Search - world

 
 
CULTURE / Books
Jul 31, 2011

Literary sludge insults child abduction issue

IN APPROPRIATE: A Novel of Culture, Kidnapping, and Revenge in Modern Japan, by Debito Arudou. Lulu Enterprises, 2011, $10, 149 pp., (paper) That prickly gadfly of gaikokujins, Debito Arudou, has done it again, diminishing a worthy topic — in this case, international child abduction — into dross...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 31, 2011

Rail rivalry outcome hinges on speed vs. safety

Following the July 23 collision of two high-speed trains in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province — blamed on faulty signaling equipment — that killed at least 39 passengers and injured over 200, Japan's media, to their credit, suppressed any obvious overtones of shadenfreude. But in the weeks before the...
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2011

Films on late double hibakusha to air in London; BBC to get invite

KYODO Nagasaki Two Japanese documentary films on the late Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, will be screened in London on Aug. 16 and invitations will be sent to the BBC, which aired a quiz show in 2010 that joked about him, the films' director said Thursday....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2011

Saudi Arabia's anti-Shiite policy empowers Iran

The old saying "lonely is the head that wears the crown" has literally taken on new meaning for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. Not only has he watched close regional allies, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, be toppled, but fellow crowned heads in Bahrain, Morocco, and Jordan...
BUSINESS
Jul 30, 2011

Japan Tobacco buys Sudan firm Haggar Cigarette for $450 million

Japan Tobacco Inc. will pay $450 million for a cigarette maker that operates in Sudan and oil-rich South Sudan, which gained independence this month after a rebellion that lasted almost 50 years.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 29, 2011

'Tokyo Ningen Kigeki (Human Comedy in Tokyo)'

Koji Fukada's 2010 black comedy, "Kantai (Hospitalité)," about a smiling stranger who wanders into the lives of a middle-class family and wreaks havoc, has a lot of invention and charm, despite the slightly silly conga-line climax. Deserved winner of the Best Picture Award in the Japanese Eyes section...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 29, 2011

'Transformers: Dark of the Moon'

Given enough money, almost any filmmaker could deliver a big, loud, silly popcorn movie about giant alien robots beating the living crap out of each other, but it takes the special talent of director Michael Bay to make such a movie totally repellent.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 29, 2011

Local galleries move to fore at Art Fair Tokyo

On the Japanese cultural calendar, visual-art events tend to take place in the more pleasant seasons of spring and autumn. Classical music and ballet have winter sewn up, with dozens of performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 or "The Nutcracker" being held over the Christmas-New Year period,...
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Jul 28, 2011

Fukulog shares its looks with Asia

Street fashion goes social on Fukulog, a site that's attracting attracting the attention of fashionistas in Japan and beyond.
EDITORIALS
Jul 28, 2011

Nightmare in Norway

Some acts are just incomprehensible. Violent crime offends almost all people, but even as we condemn such acts, we can usually construct a plausible string of circumstances that explains such behavior and puts it in some context. Some crimes are inexplicable, beyond the imagination of all but the most...
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Jul 28, 2011

Tis the season for some girl-pop classics

In Japan, observation of the seasons is an ingrained cultural trait that not only forms the basis of haiku poetry and many classic works of art, but also marks the calendar for cultural ephemera from special-edition Kit Kats to alcoholic drinks to pop music. Since summer is now at full burn, here are...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 28, 2011

"RongRong & Inri: Three Begets Ten Thousand Things"

Shiseido Gallery Closes Aug. 14
JAPAN
Jul 27, 2011

JETs fresh from the U.S. eager to help nation recover from March 11

Young Americans who will teach English at schools here on an international exchange and teaching program said Tuesday they want to help Japan recover from the March catastrophe.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jul 27, 2011

Compact new interchangable-lens camera plus a solar-powered lamp/charger

Japanese camera maker Pentax made the news earlier this month, having been acquired by Ricoh for ¥10 billion. But just prior to that, Pentax rolled out what it hailed as the world's smallest and lightest interchangeable-lens digital camera: the Pentax Q.
BUSINESS
Jul 27, 2011

K-pop stars luring Japan to buy Korean products

Yuko Ishii, a 53-year-old factory worker in central Japan, used to feel reluctant about buying products made in South Korea. That changed after she became a fan of pop stars such as boy band TVXQ.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 26, 2011

TV: Analog out, digital in, with rivals Net, satellite, cable

Sunday marked a nationwide transition to digital terrestrial television broadcasting, bringing to an end over five decades of analog transmissions in Japan.
EDITORIALS
Jul 26, 2011

Ensure food safety

On July 8, radioactive cesium in excess of the provisional government limit was detected in beef from a cow shipped from Minami Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, to a Tokyo slaughterhouse. Later beef from 10 other cows from the city was found to have been contaminated with such cesium.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Jul 26, 2011

Japan's new wave challenged NPB's best in All-Star Series

On the surface, the All-Star Series mostly seems like an exercise without much benefit for veterans.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 26, 2011

Living and loving The Alien from Nagoya

The year 1990 might not seem so long ago, but for many reasons, and in Japan especially, it was a completely different world. There was no Internet. There were no mobile telephones. There was hardly any way to get up-to-date English information on places beyond Tokyo and Osaka except by going there....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2011

EU breaks the lock on hungry North Koreans

The European Union announced July 4 it would provide €10 million of emergency food aid to North Korea through the World Food Program (WFP) until the end of September — before this year's harvest.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan