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BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Apr 27, 2012

Ruling party ends up back where it started with assistance for families

Crunching the numbers for the new child allowance.
COMMENTARY
Apr 13, 2012

Russia's 'shadow market'

We should keep in mind that Russia is a country that has spent 70 years in an inhuman experiment aimed at arranging all sides of socioeconomic life within a giant centrally planned system. Even if this time is over, many features of today's life go on reminding us of this heavy and in many ways onerous...
EDITORIALS
Apr 10, 2012

Publish or perish

A U.S. government panel has concluded that findings from two avian flu studies can be published even though there is a risk that the work could be misused by governments or terrorists to create biological weapons. The weight of the panel's expert opinion is that the "real and present danger" of naturally...
BUSINESS
Mar 31, 2012

Experts: 10% tax too minor to dent deficit

The Cabinet on Friday made good on its vow and moved forward on doubling the consumption tax by 2015, but some experts and lawmakers already see it as only a tiny step in cutting the ever-expanding fiscal deficit.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 25, 2012

Plight of women and the young in modern Japan

Demographic Change and Inequality in Japan, edited by Sawako Shirahase. Trans Pacific Press, 2011, 239 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) This stimulating collection of nine essays examines the implications of demographic trends for inequality in Japan. The contributors are sociologists who elucidate how changes...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 24, 2012

Children taught radiation studies

A group of elementary school students in Koriyama, about 60 km from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant, may only be 10 years old, but they possibly know more about radiation than fourth-graders anywhere in the world.
EDITORIALS
Mar 18, 2012

No graduation for too many

As graduation ceremonies get under way at schools across Japan this month, 1,029 students will not be graduating — not this year, not ever. That is the number of students who committed suicide last year, according to statistics released by the National Police Agency earlier this month. Though, overall,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 14, 2012

Asahi Kasei to buy Zoll Medical for $2.2 billion

Asahi Kasei Corp., a maker of synthetic fibers and industrial chemicals, has agreed to buy U.S. company Zoll Medical Corp. for $2.2 billion (¥181 billion) to expand its presence in the critical care products field and also to boost sales in Asia.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Mar 6, 2012

A few of readers' favorite things; heated discussion on the burning issue of warmth

A selection of readers' responses to Debito Arudou's Feb. 7 Just Be Cause column, "These are a few of my favorite things about Japan":
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2012

Grandparents stifle grief to raise orphaned boy

In the three prefectures hardest hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake last March 11, 1,580 children lost either one or both of their parents, according to a health ministry survey of Iwate, Fukushima and Miyagi conducted at the end of last year.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2012

Americans seem driven to work more for less

Recently a friend confided over dinner that her job was "killing" her. I was surprised. She is a director of a midsize nonprofit that is doing citizen diplomacy work in the Middle East, and she has often remarked on how gratifying it is to be involved in a program that brings historical enemies face...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 31, 2012

A winter's tale: cold homes, poor lives in wealthy Japan

Question: What am I doing outside my home at 6 a.m. with a gas can, a pump, and stalactites under my nose?
COMMENTARY
Jan 16, 2012

Finer details of atmospheric science in Beijing

In July 2009, China's Foreign Ministry made a demand of the American embassy: Stop taking measurements of air pollution in Beijing available to ordinary Chinese since they conflicted with official data and could lead to "confusion" among the public and undesirable "social consequences."
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jan 14, 2012

Aichi hospital to launch training center for robot-assisted surgery

Robots are increasingly being used in cancer surgeries nationwide.
Japan Times
JAPAN / NUCLEAR AWAKENING
Jan 4, 2012

Mothers first to shed food-safety complacency

The disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and the threat of radioactive fallout changed the lives of many people, including Mizuho Nakayama and other mothers of young children whose primary goal suddenly became that of keeping their kids out of harm's way.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 27, 2011

Quake workers bolstered by training

Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, staff members of the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Tokyo English Life Line felt they needed to help not only the survivors, but also the volunteers, NGO and welfare workers who supported the hard-hit people in the affected areas.
EDITORIALS
Dec 25, 2011

The earthquake year

The year of the earthquake and tsunami is how 2011 will be remembered in Japan. No bounen-kai (forget-the-year party) has passed without thoughts of those who lost so much in the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster on or after March 11. The powerful 9.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the northeast...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2011

Foreign residents and religion

This month, two common questions were heard among many foreign residents here: "What are you doing for Christmas?" and "Are you going home or staying here?"
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2011

Cesium-laced baby formula sparks concern, but risk low

Mothers with young children, and the overall dairy industry, were quick in reacting Wednesday to news of cesium-tainted baby formula being sold in markets, even though the reported contamination levels were well below the government-set limit.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 4, 2011

Tenten Hosokawa: Drawing the blues away

In the last few decades, clinical depression in Japan has emerged from its longstanding obscurity shrouded in shame and guilt to becoming far more openly recognized as a national disease.
EDITORIALS
Nov 23, 2011

Disturbing Iressa ruling

The Tokyo High Court on Nov. 15 overturned a lower court ruling that had ordered the government and the Japanese unit of the British drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC to pay compensation to bereaved family members of two people who died allegedly because of a side effect caused by the lung cancer drug Iressa....
Reader Mail
Nov 17, 2011

Incredible support for tobacco

Regarding the Nov. 11 article "DPJ shelves tobacco tax hike to appease opposition": With the No. 1 preventable cause of premature death being from smoking, it is just incredible that the tobacco tax increase was rejected because lawmakers have cozy support from tobacco farmers.
JAPAN
Nov 2, 2011

TPP bandwagons play tunes not all find pleasing to the ear

The question of whether Japan should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks has taken center stage in the Diet as the chasm grows between TPP advocates, mainly on the side of businesses, and opponents, representing long-protected farming and fishing constituencies.
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Inconvenient untruths<

Joseph Jaworski's letter conveniently leaves out important effects of a tobacco tax increase.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past