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JAPAN / Politics
Jul 13, 2014

Abe: Change rules for female workers

After sexist heckling debacle, prime minister seeks to repair LDP's image with renewed pledge to boost female participation in the workforce.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2014

Old silk town embraces farm reforms in test of revival scheme

Tomiyoshi Kurogoushi sighs as he looks over the terraced rice fields in the mountains of west Japan that were tended by generations of his family. Most are now covered in weeds and silver grass.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 12, 2014

An audience with an island menace

By 8 o'clock on a warm early summer morning on Chichijima, one of Tokyo's Ogasawara Islands, bright sunshine was already threatening to overwhelm my light-sensitive eyes and the heat was cranking up in preparation for what I refer to as reptilian warmth.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 11, 2014

China will struggle to cut CO₂ to safe levels: U.N.

China may struggle to cut carbon emissions to levels that prevent the worst effects of global warming, a United Nations study of 15 major emitters showed.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014

Megacities offer toxic mix of modern apocalypse

Exhibits at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture demonstrate that the urgent challenge for many societies is to prevent the megacity from becoming a byword for multifaceted apoclypse, mashinging together poverty, corruption, violence and fundamentalism.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 10, 2014

Research shows Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused lesions in fish

Oil that matches the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been found in the bodies of sickened fish, according to a team of Florida scientists who studied the oil's chemical composition.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2014

Japan's massive pachinko industry bets on casinos amid popularity decline

"Welcome!" two young women in shorts and Hawaiian shirts chime over the clatter of pinballs and J-pop music at the Million pachinko parlor in the Tokyo residential area of Suginami.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 9, 2014

Business climate is ever-changing

The business environment surrounding U.S. companies has changed and they are looking for ways to not only survive, but thrive against severe competition.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 9, 2014

Goldman's Japan M&A chief sees hunger for more deals

When a 210-year-old vinegar company bought Unilever's Ragu and Bertolli pasta sauce business last month, it showed that Japanese firms are becoming more adventurous in their search for growth, said Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s national head of mergers and acquisitions.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2014

Thomas Piketty with Chinese characteristics

As property prices have risen faster than wages and profits in manufacturing, China's top 1 percent income earners are accumulating wealth significantly faster than their counterparts in the rest of the world — and far faster than the average Chinese.
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jul 7, 2014

Letters: adoption from Japan, book bores, returnees, workers' rights and fleeing U.S. guns

Some letters in response to recent articles in the Community section about a wide range of subjects.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Jul 7, 2014

Future leader shows promise with African aid work, British schooling, and Japan politics in sight

When Doga Makiura arrived in Rwanda in 2012, the 18-year-old was amazed to find not the stains of the 1994 genocide, but a tidy airport, impressive high-rises and welcoming people.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 5, 2014

Entertaining guests with a little horseplay

I had returned from a three-month trip to the Canadian Arctic and was in Vancouver, meeting up with family and friends before returning to Japan.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jul 5, 2014

Cruz settling in with Marines

Luis Cruz wanted to go home. He wanted to see his family again, wanted to be back in a familiar environment. He wanted to get away from that lonely hotel room in Fort Myers, Florida, that was a long way from his native Navojoa, which lies on the southern tip of Sonora, a Mexican state that shares its...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Jul 5, 2014

China finally cracking down on developers ignoring ban on building golf courses

All that remains of the long fairways and manicured greens at an 18-hole golf course on the outskirts of Beijing are bits of rubble and mounds of mud. In March, Chinese authorities sent in workers to dig up the course and tear down the clubhouse.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2014

Farmers fattening pigs with recycled food

Japan burns or buries 3.3 million tons of commercial food waste every year. Then it imports 10 million tons of corn to feed animals, more than any other country.
EDITORIALS
Jul 2, 2014

Abe guts Article 9

With its Cabinet decision to allow Japan to exercise collective self-defense, the Abe administration has effectively gutted Article 9.
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2014

Prefectural and local authorities warn government over Constitution

Over the past few weeks, swaths of prefectural and local governments have condemned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's moves to reinterpret the Constitution, citing either disagreement with the aim or opposition to how it was carried out.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2014

Who'll pay for the Iraq sins?

Will the purveyors of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq ever do penance for their sins of warmongering?
EDITORIALS
Jun 29, 2014

Rushing on collective self-defense

The Abe administration may adopt a Cabinet decision as early as this week to change the government's long-standing interpretation of the Constitution so that Japan can participate in 'collective self-defense.' Opinions from the public do not seem welcome.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 28, 2014

A life of lettuce has its benefits

Lettuce. Let us raise a glass to lettuce.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 28, 2014

Sexist remarks seen through a clouded lens

It's assumed that the heckling of Tokyo assembly member Ayaka Shiomura by some of her male colleagues on June 18 became a major news story in Japan only after the foreign press picked it up as an example of intractable Japanese sexism. The situation is more nuanced than how Western media described it,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 28, 2014

Forget the world in a peaceful Okinawan island garden

First came the Ishigaki-teien, a mass of soaring limestone rocks, judiciously placed cycads and two lines of highly concentrated fukugi, the closely-matted leaves of the trees traditionally used in Okinawa as typhoon barriers. Owned by the Ishigaki family, who have lived on the island of the same name...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 27, 2014

Tiny shrew has jumbo relatives: DNA study

A new mammal discovered in the remote desert of western Africa resembles a long-nosed mouse in appearance but is more closely related genetically to elephants, a California scientist who helped identify the tiny creature said Thursday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 27, 2014

'Reinterpreting' Article 9 endangers Japan's rule of law

The most serious problem with the recommendations of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's advisory panel on reinterpreting Article 9 of the Consititution is that they reflect a result-oriented analysis driven by national security imperatives rather than constitutional law principles.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?