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EDITORIALS
Jul 14, 2005

Shutting down business fraud

Today's communities in Japan, especially impersonal big cities, are becoming hostile places in many ways for elderly people living alone. New gangs of criminals, who often pose as kind and soft-spoken business operators, are eager to swindle the elderly out of their life savings. These con artists know...
MORE SPORTS
Jul 13, 2005

Marines' Valentine firmly against MLB's new international event

Bobby Valentine is not the kind of guy to hold back his feelings. He never has been.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 10, 2005

Contort yourself, by any means necessary

"No New York," the 1978 compilation produced by Brian Eno, remains a snapshot of lower Manhattan's music scene at that time. The pioneering punk club CBGB's was thriving, the influential performance space-cum-disco, the Mudd Club, was about to open and a musician could still afford to live in the East...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 10, 2005

New horizons beckon as Train Man heads nowhere fast

The Japanese nation seems to be firmly in the grip of the otaku.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2005

Hungry underclass growing

There is a pain in the belly of Africa that just will not go away. It is gnawing at our development goals and undermining our economies. It is blighting the lives of the young and shortening the life span of the old, yet somehow it is being forgotten. What is this scourge that stalks our continent? A...
JAPAN
Jul 6, 2005

Unlike Africa, crisis in Asia not yet on political radar

KOBE — Unlike the situation in Africa, Asia's AIDS crisis has yet to grab the attention of Irish pop singers, Hollywood celebrities or leaders of the richest nations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2005

A prize-winning director quite happy to have a laugh

With his short-brimmed hat and carefully trimmed goatee, Kenji Uchida looks strikingly like the private investigator played by So Yamanaka in "Unmei Janai Hito."
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2005

Africa's health challenges

NEW YORK -- Persistent poverty in most African countries is seriously effecting the health and quality of life for children and adults. Diarrheal and respiratory infections, measles, malaria and perinatal pose the most serious threats to children's lives, while HIV/AIDS and malnutrition cast an ominous...
COMMUNITY
Jul 2, 2005

Tokyo's 'ambassador of light' high on old spirits

Channeler Rae Chandran refuses anything to drink but water. He sits on a "zabuton" and takes a deep breath, stiffens, then shudders, his posture and face relaxing into what can only be described as a light trance-like state.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2005

Asylum seekers get a big kick out of 'One Ball, No Border' tourney

Cheers and laughter echoed Sunday morning around Waseda University's soccer field in Nishitokyo as an estimated 150 people seeking asylum, lawyers, Japanese volunteers and friends gathered for an annual futsal tournament to mark World Refugee Day.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 26, 2005

Japan gets a life and finally drags its heels into Live 8

There used to be a common expression that money used to send men to the moon could better be spent on feeding people down here on Earth. As if in response, funding for space exploration was eventually cut and more money was channeled into so-called development aid, the ultimate aim of which, we were...
COMMUNITY
Jun 25, 2005

Rape earns dubious distinction as a weapon of war

ISLAMABAD -- Before World War I, casualties of armed conflicts were largely limited to battlefields and the soldiers upon them. Combat doctrine and equipment favored flat plateaus, fields or deserts removed from civilian populations. Unless the action took place in a populated area, civilians seldom...
JAPAN / A GENERATION CLOCKS OUT
Jun 24, 2005

Companies eager for baby boomers to retire with lots of money and time

The looming retirement of the baby boomer generation has become a national concern as it will cause a drastic decline in the labor force, but some firms are excited about the massive shift.
EDITORIALS
Jun 16, 2005

Shantytown outrage in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe continues its slide toward destruction. In the most recent outrage, President Robert Mugabe has evicted tens of thousands of traders from their shacks and razed their houses. It is hardly a coincidence that this "cleanup campaign" targets supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic...
Japan Times
Features
Jun 12, 2005

Shotengai

When sumo elder Futagoyama, the father of former grand champions Takanohana and Wakanohana, died of cancer two weeks ago, many sumo fans were deeply saddened at the loss of the charismatic, 55-year-old former ozeki. Many people prominent in varied walks of life expressed their sadness, as did members...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 9, 2005

TM bolsters notion of a Japanese mind-set over mortality

As we heard in a government white paper on the elderly last week, the number of people aged 90 or over topped 1 million in Japan for the first time in 2004. Japan has long held the record for its citizens having the longest life expectancy in the world. And the government is only too aware of the graying...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 8, 2005

A fling to remember

The all-male reworking of "Swan Lake" by English choreographer Matthew Bourne has become a dance and stage legend since its November 1995 premiere at Sadler's Wells Theater in London. This powerful piece of ballet zeitgeist toured widely before arriving in Japan in spring 2003. With nonstop curtain calls,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 5, 2005

Will Japanese inertia never be the same again?

Who is to blame for the dead hand of inertia that has prevented Japan from forging ahead economically and politically in the last decade and a half?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 4, 2005

Jon R. Greiner

"The Book of Lists" ranks public speaking as the foremost fear of people around the world, double that of fear of dying.
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2005

'Dead Man Walking' author seeks to end control of the noose

The death penalty is part of the same societal paradigm as war, as both are used by the state to impose control through violence, according to Sister Helen Prejean.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2005

Most efficient exit from extreme poverty

For years, the world has looked to Asia as a leader in many areas, particularly business and technology. Now Asia is serving as an important example to follow in the international race to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
COMMENTARY
Jun 1, 2005

French lessons for the European Union

LONDON -- So the French have voted down the proposed EU Constitution decisively. What now? Will the European Union fall apart? Certainly not. Does it mean that the attempt to impose a single "top-down" constitution on all 25 member states is dead? Probably -- especially if the Netherlands also votes...
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2005

Sex offender tracking system seen as start

The National Police Agency starts a new system Wednesday to keep track of convicted child molesters after their release from prison, in hopes it will help reduce sex crimes against children.
COMMUNITY / COUNTERPOINT
May 29, 2005

Causes and effects can encompass far more than 'specifics'

In January 1977, an express train traveling from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to Sydney derailed on a curve near Granville Station, 21 km west of the city. The train -- which was three minutes late when it left the last stop on its 2 1/2-hour journey -- smashed into the pillar of a bridge, killing...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 22, 2005

It's not all quiet on the (Middle-) Eastern front after the abduction

After it was learned that Akihiko Saito, a Japanese national working for a British security company in Iraq, was captured by a militant group during an ambush, the media seemed so stunned by the revelation that they couldn't get their bearings. So they seized on the only source of local information they...
EDITORIALS
May 14, 2005

A Holocaust memorial

A monument 17 years in the making officially opened Tuesday in the heart of Berlin. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe -- a city block of blank gray concrete slabs or pillars erected near the German Parliament building -- drew predictably mixed responses. Yet, by all accounts, its American architect,...
COMMUNITY
May 8, 2005

Serial stereotyping only serves others' brazen hubris

Ever since the reopening of Japan to the outside world in the mid-19th century, people from the West have categorized Japanese life in terms of one or another social model. Whatever the category chosen, though, the inference has always been that Japan is "different." How else would you account for something...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2005

Longevity bonds can help retirees prosper

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- Living a long time is one of our deepest wishes, and medical and economic progress offers the hope that it will be fulfilled. Some scientists say that the average human life span could reach 90 years or more by midcentury. But what if our wish is granted? What good is a longer...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear