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Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2011

China's ruthless water strategy

Brahma Chellaney's insightful piece on the rise of China as Asia's hydro-hegemon (Oct. 19) brings out China's resource-grab strategy.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 23, 2011

Post-Fukushima, 'they' can no longer be trusted — if ever they could

Every year when I was a child, my parents would take my brother and me from our Los Angeles home to Las Vegas on vacation. Back then in the 1950s, Vegas was still a family-oriented holiday destination. Dad would drop a few bucks at the crap table while the rest of us basked in the sun.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 23, 2011

Documenting disaster

THE TOHOKU EARTHQUAKE and Tsunami, the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor, and How the World's Media Reported Them, by Eric Johnston. The Japan Times, 2011, 96 pp., ¥1,260 (paperback) Seven months after Japan's devastating March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, the jury remains out on media reporting...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 20, 2011

What is in store for Russian Asia?

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, a large number of ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking and Russian-cultured peoples remained outside the borders of the Russian Federation — creating, in the short run, many acute and complicated problems but, in the long run, eventually facilitating a revival...
Reader Mail
Oct 20, 2011

Resourceful China sets example

In regard to Brahma Chellaney's Oct. 19 article, "China's unparalleled rise as a hydro-hegemon," China has set a template for holistic development of natural resources that its peers would do well to emulate.
COMMENTARY
Oct 19, 2011

China's unparalleled rise as a hydro-hegemon

International discussion about China's rise has focused on its increasing trade muscle, growing maritime ambitions and expanding capacity to project military power. One critical issue, however, usually escapes attention: China's rise as a hydro-hegemon with no modern historical parallel.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 16, 2011

Don't look back, Tohoku: It's time to look far beyond the Japanese box

Iam just back from a five-day journey around Iwate Prefecture in Tohoku with an NHK TV crew.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 16, 2011

Break on through (to the puppet side)

It is often said that truly gifted teachers make their subject matter come to life. Jesse Glass has taken that concept to a new level by asking his students to take literary characters off the page and dance them about the room.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 16, 2011

In the pink down on the Rio Negro

Agreat splash, sounding as if a sumo wrestler had just belly-flopped into a swimming pool, echoed up through the wooden floor of my cabin. Yes, the floor.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 16, 2011

Laid-back celebration of the empty and ordinary

PLAINSONG, by Kazushi Hosaka, translated by Paul Warham, Dalkey Archive Press, 2011, 176 pp., $18 (paper) After being dumped by his girlfriend and moving to a new apartment, the anonymous anti-hero of this plaintive novel finds himself drawn to the life of a recluse, shunning drinking friends, and spending...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 15, 2011

Whiting explores Irabu's legacy

Best-selling author Robert Whiting, who penned the classic "You Gotta Have Wa," examines pitcher Hideki Irabu's life and his impact on baseball on both sides of the Pacific Ocean in an exclusive three-part series beginning on Sunday in The Japan Times.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 10, 2011

Millionaires don't have it made

President Barack Obama has been trying to sell his new "millionaires' tax" to the Rust Belt. "What's great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it," he said in Cincinnati on Sept. 22, praising "the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires."...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2011

Hymns for human potential

March and After, by Jon Mitchell. Printed Matter Press, 2011, 34pp., ¥1,000 (paperback) "March and After" brims with pithy song, but it is not merely a collection of poetry. The slim volume cuts with journalistic economy and biographical precision.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2011

Battle line over the renminbi

Talk of a new "trade war" over the allegedly undervalued Chinese currency is yet again echoing through the corridors of power in Washington. The U.S. Senate seems determined to pass a bill penalizing China for manipulating the renminbi to keep its value artificially low. Beijing has responded by "regretting"...
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2011

Integration outlook for ex-Soviets

It is well known that, in the political field, the 20th century brought about a strong and, as it turned out, omnipresent trend toward disintegration of former empires and the formation in their place of nation-states all over the crumbling colonial world.
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2011

Dams muddy China's image

China's frenzied dam building at home and abroad is emerging as a flash point in inter- and intrastate relations in Asia. Burma's decision to suspend work on a controversial Chinese-funded dam marks a tactical retreat on a project that has symbolized China's resource greed and is a trigger for renewed...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2011

Model T testing in the Internet Age

When Frederick Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis. The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 million as immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2011

Ex-East Bloc states reflect on the Arab Spring

A seamless political thread running through the current U.N. General Assembly debate has been that of the Arab Spring, the movement that has shifted the political sands throughout the Middle East.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2011

Reformer for the delusional

The only vote that matters in Russia's 2012 presidential election is now in, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has cast it for himself. He will be returning as Russia's president next year.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 4, 2011

Spring for an off-road map to peace

As the Palestinians seek United Nations support for a state of their own, Washington has advanced two arguments to dissuade them: First, that taking the issue of statehood to the U.N. is a unilateral move away from negotiations with Israel; and second, that the effort will be counterproductive because...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 2, 2011

Meticulous ode to love and fate

It is rather disconcerting to read a novel that opens with the assertion that "I've already slid right on past the big five-oh — a milestone no one thinks is very pretty and few are eager to reach — to become a man of fifty-one," particularly when this reviewer reaches that milestone this coming...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 2, 2011

The prelude to Pearl Harbor

It is safe to say that Japanese thronging the malls in Honolulu and scooping up apartments thanks to the mighty yen probably don't give much thought to how Hawaii became part of the United States, but they know about Pearl Harbor.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 2, 2011

Satoshi Kamata: Rebel spirit writ large

Monday, Sept. 19, was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. But on that sweltering national holiday, it wasn't the heat that that drew tens of thousands of people to Meiji Park in central Tokyo, but their concerns for all the nation's citizens, and others, who may face a threat from nuclear power.
COMMENTARY
Sep 30, 2011

The challenge of managing a flammable Earth

To what extent will our future on Earth be shaped by fire? As the world gets hotter, the risk of more and bigger fires increases.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2011

Genius lurks in this dangerous czar

There is one incontestably great actor on the world stage today, and he has no interest in following our script.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 30, 2011

'Friends With Benefits'

Friends With Benefits" is one of those American movies with a title whose nuance is lost entirely in the translation; local distributor Sony didn't even try, titling it "Stay Friends" for the Japan market. "Sekkusu Furendo" might have been more on the mark, but was presumably a bit too blunt for those...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 29, 2011

Sage of Omaha could help Obama

President Barack Obama sure has been talking about Warren Buffett's taxes a lot lately. At his speech before a joint session of Congress this month, the president said that the billionaire shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than his secretary, a point Buffett has often made. The secretary's tax rate, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 27, 2011

Merits of a layman as Japan's defense minister

Japan has suffered from a leadership deficit since the charismatic Koizumi Junichiro stepped down in 2006.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 27, 2011

A compact guide to guidebooks on Japan

Despite the Internet revolution and resultant websites and blogs offering information about every conceivable aspect of any country you'd care to name, many people make sure a copy of their favorite guidebook is in their $500 suitcase or $5 backpack before boarding a plane.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 24, 2011

Keynes was not a big 'Keynesian'

What does it mean to be Keynesian? It was the British economist John Maynard Keynes who declared that when, like today, economic growth grinds to a standstill and businesses fail to provide enough jobs, governments have the ability, and the duty, to fill the gap.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami