Search - (2006-01-27)

 
 
EDITORIALS
Jun 14, 2009

A vote for peace in Lebanon

The victory of the March 14th alliance in Lebanese parliamentary elections June 7 is a welcome surprise. For many, the election was a referendum on Hezbollah and the armed resistance movement it represents as well as on the continued influence of Syria and Iran over Lebanese politics.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 14, 2009

Brewers' Macha making most of second shot managing in majors

Take a look at the standings in the various divisions in Major League Baseball, and you will find the usual high-profile, big-market teams at or near the top.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
EDITORIALS
Jun 13, 2009

Punishing North Korea

The United Nations Security Council has agreed to take tougher measures against North Korea for conducting its second nuclear test on May 25. The measures include a "call" — rather than a demand — that U.N. members inspect suspect cargo transported on ships to and from North Korea, additional financial...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009

Samurai get put through paces

Anyone who knows anything about musicals knows they require endless rehearsals in order to be staged successfully. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers didn't just jump up and glide around a sound stage as the cameras rolled; they had to practice each step of those seemingly effortless dance routines over...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009

'Sagan'

As far as biopics go, "Sagan" is a fragmented and unsatisfactory rendition of a brilliant, fascinating life.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Jun 11, 2009

Fragrant fashions, high-brow specs, Vogue in 3-D, and Tokyo's own

Getting intimate Tucked in the residential boroughs of Tokyo's Aobadai district in Meguro is a new intimate shop, Lilid 05, where the uplifting scent of fashion wafts you through its unassuming doors. The store opened at the end of April, but the Lilid 05 brand itself is also fairly new, only now in...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 11, 2009

Prius hot, but at other models' expense?

Toyota Motor Corp.'s new Prius hybrid won more than 80,000 orders even before going on sale, prompting departing President Katsuaki Watanabe to call it the carmaker's "savior." Investors don't share his faith.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jun 10, 2009

'Random' drug tests make JSA look bad

What a joke.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / TAKING A CHANCE
Jun 9, 2009

Going beyond furniture to lure in all and sundry

Focusing on something few others do can lead to business success, as Fumio Takashima has shown.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 9, 2009

Educating Americans about Muslim voices

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama has extended an open hand of friendship in his landmark Cairo speech to the Muslim world — seeking to engage Muslims with a commitment of mutual respect. No one can doubt his sincerity. From his first days in office, he has emphasized the importance of embarking...
BUSINESS
Jun 9, 2009

Goldman's Accordia Golf to spend ¥20 billion buying several course operators

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Japanese golf business unit plans to buy more courses as the recession forces companies to sell off assets unrelated to their main business.
COMMENTARY
Jun 8, 2009

Feasible anti-emission goal

In July 2008 the Japanese government adopted a target for 2050 of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent from 2005 levels. At the same time, a special panel was created to deliberate midterm reduction goals (through 2020).
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 7, 2009

Consequences of hostility on the Peninsula

SEOUL — Once again, the Korean Peninsula is experiencing one of its periodic bouts of extremism, this time marked by the suicide May 22 of former President Roh Moo Hyun, and North Korea's second test of a nuclear device.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 7, 2009

NPB teams like foreign players with Japan experience

The 2009 season seems to be one where foreign players in Japanese baseball are getting a second — or third — chance to prove they can still produce.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 7, 2009

Our columnist's 'drug runs' are happily over

Whenever I visit the United States, friends ask me to pick up things for them, usually over-the-counter (OTC) drugs that are cheaper in the States than they are in Japan. I always return with this booty as nervous as if I were carrying a brick of hash, having once been told by a colleague how customs...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 7, 2009

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: No ordinary Joe

Perhaps no Asian film director since Akira Kurosawa has received the critical attention bestowed on 39 year-old Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His "Blissfully Yours" won a major Cannes Festival prize in 2002; "Tropical Malady," took the 2004 Jury Prize and the Tokyo FilmEx first prize; and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 7, 2009

It's so cool to play an oily toad

Actors who direct and star in their own films may be motivated by something other than vanity, but they usually manage to make themselves look cool — or at least cooler than they would have if someone else had been in the director's chair.
EDITORIALS
Jun 6, 2009

Raising the birthrate

The nation's total fertility rate (TFR) — the number of children an average woman gives birth to — has increased for three consecutive years. This is good news. But the rise occurred as the Japanese economy was expanding. The economic downturn that started last fall may have an adverse effect. The...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 5, 2009

Fermenting dregs of rock 'n' roll for the masses

"I just had a connection with the sound of the words," says singer and bass player Natsuko Miyamoto when she answers my question about the name of her band, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Before I can pursue the question further: about the words, about where and when she first put them together, about...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2009

Striving for a more simple life

The paintings in "The Naxi Lifeworld: Native Painters in Northwestern Yunnan" by Zhang Yunling (b. 1955) and Zhang Chunting (b. 1958) proffer a simple and honest way of life, steeped in the seasons, nostalgia, and the pictographic Dongba script of the Naxi people of China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces....

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped