not Berlin; or Mumbai, not Delhi. I'm talking about the people of Osaka.
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013

Sharing films with a master critic

Donald Richie was my friend and mentor for more than 20 years and my inspiration before that. When I was preparing to come to Japan for the first time in 1975, I read many books about the place, but Donald's masterpiece "The Inland Sea" was the one that entranced me. My first long trip after my arrival...
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2013

Keep it clean: World watches Iceland lead the way toward ban on Web porn

Small, volcanic, with a proud Viking heritage and run by an openly gay prime minister, Iceland is now considering becoming the first democracy in the Western world to try to ban online pornography.
WORLD / Society
Feb 23, 2013

25% of U.S. teens harassed online by partner

In another mark of the increasingly digital life of teenagers, more than 25 percent of those who dated said their love interests threatened or harassed them online or using texts, according to a new study that is touted as the most comprehensive look at the phenomenon.
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2013

Wrestling with the corruption of the Olympics

It has been scarcely a week since the International Olympic Committee announced its intention to exclude wrestling from the 2020 Summer Games, and the campaign to "Save Wrestling" is in full swing.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Feb 22, 2013

Ready for spring's fresh bounty

After an unusually cold winter, the sight of spring produce is particularly welcome, especially the bright yellow-green of nanohana.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 22, 2013

Mexican police, soldiers tied to disappearances

Describing what it called "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S. organization Human Rights Watch issued a new report Wednesday with grim implications for the thousands of Mexican civilians who have gone missing in the country's shadowy drug fight.
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Celebrate Japan's diverse look

Regarding the Feb. 28, 2008, article "Why's Japan grown so ugly?": I was struck by how amazingly naive this article seems; this approach to town planning is part of why I fled Britain.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.