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COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2008

Austria's fear and loathing still democratic

NEW YORK — Two far-right parties, the Austrian Freedom Party and the Movement for Austria's Future, won 29 percent of the vote in the latest Austrian general election — double their total in the 2006 election.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2008

Motorcycle makers battle it out in Vietnam

HANOI — Red roses, field flowers, baskets of vegetables, slaughtered hogs. In Vietnam, farmers bring anything that can be loaded onto a motorcycle to market in the morning. In early evenings, bikers jam the streets as they return home.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 7, 2008

New Japanese makes inroads into Chinese vocabulary

In my last column, on Aug. 5, I discussed how Japanese people still find it practical to use kanji (Sino-Japanese ideographs) when adopting new foreign terms and modern concepts.
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2008

Counterproductive antiterrorism

Buried deep in the U.S. Pentagon somewhere is an official in charge of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As he goes about his daily chores — organizing the floor shackles, bully guards, illegal confinements, arbitrary trials and occasional torture sessions — he no doubt thinks he is...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 5, 2008

So you think U.S. democracy's dying? Well, you're probably right

The national conventions of the U.S. Democratic and Republican parties are now but fast-fading memories. The only thing that I really wanted to know once they were over was: Who has the balloon concession for these events, because there's obviously a lot of easy money to be made from hot air.
EDITORIALS
Oct 4, 2008

Rekindling trust in pensions

At a time when people's trust in the nation's pension system has practically vanished due to pension records scandals, a panel of the Social Welfare Council, an advisory body to the welfare minister, is discussing problems related to the government's 2004 decision on dealing with pension issues.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 30, 2008

Practical fashion for the other end of life

One after the other, the models strutted across the stage to bouncy '80s dance tunes, all showing off designs of the same article of clothing — adult diapers.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 30, 2008

Don't go calling me kiseichū, you big daikon

By writing about bujoku (侮辱 , insults) in Japanese, I truly risk being labeled a namaiki na yatsu (生意気な奴 , a wiseacre). Well, wisdom comes in a variety of forms, including nasty ones. So, dear reader, even if you are donkan (鈍感 , obtuse), chi no meguri ga warui (血の巡りが悪い,...
EDITORIALS
Sep 29, 2008

Making aid work

In 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which were aimed at raising the standard of living in the developing world. Among other things, the eight goals called for cutting by half the number of people worldwide who live on less than $1 a day, achieving universal primary...
EDITORIALS
Sep 26, 2008

Mr. Aso has his Cabinet

Mr. Taro Aso was chosen as the nation's 92nd prime minister by the Diet and immediately formed his Cabinet on Wednesday. For Mr. Aso, a grandson of the late former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and a son-in-law of the late former Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki, this should be an auspicious occasion.
Reader Mail
Sep 25, 2008

Generalization doesn't work

Comments by Wyndham Miles in his Sept. 21 letter, "Shameful response to gropers," are based on a misunderstanding of Sumire Shigehara's Sept. 14 letter ("Women-only train cars are shameful"). Shigehara was not implying that molested women are dishonest or that Japanese people ignore gropers. Her point...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 24, 2008

Facing a rise in sea level

SINGAPORE — As policymakers plan ahead in Tokyo, Osaka-Kobe and other major port cities in Japan, one of the most vexing questions they face is how much will the sea level rise in coming decades?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 23, 2008

Vivienne Sato

Vivienne Sato is a unique cultural concierge in Tokyo, full of the lowdown on both high art and mass culture. Vivi knows what and who's happening in the city 24/365, and if she's present, the party is on till the wee-wee hours. Always dressed to the nines — and often to the nine hundreds — with her...
EDITORIALS
Sep 21, 2008

New, centenarian society

This year's Respect for the Aged Day, last Monday, found a lot more aged to respect than ever before. According to Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry statistics, over 36,000 people in Japan are now over 100 years old. Many others are close behind. Over 28 million people were aged 65 and over, one-quarter...
JAPAN
Sep 19, 2008

Japan must address suicide's social angle to stop it, experts say

Suicide should be recognized as a social rather than individual problem, and the government and society need to take proactive measures to prevent it, panelists at a suicide symposium in Tokyo recently said.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 14, 2008

Feed, don't fight, Afghanistan

The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and killing of Japanese aid worker Kazuya Ito in Afghanistan last month remain unclear. In the web journal Japan Focus, Michael Penn conjectures that Ito's death resulted from a "botched effort to abduct him, not . . . premeditated murder." The gunshot wounds...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Sep 14, 2008

'American Graffiti,' Japanese style

First of two parts
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2008

Can YouTube cure political apathy?

Thanks to video-sharing Web sites like YouTube, it has become easier to broadcast and share video clips with the world, whether it's a short film shot with a cell phone or an elaborately choreographed movie.
COMMENTARY
Sep 10, 2008

Thailand: populism vs. privilege

Thaksin Shinawatra is shaping up to be the Juan Peron of Thailand, with the significant difference that he is a rich Peron. The billions he earned in his telecom businesses enabled him to rise to the top of Thai politics — and he used his power to shift wealth and power systematically from the rich...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2008

WHO's sick manifesto for global recession

LONDON — The World Health Organization claimed this week that "social injustice is killing people on a grand scale." Its major report on the "Social Determinants of Health" concludes that social and economic inequality is a major global cause of disease and that only massive government intervention...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2008

One-night stand set for hot '90s go-go club

Kumiko Araki has been waiting 14 years for Juliana Tokyo, a dance club that was a sensation in the capital in the early 1990s, to stage a comeback.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2008

Devo uphold their duty now for the future

As I sit down opposite the gray-haired man in a black shirt and glasses, someone comes to clear the clutter off the table — a stick-thin, retro-futuristic guitar that has been rigged for its strings to explode at the climax of a solo. His flame-haired partner takes a seat; he's wearing a full suit...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 2, 2008

Solutions demand end to nation-state myth

NEW YORK — This fall, thousands of college students will be taught a myth presented as fact. It is a myth that has helped fuel wars and may hinder finding solutions to the world's biggest problems. Though the origin of this myth is cloudy, science has proven its falsity, and a globalized world has...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 26, 2008

Dewi Sukarno

Dewi Sukarno, nee Naoko Nemoto, 68, is the widow of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. When she married him in 1959, the then 19-year-old Japanese beauty was no accidental Cinderella: From age 5, she had meticulously prepared herself for a leading role in history. Much like Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the...
EDITORIALS
Aug 24, 2008

Epidemic of anxiety

Japanese are more worried than ever, according to a Cabinet Office survey released recently. More than 70 percent of Japanese — the highest percentage ever — say they are worried about their everyday lives and the future. Nearly two-thirds of people said their standard of living went unchanged in...
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Aug 23, 2008

Long-distance becomes longtime romance

Felix Moesner met Makiko Aikawa in 1991 when he was doing a one-year robotics internship at Toshiba Corp. and a home-stay at her grandmother's house in Yokohama. Then a university student, she often visited after cooking classes at a restaurant nearby.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2008

Grappling with Japan

They met in a cafe in Manhattan. She was working on a comic strip for her book, which was about a young artist and her quest for an apartment and a day job in Brooklyn. He was a successful French film director (although she didn't know this at the time) having coffee with his two small sons. The boys...
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2008

Rural welcome is not automatic

One factor that should not be overlooked in reviving rural communities in Japan is rural people's resistance to new people moving in. And I don't just mean to foreigners! Rural people also consider Japanese "I-turn" and "U-turn" people as outsiders. Acceptance in rural communities cannot be taken for...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight