Search - 2005

 
 
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2007

U.K. liberties versus security

LONDON — The director general of the British Security Services (MI5) has been telling the world that there are at least 2,000 people inside Britain who are involved in terrorism-related activities, and there may be many more. Or to put it crudely, there are at least 2,000 individuals bent on killing...
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2007

Koreans who paid for Japan

This summer I visited several monuments in Hiroshima and Okinawa that console the souls of Koreans who died during the Pacific War while living in Japan or serving in the Japanese military. It was a heart-wrenching experience.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 25, 2007

Vermilion gallops to record win in Japan Cup Dirt

Race favorite Vermilion extended his winning streak to two with a record win in the Japan Cup Dirt Saturday at Tokyo Racecourse.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Nov 25, 2007

'Best Hit' awards; Kyosen Ohashi tour of Japan; affordable rural real estate

The fifth annual "Best Hit Kayosai (Best Hit Pop Song Festival)" will be broadcast live Monday night at 9 p.m. on the Yomiuri Television network (Nihon TV in Tokyo) from the Osaka Festival Hall.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 23, 2007

'Midnight Eagle'

Why do national cinemas excel in some genres but not in others? Whatever its many sins, Hollywood makes thrillers that for sheer visceral kicks — car chases! explosions! Matt Damon leaping across a chasm through a tiny open window! — are the global standard.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 23, 2007

Guided through Japan's deep north by the holy spirit of Basho

Tohoku is Japan's "deep north," through which the famous Zen monk and haiku poet Matsuo Basho walked in 1689, writing one of the most famous travelogues in world literature, "Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 22, 2007

Asian collectors overtake Japanese market

China casts a long shadow over the Japanese art market. However lively, large and long-suffering the art world in Japan may be, it has not garnered the kind of excited interest that the relatively young Chinese scene has in the last five years.
JAPAN
Nov 21, 2007

Prosecutor avoids prison for forged nixing of case

A former prosecutor was handed a suspended two-year prison term Tuesday for forging signatures and personal seals of a molestation victim to make it appear she had filed a request to withdraw her criminal complaint.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 20, 2007

Watching them watching us

A s many non-Japanese are well aware, today is "G Day," or "F Day," or whatever cute name you'd like to assign to it: The day that the government begins fingerprinting virtually all foreigners — or "gaijin," or more appropriately "gaikokujin" — entering Japan. And those of us who will be subjected...
EDITORIALS
Nov 19, 2007

Expansion of asset-backed loans

Financial assistance to smaller enterprises will be effective in narrowing the economic gaps between urban and rural regions, because it will help strengthen local economies. Hopefully the government's policy measures for such assistance will prove helpful.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 18, 2007

Hot hibachi league seems likely to burn all winter long

About this time of year, someone usually asks me, "Are you going to keep writing the column through the winter?" or "What is there to write about during the offseason?"
MORE SPORTS
Nov 17, 2007

Noguchi eyes breakthrough performance in return

More than three years have passed since the most significant day in Mizuki Noguchi's life.
EDITORIALS
Nov 17, 2007

Staving off recidivism

The Justice Ministry's 2007 white paper on crimes focuses on repeat offenders, using analyses of statistics from 1948 to 2006. It points to the importance of education and support programs for criminal offenders as a means of preventing the recurrence of crimes, and shows that the duty to prevent crimes...
BASKETBALL
Nov 15, 2007

Hokkaido residents embrace new pro basketball team

SAPPORO — It wasn't until recent years that Hokkaido was believed to be a place that wouldn't come into being, mainly because of the far, isolated location from the mainland of Japan — Tokyo particularly — and its chillier climate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / OTAKOOL
Nov 15, 2007

Remix this: anime gets hijacked

Tim Park sits at home in his one-man studio in Ontario, Canada surrounded by piles of anime DVDs and a ton of tech.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 15, 2007

A big noise about what?

'I think the best pop is always subversive in its nature," says James Righton over the phone from London a few days after his band Klaxons beat the bookies' odds to win the Mercury Music Prize, a major award that gives $40,000 to the "best" British or Irish album of the year. "Even things like Abba —...
EDITORIALS
Nov 14, 2007

The dollar tumbles

There is something weirdly appropriate about the fact that it took a supermodel and not an economist to draw attention to the plight of the U.S. dollar. Reports that Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen allegedly refused to be paid in greenbacks and insisted on euros had markets aflutter and highlighted...
COMMENTARY
Nov 14, 2007

Telling the truth about the limits of oil

LONDON — If a diplomat is "an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country" (Sir Henry Wotton, 1612), then oil industry executives used to be the business world's equivalent of diplomats.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami