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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy / Longform
Mar 7, 2022

Is Japan on the brink of its own ‘Great Resignation’?

The pandemic has prompted millions across the globe to leave their jobs for more fulfilling, flexible roles. Should Japan's employers be worried?
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 7, 2022

Ukrainians find that relatives in Russia do not believe it is a war

Russian television channels do not show the bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, and its suburbs, or the devastating attacks on Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and other Ukrainian cities.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 4, 2022

The Eurobeat boom, boom, boom, boom means the '90s are back

Dust off your best para para dance moves, the sound of hi-NRG Heisei has returned.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 3, 2022

‘The Last 10 Years’: Keep a hanky handy for this weepy romance

Michihito Fujii's splashy terminal illness drama can't help succumbing to the usual genre tropes.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Feb 28, 2022

Pyeongchang still waiting to reap benefits of 2018 Winter Olympics

'The reality is very different from what was promised to us. Back then, locals here expected the Olympics to affect us a lot.”
Japan Times
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Hokkaido
Feb 28, 2022

Hokkaido, a pioneer in esports, draws fans and pro teams

The region has joined the boom, and has seen professional teams sprouting up one after another in anticipation of further growth and the Hokkaido Esports Festival.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Feb 27, 2022

Diane Kichijitsu: ‘Human interactions provide plenty of comedic material’

The male-dominated world of 'rakugo,' traditional Japanese comic storytelling, has welcomed a British woman who's in on the joke.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 26, 2022

Ukraine’s TV comedian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finds his role as wartime leader

Zelenskyy may be among the least likely wartime leaders the world has known, yet he's winning praise in the role just when his political fortunes had been dwindling.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2022

Hiroshi Okuhara's ‘Hotel Iris’ is a house of mirrors

The director's film adaptation of Yoko Ogawa's novel, in which Masatoshi Nagase plays a dangerously seductive translator, blurs the line between fantasy and reality.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Feb 23, 2022

Inside the global drive to fund a revolution in Myanmar

Activists and the shadow government alike have to resort to unofficial channels to ensure aid escapes the military regime's clutches.
Special Supplements / Ainu language special
Feb 21, 2022

Respected comic book spurs hope for indigenous tongue

In 2009, UNESCO in its “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger” designated the Ainu language as being critically endangered. As the most dire of the five categories — only extinct is worse — used in the report, it highlighted the precarious state that had befallen the language.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 20, 2022

Theater Commons Tokyo rethinks the 'voices' of performing arts in the COVID era

The festival examines radically different ways of creating and experiencing theater in the context of the pandemic, while also challenging the very idea of what theater can be.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / ANALYSIS
Feb 19, 2022

Hong Kong's 'COVID zero' success now worsens strains of omicron spike

Like an immune system overreacting and harming the person it is meant to protect, the 'dynamic COVID zero' policies that had crushed the virus in Hong Kong have contributed to current woes.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 18, 2022

A U.N. pact may restrict plastic production. Big Oil aims to stop it.

U.N. members are set to meet this month to draft the blueprint for a global plastics treaty. That's a problem for Big Oil, with the plastic industry set to double output within 20 years.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 18, 2022

With omicron as a ‘golden ticket,’ American travel fears fade

Two years into the pandemic, American travelers are generally less concerned about getting sick than getting stuck, according to travel agents.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 17, 2022

Deep-ocean creatures previously unknown to science may be fighting climate change

Plankton that fall to the ocean floor regulate the global climate by transferring carbon from the atmosphere to the seafloor, where it can remain entombed for millions of years.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 16, 2022

Can Kishida’s ‘new capitalism’ help Japan’s workers?

What is remarkable about Kishida's new capitalism is that the LDP is the very party that brought neoliberalism to Japan in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Feb 14, 2022

Ivan Reitman, director of ‘Ghostbusters,’ is dead at 75

Ivan Reitman, a producer and director of a string of movies including 'Ghostbusters” and 'National Lampoon's Animal House” that imprinted their antics on the funny bones of a generation of filmgoers, died Saturday at his home in Montecito, California.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 14, 2022

Here’s what the pandemic has in store for the world next

As a virus-weary world limps through the third year of the outbreak, experts warn that omicron won't be the last variant we have to contend with.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 14, 2022

Afghan smugglers hike prices and expand networks after Taliban takeover

The Taliban's lightning capture of Afghanistan has prompted a mass exodus, and smugglers are taking advantage of Afghans' desperation to leave by hiking prices.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 13, 2022

‘Of Arcs and Circles’: Step into the fertile imagination of a garden expert

Landscape artist Marc Peter Keane's collection of essays experiments with form and offers practical observations as well as metaphysical musings.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Feb 9, 2022

How Olympians embraced mental health after Simone Biles showed the way

The American gymnast's public struggles gave other Olympians tacit permission to share their vulnerabilities. Some of them have.
Japan Times
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Feb 8, 2022

The complex road to ending the dependence on Chinese rare earths

China is the global leader in rare earths mining, refining and component manufacturing, controlling about 37% of world reserves and 58% of mine production in 2020, sources show.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 5, 2022

'The Battle of Sekigahara' retraces Japan's historic samurai conflict

Chris Glenn's new book brings one of the most significant events in Japanese history to life in a blow-by-blow account of the battle that took place in 1600.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Feb 5, 2022

Quilting in the midst of a pandemic

Japan's quilters use new work and a new show to sew past to present
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 4, 2022

The end of ‘Fight Club’ was cut in China. The pattern goes back decades.

The 1999 cult classic starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton is not the only foreign film to be altered for audiences in mainland China.
OLYMPICS
Feb 4, 2022

What to watch at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics

Catch up on five key storylines to keep an eye on at the Games over the next couple of weeks.

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