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BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Feb 27, 2012

Fiscally hobbled Japan nears multiple-currency era: Is yen's demise nigh?

For a single-currency area to be sustainable, one of two conditions needs to be met. One, sufficient economic convergence throughout the area in question. Two, a transfer mechanism to offset whatever economic divergences exist in the area. The eurozone currently meets neither of these conditions. Thus...
COMMENTARY
Feb 27, 2012

Find common ground with critics to work out norm for 'responsibility to protect' operations

Ten years after the formulation of the responsibility-to-protect (R2P) principle as a guide for driving international intervention in a country, it is worth making three points:
Reader Mail
Feb 26, 2012

Historical realities of getting old

In Craig Bowron's Washington Post article "At the end of a loved one's life, why is it so hard to let go?" (reprinted in The Japan Times on Feb. 22), certain impressions about life expectancy need to be further interpreted with examples from advanced societies other than the United States.
Reader Mail
Feb 26, 2012

No peace message from mayor

Regarding the Feb. 23 article "Nagoya mayor won't budge on Nanjing remark": It doesn't matter how many people were killed in Nanjing in 1937 by the Imperial Japanese Army. Crimes were done and there's no going back on that. What matters is that the Nagoya mayor denies a fact that Japan's own historians...
JAPAN
Feb 26, 2012

Skepticism grows over scientists quake forecasts

When two University of Tokyo seismologists recently released a study forecasting that a major earthquake would strike the capital and its 13 million inhabitants sometime in the next four years, they made front-page headlines.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Feb 26, 2012

Fantasy series 'O-Parts'; documentary on Japan's new budget airlines; CM of the week: Bath Roman

A new four-part fantasy series, "O-Parts" (Fuji TV, Mon.-Thurs., 11 p.m.), based on the popular manga, will air this week. Ryuhei Maruyama plays Kakizawa, an unemployed youth who is abducted by a mysterious man in black.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 26, 2012

Fuji-san: reflections on Japan's iconic mother mountain

MOUNT FUJI: Icon of Japan, by H. Byron Earhart. The University of South Carolina Press, 2011, 238 pp., $40 (hardcover) It is significant that in a country where nature has long been transfused with the numinous, that Japan's most iconic image is neither a building nor a monument, but a mountain — Fuji-san....
LIFE / Longform
Feb 26, 2012

Danger zones: What are Japan's coastal communities doing to avert a disaster like March 11?

Teruo Saito has lived most of his 79 years within a couple of hundred meters of the Pacific, in an area that has been overwhelmed by massive tsunamis twice in the last 600 years.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 26, 2012

Job-seeking comedy avoids real issues

In 2004, novelist Ryu Murakami published "13-sai no Hello Work," a job guide for 13-year-olds, though most of the copies were bought by adults. The book did not offer practical advice, but rather job descriptions in all lines of work, from engineer to prostitute, in order to give readers an idea of what...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 25, 2012

Austerity — we've embraced it in the countryside

Austerity. It's a word steeped in meaning. No one is more aware of a stagnant economy than the Japanese people, who are spending less and learning to relish cheap, imported goods.
BUSINESS
Feb 25, 2012

Panasonic eyes big U.S., Europe solar, storage acquisitions

Panasonic Corp. is in talks over potentially its biggest acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe in a decade, hoping to speed its transition from manufacturing televisions to supplying solar energy and power storage services.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Feb 24, 2012

Kōji — Japan's vital hidden ingredient

The development of Japanese cuisine owes much to the humble kōji or kōji-kin. A type of fungus or mold, it is used in all kinds of foods and beverages. It's as important in Japan as the fungi, bacteria and yeast that give character to cheese, yogurt, wine, beer and bread are in the West. The difference...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2012

'Melancholia' / 'Young Adult'

Lars von Trier ("Manderlay," "Dancer in the Dark") is just as famed for his works as for his strange statements to the press (such as a recent expression of sympathy for Adolf Hitler). He's also frank about having been diagnosed with acute depression, disclosed in numerous interviews since 2006. Since...
COMMENTARY
Feb 24, 2012

An alternative to Putin's way

A "frosty Saturday" Feb. 4 confirmed the deadlocked nature of the situation that has ripened in Russia for more than a decade of Vladimir Putin's rule (as president and senior partner in the infamous "tandem").
Reader Mail
Feb 23, 2012

Unbearable cost of Iranian oil

With increasing international momentum for an oil boycott on Iran in light of the Tehran regime's relentless pursuit of nuclear energy capability, Japan's leaders must pause and reflect on the unbearable cost of Iranian oil. By cost, I am not referring exclusively to yen and rials, but to the political,...
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2012

Transcripts sketch out NRC's 3/11 confusion

Transcripts of phone conversations immediately after the March disasters, released Tuesday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reveal the early sense of urgency and confusion about the crisis unfolding at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
Reader Mail
Feb 23, 2012

Trans-Pacific interest in the Ainu

I would like to thank Michael Hoffman for his Feb. 19 review of the book "AINU SPIRITS SINGING: The Living World of Chiri Yukie's Ainu Shinyoshu" (by Sarah M. Strong). I am an American Indian, and the stories of the Ainu have always been of interest to me. During my visits to Japan I have looked for...
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2012

A false spring in South Asia

From the armed coup that recently ousted the Maldives' first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, to the Pakistani Supreme Court's current effort to undermine a toothless but elected government by indicting Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on contempt charges, South Asia's democratic advances...
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2012

Proposed monument misses why we like Ike

Two coming developments, one dismal and one excellent, pertain to America's memory of a great man. One of several oversight panels soon will consider a proposed memorial to Dwight Eisenhower. The proposal is an exhibitionistic triumph of theory over function — more a monument to its creator Frank Gehry,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 23, 2012

Lithuania follows nuclear path

While the meltdown crisis in Fukushima has raised awareness around the world of the dangers of nuclear power, Lithuania, with its limited natural resources, appears to have little choice but to rely on atomic energy to reduce its heavy reliance on natural gas from Russia.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2012

At the end of a loved one's life, why is it so hard to let go?

I know where this phone call is going. I'm on the hospital wards, and a physician in the emergency room downstairs is talking to me about an elderly patient who needs to be admitted to the hospital. The patient is new to me, but the story is familiar: He has several chronic conditions — heart failure,...
JAPAN
Feb 22, 2012

Hopes fade for Monju's energy dream promise

Japan's long and expensive pursuit of a superefficient nuclear reactor — a model once touted as the key to its energy future — now teeters on the brink of failure amid new government concerns about its runaway costs.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 21, 2012

Ill-prepared schools put returner, family in tough spot

In response to our recent two-part series on education ("Rejoining school system in Japan after time away can be tough" and "Acceptance — social and otherwise — a crucial issue for Japan returnee kids," Jan. 10 and 17), Rosie decided to share the story of her daughter's difficulties entering the...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years