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SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 18, 2010

Tevez perfect example of a spoiled athlete

LONDON — We cannot be far from the day when a footballer puts in a transfer request because he doesn't like the tea lady.
EDITORIALS
Dec 17, 2010

Mr. Kan to open floodgates

Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Wednesday decided not to appeal a Dec. 6 Fukuoka High Court ruling that called for opening two floodgates, north and south, of the dike in Isahaya Bay.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2010

Is open diplomacy possible or even desirable?

PRINCETON, New Jersey — When the furor erupted over WikiLeaks' recent release of a quarter-million diplomatic cables, I was reminded of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 speech in which he put forward "Fourteen Points" for a just peace to end World War I.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 15, 2010

The Kremlin resets Russian foreign policy

2010 has seen a change in Russia's relations with the West. The Obama administration came to office promising a "reset" in relations with Moscow, and in the past year, this new mood of cooperation has begun to deliver tangible results. Moscow and Washington are working together to reduce their nuclear...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 15, 2010

A force for good or evil?

SYDNEY — Hero hacker or the world's most dangerous tattletale? No Australian has been so applauded and reviled as Julian Assange. Holed up in a London jail awaiting charges for extradition to Stockholm, then to a likely one-way trip to a ghastly fate in Washington, Assange has burst onto the world...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Dec 14, 2010

Splits, rumors of splits, and the hole if Kan splits

With its rate of approval dwindling fast, the administration of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has fallen into a "lame-duck" status, and the resultant "political vacuum" is likely to linger on for some time to come, as there is no clear prospect as to what kind of political landscape will emerge in the event...
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Dec 14, 2010

Nagano: What's the best way to learn a foreign language?

Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 12, 2010

Kabuki's golden boy knocked off his pedestal — for now

TBS's Dec. 4 edition of "Newscaster" aired a long report on the run-in that kabuki star Ichikawa Ebizo had with a man at a Tokyo bar in the wee hours of Nov. 25, a dustup that resulted in Ebizo's hospitalization with a fractured cheekbone and broken teeth. Elaborating on the principle of "it takes one...
COMMENTARY
Dec 6, 2010

Frankly, says the diplomat

LONDON — There is not much in the latest batch of Wikileaks that should come as a surprise to most well-informed people. It is surely common knowledge that the present Russian government has close connections with Mafia-style criminals. No one could have been surprised by reports of the concerns of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 5, 2010

Matsumoto Koshiro IX: A lifetime of kabuki

"Koraiya!" shouts someone in the audience, acclaiming the actor center stage. Feeding off the adulation, he launches into his next line. "What a useless fellow you are," he yells, berating the servant at his side. "You shall pay dearly!"
EDITORIALS
Dec 5, 2010

Dark side of the Internet

A long with its many benefits, the Internet has also brought new dangers, as seen in the rising number of reports of shady sites to a hotline commissioned by the National Police Agency. Over 18,500 tips were received by the Internet Hotline Center in the first half of the year, an increase of 75 percent...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 4, 2010

Bid process for World Cup a farce

LONDON — Before the host for the 2006 World Cup were decided the general feeling was that South Africa, FIFA president Sepp Blatter's preference, was nailed on. A one-horse race.
EDITORIALS
Dec 4, 2010

Incompetent leadership showed

Although the Kan administration managed to get the fiscal 2010 supplementary budget enacted during the latest Diet session, which ended Friday after 64 days, Prime Minister Naoto Kan failed to help generate meaningful exchanges of opinion between the ruling and opposition forces on important domestic...
CULTURE / Film
Dec 3, 2010

Higashi gets melodramatic (but not too much)

Born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1934, Yoichi Higashi graduated from Waseda University's Department of Literature in 1958 and entered Iwanami Film Production, a documentary and educational film company. After making his feature debut with "Okinawa Retto (Okinawa Archipelago)" in 1969, he won the Directors...
COMMENTARY
Dec 1, 2010

The N. Korea conundrum

North Korea bombards the South Korean held island of Yeonpyeong in the Yellow Sea, killing and wounding a number of people there. The hawks call for the strongest possible response. The pundits warn of another Korean War.
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Nov 30, 2010

Tokyo: Who — if anyone — should be punished for the Senkaku collision video leak?

Olivia MokStudent, 21 (Chinese)I think no one should be punished because the navigator (who uploaded the video to YouTube) revealed the truth, and people have the right to know. I think what the government is doing by trying to hide the information is just another form of censorship.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Nov 30, 2010

High praise for piazzas; Japan not so clean, friendly

A must for societal well-being I read your article on public space ("Plans for public space need public's input," Hotline to Nagatacho, Oct. 26), and I couldn't agree more.
EDITORIALS
Nov 29, 2010

Financial pinch for nursing care

An estimate disclosed Nov. 19 by the health and welfare ministry says that the monthly premium for nursing care insurance paid by people aged 65 or over could go above ¥5,000 in the near future.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 28, 2010

It's time Japan shook off its past and stopped toadying to the U.S.

Allow me to introduce a Japanese word to those unfamiliar with it. It is the verb kobiru, which means "to flatter"; "to curry favor with"; "to play up to"; "to toady to." In more up-to-date parlance, it may be rendered as "to suck up to."
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 28, 2010

Journalist wants Ashikaga murder case reopened

In June 2009, this column mentioned a TBS news report about the DNA testing method that resulted in the 1992 conviction of Toshikazu Sugaya for the 1990 murder of 4-year-old Mami Matsuda in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. Sugaya was sentenced to an indefinite prison term but was released last year after...
COMMENTARY
Nov 25, 2010

Let's hope Obama wins New START gamble

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama's decision to press for ratification of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States is one that will have a lasting influence on the rest of his presidency.
COMMENTARY
Nov 24, 2010

Japan's declining prestige

LONDON — Japan's prestige abroad has continued to decline despite the change from the clapped out Liberal Democratic Party with its series of old hack prime ministers to a government led by the Democratic Party of Japan. Foreign observers thought that surely a DPJ government must represent a change...
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2010

Yanagida resigns over gaffe

Justice Minister Minoru Yanagida resigned Monday amid the fallout over his joking about his Diet duties, and after Prime Minister Naoto Kan effectively pressured him to step down.
JAPAN
Nov 23, 2010

Japan hand Chalmers Johnson dead at 79

OSAKA — American author and scholar Chalmers Johnson, whose views on postwar Japan angered American academics and Japan experts in the late 1980s but influenced a generation of students studying the country, died Saturday in California at age 79.
COMMENTARY
Nov 21, 2010

To fold on rights is not an option

LONDON — In his recently published self-justifying and self-congratulatory memoir "Decision Points," former U.S. president George W. Bush declared that the waterboarding of al-Qaida suspects, which he had authorized, was justified because the information obtained from the suspects had been instrumental...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 21, 2010

Tossing our leaders to the lions

In Tokugawa days (1603-1867), criticizing the government was a capital offense. Rulers, not only in Japan but the world over, expected to be — and generally were — not only obeyed but revered, sometimes as gods, sometimes as beings only slightly less exalted. "God," wrote the French bishop and political...
EDITORIALS
Nov 20, 2010

Too close to the death penalty

Six lay judges and three professional judges at the Yokohama District Court on Tuesday handed down a death sentence to a 32-year-old man for murdering two men in a Chiba Prefecture hotel in June 2009 — the first death sentence under the lay judge system introduced last year.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?