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COMMENTARY / World
Feb 3, 2014

Torture happens when people are your export

It's simply easier for leaders of some countries to export their own people abroad and count the money than to take on vested interests and generate opportunities at home.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 2, 2014

Melting Arctic ice brings hope to Russian city

The city of Nadym, in the extreme north of Siberia, is one of the Earth's least hospitable places, shrouded in darkness for half of the year, with temperatures plunging below minus 30 Celsius and the nearby Kara Sea semipermanently frozen.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Feb 1, 2014

Steamer surveys new island; Forces land on Hainan Island; Kyu Sakamoto profiled; Leftists suspected in shrine bombing

The N.Y.K. Bonin liner Chefoo, which returned to Yokohama yesterday, gave an interesting account of her exploration of the newly formed island near Minami Iwojima.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2014

Climate change looks too big to ignore or fix

There are no global institutions even remotely capable of getting the world to reduce its energy consumption. So, unless we get a cheap, clean renewable, we're probably all going to be getting hotter.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 30, 2014

'Dakishimetai: Shinjitsu no Monogatari (I Just Wanna Hug You)'

Of Japanese medical melodramas there is no end. Targeted largely at the female audience, they appear on the lineups of Toho and other major distributors with the regularity of cherry blossoms in April.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2014

Troubled Thailand is only the tip of Asia's iceberg

Thailand may offer the clearest example of how the U.S. Federal Reserve's ultralow interest rates have helped cover up deep-seated structural problems in emerging markets.Officials throughout Asia will regret ignoring the near suicidal course they're on.
Reader Mail
Jan 29, 2014

Can't go back so let's reconcile

I was tremendously interested in the Jan. 21 article "Korean who assassinated Japan's first leader honored" and a related article on Jan. 23, because I had a chance to visit the place where Hirobumi Ito was shot at Harbin railway station (1909). The places where Ito was standing and where Ahn Jung Geun...
JAPAN / Q&A
Jan 29, 2014

Flu menace again reaching peak

While this year's influenza season is predicted to peak around early February, anybody of any age group, sex or nationality is at risk of infection all the way through March.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2014

Marijuana's sobering lessons from Prohibition

Like alcohol after the repeal of Prohibition, legal marijuana will be a profitable business kept on a tight leash. And we should expect the public health consequences tol be mixed, though hardly a disaster.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 28, 2014

New dawn breaking over Japan

Writing from Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says it is not twilight, but a new dawn, that is breaking over Japan, thanks to his administration's overcoming the notion that certain reforms could never be carried out.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 28, 2014

Ukraine PM offers to resign

Ukraine's prime minister offered his resignation Tuesday to help bring about an end to more than two months of street protests that turned deadly last week and have taken over government buildings across the nation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jan 27, 2014

Have your say on English education

Letters and online responses to the Jan. 6, 13 and 20 Learning Curve columns by Teru Clavel on English education.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 26, 2014

Healing words for a hospital stay

One morning, you wake up feeling kibun ga warui (気分が悪い, under the weather) and slightly darui (怠い, lethargic). Rising out of bed, you take two steps forward when the world goes dark and you taoreru (倒れる, pass out). In a panic, your roommate calls ichi ichi kyū (119, Japan's equivalent...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2014

Mindless inventiveness for checkered legacies

To say that the late Ariel Sharon's eight-year-long coma had given Israel time to 'come to terms' with his checkered legacy is a cliche that deserves to be swept away.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 25, 2014

Is altruism our hope, and growth a curse?

My day job is at Chuo University in western Tokyo, and January at Japanese universities is chaotic, what with final classes, reports and grading as our second term comes to an end and the academic year winds down toward its conclusion in March. Among the words that come to mind, "happiness" is not usually...
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2014

Automakers gird for Super Bowl

From the Muppets to James Franco, Hollywood will be working hard for carmakers at the Super Bowl.
EDITORIALS
Jan 23, 2014

Damages from a terror probe

Despite the award of ¥90.2 million in damages to 17 Muslims in Japan found to have suffered defamation of character after details of a police investigation of international terrorism were leaked onto the Internet, the plaintiffs have appealed the Tokyo District Court ruling for affirming that the probe itself was necessary.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 23, 2014

New-year festivities all set to start in Yokohama

From the end of next week, Yokohama's Chinatown begins its spring festival to ring in the Year of the Horse.
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2014

Internet wiz courts offbeat vote

A Tokyo gubernatorial candidate with an offbeat platform surfaced Wednesday, just one day before applications to run in the Feb. 9 election have to be filed.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS
Jan 21, 2014

At Ikkaku, it's fine to ask a chicken its age

Ikkaku is located in a 12-story building with more bars and restaurants than I imagine there are in most towns in West Texas or West Cork. And the building is in Shinsaibashi, which probably has more places to eat and drink than all of Wyoming. This is, after all, Osaka, the city that celebrates over-indulgence...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 20, 2014

Temperatures hit season low on 'daikan' plunge

As Japan marked the coldest day on the calendar Monday, the mercury fell to its lowest point this winter in many places across the archipelago, the Meteorological Agency said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LEARNING CURVE
Jan 19, 2014

China, South Korea face familiar woes in English quest

Japan isn't alone in its struggles with teaching English. China and South Korea have experienced similar frustrations, but their responses and results have been quite different.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jan 19, 2014

'Pilgrims' flock to site of death in Alaska's wilds

The old bus in which Chris McCandless died in 1992 in the interior of Alaska — made famous in Jon Krakauer's best-selling book "Into the Wild" and later in the Sean Penn film of the same name — long ago lost its windows to souvenir hunters.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 19, 2014

'Damning' Savile review expected to reveal up to 1,000 cases of child abuse

The BBC will be plunged into fresh crisis with the publication of a damning review, expected next month, that will reveal its staff turned a blind eye to the rape and sexual assault of up to 1,000 girls and boys by Jimmy Savile in the corporation's changing rooms and studios.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2014

A True Novel

Like all artists, novelists find the impetus to begin in various places. Some inspire themselves with a formal challenge. Georges Perec, for example, asked himself what would happen if he tried to write a novel entirely bereft of the letter "e." Others, in their doodling and false starts, stumble upon...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN WEB WATCH
Jan 16, 2014

Japan's mobile apps provide an 'A' for every 'Q'

Question and answer sites have for a decade been one of the most popular user-contributed services on the Web — and Japan is no exception. On the traditional Web, the market has been occupied by a few big players, but the recent popularity of smartphones has attracted new startups to the mobile Web...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2014

'Bilocation'

"There will never be another you" goes the jazz standard, but is it true? Have you ever thought that your spitting image might be wandering the world somewhere? What if you encountered you on the street? I would make fast tracks in the opposite direction.

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan