Search - long form

 
 
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Apr 27, 2008

Versatility gives veteran Gonzalez solid opportunity with Giants

Yomiuri Giants utility man Luis Gonzalez is determined to take advantage of his opportunity to play for the club's varsity team after replacing slumping Korean first baseman Lee Seung Yeop, as Kyojin manager Tatsunori Hara plays the up-and-down yo-yo game with respect to Japanese baseball's four-man...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 17, 2008

Up close with images of faith

W ith its current exhibition of National Treasures from Yakushi-ji Temple, the Tokyo National Museum is offering a not-to-be-missed opportunity to see masterpieces of ancient Buddhist and Shinto art. For the first time ever, they are being displayed in a museum so that they can be studied much more closely...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 8, 2008

"Yasukuni" director Li on his tough-love letter to Japan

"Yasukuni" director Li Ying shares his thoughts with John Junkerman and David McNeill on the contentious Tokyo shrine, the motivation behind the movie, and his reaction to the furor in Japan over the documentary's release.
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Apr 7, 2008

Ono quietly reviving career with VfL Bochum in Bundesliga

While Urawa Reds storm up the J. League table after a disastrous start to the season, one former player is quietly rebuilding his own reputation abroad with slightly less fanfare.
EDITORIALS
Apr 4, 2008

NHK is not a propaganda organ

At a recent meeting of the management committee of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.), committee chairman Shigetaka Komori called on the broadcast network to emphasize Japan's national interests in its international programming when reporting issues that concern the national interests of Japan and another...
SOCCER / World cup
Mar 28, 2008

Bahraini muscle frustrates Japan

Japan's 2010 World Cup qualification hopes hit a snag on Wednesday as Bahrain grabbed a late goal to send Takeshi Okada's men crashing to a 1-0 defeat in Manama.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 27, 2008

Tokyo's tidal wave of art

L ike a tsunami moving through deep water, the boom in Japan's contemporary art world has been approaching, little detected, for several years. Now, as it readies to peak in a proliferation of events next week — many of them brand new — we can see for the first time just how big it was, and who was...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Mar 23, 2008

JFA gives cold shoulder to Premier League proposal to play games overseas

From a soccer perspective, the upcoming Major League Baseball season-opening series between the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics at Tokyo Dome feels like a glimpse into a parallel universe.
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 23, 2008

Tokyo's thrilling new fashion feast

With an improved turnout and more labels on the runways, last week's Japan Fashion Week '08-'09 Autumn / Winter Collection was, on paper, a near- soaraway success.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2008

The final days of revolutionary struggle in Japan

The West sees the turbulent era of the late 1960s and early '70s principally through the lens of its own protesters and radicals, with America's war in Vietnam the focal point of activist anger. If it thinks about East Asia in this period at all, it is usually the China of Mao and the Red Guards, who...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 20, 2008

Photos preserve architecture that's disappeared with time

Unless blessed with unlimited time and resources, visiting all the buildings around the world that you would like to see is rather unlikely. Even if you do manage to reach some of them, entrance inside may still be prohibited or restricted.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 19, 2008

No Tibetan independence

LONDON — The monks who marched through Lhasa on March 10 to mark the anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959 did not want to wreck China's Olympic year, but they knew that Chinese troops would be less likely to shoot them this year than most. And so it proved: the monks were...
COMMENTARY
Mar 15, 2008

Still mired in parochialism

LONDON — "No man is an Island, entire of itself; everyman is a piece of the Continent.''
COMMENTARY
Mar 10, 2008

Get set for emissions trading

The year 2007 marked the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Kyoto Protocol; the 20th anniversary of the release of the report "Our Common Future" by the World Commission on Environment and Development, headed by former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland (the expression "sustainable development"...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 10, 2008

No easy answers for the United States before or after the presidential election

The United States will likely see a "fertile period of policy experimentation" under the new administration that takes office after the November presidential election, says Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who is an expert on U.S. election campaigns.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2008

Keynes and the end of economic history

PARIS — Some academic works, for reasons that are at least partly obscure, leave a persistent trace in intellectual history. Such is the case with John Maynard Keynes' paper "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren."
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 23, 2008

Japan swimmers at home in Flagstaff

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, far from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo's hyper daily pace, Japanese swimmers enjoy a haven of privacy and a world-class training center as they prepare for the imposing challenge of competing for Olympic medals.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 16, 2008

Gravity and its effects on teaching

I was looking at my classroom full of students the other day and wondering — where did I go wrong? Most of them were asleep and the few who weren't were unconscious. I stopped talking, looked out the window and pondered the science of teaching. I came to the conclusion that science is indeed to blame:...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 10, 2008

There's no way of stopping the poisoned food sent from abroad

Last week, when the Chinese government sent five experts to talk with Japanese counterparts about those pesticide-tainted frozen gyoza (Chinese dumplings) imported from their country, the head of the team, Li Chunfeng, expressed concern over the feelings of Japanese consumers. He also offered a veiled...
COMMENTARY
Feb 7, 2008

Russia disappoints the world

LONDON — What are we to do about Russia?
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2008

Say no to nukes in the Arctic

"The Arctic is the barometer of the globe's environmental health. You can take the pulse of the world in the Arctic. Inuit, the people who live farther north than anyone else, are the canary in the global coal mine.''
CULTURE / Film
Jan 31, 2008

Humanist harks back to cinema's golden age

How many directors make great movies after turning 70? John Huston did it with "The Dead," likewise Akira Kurosawa with "Ran" and Clint Eastwood with "Letters from Iwo Jima," but the numbers are few.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ALSO OUT THERE
Jan 30, 2008

Finessing the pen-twirl becomes a fine science

Unlike Tamagotchi or the Nintendo DS, the latest Japanese gadget does not bleep, comes without voice recognition system and will not connect to the Internet.
EDITORIALS
Jan 27, 2008

The 'keitai' generation

Nearly 100 percent of high school students, 50 percent of junior high, and a third of those in grammar school now own cell phones. Even the word "cell phone" already sounds out of date, replaced even among foreign residents by "keitai," the shortened form of the Japanese word for portable phone.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 26, 2008

Retirement — island style

In case you haven't heard, the Seto Inland Sea islands are experiencing a mini-boom. Thanks to government programs that highlight the joys of island life, there has been a slow but hopeful movement of people out to the islands. Healthy living, safe neighborhoods and natural surroundings are just some...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 24, 2008

New cram school blurs public and private line

Cram schools have long played an important complementary role to classroom education, but a new type opening Saturday in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, is causing a stir among educators.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 24, 2008

From ordinary to spectacular

Go Aoki is one of Japan's most in-demand playwrights and directors. The small venues where his Gring theater company typically stages his works attract drama-world insiders — as a result, besides taking Gring on the road in early 2008, Aoki has already been enlisted for three high-profile collaborations....
JAPAN
Jan 19, 2008

Fukuda opens Diet, lays out his agenda

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda vowed Friday to start Diet discussions on the establishment of a permanent law that would authorize the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces overseas to engage in peace operations so that Japan can fulfill its duties as a "peace-cooperating nation."

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.