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LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 20, 2007

Breast-cancer treatment is not always the same

Getting tested or treated for a life-threatening disease is nerve-racking for anyone, but it can be all the more so when outside of your home country.
Japan Times
CULTURE / OTAKOOL
Nov 15, 2007

Remix this: anime gets hijacked

Tim Park sits at home in his one-man studio in Ontario, Canada surrounded by piles of anime DVDs and a ton of tech.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 15, 2007

A big noise about what?

'I think the best pop is always subversive in its nature," says James Righton over the phone from London a few days after his band Klaxons beat the bookies' odds to win the Mercury Music Prize, a major award that gives $40,000 to the "best" British or Irish album of the year. "Even things like Abba —...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2007

Should we study race-intelligence links?

PRINCETON, New Jersey — The intersection of genetics and intelligence is an intellectual minefield. Harvard's former President Larry Summers touched off one explosion in 2005 when he tentatively suggested a genetic explanation for the difficulty his university had in recruiting female professors in...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 10, 2007

Lucky little countries, or not?

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, New York — Western Europe's small democracies have, on the whole, been exceptionally fortunate. Freer and richer than almost anywhere else in the world, countries such as Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland would seem to have little to worry about. This is why the world normally...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2007

Gen. Musharraf's last act?

PRAGUE — Desperate to hold onto power, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has discarded Pakistan's constitutional framework and declared a state of emergency. His goal? To stifle the independent judiciary and free media. Artfully, though shamelessly, he has tried to sell this action as an effort to bring...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2007

Let history judge Russia's revolutions

PRAGUE — A plethora of anniversaries is arriving in Russia. This fall marks the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 and the 25th anniversary of the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Next month will see the 15th anniversary of the Soviet Union's disintegration. Only by understanding that first...
JAPAN
Nov 6, 2007

Nova fall just simple math: it bled red

A 330-sq.-meter office with a double bed, sauna and tea room was where Nozomu Sahashi, ousted president of Nova Corp., worked as the language school chain steadily teetered near bankruptcy over the past few years.
Reader Mail
Nov 1, 2007

Loss of trust in employers

Regarding the Oct. 28 letter "Bureaucratic disaster all around": The author is most correct in predicting the ramifications stemming from the Nova scandal. The economic impacts as a result of this fiasco will be felt for some time, and at a time when the last thing the economy needs is a financial...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Oct 31, 2007

Tokyo's botanical beauty

A FLOWER LOVER'S GUIDE TO TOKYO: 40 Walks for All Seasons, by Sumiko Enbutsu (Kodansha International, ¥2,200)
EDITORIALS
Oct 29, 2007

China and Japan

Despite recent statistics, China may not ever dominate Japan in the way many alarmists fear, but the balance of power between the two countries will undoubtedly continue to shift in the near future. The readjustment in relations, though, may occur in unexpected ways that are less obvious than government...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Oct 28, 2007

Design climbs into the driver's seat

Japanese automakers' attention to the style stakes is on display at the Tokyo Motor Show, but they still need to shift it up a gear.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2007

Turkey's army won't invade

PRAGUE — Just when the smoke from Turkey's domestic political conflicts of the past year had begun to clear, another deadly attack by Kurdish separatists on Turkish soldiers has the government threatening military attacks inside northern Iraq. That prospect raises risks for Turkey, Iraq and the United...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Oct 24, 2007

Japan traces robots' past, future

"Robots will become the Ford Model T of the 21st century," says Japanese scientist Hirohisa Hirukawa.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Oct 21, 2007

A world of exclusive wheels rolls into Tokyo

Dozens of automotive masterpieces are about to go on show in a bid to make Japan Asia's social hub for classic-car buffs.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 21, 2007

Sun Piao: Shanghai's answer to Dirty Harry

Citizen One by Andy Oakes. London: Dedalus, 2007, 434 pp., £9.99 (paper) Innocent young women are being horribly tortured and murdered. Next to die are the cops who investigate. Only someone with tremendous power and influence can kill with such impunity.
EDITORIALS
Oct 19, 2007

Confidentiality of a murderous motive

Public prosecutors have arrested a Kyoto psychiatrist on suspicion of leaking secret investigative materials to a journalist on a 17-year-old boy who was tried in family court in connection with a fire that killed his stepmother and two siblings. The freelance journalist later published a book using...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 18, 2007

A film director in the theater

Daisuke Tengan is an acclaimed filmmaker, but search for him on the Internet and the first thing you'll discover is that he's the son of director Shohei Imamura, who won the Palme d' Or at the Cannes Film Festival for "Narayamabushiko" in 1983 and "Unagi" in 1997.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 17, 2007

Individual variations and a sense of identity

I have recently returned to Japan from five astonishing weeks in the neotropics. Exploring and observing the riches of Brazil's Atlantic rain forest and Pantanal (the world's biggest wetland area) has left me overwhelmed by their biodiversity.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 16, 2007

No-tell love hotels cash in catering to the carnal

In any town bigger than a hamlet, you are sure to find a patch of gaudy hotels styled after rococo palaces, Grecian temples, even rocket ships. Some sport a miniature Statue of Liberty on the roof, others lurid neon signs.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 16, 2007

The faces behind the numbers: A day feeding Tokyo's hungry

Last in a two-part series O n a typical Saturday evening, I stroll around the bustling streets of Shibuya with my friends, dressed up, heels clicking, ready to hit a couple of trendy shops. The chilly breeze puffs up the hairs on my arms and I shudder — winter is approaching. We chat about school,...
Reader Mail
Oct 14, 2007

Tired myth of uniqueness

In her Oct. 7 book review of Alan Macfarlane's "Japan Through the Looking Glass," Mariko Kato writes "It is fully known that Japan -- despite being the world's second-largest economy and a hyperproductive civilization -- is utterly different from the West."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 14, 2007

Nagai Kafu's geisha: expurgated, revised, then finally fully exposed

Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale, translated by Stephen Snyder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 166 pp., $24.95 (cloth) Komayo, widowed young, resumes her life as a geisha, taking up with a former patron who wants to redeem her. She, however, falls in love with a young actor specializing in female...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Oct 12, 2007

Britain is finally waking up to the unmistakable smell of sake

I recently returned from Britain, where I took part in some events sponsored by the Japan Central Brewers' Association and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. I was impressed by the quality and the sheer variety of sake offered by Japanese brewers and enthusiastic local distributors such as Tazaki Foods....
JAPAN
Oct 11, 2007

Osaka mayor expected to prevail despite policy, financial snafus

OSAKA — Osaka Mayor Junichi Seki is expected to be re-elected when voters go to the polls Nov. 18, despite public anger over the city's problematic assimilation assistance policy for descendants of the feudal outcast class, failing public works projects and a lack of appeal among his peers, even in...
COMMENTARY
Oct 11, 2007

'Silly summit' produced serious results

LOS ANGELES — It sure opened up as one big oddball of a summit.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2007

Stepping into the alternate world of Japan

JAPAN THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: Shaman to Shinto, by Alan Macfarlane. Profile Books Ltd., 2007, 256 pp., £16.99 (cloth) Reviewed by MARIKO KATO "In many ways I was like Alice, that very assured and middle-class English girl, when she walked through the looking glass."

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami