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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 14, 2008

Getting scrappy with jazz-punks Midori

"I don't really listen to punk or know too much about what constitutes Japanese punk," declares Mariko Goto. "That said, if we're going to categorize ourselves, I'd say we're a punk band. But the sort of punk we make is nostalgic and lonely. It's like a four-tatami room with just one door and one window;...
EDITORIALS
Nov 13, 2008

Enabling decentralization

Prime Minister Taro Aso has instructed Cabinet ministers to push for the abolition and integration of their ministries' regional offices. His instruction is in line with the call by the government's devolution panel for drastic reform of such regional offices. Since the reform is a main pillar of overall...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2008

Tokyo's Rokku laughs it up again at film festival

The objectives of the First Old Town Taito International Comedy Film Festival, which runs Nov. 21 to 24 in the Tokyo districts of Asakusa and Ueno, sound ambitious. Noting on the festival's English-language Web site that "there are innumerable film festivals held throughout the world," the executive...
Japan Times
CULTURE
Nov 13, 2008

Understanding Ueto, Japan's reluctant star

"I never wished to become an actress or a star who performs on TV," explains Aya Ueto, the prominent model and actress. "I took this role because my management gave it to me."
JAPAN
Nov 13, 2008

New territorial row brewing

In the latest territorial flap between South Korea and Japan, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voiced concern Wednesday over growing South Korean capital investment in Nagasaki Prefecture's Tsushima, an island city only 50 km from the Korean Peninsula.
BUSINESS
Nov 13, 2008

Aso's ¥2 trillion plan will have no effect: Ota

Prime Minister Taro Aso's ¥2 trillion plan to aid households won't be enough to help the economy, according to former economy minister Hiroko Ota.
EDITORIALS
Nov 12, 2008

Keeping sex offenders close

In late September, South Korea joined a group of nations where the movements of released sex-crime offenders are electronically monitored. Such offenders have to wear electronic anklets and additional communication devices all the time. Fifty-three convicted offenders have become the first group to wear...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 9, 2008

Life in Burma: an expatriate's point of view

BURMA CHRONICLES by Guy Delisle. Quebec, Canada: Drawn and Quarterly, 2008, 208 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Over the past 20 years Burma has sunk ever further into an abyss of political oppression and economic malaise under a brutal military junta that shot monks on the streets of Yangon during the Saffron Revolution...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Nov 9, 2008

Wrestling with a guilty verdict

Kazuhiko Togo, a retired career official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Ambassador to the Netherlands, is the grandson of Shigenori Togo, Japan's foreign minister at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Nov 9, 2008

From heroes to zero, and lasting scars

Nov. 12 marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, which in terms of judicial procedures is now widely regarded as having been fundamentally flawed and biased against the defendants.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 7, 2008

Canadian music execs schmooze up to Tokyo

The relatively small 33 million population of Canada, the world's second-largest country in terms of land mass, makes it nearly impossible for its musicians to maintain careers based on domestic support alone.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 7, 2008

Bamboleo brings on the salsa

One of the world's most renowned Cuban salsa bands will bring their passionate and romantic performance to a Tokyo audience on Nov. 14.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 6, 2008

A place for women

Seian Shima's "Untitled" (1918), in "Women Artists in Osaka" at the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art till Dec. 7, is a remarkable work. A self-portrait — uncommon in Japanese painting generally — it conforms to no ideal form of beauty, unlike images done in the bijinga (beautiful woman pictures) genre....
BUSINESS
Nov 6, 2008

Skymark chief now top shareholder

Skymark Airlines Inc. President Shinichi Nishikubo boosted his stake in the company, making him the majority owner of Japan's largest discount carrier.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 5, 2008

Escapee gives glimpse of North prison camps

Shin Dong Hyuk had just turned 14 when he was forced to watch the executions of his mother and older brother for trying to escape from North Korea's "total control" prison camp No. 14, a Stalinist gulag for political prisoners. His mother was hanged; his brother was shot nine times.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 5, 2008

Nagoya family's temple reassembled on S.C. campus for classes

The former Buddhist temple sits opposite a waterfall on the campus of Furman University, with vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains when the trees are bare.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Nov 4, 2008

Asa out again — but the show goes on

Intentional or not, Asashoryu has done it again. In the run-up to the Kyushu Basho, he has stolen the spotlight.
BASKETBALL
Nov 3, 2008

'Helicopter' maintains prolific output to power Apache past 89ers in bj-league showdown

There have been a number of changes in the bj-league since six teams suited up for the inaugural season in 2005-06. But some things are constant, such as this undisputable fact: Tokyo Apache guard John "Helicopter" Humphrey is capable of scoring 30-plus points in every game.
COMMENTARY
Nov 3, 2008

Different playbooks aimed at balancing Asia's powers

NEW DELHI — The Japan-India security agreement signed recently marks a significant milestone in building Asian power equilibrium. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and with shared common interests is becoming critical to instituting stability at a time when major shifts...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 2, 2008

Probing the real Japan with Kenneth Pyle

Kenneth Pyle says his first memories of Japan were of watching war films when he was a child — "all the dogfights with Zero fighters and all that."
EDITORIALS
Nov 2, 2008

Handling info in the MSDF

The Yokohama District Court on Oct. 28 gave a suspended 2 1/2-year prison term to a lieutenant commander of the Maritime Self-Defense Force for passing information on the U.S.-developed Aegis weapons system to another lieutenant commander, an instructor at an MSDF school in Etajima, Hiroshima Prefecture....
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Oct 30, 2008

Oh's career sparkled with achievements as player, manager

Second in a three-part series

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan