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EDITORIALS
Mar 21, 2011

Promoting tourism

Can tourism become a force for economic growth? The Japanese government hopes so, making tourism, including medical tourism, one pillar of its new growth strategy adopted last summer.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Mar 21, 2011

Old-style survival skills put local shop owners in disaster limelight

A week after the earthquake and we are still living with the aftershocks, and in more ways than one. While the earth still shakes under us now and again, shakes of a different kind also keep coming: nuclear power plant failures, radioactive contamination fears, rolling power cuts, panic buying and sudden...
Reader Mail
Mar 20, 2011

Aussies remember Japan's help

In Australia, we all have great sympathy and feelings for our friends in Japan. Both countries have now suffered at the hands of nature. During our recent floods and bush fires, many messages of support came from Japan, together with rescue teams to help our own. Australians do not forget these things....
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2011

Black ink, red blood

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PRESS NETWORKS OF EAST ASIA, 1918-1945, by Peter O'Connor. Global Oriental, 2010, 381 pp., £61 (hardcover) In the pre- and early war years, the big three newspapers at the center of the networks in Japan were The Japan Times, Japan Advertiser and the Japan Chronicle.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2011

The protocols of freedom

THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The Practice of the Wild. Edited by Paul Ebenkamp. This is a companion to the film "The Practice of the Wild," directed by John J. Healey, produced by Will Hearst and Jim Harrison with San Simeon Films. Counterpoint, 2010, 160 pp., $28 (cloth/DVD) Snyder...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEK 3
Mar 20, 2011

'Nothing can prepare you to witness this'

It's a relatively minor incident that gets me. I'm at a gymnasium in central Ishinomaki photographing members of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) as they unload dozens of corpses from a truck. Each is wrapped in blankets, some with flowery designs far too cheerful for this occasion.
Reader Mail
Mar 20, 2011

U.S. Navy could boost power grid

Regarding Jun Hongo's March 16 article, "One certainty in the crisis: Power will be at a premium": One way Japan might increase the production of electricity is to work a deal with the U.S. government. The U.S. Navy has a ready supply of mobile nuclear power plants that can provide enough electricity...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 20, 2011

Sumo seeks to recover from disaster of its own making

If March 13, 2011, had been a normal Sunday in Japan, at around 4:30 p.m. this writer would have popped open a beer, grabbed a packet of shelled peanuts, switched on his TV and watched the first day of the Osaka Grand Sumo Tournament on NHK.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 20, 2011

MLB family reaching out to help Japan

The relationship between Japan and Major League Baseball stretches back over a century with a number of highs and lows dotting the landscape along the way.
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2011

Lapses, coverups color public view of nuclear plants

Behind the escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a cozy relationship with government regulators, who are often willing to overlook safety lapses.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Mar 19, 2011

F.A. punishment of Ferguson illustrates just how gutless it really is

LONDON — The five-game touchline ban and £30,000 fine handed to Sir Alex Ferguson by the Football Association for criticism of referee Martin Atkinson ranks alongside five minutes on the naughty step.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 19, 2011

Poetess achieves duality of words, numbers

Statistically, there's no accounting for Jessica Goodfellow's life in Japan. The daughter of an engineer, on a fast track in her early 20s to a Ph.D. in economics at California Institute of Technology, Goodfellow realized something essential didn't correlate: her incalculable love of poetry.
BUSINESS
Mar 19, 2011

Osaka hotel occupancy rate surges as people flood in from Tokyo

Hotels in Osaka are in high demand as residents and companies leave Tokyo to seek shelter amid concerns over radiation leaks after the nation's worst earthquake.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 18, 2011

Museums close to cope with earthquake damage and fallout

The tragedy of Friday's massive earthquake and following tsunami in northeast Japan has shaken the nation. And as Japan attempts to assess the damage and send relief, the country's art world is attempting to recover and show support.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 18, 2011

Japan's musicians show their hearts

A mid a flurry of cancellations of festivals and other concerts around the nation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, there has been a growing number of domestic artists, labels and event organizers — both big and small — who are making use of their music to do what they can to aid...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2011

Stars certain movie business will bounce back

Each new day since the March 11 earthquake seems to bring something worse, but the Japanese entertainment industry is no stranger to disaster and mayhem. There's a been-there-seen-it-all mindset, nurtured by a long history of alternating repression and liberation, plus natural disasters in between.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2011

'Never let Me Go'/'Away We Go'

The challenge this week is how to convince you to go see "Never Let Me Go" without ruining its surprises for you. The film looks deceptively normal: It's a love triangle with Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan set in 1970s and '80s England. But — and this is a huge but — there's...
BUSINESS
Mar 18, 2011

LG to release tablet PC as scheduled

LG Electronics Inc. still plans to introduce an Android-based tablet computer in Japan this month, even as the country grapples with the aftermath of its strongest earthquake on record.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 17, 2011

Japan's immense challenge

HONG KONG — Prime Minister Naoto Kan rightly called it the worst disaster to hit Japan since World War II. But the question now for Japan is whether the massive earthquake and tsunami that smashed the country on Friday can prove to be the earthmoving event that wakes up Japan's politicians to set the...
Reader Mail
Mar 17, 2011

Hurting for those half-a-world away

I should be thinking about my work, but all my thoughts are for a people thousands of miles away. I hurt so much inside for these people I have never known, from a place I have never been. All the fear, hurt and sorrow they must have, losing so many they loved. Great towns and villages washed away in...
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2011

Demand for imported grain not to decline: U.N.

Grain demand in Japan, the world's largest corn importer, is unlikely to decline even after Friday's earthquake and tsunami damaged some of the nation's ports and disrupted deliveries, the United Nations said. The country, struck by its strongest earthquake on record Friday, faces power blackouts and...
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2011

Lithium-ion battery, substrate markets said among hardest hit

The global supply of lithium-ion batteries, substrates for chips and power-supply capacitors may be the technology industries hit the hardest by the Tohoku catastrophe, Daiwa Securities Group Inc. said.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 16, 2011

Through the shaking, Japan comes together

For centuries, Japan had operated on the unvoiced logic that the only certainty in this world is disaster — specifically, tensai (天災, heavenly disaster). Four centuries ago, Edo (江戸, Old Tokyo) citizens said to each other that they had four major things to fear: jishin (地震, earthquakes),...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 16, 2011

Toyota output reduction may top 40,000 vehicles amid power crisis

Toyota Motor Corp. may lose output of at least 40,000 vehicles after Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake damaged factories and crippled nuclear power plants, which led to electricity shortages.

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