Search - article

 
 
Reader Mail
May 24, 2012

Monuments don't change history

Regarding the May 20 AP article "Sex slave plaque in New Jersey riles Japanese officials": As an American citizen, I find it inappropriate for such a monument to be built in the state of New Jersey. If Koreans, on their own soil on the Korean Peninsula, feel the need to build such monuments, I can't...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2012

Beijing's North Korea policy only emboldens Pyongyang

Discussions in Beijing about North Korea are always frustrating. It's not so much due to the sharp divergence in U.S. and Chinese thinking about how to deal with Pyongyang; the two sides differ on many issues. No, the real problem, from our perspective, is the illogic of the Chinese position. Indeed,...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Promote respect, not sympathy

Regarding the May 16 Kyodo article "Ministry to urge employers to hire more women": I feel the motive here is incorrect. Instead of taking up this initiative to "improve [women's] employment conditions", the labor ministry should make efforts to acknowledge the value that women can add to the nation's...
Reader Mail
May 20, 2012

Stupidity of planners and builders

I was distressed, but not shocked, to read in the May 14 Jiji article "Extra work jacking up disaster housing costs" that homes for tsunami victims were not being built with the cold in mind.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 20, 2012

Japan faces a long, hot, nuclear-free summer

Is Japan — and particularly the Kansai region — going to have enough electric power to get it through peak summer demand? The Meteorological Agency's three-month projection for May through July, posted on its website (www.jma.go.jp/jp/longfcst/000_1_10.html) hedges its bets. For the four main islands,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 20, 2012

Economic woes, political volatility may creep into U.S. foreign affairs

No matter who wins the presidential election in November, the United States appears headed for a prolonged period of political volatility as leaders do not seem to have good answers to voters' anxieties about their economic future. This threatens to spill over into U.S. relations with the rest of the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
May 19, 2012

Hot springs puffer fish enjoy taste of success

Innovative attempts to raise tiger fugu in water originating from hot springs have been a great success in Nagano Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
May 17, 2012

NATO: world's best security insurance

Many years ago, I took my children to visit the sites of the D-Day landings (June 6, 1944) in Normandy. I wanted them to understand the sacrifices that others had made so that Europe and North America could enjoy the benefits of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Reader Mail
May 17, 2012

Whose nod will reassure us?

Regarding the May 15 front-page article "Oi assembly says yes to restarting reactors" and the rush to restart these idled nuclear reactors: The Oi municipal assembly's choice to preserve its local economy makes sense, especially in light of the lucrative measures of support promised by the central government...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
May 16, 2012

Japan's social-gaming industry hindered by government's anti-gambling move

When it comes to mobile social-gaming, nowhere is it as popular or as profitable as it is in Japan. The nation's two industry giants, Gree and its rival DeNA's Mobage, have been increasing their sales every quarter for years. Gree's TV-commercial campaigns are second only to cosmetics company Shiseido...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 13, 2012

Beware not the loud girls, but the plain ones

No one who remembers the ganguro (black-face) girls of the mid to late 1990s will be shocked by Friday magazine's little article on the hadeko (loud kids) of today, but it all gives rise to a bemusing question: How did the age-old quest for beauty become transmuted into a quest for weirdness?
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 13, 2012

Road-death stats hide the truth

The media likes to report on victims of accidents, disasters and crimes, and while it's natural to feel sympathy for unfortunate individuals, the only imaginable benefit this sort of coverage provides to viewers and readers is catharsis, which is better served by the popular arts.
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
May 12, 2012

Nagoya guide dog gets crash course in English

Canadian Lorelei Harada, a long-term resident of Japan with a progressive eye disease, will receive a guide dog from the Chubu Guide Dogs Association of Japan that has been trained to understand English.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 11, 2012

Filmmaker says don't worry, be happy

"Wow, the weather turned bad quickly, huh?"
Reader Mail
May 10, 2012

Dosimeters measure our distrust

Regarding the May 4 Jiji article "Last reactor halts Saturday": The measure of the Japanese people's distrust of any government assessment of the country's nuclear power system can be measured literally in becquerels as many members of the public now carry their own compact radiation-measuring devices....
COMMENTARY
May 10, 2012

Signal honor from the lord of clips

I wanted you to be the first to know. It has just been revealed by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy in the United States that I am on a very short list of journalists (eight in Western countries and seven others in India, Pakistan and Arab countries) to whom Osama bin Laden...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 10, 2012

Makoto Morimura literally finds hope in the news

Osaka-based artist Makoto Morimura was surely not alone last year in feeling that the newspapers were full of gloom and doom. But he probably was the only person who in response set for himself the task of searching for hope, literally.
Reader Mail
May 6, 2012

Global infrastructure crumbling

Kevin Rafferty's May 2 article, "Inviting economic suicide?," is correct on the main points: Japan is in an economic tailspin and this is of grave concern for our well-being. But so, too, is the rest of the industrialized world as the 500-year-old banking system, which is based on fraudulent accounting...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / Japan Pulse
May 5, 2012

Anyone for French toast ... cooked with mayo?

Some new Japanese spins on an old breakfast favorite.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
May 5, 2012

Observatory fills small Gifu town with pride

An official opening ceremony Sunday was held to celebrate the completion of a small astronomical observatory on the grounds of Tara Elementary School in Kamiishizu, Gifu Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 4, 2012

'Kantori Garu (Country Girl)'

The first time I went to Kyoto, in the mid-1970s, I thought I was in the middle of the biggest school excursion in the country. Thousands of kids from all over Japan were milling about in shopping districts and on temple grounds, and a foreigner such as I was still a sight rare enough for dozens of them...
Reader Mail
May 3, 2012

Feeling deregulation's effects

Let me make a brief comment about the Bloomberg article by Jared Diamond, titled "Three reasons why Japan's economic pain is worsening," which ran in The Japan Times on April 28.
Reader Mail
May 3, 2012

What are these people paid for?

Regarding the April 27 front-page article "Ozawa not guilty of fund conspiracy": It was pretty obvious that the former president of the Democratic Party of Japan, Ichiro Ozawa, would have to be found not guilty of conspiring to hide a ¥400 million payment to his fund management body, although in my...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 1, 2012

Debito takes on Donald: readers' responses

Some readers' responses to Debito Arudou's April 3 column, "Keene should engage brain before fueling 'flyjin,' foreign crime myths":
COMMENTARY
Apr 30, 2012

Fact-checking Japan's critics

The better U.S. media now use fact-checkers and truth meters to debunk outrageous claims by politicians. Maybe Japan should do the same toward its critics.
Reader Mail
Apr 29, 2012

Ground and waterway radiation

Regarding the April 24 Jiji article "Fukushima air to stay radioactive in 2022": This type of reporting is valuable. The radiation content in the air near Fukushima will remain dangerous. Other things that need to be discussed is the amount of radiation in the ground and in the waterways of Japan.
Reader Mail
Apr 29, 2012

Bone-marrow hurdles cleared

I would like to thank The Japan Times and its readers for making a real difference to someone in dire straights.
Reader Mail
Apr 29, 2012

Give all energy-savers a break

Regarding the April 26 Jiji article "Government to roll out new energy-efficiency system for homes": In the future most energy- efficient homes will be located far from downtown urban centers simply because land prices are more affordable the farther you move away from the congested and highly commercial...

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past