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Reader Mail
Aug 12, 2010

Keeping track of the centenarians

Regarding the Aug. 6 article "Cities scrambling to find centenarians": This is the funniest — yet not funny — scandal to ever hit the pages of multimedia. Maybe a good suggestion would be to connect the medical insurance system with the pension system, since more than 99 percent of the population...
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2010

Foreigners' kids abroad could get ¥1 billion in child allowances: LDP

The government paid child allowances for April and May to foreign residents for 7,746 children living outside Japan, an amount coming to about ¥1 billion in public money for the fiscal year, the Liberal Democratic Party said Wednesday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2010

A vote for Hong Kong as most livable city

HONG KONG, PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES — For me, there is no question that Hong Kong is one of the world's most wondrously livable cities. After 30 years of having Hong Kong as my home, I would challenge anyone to claim that — on balance — any other city can deliver the same combination of virtues.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2010

Pedal faster, not slower

LONDON — Memo to Naoto Kan, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, and Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh: Running an economy is like riding a bicycle — if you maintain a good speed, you can make progress; but if you reduce your speed, there is always the danger of losing your balance,...
COMMUNITY / ZEIT GIST: UPDATE
Jul 27, 2010

Talks drag on, teachers fired in Berlitz case

After 20 months of legal wrangling, neither side has managed to snag a win in Berlitz Japan's ¥110 million lawsuit against five teachers and their union, Begunto.
EDITORIALS
Jul 26, 2010

No reason not to intervene

The Child Abuse Prevention Law went into force in November 2000. Under a 2004 revision, people are obliged to report to the authorities concerned whenever they come across children with bruises or a feeble build that suggests physical abuse. A 2007 revision enables a court to issue a permit for children's...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 10, 2010

Crisis a chance for consolidation

The European debt problem triggered by the Greek crisis this year provides a good opportunity for both Japan and Germany to start fiscal consolidation efforts in the face of mounting public-sector debts, experts from the two countries told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Jul 3, 2010

'Karoshi' claims first foreign trainee

MITO, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) A labor office in Ibaraki Prefecture will acknowledge that a Chinese national working as an intern at a local firm under a government-authorized training program died from overwork in 2008, marking the first foreign trainee "karoshi" death from overwork, sources said Friday....
EDITORIALS
Jul 3, 2010

Lower summits of expectations

It is summit season. The Group of Eight club of leading industrialized powers held its annual shindig in Canada last week. That conclave was followed, for the first time, by the summit of the Group of 20, which accounts for 85 percent of global wealth and has emerged as the "director" of the global economy...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2010

Challenges of social progress for Brazil, India, South Africa

WATERLOO, Canada — Governments from the South are assuming leading roles in decisions on global issues such as climate change, health governance, trade regimes, and water and food security.
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2010

Elderly participation

The 2010 white paper on the aging society, approved by the Cabinet last month, shows a rapidly graying population. As of Oct. 1, 2009, people age 65 or over numbered a record 29.01 million, or 22.7 percent of the total population, a rise of 0.6 percentage point from 2008. The number of elderly people...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 24, 2010

Face to face with Internet privacy issues

NEW YORK — Long ago, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was in grade school, I wrote a book ("Release 2.1: A Design for Living in the Digital Age") in which I lauded something called gP3h (now p3p), the platform for privacy preferences. I was sure that people would start using P3 or something like...
BUSINESS
Jun 19, 2010

Growth plan goals: Jobs, no deflation

The government unveiled an economic growth strategy Friday for the next decade, aiming to eliminate deflation by the end of fiscal 2011, create ¥123 trillion worth of demand and 5 million jobs in four specific fields, as well as lower corporate taxes.
BUSINESS
Jun 17, 2010

Kan may need ¥7 trillion tax hike

Prime Minister Naoto Kan may have to raise taxes by as much as ¥7 trillion to fulfill his pledge to cap bond sales in coming years, according to an independent adviser to the government.
EDITORIALS
Jun 14, 2010

Vision for competing

As the Japanese economy suffers from sluggish domestic demand amid stubborn deflation and the graying of the population, and as Japanese companies are challenged by Chinese and South Korean firms in overseas markets, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Industrial Structure Council has unveiled...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 11, 2010

From pretty-boy star to grizzled veteran

HOLLYWOOD — "My next movie is a sequel to the one I did where I play a guy trapped inside a video game," says Jeff Bridges, veteran of over 60 films.
JAPAN
Jun 10, 2010

Cervical cancer vaccine rate too low

In a decade or so, women in one city in Tochigi Prefecture will probably have a lower chance of getting cervical cancer, which kills about 3,500 women in Japan every year.
COMMENTARY
Jun 10, 2010

Finding your way to the world of happiness

There can be few things less useful than a world map of happiness. If you live in one of the unhappy places, there is little chance that you will be able to move to one of the happy ones — and anyway, there's no way of knowing whether immigrants are happy there. Besides, your personal capacity for...
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2010

Kan front-runner to replace Hatoyama

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Naoto Kan is expected to win the Democratic Party of Japan presidency, get voted in by the Diet as prime minister, then form a new Cabinet — all on Friday.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past