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Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2014

Abe wins battle to broaden defense policy

The administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe authorizes a reinterpretation of war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, allowing Japan for the first time since World War II to come to the aid of an ally under attack.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / A TASTE OF HOME
Jul 1, 2014

Gunma's 'Brazil Town' offers a carnival of cuisine

This month A Taste of Home is taking a field trip to Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture. Oizumi, an otherwise ordinary town, is home to roughly 4,000 Brazilians — about one-tenth of the local population. Most of them work in nearby factories (Subaru is a big one). But some of them are working to make life a...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 1, 2014

Japan's status quo crumbles with an apology to a woman

When Tokyo city assemblyman Akihiro Suzuki bowed to assemblywoman Ayaka Shiomura and apologized for publicly heckling her over her unmarried status, some people caught their breath, convinced that they were witnessing something epochal in Japan.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 1, 2014

China's military calls for unity after top level graft bust

China's military called on Tuesday for unity and loyalty to the ruling Communist Party after one of its most senior former officers was accused of corruption, the highest-ranking official to date felled in a battle against pervasive graft.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2014

Time to say goodbye to the business cycle?

The many failures of economics before, during and after the recent financial crisis have left an intellectual vacuum. It seems that governments' past success in stabilizing the economy in the short run encouraged too much debt and instability in the long term.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 1, 2014

Shokuhin Matsuri aka Foodman cooks up footwork on 'oiss'

"I used to be a video-game nerd," says Takahide Higuchi, the experimental footwork producer also known as Shokuhin Matsuri in Japanese and Foodman in English. "I thought that guys who were popular with girls made music, but I was sort of stubborn and didn't try. Then, in my last year of high school I...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jul 1, 2014

Whaling town preserves tradition

The whaling season opened with a public carve-up and barbecue in the coastal town of Minamiboso, Chiba Prefecture, where workers last Thursday sliced a whale before a crowd of elementary school students and residents. Onlookers later received pieces of fried whale meat.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 1, 2014

Microsoft targets cybercrime rings with roots in Kuwait, Algeria

Microsoft Corp. launched what it hopes will be the most successful private effort to date to crack down on cybercrime by moving to disrupt communications channels between hackers and infected PCs.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 1, 2014

Square Enix seeks China game partners beyond Tencent, Shanda

Square Enix Holdings Co., maker of the "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest" video game series, is seeking partners in China to win sales in Asia's biggest economy. The shares rose the most since February.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 1, 2014

Rome's Trevi Fountain gets face-lift

Rome unveiled the most drastic face-lift for the Trevi Fountain in its 252-year history on Monday, the latest in a series of privately funded restorations to Italy's prized landmarks.
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 30, 2014

North's missiles may have sent different message

As Japanese and North Korean envoys prepared to hold talks Tuesday, Tokyo faced the difficulty of assessing Pyongyang's seriousness in its promised inquiry into the fates of abducted citizens while apparently snubbing Japan and other neighbors Sunday with a pair of missiles fired into the ocean.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 30, 2014

Rakuten exec takes action to help moms

Mie Kurosaka, Rakuten Inc.'s first female executive, returned to work at Japan's biggest online mall operator only three weeks after giving birth in 2002.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jun 30, 2014

Despite wowing West, Ukraine leader dependent on Putin

Three weeks into his job, President Petro Poroshenko looks like a man in a hurry.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 30, 2014

New station to boost Shinagawa's international role

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) announced in early June it will open a new station on the Yamanote loop in Tokyo in time for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2014

Who'll pay for the Iraq sins?

Will the purveyors of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq ever do penance for their sins of warmongering?
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2014

Most Japanese voters oppose security shift

Half of Japanese voters oppose dropping a ban that has kept the military from fighting abroad since World War II, a survey showed on Monday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe readied a landmark shift in security policy that would ease the constraints of the pacifist constitution on the armed forces. A third...
JAPAN / JAPAN TIMES FORUM ON FEMALE SCIENCE MAJORS
Jun 30, 2014

Majoring in science may expand opportunities for women

Moderator: Let's discuss the challenge of hiring more female science majors and solutions to that issue. Let me first ask you what kind of skills are you seeking in women? I wonder if the marketing skills of female science majors, instead of just their capabilities in research and development, could...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jun 29, 2014

Reclusive cleric takes charge in Iraq crisis

Najaf is far from Baghdad's palaces and the battlefields of northern Iraq. Its mud-brick houses, dirt alleys and concrete office blocks project little in the way of strength or sway. But it is here, where Iraq's most influential clerics work from modest buildings in the shadow of a golden-domed shrine,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2014

Abe's 'drill bit' buckles on labor reform

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed at the World Economic Forum in Davos to take a "drill bit" to the "solid rock" of vested interests blocking reforms to Japan's economy, executives at companies such as General Electric and IBM paid attention.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Jun 29, 2014

Cartoonist Ernst captured 'fish-out-of-water' gaijin as they floundered

Having often been told by the Japanese that he would 'never understand' their culture because he was not one of them, American cartoonist Tim Ernst decided to embrace this notion and deploy it creatively.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2014

Shamelessness of neocons

How do we impress on U.S. neocons-cum-chickenhawks — and their Australian-British fellow-travelers — the enormous disparity between the vision dreamed for Iraq, the goals pursued, the means used and the results obtained?
LIFE / Language
Jun 29, 2014

Particles create the chemistry of adjectives and adverbs

I first started studying Japanese the summer after my first year of college. I was still promising my parents that I would take the med school prerequisites and eventually become a doctor, but I knew going in to college that all I really wanted to do was learn Japanese. I must have had science on my...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2014

Beijing's struggle to control a military district

China's ability to bring North Korea into line may depend on the outcome of an epochal struggle to bring the Shenyang Military District, which borders North Korea, under central authority.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 28, 2014

Smartphones drive new headphone boom

You might think the world of high-end earphones and headphones is only for audiophiles, but the smartphone boom has drastically expanded the market, if the turnout at the Portable Audio Festival in Tokyo was any indication.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 28, 2014

A life of lettuce has its benefits

Lettuce. Let us raise a glass to lettuce.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jun 28, 2014

EU, Ukraine ink trade pact; cease-fire extended by 72 hours

The European Union signed a historic free trade pact with Ukraine on Friday and warned it could impose more sanctions on Moscow unless pro-Russian rebels act to wind down the crisis in the east of the country by Monday.

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person