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Reader Mail
Sep 6, 2012

Elderly blocking young workers

Regarding the Aug. 31 Bloomberg article "Willing elderly workers helping to defuse pension time bomb": At 66, I'm also one of those elderly workers. While delaying retirement is helping to defuse the pension time bomb, it's adding to other problems.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 6, 2012

JAL reportedly gets all IPO orders

Japan Airlines Co.'s ¥663 billion initial public offering, the largest since Facebook Inc., has drawn orders for all the stock being sold, according to two sources with knowledge of the transaction.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2012

U.S. candidates can't ignore war in Afghanistan

As Republicans gathered in Tampa on Aug. 27, a 25-year-old Army sergeant serving his third tour in Afghanistan, Christopher J. Birdwell of Windsor, Colorado, was killed in action.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2012

The heirs of inequality

It has long been known that spurts of rapid economic growth can increase inequality: China and India are the latest examples. But might slow growth and rising inequality — the two most salient characteristics of developed economies nowadays — also be connected?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012

Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage

Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 1, 2012

Welcome to ramen land

Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 31, 2012

Tokyo Jazz Festival grabs Ornette Coleman for headlining spot

Note: A week after the publication of this article, Tokyo Jazz Festival organizers announced Ornette Coleman will not come to Japan due to poor health.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 31, 2012

Reverse imports on the rise thanks to strong yen

Japan Inc. has found a new export market: Japan.
Reader Mail
Aug 30, 2012

Old 'small government' refrain

In a Washington Post opinion article that ran Aug. 27 in The Japan Times under the headline "The unlikely chance of shrinking government," Lawrence Summers discusses the debate about the size of government, and how and why the size is unlikely to decrease in the coming years.
COMMENTARY
Aug 29, 2012

Tensions rise in Northeast Asia

Japan and South Korea, allies of the United States since World War II, are supposed to be part of an Asia-Pacific counterbalance to China's growing power and its expansive maritime and island claims in East Asia's seas. Instead, an upwelling of nationalism as the region marked the Aug. 15 anniversary...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 27, 2012

Shifting views on the role of the Emancipator

Gore Vidal, who died at the end of July, was one writer whose essays I began to read years ago. I then moved on to his novels, though I saw one of his more famous Broadway plays, "The Best Man," only recently for the first time.
Reader Mail
Aug 26, 2012

'Grandmothers' still victimized

Regarding the Aug. 23 article "No evidence sex slaves were taken by military: Hashimoto": I always read The Japan Times in the afternoon, and although I should be used to it, I am always flabbergasted by what politicians dare to say.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2012

Embassies join to give kids look at other cultures

The Children's International Festa 2012 in Tokyo gave kids hands-on experience with other cultures Saturday, from making beeswax candles New Zealand-style to learning Mayan numbers.
JAPAN
Aug 23, 2012

No evidence sex slaves were taken by military: Hashimoto

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said there was no evidence that the Imperial Japanese Army forced Korean women and girls into sexual servitude at wartime military brothels.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 23, 2012

Rihanna, Grimes and J-pop rule at this year's Summer Sonic

When the opening notes to the Rihanna hit "We Found Love" played over the QVC Marine Stadium sound system Sunday night, the packed-tight crowd erupted louder than it had at any point in the show. Glow sticks were thrust into the air harder and bottled waters launched into the sky as the climax of the...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Aug 21, 2012

NPB may have solution to WBC problem

Perhaps Nippon Professional Baseball has come up with something that will finally convince the Japanese Professional Baseball Players Association to reverse course and compete in the next World Baseball Classic.
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Aug 21, 2012

Takahashi's 300th homer bittersweet

Yoshinobu Takahashi looked more relieved than happy after his 300th home run. Many fans and observers had expected it to come earlier in his career, before later wondering if it would come at all. That helped give the moment feelings of both admiration and incompletion.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Aug 19, 2012

The new Emperor's character, China conflict escalates, eruptions on Miyakejima Is., JET program takes off

100 YEARS AGOSaturday, Aug. 3, 1912
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 19, 2012

Scholar Tenshin Okakura's seaside pavilion, destroyed in tsunami, witnesses a new dawn

Rokkakudo, a small, six-sided wooden pavilion that overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a low rocky headland in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, is by no means Tenshin Okakura's most important legacy. That honor would go to "The Book of Tea," a now-classic dissertation on traditional Japanese aesthetics that...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 15, 2012

Specs fight eye damage from gadget screens

Whether at home, at work or outdoors, people spend a lot of time looking at electronic devices with screens, including computers, TVs and smartphones.
OLYMPICS / LONDON POSTCARD
Aug 12, 2012

Wishing the show could continue on indefinitely

There's a different vibe in the air as I walked around Olympic Park on Friday.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 10, 2012

Ibaraki art museum hopes to revive area with exhibition on Walt Disney's life

Since opening in 1997, the Tenshin Memorial Museum of Art, located in the city of Kitaibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture, has focused its exhibitions on nihonga (Japanese style) paintings, because that was the style made internationally famous by Tenshin Okakura, the early 20th-century critic and educator for...
COMMENTARY
Aug 10, 2012

Munificently treading water

Reciprocity is the first principle of diplomacy, and India has walked the extra mile to befriend neighbors, as underscored by its record on land and water disputes. Yet today, India lives in the world's most-troubled neighborhood.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 10, 2012

'Win Win'

The last time I saw Paul Giamatti in a lead role was in "Sideways" (2004), when he played a middle-aged guy who stole money from his aging mother to winery-hop in Napa Valley. Now Giamatti resembles a trusty musical instrument, fine-tuned to the exact specifications of what can only be described as Giamatti-ness....
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2012

Another missed chance to lead

Recent events such as the Tokyo Electric Power Co. debacle have further eroded what little trust the public had in the government. In a similar vein, the policies regarding immunizations for this nation's children show that the health ministry is more concerned with protecting themselves rather than...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 7, 2012

Less naming and shaming, better translations and more pragmatism, please

Readers' responses to Debito Arudou's last column, "In formulating immigration policy, no seat at the table for non-Japanese":

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’