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COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 26, 2010

Black Sea challenge by U.S. set to keep Russia on edge

A storm is gathering in and around the Black Sea as Russia faces a mounting challenge from the United States, which is beefing up its military presence in former Soviet satellite countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 25, 2010

The samurai who were let out of the box

NEW YORK — The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibition titled "Samurai in New York: The First Japanese Delegation, 1860." The "delegation" was the first embassy dispatched by Japan in more than a millennium. The previous one, in 838, went to the Tang Dynasty court to pay tribute to the Chinese...
EDITORIALS
Jul 25, 2010

Cooking the planet, not the books

Last year, controversy swirled around British climate researchers after leaked e-mails suggested that they had "cooked the books" on climate research by manipulating evidence, harassing opponents and suppressing dissenting opinions. The uproar triggered several investigations, all of which exonerated...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jul 25, 2010

Death of 'The Boss' huge news in U.S., not in Japan

I'm just back from a summer trip to the United States with time in northern New Jersey, where the big news last week was the death of New York Yankees owner George "The Boss" Steinbrenner on July 13, and the press coverage was extensive.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 25, 2010

Computer addiction dulls wits at work

Differences in familiarity with computers are creating ever-wider gaps within the ranks of Japan's salarymen. Evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (July 17) reports on the emergence of a new type of person at companies who never stops typing on his PC, even while being spoken to by a colleague.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 25, 2010

Japan's 'seismic ship' may yield a bonanza

Despite the ongoing Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the search for deep-sea oil and gas reserves elsewhere continues unabated — off the coasts of Scotland, Greenland, West Africa, Brazil, the Philippines . . . and even Japan.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 25, 2010

A bailout by any other name

The gap between rich and poor seems to be widening worldwide, the result of government deregulation and the dominance of market-led economic policies. As businesses are given freer rein to do whatever they want, wages at the lower end of the pay scale drop. Government revenues consequently shrink, thus...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2010

On the hunt for snakes and dragons in Chinatown

Two years back I reviewed "Year of the Dog," about the exploits of detective Jack Yu, the creation of Chinese-American author Henry Chang, who portrayed New York's Chinatown as a frightfully sordid place. Yu, besides being forced to endure the slings and arrows of a race- baiting police department, suffered...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 23, 2010

Reflections of Chekhov's Russia in modern-day Japan

"People compare me with Bertolt Brecht, and I am glad to hear that — but why won't anyone call me Anton Inoue?"
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 23, 2010

Yokohama gets jazzed up with Harlem Nights

Feel like getting in a New York state of mind? You might not have to travel too far because next week Yokohama will add a little slice of the Big Apple to its environs.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 23, 2010

Interactive exhibit presents art from a child's perspective

Ever wondered what goes through a baby's mind? Five groups of innovative artists take a guess with "Garden for Children," an interactive exhibit to be displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, starting this weekend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 23, 2010

When science meets art, it gets confusing

In 1959, British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered an influential lecture titled "The Two Cultures," in which he claimed the divide between the sciences and the humanities was to the detriment of finding solutions to world problems. The Second Law of Thermodynamics was to science what Shakespeare...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2010

No global shortage of fiscal fibs and follies

BERKELEY, Calif. — Across the globe, the debate over fiscal consolidation has the distinct sound of two sides talking past one another.
MORE SPORTS
Jul 21, 2010

Time for Mayweather to get in ring with Pacquiao

LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. lives in what he calls his Big Boy house, a $9.5 million golf course mansion he likes to show off whenever HBO trots out its "24/7" show to promote his fights.
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2010

Honda preps plug-in hybrid, EV for 2012

WAKO, Saitama Pref. — Honda Motor Co. said Tuesday it will debut in 2012 a hybrid car that can be charged at home and an electric vehicle in Japan and the United States, a move expected to further fuel competition for environmentally friendly vehicles.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 21, 2010

Kanji for ‘big' will expand your Japanese skills

Every year on Aug. 16, at exactly 8 p.m., the first in a series of five giant bonfires is lit on a mountainside overlooking the city of Kyoto, signaling the moment when ancestral ghosts return to the spirit world after visiting relatives on Earth during the three-day O-bon festival. The largest and most...
COMMENTARY
Jul 18, 2010

Kids' notebooks depict culture of resistance

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN — Resistance is not a band of armed men hell-bent on wreaking havoc. It is not a cell of terrorists scheming on ways to detonate buildings. Resistance is a culture — a collective retort to oppression. Understanding the nature of resistance is not easy. Even if a newsbyte could...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 18, 2010

From grubs to kimono

Bryan Whitehead redefines what it means to "make something from scratch."
EDITORIALS
Jul 18, 2010

Stress and the railways

Japan has long taken pride in its world-class rail system. Trains enjoy a prominent role in its culture from the Shinkansen to Kenji Miyazawa's "Ginga tetsudo no yoru" ("Night on the Galactic Railroad") to Hitori Nakano's "Densha otoko" ("Train Man"). So it is hardly surprising for strains in Japanese...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 18, 2010

Japan's media laps up poll parade

One of the funniest images to emerge from last week's Upper House election was the row of Liberal Democratic Party bigwigs pointing their forefingers to the sky in unison and flashing big stupid grins. The big stupid grins were a reaction to the party's supposed comeback, since they had just won more...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2010

Whitewashing history the Japanese bureaucrat way

Putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen coop is asking for trouble. In relying on Japan's Ministry of Education to implement education reforms during the Occupation (1945-52), U.S. authorities ensured that their good intentions would come to naught.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan