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COMMENTARY / World
May 16, 2012

Internet age renders obsolete U.S. view of China

When the human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng escaped extra-legal house arrest and beatings and found his way to the U.S. Embassy last month, he became an instant hero on the Chinese Internet.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Apr 15, 2012

U.S. forces keep the world in their sights

Complex issues often become much easier to understand when they are approached with the benefit of a broader perspective.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 22, 2012

At the end of a loved one's life, why is it so hard to let go?

I know where this phone call is going. I'm on the hospital wards, and a physician in the emergency room downstairs is talking to me about an elderly patient who needs to be admitted to the hospital. The patient is new to me, but the story is familiar: He has several chronic conditions — heart failure,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 5, 2012

Todai calls for change, but will others follow?

Spring approaches, and the thoughts of the media, which like nothing better than the warm comfort of a predictable news cycle, turn to education. Students are wrapping up the scholastic year and some are taking tests that will determine their lives. Last year, reporters got a bonus; That story about...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 27, 2011

Quake workers bolstered by training

Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, staff members of the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Tokyo English Life Line felt they needed to help not only the survivors, but also the volunteers, NGO and welfare workers who supported the hard-hit people in the affected areas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 22, 2011

Seeking solace in artistic responses to March 11

What can art do? What role can it play when the whole world seems suddenly unstable, unsure?
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 28, 2011

Rising yen, falling prices, cheap beer

Beginning last Wednesday, Aug. 24, the Ito Yokado supermarket chain announced a five-day sale at 120 of its branches in the greater Tokyo area. Among the reduced-price items were U.S. beef, Australian oranges and South African pineapples.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 21, 2011

Veteran umpire Hirako remembered fondly after passing

Japanese sports papers and various Web sites on Aug. 17 reported the death of former Central League umpire Kiyoshi Hirako.
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Jun 17, 2011

A new flying eye in the sky

The Japanese Self-Defense Force unveils the prototype of flying sphere and the fanboy crowd goes wild.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 29, 2011

The hot, sticky summer of our discontent

Last summer went on record as Japan's hottest ever, as the daytime mercury seemed stubbornly stuck in the 33 to 36 degrees Celsius range while at nighttime it usually refused to budge to below the 25 C mark.
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
May 21, 2011

Table for one? Right this way

Some Tokyo restaurants are aiming to take a bite out of the large market of solo diners.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 1, 2011

Tohoku charity a minefield for Japanese celebrities

One of the worst-kept secrets on television is the location of Dash Village, a remote farm that was built by the boy band Tokio in the late 1990s. It has since been maintained by the quintet as part of a running feature on their Sunday night Nihon TV variety show "Tetsuwan Dash," and in order to discourage...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 26, 2011

English mags approach milestone, crossroads

Those members of the expat community in Japan who are addicted to their weekly or monthly fix of English-language magazines will have surely noticed all the changes going on lately. These are troubled and exciting times and, just as it has in the past, the local media world is trying to rise to the challenge...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 17, 2011

Japan's food crisis goes beyond recent panic buying

The neon lights of Ginza flickered out, leaving Tokyo's favorite playground in ominous darkness. Drivers fumed while waiting in long lines to purchase gasoline. Goods disappeared from supermarket shelves, sending housewives on forays into neighboring prefectures in search of everyday items such as toilet...
BUSINESS
Mar 26, 2011

Shirakawa snubs '30s-style JGB-buying for rebuilding

Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa is under fire for refusing to consider 1930s-style purchases of government bonds to fund reconstruction from the nation's largest earthquake on record.
COMMENTARY
Mar 7, 2011

U.S. foreign aid hinders more than it helps

SEATTLE — The United States will run up a record $1.65 trillion deficit in 2011. Yet Washington keeps subsidizing foreign governments. House Republicans have targeted foreign aid. This year the State Department would lose 16 percent of its budget; humanitarian aid would drop by 41 percent.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 1, 2011

Trendy Harajuku draws crowds

For several decades, the trendy Harajuku district in central Tokyo has been a magnet for young people seeking the latest fashion trends and also for those who want to express their own style.
JAPAN / AT JAPAN'S EXPENSE
Jan 3, 2011

Japan not alone in demographic conundrum

Second in a series
CULTURE / Music
Dec 31, 2010

Best Japanese/overseas albums of 2010: Goblin

Shugo Tokumaru — "Port Entropy"
CULTURE / Music
Dec 31, 2010

2010's many charts tell a confusing tale

As seems to be becoming commonplace with these end-of-year roundups, the big music story was once again the rise (and rise) of AKB48 and their rapidly multiplying sister groups, SKE48 (named after their home at Nagoya's Sunshine Sakae building), NMB48 (after Namba in Osaka) and "mature" proto-porn, postgraduation...
BUSINESS
Dec 18, 2010

Mixi feels Facebook lacks local appeal

Mixi Inc., owner of Japan's largest social networking service, expects to fend off Facebook Inc. because its website is better suited to domestic users and personal data are more secure, President Kenji Kasahara said recently.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Nov 23, 2010

Move over 3G, LTE new kid on the block

Mobile communications have become part of daily life and the trend is accelerating. This has fueled the development of Long Term Evolution, a next-generation communications network.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 29, 2010

Anyone for tennis?

If you've ever had a tennis lesson, your coach likely told you to block, rather than swing at your volleys. That knowledge makes it all the more thrilling to watch someone like the athletic 16-year-old Sanae Ota rush in from the back of the court, leap up to a high, floating ball — before it bounces...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 22, 2010

Families dictate Japan's economic fate

Though everybody saw it coming, the announcement last week that China's economy supplanted Japan's as the second largest in the world shocked many people. It matters little that China's sheer size makes its dominance inevitable. What matters is that Japan's 42-year run as the world's No. 2 is over, and...
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Aug 20, 2010

Time for bj-league to slow down on expansion

In a mad rush to expand, the bj-league is ignoring a number of real concerns, including the pressing need to aggressively market itself in Tokyo, this nation's entertainment, government, financial and media capital.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 17, 2010

Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric

Sea Shepherd's Web site describes him as "the first New Zealander to be taken as a prisoner of war from the Southern Ocean to Japan," and there is no doubting Peter Bethune's popularity in this country. His trial in Tokyo earlier this year for interfering with Japan's annual whale hunt dominated New...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010

Hippies and hipsters brave a soggy Fuji Rock

When you're talking about a music festival whose inaugural event was literally wiped out by a typhoon, it can feel a bit petty to complain about the weather. All the same, campers arriving at Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba on Thursday last week might have hoped for a warmer welcome than the torrential downpour...
BUSINESS
Aug 4, 2010

Mitsui loath to ante $480 million

Mitsui & Co. has refrained from paying $480 million in bills from BP for costs related to the damaged Gulf of Mexico oil well, in which the trading house holds an indirect stake.
BUSINESS
Jul 10, 2010

Itochu buys uranium explorer stake

Trading house Itochu Corp. said Friday it has agreed to buy a 10.3 percent stake in Australian uranium explorer Extract Resources Ltd. to benefit from global demand growth for the fuel.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo