Search - article

 
 
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2013

Impact on Taiwan's sovereignty

Regarding Frank Ching's Oct. 21 article, "Taiwan opposition leery of China trade accord": This is sheer propaganda. Ching doesn't seem to have the foggiest idea of the negative impact that the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) has had, and will have, on Taiwan's sovereignty. Data to date...
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2013

Perpetual threat to our survival

Regarding Robert Spalding Oct. 9 article, "Nuclear arms also serve as instruments of peace": Spalding's argument that the possession of nuclear weapons actually helps to maintain peace among states may convince some people, but what he seems to miss is that such deterrence works only in an interstate...
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2013

Abe's quest for a nuclear base

Surely the headline for the Oct. 19 article "Fukushima 2020: Will Japan be able to keep the nuclear situation under control?" is rhetorical, as the instigator of the nuclear coverup, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is about to pass his "Whatever-I-Feel-Like-Making-Secret-Is-Secret Act," for which he will...
Reader Mail
Oct 23, 2013

Sorcerer needed for Fukushima

The most disturbing sentence in the Oct. 16 Jiji article "Tepco's toxic water failures pitiful [according to the Nuclear Regulation Authority]" is the last one: "Meanwhile, no community has volunteered to host the 'final' storage site."
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Oct 22, 2013

Russia eyeing NSA-like surveillance

Less than three months after granting asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, Russia is preparing to implement the kind of electronic surveillance that Snowden uncovered in the U.S.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 22, 2013

ACA website to New Yorker: drop dead for now

The not-typically-quotable U.S. House Speaker John Boehner does have a point when he asks how we can we tax people for not buying Obamacare from a website that doesn't work.
LIFE
Oct 22, 2013

Apathy is the real enemy in NSA affair

One of the most disturbing aspects of the public response to Edward Snowden's revelations about the scale of governmental surveillance is how little public disquiet there appears to be about it. A recent YouGov poll, for example, asked respondents whether the British security services have too many or...
LIFE
Oct 22, 2013

Mike Mills looks at depression in Japan

Among all the many trips American film director Mike Mills has made to Japan since he first started coming here in the mid 1990s, one incident in particular has remained with him.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Oct 21, 2013

With ban on lead in hunters' bullets, California hopes to protect condors

By 1982, the number of California condors in the wild had dwindled to 22, an entire species nearly wiped out by, among other threats, lead poisoning from hunters' ammunition.
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Oct 20, 2013

Political winds buffet NHK

An NHK insider warns that the quality of Japan's public broadcasting system is threatened by a poor personnel appointment for which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pulling the strings.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Oct 20, 2013

Disaster prevention day

On Sept. 1, the Day of Disaster Prevention, training was carried out in many areas. This is the 90th year since the Great Kanto Earthquake. In some places, participants had to prepare to face many dead bodies in the worst situation, and in other places they sought for ways to deal with a coming crisis by setting up various situations.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Oct 18, 2013

Norma Field, champion of Japan's leftist literature, retires — but not from anti-nuclear activism

A colleague once told me he didn't want to be attached to lost causes,' says academic Norma Field. 'I've never understood thinking like that. The bright spots in human history are so few. We should embrace and magnify them.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 18, 2013

Civilizing academia's marketplace of ideas

History professor Niall Ferguson goes after liberal economist Paul Krugman, calling him the intellectual equivalent of a robber baron for the way he 'abuses his power' in the blogosphere.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Oct 18, 2013

Nagoya temple erects Home-for-all for guests

Aioiyama Tokurinji Temple in Tenpaku Ward, Nagoya, is currently building a guest house named Home-for-all within its premises. The house will be fitted with a solar power system and will be self-sufficient energywise.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2013

Defenders of Thai monarchy busy politicizing

You would think that Thailand's state agencies would be trying to de-politicize issues related to the monarchy in light of the country's deep polarization in recent years. You would be wrong.
EDITORIALS
Oct 16, 2013

Policy speech overlooks key issues

An extraordinary Diet session starts ostensibly to deal with radioactive contamination, reconstruction of disaster-hit areas and world trade, but the prime minister's policy speech misses.
Reader Mail
Oct 16, 2013

Police must confront 'stalkers'

Regarding the Oct. 11 front-page article "Tougher stalking law failed to stir police": The death of a child may not be the police's fault, but there are serious issues with Japan's police force. Not accepting the victim's first report and suggesting that the victim take the matter to another police station...
Reader Mail
Oct 16, 2013

Forget about cellphone warnings

Regarding the Oct. 12 article "Police partially blame stalking slaying to cellphone mixup": What a headline! So, if only the Mitaka police had had Charles Thomas Ikenaga's telephone number [instead of his friend's], there never would have been a savage murder right in front of the victim's home.
Reader Mail
Oct 16, 2013

Obama's 'dawdle' a wise move

In his Aug. 29 article, "Obama's great Asian dawdle," Brahma Chellaney gets it wrong on two major points.
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Oct 16, 2013

Adoption and fostering, animal homes and a tribute: readers' mail

In response to a recent story about adoption and foster parenting in Japan, one woman recounts her life of doing both.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2013

The freedom of belief and religion

Freedom of belief or religion is considered in democratic countries to be a fundamental human right and is enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Freedom of religion includes the right to change religion or not to have any religion. It also covers the freedom to practice...
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Oct 13, 2013

Japan's decreasing population

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications made public on the 28th that the population of Japan based on the basic register of residents as of the end of March this year was 126,393,679.
Reader Mail
Oct 12, 2013

Cigarettes belie health campaign

Regarding the Oct. 8 article "Japanese convenience store chain going healthy": I enjoy shopping at Lawson, but it seems blatantly hypocritical for the chain to launch a PR campaign that says the company is "going healthy."
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2013

The U.S. Civil War continues

A big hoax of American history is that the Civil War ended in 1865. Unfortunately it continues — as a battle over redistributing shares of economic power in the clothing of cultural values.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Oct 11, 2013

Camera Grandma's photos document Gifu village's demise

Izu Photo Museum in Nagaizumi, Shizuoka Prefecture, is exhibiting the work of late amateur photographer Tazuko Masuyama on the Tokuyama Dam in Gifu Prefecture, where a small village vanished under the waters of a reservoir decades ago.
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 11, 2013

Vitamin D's aid for bones doubted

Vitamin D supplements don't help boost bone density in healthy adults, judging from a review of 23 studies that suggests the supplement should be limited to people with a documented deficiency to fight osteoporosis.
EDITORIALS
Oct 10, 2013

Political intervention in education

The education ministry should drop its threat to have Taketomi Town of Okinawa Prefecture declared a scofflaw for refusing to adopt a school civics textbook selected by an area council.
Reader Mail
Oct 9, 2013

Heroine seemed to act alone

Regarding the Oct. 2 Kyodo article "Woman killed by train after saving man": This was a heroic young lady. Sincere condolences to her family. I saw the report on TV. She (Natsue Murata, 40) was on the other side of the railroad tracks [between Kamoi and Nakayama stations on the JR Yokohama Line]. She...

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