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Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 4, 2014

Benefits of parkrun go well beyond physical

The thousands of Britons who take to their local green space each week for a mass 5 km parkrun can expect to reap health benefits well beyond losing 1 kg and lowering their blood pressure.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 2, 2014

Film festival hopes to present refugees as more than just victims

From Syria to Afghanistan to South Sudan, conflict this year has pushed the number of people seeking refuge around the world to numbers not seen since World War II.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 2014

Susumu Shingu knows which way the wind blows

Less than five minutes into conversation, Susumu Shingu's wife, Yasuko, pulls out a large binder crammed with photographs, sketches and drawings and starts flipping through images of her husband's most recent sculptures.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 2014

Nothing goes out of fashion quite like the future

Vincent Fournier's exhibition at the Diesel Art Gallery shows a love and fascination with technology, but it is not a straightforward adoration. The French photographer combines this with an impish sense of humor and also brings a sociologist's view to his subjects, which are portrayed with luscious...
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 2, 2014

Scientists find potential way to treat cold-triggered asthma

British scientists have identified a sequence of biological events that could trigger life-threatening asthma attacks in people suffering from colds — a finding that holds the potential for developing more effective medicines.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 1, 2014

Death-row samurai spills ink, not blood

Why have samurai movies become so middle-aged and sedate? Starting in the silent days and continuing through their 1950s peak, period films with top-knotted heroes typically featured a big one-against-many finale with flashing swords and the occasional firearm. Especially in the early days, both actors...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 1, 2014

Frank: Skewering the cult of mental illness as art

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young man with a dream: He wants to be in a band. He wanders the streets looking for something, anything, to give him some inspiration to write a song, and spends endless hours twinkling at his keyboard. Yet everything he pens is absolute crap and he seems much better at writing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 1, 2014

If I Stay: High school romance with a coma on top

This adaptation of Gayle Forman's best-selling young adult novel from 2009 follows high school teen Mia (Chloe Grace Moretz), who is worrying about her boyfriend, college and stuff like that when an auto accident puts her into a coma.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Oct 1, 2014

Readers' letters: Ian Thorpe, the Yushukan, racism, teaching English, tipping and sunlight

Some emails received in response to recent Community articles.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Oct 1, 2014

Divided Chinese eye Hong Kong protests with admiration, anger

For some mainland Chinese in Hong Kong, the sight of thousands of people on the streets protesting for greater democracy is an alien one that has prompted comparisons with the relative lack of political freedom back home.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 1, 2014

'Abenomics' colors Japan's art market after years of pallid returns

Just a decade ago, a lithograph by artist Yayoi Kusama would sell for several hundred dollars at best. But now her pieces, some just the size of a magazine, can fetch as much as $74,000.
ASIA PACIFIC
Sep 30, 2014

Chinese receive limited coverage of 'illegal' Hong Kong protests

On a day when front pages of newspapers in Hong Kong and around the world carried stories on prodemocracy protesters confronting riot police in the city, the lead article in China's official People's Daily focused on a new book of President's Xi Jinping's speeches.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 29, 2014

New anti-Semitism in Germany isn't the same

It's not the old-style, neo-Nazi anti-Semites who are trying to burn down synagogues or calling the Jews out to fight these days, as they have a problem with the currently dominant strain of anti-Semitism — its carriers have darker skin.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Sep 27, 2014

Japan — A short Cultural History

If there's room in your life for just one general history of Japan, let this be the one. In the hands of a master, history becomes art. British scholar-diplomat Sir George Bailey Sansom (1883-1965) was such a master.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Sep 27, 2014

Jean-Georges Vongerichten: 'What you eat as a child forms your palate'

My dream 25 years ago was to start one restaurant, and now I have a whole empire.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2014

Putting off environmental sacrifice

Are environmentalists who want society to divest itself of fossil fuels hypocrites if they don't adopt a radically reduced carbon lifestyle themselves?
BUSINESS
Sep 26, 2014

Famed bedroom trader Takashi Kotegawa reveals his wealth secrets as he guns for $1 billion

It was six minutes after the opening bell on Feb. 4, and dozens of big-name stocks were still untraded in Tokyo. Telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp. was among those that hadn't budged. The offer price fell 5 percent, then more, and still there were no takers.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 24, 2014

Hong Kong student activists rally ahead of threatened blockade

Hong Kong students gathered in the heart of the city for a second day on Wednesday ahead of a planned blockade of government buildings if the city's leader fails to discuss their demands for free elections.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EMBASSY AVENUE
Sep 22, 2014

In commemoration of Lithuanian Jews

Sept. 23 is Lithuania's Holocaust Memorial Day that pays tribute to the victims of the destruction of Vilnius ghetto in 1943.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 21, 2014

With crash probe, China turns up heat on ex-security chief Zhou

Little is known about the exact circumstances in which Wang Shuhua was killed. What has been reported, in the Chinese media, is that she died in a road accident sometime in 2000, shortly after she was divorced from her husband. And that at least one vehicle with a military license plate may have been...
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 21, 2014

New smartphone app gives sight to the blind

Jonathan Mosen, who has been blind since birth, spent a recent evening snapping photos of packages in the mail, his son's school report and labels on bottles in the fridge. In seconds, he was listening to audio of the printed words the camera had captured, courtesy of a new app on his Apple iPhone.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 20, 2014

Lafcadio Hearn: 'Japanese Thru and Tru'

A small cage was opened at Lafcadio Hearn's funeral, setting birds into the air, the soul of the deceased presumably taking flight with them. His coffin was draped in chrysanthemums and fragrant olive, adorned by a laurel wreath. Seven Buddhist priests read the sutras at Kobudera (now Jishoin Enyuji...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 20, 2014

Glimpses of Lafcadio Hearn's Matsue

The Matsue-bound train I boarded at Okayama Station was pointedly named Yakumo, a reference to its destination's best-known former resident: Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), whose adopted Japanese name was Yakumo Koizumi.
EDITORIALS
Sep 20, 2014

Conditions for kids worldwide

A new report from the United Nations children's agency reminds us that violence remains a leading cause of preventable injury and death among children worldwide.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Sep 19, 2014

Blood types

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 13, 2014

'No child ever deserves to be abused like this'

Images of Koyuki Higashi's childhood came back to her in flashes. She was almost always in the bathroom; sometimes she caught a glimpse of the stool she used to sit on while taking a shower, other times she saw her father and her, bathing together. For a long time Higashi was unable to make much sense...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 13, 2014

Waking up to child abuse

With reported cases of child abuse topping 70,000 per annum for the first time in August, Masami Ito examines the nation's changing attitudes toward violence at home.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic