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COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2008

Say no to 'NPT' of climate change

Climate change has been correctly identified as a threat multiplier. Yet it has already become a divisive issue internationally before a plan for a low-carbon future has emerged.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2008

LDP election chief cool to near-term campaign

The Liberal Democratic Party needs more time to promote its policies before entertaining any idea of a Lower House election, the chairman of the LDP Election Strategy Council indicated Tuesday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 5, 2008

Schools aim to cultivate returnee students' 'second culture'

Yuki, 7, zooms around the school lounge in her neon T-shirt, hugging teachers, gesturing wildly, making jokes and chattering away in perfect English. Yuki is Japanese and learned English when her family lived in Los Angeles for two years. She is affectionate and expressive, or at least she is on Saturdays...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 3, 2008

The new language of translated films

CINEMA BABEL: Translating Global Cinema, by Abe Mark Nornes. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2008, 304 pp.,$22.50 (paper) Though foreign film is now seen by all, we are still dependent on translation to discover what is going on up on the big screen or on the little tube. This translation of dialogue can be...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 30, 2008

Climate change in Costa Rica

A couple of weeks ago I was woken at dawn by the booming screeches of the aptly named Howler Monkey. I was in Costa Rica, in the cloud forest of Monteverde.
EDITORIALS
Jul 30, 2008

A 'go-ahead' for Mr. Singh

The government of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a parliamentary vote of confidence last week. What looks like another skirmish in India's fractious domestic politics is anything but: The victory has profound implications for the global nuclear order and shifts the terms of engagement between...
JAPAN
Jul 26, 2008

High court zero-tolerance signal for stock scams said no surprise

Friday's high court ruling to uphold Livedoor Co. founder Takafumi Horie's prison term is significant because the judiciary has restated its zero tolerance of activities that undermine fair stock market trading, experts said.
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2008

Sports no match for good books

I applaud The Japan Times for publishing Grant Piper's July 21 letter, "Social competition or pathology?" I agree with his views that competitive sports are immoral and inappropriate, but I disagree that noncompetitive, friendly and recreational sports are qualitatively any different from organized sports....
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jul 23, 2008

There's still hope — despite our milquetoast* leaders

In the runup to the Group of Eight summit held this month in a stupendously policed corner of Japan's most remote northern island, there was widespread expectation that little would be achieved on the environmental agenda.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 22, 2008

Clustering with the Europeans

Japan was among the 111 countries that took part in an international conference held in Dublin, Ireland, in May and unanimously adopted a treaty that, in principle, prohibits all signatories from using, developing, producing, stockpiling, retaining or transferring cluster munitions.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 22, 2008

Whaling: the meat of the matter

Whales are magnificent creatures I have always dreamt of seeing in the flesh. However, tucking into a slab of whale steak at a restaurant in Tokyo was not what I had in mind. Nevertheless, this was a close encounter with one of the world's largest mammals that I felt I could not duck out of: If I was...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jul 22, 2008

Do you eat whale?

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2008

'Starship Troopers 3: Marauder'

The "Starship Troopers" franchise keeps scrabbling on, less due to public acclaim than the immutable logic that any science-fiction movie worth doing once is worth doing three times. There's something about trilogies — from Asimov or Tolkien perhaps — that just makes nerds feel complete. Fortunately...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 15, 2008

Human rights — strictly personal, strictly Japanese?

Go figure. Just a few weeks after I wrote about how Japanese courts try to avoid doing anything dramatic, on June 4 the Supreme Court ruled that a section of the Nationality Law was unconstitutional. Such rulings being so rare, I steeled myself for a big helping of highfalutin' Japanese legalese and...
Japan Times
Features
Jul 13, 2008

Japan's culture policy lingers in limbo

It's a fact that has long puzzled devotees and plain old tourists alike. Japan's manga and anime arts have been wowing the world for more than a decade, and yet the national government still hasn't got around to setting up a proper museum for their enjoyment, preservation and study.
Reader Mail
Jul 13, 2008

Hit holdouts with a carbon tariff

I have a question for all of those who fuss and worry that some countries (specifically China, India and, possibly, the United States) will be unwilling to commit to specific carbon- reduction targets, because of fear that to do so would leave them at an economic disadvantage.
SOCCER
Jul 12, 2008

Ronaldo backs up Blatter's view on 'slave' players, hints at exit from Old Trafford

LISBON (AP) Cristiano Ronaldo escalated his rift with Manchester United on Thursday by backing FIFA president Sepp Blatter's assertion that he is being treated like a slave by the Premier League club.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Jul 12, 2008

Shy Belgian boy falls for worldly Japanese girl

Marc Van Cauteren and Reiko Shinozaki met in Tokyo in 1993 after mutual friends encouraged him to call her during a business trip to Japan.
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2008

Confectioners spice things up with hot chili, soy sauce sweets

The Japanese sweets scene is heating up and getting salty to boot.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 10, 2008

G8 trying to have it both ways on nukes

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — On July 1, 1968, world leaders signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, in which nonnuclear weapons states agreed to never produce or acquire such arms while countries possessing them agreed to eventually scrap their arsenals.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 10, 2008

G8 couldn't push emitters to set targets

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — The three-day Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, concluded Wednesday as the major industrialized powers and key emerging economies agreed to jointly fight global warming but failed to set any quantitative goals to substantiate their pledge.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 10, 2008

Summit outcome belies high expectations

TOYAKO, Hokkaido — The drive for economic prosperity by the major nations still outweighs the urgent need to save an ailing planet.
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 10, 2008

Media flummoxed: Did summit succeed, fail, what?

The masterfully crafted jargon and haziness in a statement issued Wednesday by the Group of Eight leaders and their counterparts from eight other major greenhouse gas emitters left even newspapers bamboozled on what actually took place in Toyako, Hokkaido.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 8, 2008

Beware the foreigner as guinea pig

Anywhere in the world, noncitizens have fewer legal rights than citizens. Japan's Supreme Court would agree: On June 2, in a landmark case granting citizenship to Japanese children of unmarried Philippines mothers, judges ruled that Japanese citizenship is necessary "for the protection of basic human...
JAPAN / G8 SUMMIT 2008
Jul 7, 2008

NGOs call on G8 to take action on tough issues

SAPPORO — After years of broken promises and ignoring problems until they turn into crises, it is time for the Group of Eight leaders to stop talking the talk and start walking the walk when it comes to climate change, poverty and human rights issues.

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