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JAPAN
Jan 6, 2010

Writer: Juvenile killer not a 'devil'

It all began with a letter from a condemned killer.
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2010

China wants it both ways

China is a schizophrenic power, a developing country on select international issues but a rising superpower that sees itself in the same league as the United States in other matters, with its new muscular confidence on open display. At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit meeting, China was the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 5, 2010

Minors in own category but never above the law

Jan. 11 marks Coming of Age Day, an annual holiday to celebrate people who have reached legal adulthood.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jan 3, 2010

Jake Adelstein: Insider reaching out

Author Joshua "Jake" Adelstein supposes that if he'd stayed home in rural Missouri and had never come to Japan, he'd probably have become a small-town lawyer or a very happy detective on the local police force.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 27, 2009

First glimpses of a new world

THE LURE OF CHINA: Writers From Marco Polo to J.G. Ballard, by Frances Wood. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009, 283 pp., £19.99 (hardcover) Not many readers follow the adventures of Robinson Crusoe as far as China, or even realize he went there. But the first volume of the famous story...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2009

The day that Romania's 'bears' fought back

NEW YORK — The late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu liked to hunt bear. With his retinue, he would retreat to a lodge in Transylvania and sally forth, locked and loaded. He was accustomed to good fortune, for his huntsmen took precautions. They would chain some poor beast to a tree, drug it to...
COMMENTARY
Dec 22, 2009

Travails of a 'young war criminal'

LONDON — Alan Watkins is my favorite British journalist. Well into his 70s now, each week he still produces an elegant and knowing column, usually about British politics. And with a casual understatement that you might easily mistake for irony, he has for the past six years regularly referred to former...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2009

Famed tale a perennial favorite

. The shogunate ordered Asano to commit ritual suicide over the breach in acceptable behavior. On Dec. 14, 1702, 47 samurai followers of Asano took revenge on Kira and killed him. They then subsequently dispatched themselves.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 22, 2009

Recognizing confident India as indispensable

PARIS — "Do not forget India." That warning made sense 10 or 15 years ago; not any longer. India is now impossible to ignore, much less forget, owing not only to its rapid economic growth but also to the country's increasing geopolitical stature.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 21, 2009

Legacy of '89 digressed from the U.S. script

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the relatively nonviolent overthrow of communism throughout Central and Eastern Europe, optimists predicted a new golden age of a world filled with peaceful democracies. History, for some, seemed to have come to an end. But the optimists...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB
Dec 20, 2009

Zimbalist says Matsui's key impact for Angels will be on the field

Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and Daisuke Matsuzaka all helped open up markets and bring new streams of revenue to their respective teams when they made their major league debuts.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 20, 2009

Alexandria's library: A phoenix amid the tea fields of Uji

Recalling the glorious Heian Period in Japan's history from 794 to 1185 at once conjures up images of a world of courtiers, 12-layered kimono, elegant poetry competitions beside winding streams — and secret trysts in scented chambers.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 20, 2009

Tuning in to Alaskan bears

With temperatures falling steadily, amazing things are happening in the natural world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 20, 2009

Steve Finbow: Best books of 2009

AUDITION, by Ryu Murakami. W. W. Norton & Company, 208 pp., $13.95 (paper)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 20, 2009

David Cozy: Best books of 2009

To grasp the achievement of Edogawa Rampo one needs to read both his stories and his essays. Thus Kurodahan Press, in making available this exquisitely edited collection of both fiction and nonfiction, has done readers a great service. Entering the fantastic twists and turns of Rampo's stories, one is...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 17, 2009

Do humanoid robots deserve to have rights?

PRINCETON/WARSAW — Last month, Gecko Systems announced that it had been running trials of its "fully autonomous personal companion home care robot," also known as a "carebot," designed to help elderly or disabled people to live independently. A woman with short-term memory loss broke into a big smile,...
JAPAN
Dec 15, 2009

Climate confab's acronym soup requires deciphering

COPENHAGEN — BINGOS, RINGOS and TUNGOS. BRICs. KP and COPMOP.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 11, 2009

Aussie revolt over climate

SYDNEY, Australia — Even before the Copenhagen talkfest opened this week, a climatic wrangle cost an Australian political leader his job. Even before the expected international fallout from Copenhagen, Canberra is on alert for national electoral turmoil.
COMMENTARY
Dec 10, 2009

Asia's new strategic partners

The recently concluded India-Australia security agreement has come at a time when tectonic power shifts are challenging Asian strategic stability. Asia has come a long way since the emergence of two Koreas, two Chinas, two Vietnams and a partitioned India. It has risen dramatically as the world's main...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2009

Inside Thailand's hidden separatist war

LEEDS, England — Thailand's former prime minister, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, recently ignited a furor when he proposed that the separatist campaign in his country's Muslim-majority southern provinces might be solved politically, with a form of self-rule. Thailand's ruling Democrat Party immediately called...
COMMENTARY
Dec 6, 2009

Disgusting surfeit of anti-Obama remarks

LOS ANGELES — Some necessary context for President Barack Obama's long-awaited Afghanistan policy speech: Foreign policy performance is anything but the total measure of a president's worth. America's domestic politics, not to mention its elections, are more often than not driven by the forces, and...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 6, 2009

Politically incorrect maybe, but also some trenchant home truths

The world used to be one hell of a racist place. All you need do is go back a few decades to find public pronouncements that today would land you a punch on the schnozz, if not a stint in the slammer.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 6, 2009

There's something dark in the basement

HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET, by Jamie Ford. Ballantine, 2009, 320 pp., $24 (hardcover) Reviewed by Mark Schreiber "Bitter and Sweet" is not just the intersection of two streets in Seattle, but a fair description of the story behind the title. It is 1986, and Henry Lee, a retired draftsman...
COMMENTARY
Dec 2, 2009

AIDS takes increasing toll on women's lives

AIDS is posing an increasing threat to women, especially in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization, AIDS is the leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2009

Less efficient natural 'cleaning' could tip global carbon balance

SINGAPORE — Nearly everyone is familiar with budgets. Households keep them. So do companies and national governments. But what about the carbon budget that measures the health of our climate system?
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Nov 29, 2009

Deer problem growing fast

This winter, naturalist and woodland conservationist C.W. Nicol will be busy cooking up delicious meals using wild deer meat — slow-cooked keema curry, hearty shepherd's pie and soy-simmered nikudango meatballs, to name a few.
ENVIRONMENT
Nov 29, 2009

Deer problem growing fast

This winter, naturalist and woodland conservationist C.W. Nicol will be busy cooking up delicious meals using wild deer meat — slow-cooked keema curry, hearty shepherd's pie and soy-simmered nikudango meatballs, to name a few.
Reader Mail
Nov 26, 2009

Learning English to read a text

As a Japanese college student, I would like to reply to Adrian Leis' Nov. 8 letter, "Only textbooks by native speakers." I am sure that Leis conducts his classes well using textbooks written by native English-language speakers, but I would like him to understand that textbooks written by Japanese speakers...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Nov 24, 2009

Emperor — poise under public spotlight

This year marks Emperor Akihito's 20th year on the Chrysanthemum Throne.
Reader Mail
Nov 22, 2009

Blog posts can be so much noise

Although I found the Nov. 18 article "Lets kensaku — searching the Web in Japanese" interesting, it didn't tell me anything I was not already aware of. I was hoping it would address the biggest problem I have when doing Japanese-language searches online: search results primarily comprising people's...

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