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Japan Times
JAPAN / WEDGE
Feb 23, 2014

'Cloud matching' inspiring startups

Cloud matching, the practice of matching buyers and sellers from a large pool of people, organizations and companies, is a field entrepreneurs are seeking out as a new business opportunity.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Feb 23, 2014

Teens win first medals for Japan

Ayumu Hirano and Taku Hiraoka earned Japan's first medals at the Sochi Winter O lympics on Feb. 11 by taking silver and bronze, respectively, in the men's snowboard halfpipe.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 22, 2014

Noam Chomsky: Truth to power

Often dubbed one of the world's most important intellectuals and its leading public dissident, Noam Chomsky was for years among the top 10 most quoted academics on the planet, edged out only by William Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Aristotle.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 22, 2014

Abe's culture wars boomerang against Japan

Japan's culture wars are heating up to the detriment of the nation. The Financial Times is right to warn that the jingoism of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and attempts to stifle public debate, are grave threats to Japan's open society. Most Japanese don't want to go where Abe is trying to drag them, but...
Reader Mail
Feb 22, 2014

Don't wait up for a U.S. apology

I am an admirer in general of Jeff Kingston's articles, but I can't believe his Feb. 16 Counterpoint article, "Tokyo firebombings and unfinished U.S. business." Is he so naive as to think that the United States should apologize not only for the Tokyo firebombings of March 9-10, 1945, but also for the...
Reader Mail
Feb 22, 2014

Pioneer on course to foil stereotype

Rowan Hooper makes a good observation in his Feb. 16 article "Stem-cell leap defied Japanese norms." But I think this is also a cultural issue in which Haruko Obokata herself is given more importance than what she does.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 22, 2014

Report says allies under attack must request Japan's assistance

Japan can defend its allies and friendly nations under attack but only at their request, a prominent member of a government panel mulling collective security says in an apparent bid to ease concern that the government may act on its own.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2014

The return of 1980s rhetoric in Russia

Today's Russia may be a wealthier, more open nation than the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, but President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine is working hard on restoring the stifling moral climate of 30 years ago.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 21, 2014

'Fallujah' asks where responsibility lies for 2004 Iraq War hostage issue

A movie documenting the lives of three Japanese who were taken hostage by an armed group in Iraq in 2004 during the Iraq War and were later released started playing on Feb. 8 in Cinemaskhole, a movie theater in Nagoya.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 20, 2014

Cabinet will decide defense role: Abe

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday that Cabinet approval is enough to change the government's interpretation of war-renouncing Article 9 and allow Japan to help defend allied nations.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Feb 19, 2014

Nasty, brutish and short?: The brief life and times of 'Happy Bob'

March 1984: Ronald Reagan was U.S. president, Yasuhiro Nakasone Japan's prime minister. Afghan rebels were struggling to rid their country of foreign invaders (deja vu!). Break-dancing was a global craze. Tokyo Disneyland was so new it hadn't even been visited by Michael Jackson yet. Pay telephones were...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 19, 2014

NNTT debut peers behind the masks of 'Condemned' Sartre family

Until Japan was opened to the West in the mid-19th century, its theater culture mainly comprised traditional forms such as kabuki, comic kyōgen, bunraku (puppet theater) and noh.
Reader Mail
Feb 19, 2014

Roll out carpet for foreign nurses

Regarding the Feb. 3 article titled "Give foreign nurses in Japan a boost by treating accord as long-term remedy for labor shortages": I am shocked again to realize how xenophobic the Japanese authorities are. It is evident that the nationwide nursing shortage is worsening, yet the central and local...
Reader Mail
Feb 19, 2014

Some lay judges just don't get it

For a long time, one criticism of Japan has been the paucity of broad and deep public discussion of its use of capital punishment, a lack of transparency in the process and the treatment of detained convicts in general. Successive governments have trotted out statistics declaring overwhelming public...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Feb 18, 2014

Consumption tax rush approaching peak time

Many who want to avoid the higher consumption tax by buying now may not save as much money as they think.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Feb 16, 2014

An endangered liberal voice

What has become of the Liberal Democratic Party's 'liberalism' since the Abe administration took the nation's helm? A lone survivor of that tradition weighs in on the future of 'Abenomics' and Japan itself.
EDITORIALS
Feb 16, 2014

Now Kaieda must deliver

The head of the Democratic Party of Japan says the party will fiercely confront the Abe administration, which he called a 'raging horse,' to push politics aimed at protecting people's lives and jobs.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 16, 2014

All's fair when it comes to NHK's fare

In a country where TV fare typically involves panels of posturing personalities oohing and aahing over each other's exploits, Japan's two national NHK channels are a welcome beacon of quality programming.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Feb 16, 2014

Buckingham palace seeks new housekeeper

Buckingham Palace is advertising for a new housekeeping assistant, whose duties include running the royal baths and arranging the tea service.
JAPAN / FUKUSHIMA FILE
Feb 16, 2014

Lack of bids threatens to keep Fukushima evacuees in temporary lodgings

Plans to build new public apartments for the nuclear refugees in Fukushima Prefecture are stalling because the prefectural government is struggling to attract bids from contractors.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 15, 2014

A tale of two Abes: PM's rosy view jars with life of toil seen in poison case

Did the frozen-food poisoner have some obscure notion of 'justice' in mind? Might it have been his way of saying to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 'Japan is not back; Japan won't be back until working for a living does not entail the sacrifice of all human dignity
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 15, 2014

Samuragochi scandal shows that tin-eared classical music fans can be suckers for stories

What makes Mamoru Samuragochi's story interesting is not that he got away with his subterfuge for so long, but that the media, the public and even professional musicians accepted the story as being proof of his value as an artist.
Reader Mail
Feb 15, 2014

Dumb reason for embracing English class

Regarding Michael Hoffman's Feb. 2 article, "For Japan's foreign residents, the little things make such a big difference": The other day I saw a language-school ad showing an interracial wedding between a Japanese man and his blonde, blue-eyed bride, with a white male gesturing frustratedly in the background....
Reader Mail
Feb 15, 2014

Time for project on climate reality

Readers might find it puzzling that the subject of the Feb. 3 editorial, "Rising costs of climate change," was not front-page news. Increasingly extreme weather events brought about by man-made global warming should be a priority today precisely because it is the No. 1 threat to our future.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Feb 14, 2014

Chinese students put Shiga residents online

Chinese exchange students at Shiga University have been interviewing local residents and posting the videos and articles in Chinese under a project called Interviewing 100 People in Hikone.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 13, 2014

A butler who brought color to the White House

"The Butler" director Lee Daniels didn't start out as a filmmaker but as an owner of a nursing agency in Los Angeles. "So I know how to gather funds, get the people, and treat filmmaking like a business," he tells The Japan Times. "At the same time, once the filming starts, I can't be just a businessman...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 12, 2014

Kushida's 'Flapper' comes roaring back

"Young people these days won't be too familiar with the term the Roaring Twenties, but the 1920s still hold interest as a period. It was a time of changing values, not only in the United States, but in Europe: Dadaism, Cubism, Expressionism and other non-mainstream arts were blossoming. All over the...
Reader Mail
Feb 12, 2014

Creative tale of deductive thought

Regarding the Jan. 30 article by Mark Gottlieb, "The confounding case of Japan's creativity crisis": While the premise that describes "creativity" appears generally sound, Gottlieb's assertion that "At its heart, creativity is really nothing more than deductive reasoning" doesn't seem to hold up.
Reader Mail
Feb 12, 2014

Making a clear cut with the past

Concerning the Feb. 4 article "Yasukuni: It's open to interpretation": I would like to add a few historic facts. Yasukuni is barely understood in its historic context. It is not just a memorial for the war dead! In the middle of the 19th century the modern nation of Japan was modeled according to the...
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Feb 9, 2014

Olympics to have great impact on economy

Tokyo's hosting of the 2020 O lympic Games will generate up to ¥20 trillion in spillover effects for the economy, according to a projection released by a think tank on Jan. 6.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years