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Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 22, 2011

The nostalgic and sweet life of Kyoto

The world of wagashi, traditional Japanese confectionery, can be a little difficult to decipher. Not a few people are rather underwhelmed by their first taste of a typical wagashi such as daifuku, a sticky rice dumpling filled with an, sweet adzuki bean paste. Even if you can get over the strangeness...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 17, 2011

In charting their life's course, today's youth might better stay foolish

Why is this generation of young people in Japan so self-absorbed and seemingly unconcerned, to the point of distracted apathy, about the social and political dilemmas facing their country today?
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011

Watch your manners!

MANNERS AND MISCHIEF: Gender, Power and Etiquette in Japan. Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2011, 245 pp., $22.95 (paper) Don't let the cutesy Hello Kitty cover fool you. "Manners and Mischief" disdains frivolity and stands firm as an academic text for students...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 10, 2011

With Japan at a crossroads, it's instructive to recall the Hidaka affair

Exactly 30 years ago this month, I had an encounter with a man who became innocently involved in an international incident. That incident may be all but forgotten now, but it's worth recalling here because it highlights the struggle of an individual of conscience to have the truth revealed.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2011

China rocks South China Sea boat

A rhetorical conflict has roiled the waves of the South China Sea, the strategic resource-rich region bordered, and in part claimed in various parts, by six Southeast Asian states.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2011

Are the meek set to inherit Russia?

In a recent interview, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proclaimed that he wants a second term in office following the 2012 election, but that he would not run against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who put him in power in the first place.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2011

The risks of 'disaster nationalism'

A common sight seen throughout Japan these days are signs that read Ganbaro Nippon (translated "Don't give up Japan").
COMMENTARY
Jul 1, 2011

Black info and media gullibility: creation of the Tiananmen myth

The recent WikiLeaks release of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing has helped finally to kill the myth of an alleged massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 1, 2011

'Ogawa no Hotori (On the Bank of the Stream)'

When I saw Yoji Yamada's "Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai)," a lyrical, low-key 2002 drama about a low-ranking, family-loving samurai forced to kill for his clan, it struck me as a throwback to the genre's 1950s Golden Age. But this, I later discovered, was the first feature based on the fiction...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2011

Chinese finance comes of age

The Chinese financial system's evolution in recent years has been extraordinary. I have observed its transformation as a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC).
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jun 28, 2011

Does Japan need an education in dealing with difference?

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Gerry McLellan's May 24 Hotline to Nagatacho column "Japanese adults need an education in dealing with difference." The following is a selection of readers' views.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 26, 2011

Disney collection appraisal; feline muses; CM of the week: Intel

The guest on the antique-appraisal show "Kaiun! Nandemo Kanteidan" ("Good Fortune! Team That Evaluates Anything"; TV Tokyo, Tues., 8:54 p.m.) is Hiroshi Yamamoto, the silver medalist in archery at the 2000 Athens Olympics.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 26, 2011

The other day of infamy

A TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRACY: Japanese Confinement in North America, by Greg Robinson, Columbia University Press, 371 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) The facts are well known. In the spring of 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, some 112,000 Japanese American citizens living on the Pacific...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 26, 2011

Inside Aokigahara, Japan's 'Suicide Forest'

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast...
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2011

Election season comes early in the Kremlin

In the highly controlled environment of Russian domestic politics, there are few surprises. Russia is a managed democracy in which political changes and election outcomes are carefully orchestrated by the Kremlin.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jun 24, 2011

PL struggled at gate in interleague

The Pacific League, led by the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, got the best of the Central League on the field, but couldn't keep pace in the stands.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 24, 2011

Keep a low-power kitchen this summer

Now that we are entering the hottest part of the Japanese summer, it's time to get really serious about saving electricity — in the kitchen as much as anywhere.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2011

Suicides upping casualties from Tohoku catastrophe

On June 11, a dairy farmer in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, chalked a note on the wall of his cattle shed. "If only there wasn't a nuclear power plant," the message read, in reference to the damaged Fukushima No. 1 plant just 45 km away, which had effectively ended his livelihood.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 21, 2011

Kinpū

Dear Alice,I am fascinated by the elaborately decorated envelopes offered for sale in Japan. I know they are used for giving money, because the first time I came to Japan to study martial arts a friend taught me to put my lesson fees into an envelope, rather than just hand bills to my teacher. I'd like...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 19, 2011

Of predators and prey

The forest floor is a maze, a tangle, an adventure — all depending on one's scale.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jun 19, 2011

Anti-whalers should just stop ...

Nearly a quarter of a century since Japan began its controversial "research whaling" cull off Antarctica, there was a major development this year in the annual contest of wills between whalers and conservationists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 19, 2011

Oh, where is the city of dreams?

Illuminated manuscripts, Persian and Mughal miniatures, Victorian novels enriched by illustrations from the likes of Cruikshank and Phiz: Illustrated texts have a long, rich and varied history.
COMMENTARY
Jun 17, 2011

Novel approach to treating cancer

The discovery that two new drugs can control melanoma could revolutionize the treatment not only of melanoma but also of other cancers as well.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 17, 2011

SPAC says the show must go on in Shizuoka

Satoshi Miyagi, the artistic director of the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC), admitted during a press conference in April that he had thought about calling off the center's international theater festival following the March 11 disasters that hit Japan's northeastern Tohoku region. Finally, though,...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 17, 2011

French arts festival lifts any ennui in Yokohama

The relationship between Japan and France began in the early 17th century, when a Japanese ambassador and an accompanying samurai stopped off in Southern France on their way to Rome. They caused a stir with the locals. The infatuation must have been reciprocated because, 400 years later, Yokohama has...

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