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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 1, 2010

Delorean

The Argentinian writer and Nobel laureate Jorge Luis Borges once described the Basques as "a people who throughout history have done little else than milk cows." Although this dismissive comment was from a character narrating a tale rather than the author's own, it could nevertheless be said that Basques...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 28, 2010

'Friendship festival' draws the line at the French: some responses

A selection of readers' views on "U.S. Navy 'Friendship Festival' draws line at the French" (Zeit Gist, Sept. 7) by Blair McBride:
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 25, 2010

The Icarus of currencies?

HONG KONG — My old friend Yoh Kurosawa just threw his head back and laughed: "How can you say that the rising yen is a danger. It proves we are strong, the world regards us as best."
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Sep 25, 2010

Ichiro's achievement testament to his drive

Baseball is the ultimate numbers game. Always has been, always will be.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 24, 2010

We all deserve eggplants in fall

There is a famous old Japanese saying about aki nasu or fall eggplants: "Aki nasu yome ni kuwasuna" — "Don't let the daughter-in-law eat fall eggplant."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 19, 2010

Taking up residence uninvited

I could scarcely make out the small songbird moving secretively through the undergrowth in the gloom of the dark forest. Its calls were barely familiar to me and seemed so out of context that I didn't recognize them at all at first.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 19, 2010

Summer's heat is spent, the leaves are about to turn, an equinox nears

"The turning of the leaves in the American autumn is, in its own way, wonderful, but it lacks a poignancy and an elegance suggestive of the passing of time."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 17, 2010

Firth on playing it gay by playing it straight

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Colin Firth was nominated for an Oscar for best actor this year for "A Single Man." As we know, Hollywood insider Jeff Bridges took home the Oscar, but Firth was "genuinely thrilled at the nomination and genuinely relieved when it was over. The stress is something else. So are...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2010

If wild fish could only scream

PRINCETON, N.J. — When I was a child, my father used to take me for walks, often along a river or by the sea. We would pass people fishing, perhaps reeling in their lines with struggling fish hooked at the end of them. Once I saw a man take a small fish out of a bucket and impale it, still wriggling,...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2010

Why Putin is good for Japan

For Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it has been a hectic summer. He took a spin across 2,100 km of the Siberian tundra in a Lada, was initiated into the Hell's Angels, fired darts at gray whales with a crossbow and still found time to jump into the cockpit of a Be-200 jet to extinguish the wildfires...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 14, 2010

Is racism coloring debate on Japanese whaling?

Following is a selection of readers' responses to the Aug. 17 Zeit Gist columns headlined "Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric" by Dougal McNeill and "Appeals to culture, tradition ignore the historical facts" by Chris Burgess:
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 12, 2010

Budget cuts dooming diners to plumpness

"The destiny of a nation depends on the manner in which it feeds itself," wrote French epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) in his famous treatise, "The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy."
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2010

Will nationalistic pursuits doom European Union?

WASHINGTON, THE WASHINGTON POST — The European Union is dying — not a dramatic or sudden death, but one so slow and steady that we may look across the Atlantic one day soon and realize that the project of European integration that we've taken for granted over the past half-century is no more.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2010

'Zero: An Investigation of 9/11'/'Micmacs'

Nine years on from the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, doubts persist as to the true nature of what took place on that fateful day in September. While there's no shortage of conspiracy theories on just about anything these days — Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dan...
COMMENTARY
Sep 5, 2010

The yin and yang of human rights in China

HONG KONG — The only lady vice minister in China's Foreign Ministry is Fu Ying, a well-coiffed, mild-mannered 57-year-old, an ethnic Mongol who speaks flawless English, who has served as ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and Britain, and who is known for her media skills.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2010

New look at old Edo's window to the West

Japan's seclusion policy (sakoku) from the early 17th to the mid-19th century is commonly studied from the point of view of the bakufu, the Tokugawa government in Edo that exercised central control over the other domains of the realm.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 24, 2010

March of folly into Afghanistan's cul-de-sac

NEW DELHI — When reports of WikiLeaks' disclosure of raw U.S. intelligence data from Afghanistan hit computers worldwide, commentators in Pakistan reacted with vitriolic broadsides. One spoke of "Neocon vampires" . . . "bloodthirsty Islamophobes" . . . "think tank irredentists" . . . (Indian) revanchists...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2010

Weak START for the mindset of deterrence

LOS ANGELES — A strange sense of deja vu is gripping Washington these days, as the debate over ratification by the U.S. Senate of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia heats up. Spats have broken out among the Obama administration, future presidential contenders, senators,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 22, 2010

Indonesia intrigue, Tokyo high-tech high jinx

While such enduring bad guys as Nazis, KGB agents, Cosa Nostra gangsters, sinister Asiatics and the occasional vampire still receive top billing in U.S. popular fiction and cinema, the events of 9/11 have not surprisingly inspired a stream of works featuring villains of Middle Eastern and/or jihadist...
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2010

Flickers of hope for nuke abolitionists

HIROSHIMA — In Hiroshima, this place where a fearful age was born one fiery instant 65 years ago, the Flame of Peace still flickers on, awaiting the day when the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Aug 15, 2010

Enatsu's feats resonate years later

Nippon Professional Baseball recently released the results of an interesting survey of the greatest games and moments — regular season and postseason — in its history. Indeed, opinions will vary on which games should be on the list and how to rank those games in order of greatness.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 15, 2010

Relics of Ice Age Japan

Scrambling across hillsides may not be everyone's cup of tea, but we naturalists are determined folk and take such activities in our stride when exploring our environment.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 15, 2010

Unresolved mystery from the mind of Murakami

In May 2009, Haruki Murakami released "1Q84" to tremendous sales and mostly positive domestic reviews. The novel, released initially in two parts, follows two, 29-year-old Tokyoites as they are pulled into an alternative version of the year 1984.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2010

Go tickle yourself and get a financial clue

TOULOUSE, France — If history punishes those who fail to learn from it, financial history also punishes those who learn from it too enthusiastically.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 8, 2010

A warm embrace for ruff justice

Some years ago, a Belgian woman named An van Dienderen wondered why so many Japanese tourists visited her hometown of Antwerp, and particularly its cathedral. She learned that they wanted to see the place where the boy Nello and his faithful dog Patrasche died in the story "A Dog of Flanders." This thin...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 8, 2010

Lost worlds of Japan

The sound of bells echoes through the monastery at Gion Shoja, telling all who hear it that nothing is permanent. The flowers of the sala trees show that all that flourishes must fade. Proud men, powerful men will fall, like dreams on a spring night, like dust before the wind.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 8, 2010

The future lies under a different sky

Of Indian and Swiss parentage, Meira Chand grew up in England and began to publish novels while living in Japan. This is her eighth full-length work of fiction, and of those, only two have been unconnected with this country — though one of those, "House of the Sun," set in India, is probably her best...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 8, 2010

Roads to nowhere lead to past times

On a scorching hot day in late June, some 20 tourists were gazing at the fenced-off entrance of an abandoned tunnel named Taura Zuido (Taura Tunnel) in the Kanagawa Prefecture port city of Yokosuka.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 8, 2010

Japan's dismal dearth of new heroic figures

"Created in response to deep popular needs, the legendary hero survives long after his death. . . . While the positive aspects of the hero's life and character come to be emphasized (or even created out of whole cloth), less attractive features are passed over in silence and remain forgotten until they...
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2010

The NPT's uncertain future

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's coming into force. Despite its central role in shaping the global nuclear order, the NPT's future looks anything but promising.

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