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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 9, 2014

Asia's myriad film genres celebrated at Udine festival

Why go to a film festival that specializes in the sort of popular Asian genres — from Hong Kong actioners to South Korean comedies — that the other "better" sort of festivals have traditionally sniffed at?
WORLD / Crime & Legal
May 5, 2014

China military leaker gets 10 years

China has handed a 10-year prison term to an individual who leaked secret military documents and photographs to a foreign spy, state media reported on Monday, without naming the country involved.
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2014

Malaysia's jet, Korea's ferry tell larger stories

Tragedy has struck Malaysia and South Korea in recent weeks, with the travails of searching for a lost airliner and of recovering bodies from a sunken ferry played out in horrifying detail on the world's TV screens. Unlike Malaysia, though, South Korea is likely to come out of its crisis stronger than ever.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2014

China starts, loses unprovoked Twitter war

China loses an unprovoked war on Twitter after a semi-retired Twitter account of mostly Sinophiles suggests that a solemnly worded Twitter message fron the People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's official mouthpiece, is a parody.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 30, 2014

Injuries reported after explosion in capital of China's Xinjiang region

An explosion at a railway station in Urumqi, the capital of China's restive far western region of Xinjiang, on Wednesday injured some people, state media said.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2014

Manga about work at Fukushima No. 1 stirs locals' ire

Cartoon characters who suffered nosebleeds after a visit to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are turning into a headache for manga publisher Shogakukan.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Apr 29, 2014

Kerr qualified to coach Knicks but may pass on chance

When Steve Kerr was a star senior guard at the University of Arizona in 1988, students at a game at rival Arizona State shouted, "PLO, PLO," and "Go back to Beirut" at Kerr.
CULTURE / Music / STRANGE BOUTIQUE
Apr 29, 2014

Music curators deserve credit for keeping local scenes alive

The term "cultural curator" is one that tends to provoke reactions ranging from sneers to rage. It really is a horrible term in some ways, with problematic embedded associations.
EDITORIALS
Apr 28, 2014

Plug political funding loopholes

The fact that a question even exists on whether Your Party former chief Yoshimi Watanabe broke the law when he personally borrowed ¥800 million from a cosmetics company chairman ahead of elections points to the inadequacy of current laws on political funding transparency.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 27, 2014

China releases trove of Japanese sex slave records

China has released previously confidential Japanese wartime documents, including some about "comfort women" forced to serve in military brothels during World War II, state media reported.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 27, 2014

Flipping kanji around for new meanings

A number of Japanese compound words can be used to form other words when the order of their kanji is reversed. Take 平和 (heiwa, peace) for example, which can be reversed to read 和平 (wahei, which also means peace, but with a slightly different usage such as in 和平交渉 (wahei kōshō, peace...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 25, 2014

Japan scores whaling own goal

In the hindsight of the recent International Court of Justice's humiliating ruling against Japan's Antarctic scientific whaling, the government's slapping down of Japan Greenpeace in 2010 was probably a bad idea.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2014

Not the time to turn virtual war into a real one

Although a dozen or so people have been killed in random incidents, the 'war' in eastern Ukraine remains virtual. The old existing civic administrations go on as before, ignoring the pro-Russian takeovers of civic buildings.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 24, 2014

Politician knocks Obama's marriage

President Barack Obama's Tokyo visit may have generated the kind of media attention normally associated with a Paul McCartney concert. But one Japanese politician, at least, didn't seem too excited.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 24, 2014

Did Barack, Shinzo get down to sushi or business?

U.S. President Barack Obama had his first session with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday in Tokyo, treated at what is often touted as the best-ever sushi bar in Japan: Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo's Ginza district.
MORE SPORTS / MAN ABOUT SPORTS
Apr 22, 2014

Ex-NFL star Johnson happy for new shot with CFL

Don't you just love serendipitous dovetailing?
ASIA PACIFIC
Apr 21, 2014

China steps up purge of online porn amid wider censorship push

China has shut down more than 100 websites carrying pornography and closed thousands of accounts on social media sites in an renewed effort to clean up the Internet, state media reported.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 19, 2014

Team Abe's alternate-reality Kool-Aid

Japan's relations with China and South Korea are in tatters, there has been no progress on dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons program, strains with Washington persist, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks are at an impasse, whaling got harpooned and hopes for a deal with Russia on the northern...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Apr 17, 2014

For China's Xi, purging corruption a means to install loyalists

Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to use a purge of high-ranking officials suspected of corruption to instal people close to him and reform-minded bureaucrats into critical positions across the Communist Party, the government and the military, sources say.
BUSINESS / Markets
Apr 14, 2014

Bourses scrap disclosure reforms

Japan Exchange Group Inc. has decided to scrap a plan to adopt tougher disclosure rules, saying the nation's companies are getting better at communicating with investors on their own.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 12, 2014

Loss of after-school program in Osaka will hurt poor kids

In February, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was castigated by local media for keeping public schools open during a snowstorm. One of his reasons for not closing schools was that many parents relied on them not only to look after their kids during the day, but also to feed them. The U.S. Department of...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2014

U.S. empire beyond salvation

For 25 years, the U.S. has tried to police the world for its own interests and failed. Now, it can't even cut and run from Iraq and Afghanistan because it is too deeply entrenched in the Middle East.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Apr 8, 2014

U.S. labels some eastern Ukraine protesters as 'paid provocateurs'

The U.S. on Monday accused Russia of instigating the storming of government offices in eastern Ukraine, unrest that echoed the events preceding Russia's annexation of Crimea.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2014

Recep Erdogan's pyrrhic victory

The triumph of Turkey's beleaguered Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party in last week's local elections is unlikely to ameliorate the country's internal conflicts, much less revive its tarnished international standing.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2014

Voters do not deserve blame for low turnout

There was a time in America when political activitists used to say that a candidate whose main strategy was to talk about how rotten the other side was wasn't worth a vote. Can the today's voters who share that sentiment be blamed for not voting on Nov. 4?
JAPAN
Apr 5, 2014

MSDF vessel to strike new North missiles

A Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer in the Sea of Japan is ordered to shoot down any ballistic missiles launched by North Korea.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 5, 2014

Fallout from the tax rise may hit in surprising ways

Prior to the consumption tax increase last Tuesday, from 5 percent to 8 percent, Japanese consumers were spending to beat the band. The local business magazine Economist (not to be confused with the English language newsweekly) reports that ¥4 trillion was spent on goods and services in recent months...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 5, 2014

Reinventing the wheel: the future of cycling in Tokyo

On Jan. 24, a full-page advert appeared in the Tokyo edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun for a petition on behalf of the capital's cyclists. "Join the new governor in making Tokyo a bicycle city," read the headline for the ad, which reeled off a series of suggested improvements: more extensive cycling lanes,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 5, 2014

Lessons of Fukushima: Reactor restarts are unwise

Kyle Cleveland, my colleague at Temple University Japan, recently published a report in the online Asia-Pacific Journal, "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Politics of Uncertainty" that has drawn widespread media attention. Based on numerous interviews with government officials,...
Reader Mail
Apr 5, 2014

A hyped story never trumps truthful report

Regarding Michael Hoffman’s March 30 Big in Japan column titled “The truth is, we have gotten too used to lying” [which concerns the media frenzy over the suspicion that Dr. Haruko Obokata manipulated data in her research papers describing a new, simple method for producing pluripotent cells]:...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear