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EDITORIALS
May 9, 2011

First extra budget moves

The Diet on May 2 enacted the first supplementary budget for fiscal 2011. Worth ¥4.015 trillion, the extra budget is aimed at pushing reconstruction measures in the Tohoku-Pacific region, which was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The Kan administration now faces the more difficult...
EDITORIALS
May 9, 2011

Stimulating the economy

Economic reports made public April 28 by the government and the Bank of Japan underscore the rapid deterioration of the Japanese economy in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear plant accidents.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 9, 2011

A further understanding of how money talks

In my previous column on the subject of 金 (kin or kane), alternatively meaning money, gold or metal, I realized that I'd barely scratched the surface of this vast subject. What forms does money take? How is it handled? Or, for that matter, how is it mishandled?
Reader Mail
May 8, 2011

Better use of the U.S. Marines

In April 27, 135 killer tornadoes struck America's southern states, devastating towns and villages and killing 337 people. Alabama sustained the greatest damage, and reported 249 deaths. Nearly 1 million customers were forced to go without electricity, a scale comparable to that caused by Hurricane Katrina,...
Reader Mail
May 8, 2011

Insane choice for future energy

Regarding the May 4 editorial, "Triple disaster and the Constitution": The nuclear plant disaster at Fukushima disaster is not over, and there will likely be other reactors in Japan and around the world that will meet the same fate because of the fact that there are 440 nuclear power plants globally...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 8, 2011

'Transcendent Man' denies life ends with death

When Ray Kurzweil was a child he tried to invent a homework machine: He didn't accept that he had to waste time doing his dumb school assignments. Half a century on, nothing much has changed, though the authority Kurzweil challenges has got loftier: Now, says the American futurist and inventor, he doesn't...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 7, 2011

In search of a nuclear disposal site

Roughly 300 km northwest of Finland's capital, Helsinki, is the island of Olkiluoto, home to two nuclear power plants and the potential site for one of the world's first permanent underground high-level nuclear waste repositories.
CULTURE / Music
May 5, 2011

New record label Pachinko starts up despite uncertain times

In 2010, legal downloads of music in Japan increased marginally over 2009, but CD sales were down by 12 percent, and sales by foreign artists, both imports and nihonban (domestically manufactured discs), by 15 percent. It doesn't sound like the best time to start a new record label featuring overseas...
OLYMPICS
May 5, 2011

The least that East Asians can do to cooperate

As China continues its unremitting rise, people throughout East Asia are wondering whether their states will ever be able to achieve the peaceful, stable relations that now characterize Europe. Given the regularity of serious diplomatic spats — over everything from tiny atolls in the South China Sea...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 5, 2011

'Art Brut Japonais': Unleashing the uninhibited power of expression

In recent weeks there have been several contemporary-art group exhibitions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Annual, VOCA at the Ueno Royal Museum, and the Sompo Japan Rising Artists Exhibition. In theory these exhibitions, which are usually scheduled to coincide with the optimism of spring,...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
May 4, 2011

Spurs paid price after running into confident Grizzlies at wrong time

The beauty of the NBA's best-of-seven playoff format is the best teams almost always advance from the first round.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
May 3, 2011

Kamakura: Considering TEPCO's handling of the nuclear crisis, do you think the company should be taken over by the government?

Jean-Philippe PatryChiropractor, 38 (French)Yes, it should be taken over. The government should take over nuclear energy and invest in new energy. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is after easy money; it's a capitalistic thing and it should be disbanded.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 2, 2011

Japan firms ignore foreign media at own peril: expert

Japanese companies need to improve their communication with the foreign media when attempting to expand their presence in overseas markets, says a Tokyo-based expert in corporate public relations.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 2, 2011

Reading between the lines of disaster vocabulary

If you chanced to visit Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s website in mid-April, you probably saw a note regarding the utility's tsunami e no taisaku (津波への対策, tsunami policy). Clearly it had been written in more innocent times. Relax, it said in effect. The policy was iron-clad. It rested on painstaking...
Reader Mail
May 1, 2011

Silent protests against noise

Regarding the April 26 article "Brit held in campaign noise protest": Assuming nobody was hurt by grabbing the microphone, I'd like to applaud Edward Jones' actions in disrupting campaign efforts (for the Tokorozawa Municipal Assembly, Saitama Prefecture) on April 23.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2011

Way to institutionalize a system of integrity

When a career bureaucrat with a corruption charge pending against him was chosen to be the chief vigilance commissioner, the Supreme Court nullified the appointment to protect the "institutional integrity" of the CVC.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 1, 2011

Tabloids warn of major quake beneath Tokyo

Now that northeast Japan is gradually shifting into recovery mode and the Fukushima nuclear plant crisis is becoming more manageable, new themes have been emerging in the vernacular media. One is the life expectancy of the cabinet of PM Naoto Kan.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes