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JAPAN
Oct 27, 2007

Nova students give poor grades to management

Though forewarned of their language school's financial woes, students Friday reacted to the news of Nova Corp.'s bankruptcy with shock and disappointment.
EDITORIALS
Oct 26, 2007

A ceiling on extended power

The Kanagawa Prefectural Assembly has enacted a bylaw limiting a governor to three consecutive terms in office, or 12 years. It will not take effect, though, until the central government places a limit on the number of times a person can be elected as governor or mayor, by revising the Local Autonomy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 25, 2007

A legacy in question as Pop artist gets animated

Artists can never be 100 percent sure of their legacies. Some die famous and confident they'll be remembered for generations. If they're lucky, they might be right.
COMMENTARY
Oct 22, 2007

Let MSDF refueling law die

Late last month a gathering in Yokohama remembered the victims of a U.S. military jet crash in a residential area 30 years ago. I was stunned to learn that a Japanese Self-Defense Force helicopter that had rushed to the scene of the crash flew away with two slightly injured U.S. servicemen without looking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 19, 2007

'The whole world wanted us dead'

The locals call her Madussa, or Medusa. Clearly, 46-year-old Ari Up, the punk-reggae goddess of the recently reformed Slits, is still a mesmerizing presence — and not only because she sports a tangled blonde beehive of dreads.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 18, 2007

Feeling low exacts an extremely high cost

PRAGUE — Depression is, according to a World Health Organization study, the world's fourth worst health problem, measured by how many years of good health it causes to be lost. By 2020, it is likely to rank second, behind heart disease. Yet, not nearly enough is being done to treat or prevent it.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Oct 18, 2007

Who killed Takashi Saito?

That any life should be lost during sport is tragic, and sumo is no exception.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 13, 2007

Shining on after the darkness of death

In July 2005, Kim Forsythe lost her 2-year-old son, Tyler, to acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Even before that time, she had begun to realize how the emotions she was experiencing could be turned into something positive, something that could ease the pain of Tyler's passing while providing aid and comfort...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 11, 2007

Mother of all comebacks

Hollywood's hardest-working movie star, John Travolta dons a fat suit and breasts to play a housewife in his latest role, the all-singing, all-dancing musical 'Hairspray.'
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Oct 10, 2007

Hellcat bent for leather — a navy flyboy's tale

From 26,000 feet he punched through a hole in the overcast over Tokyo early on a freezing Feb. 12, 1945, rolled into a roaring 60-degree dive and fired his rockets at a Mitsubishi engine plant.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 8, 2007

Chinese suffering from poverty, uneven development, experts say

The widening economic divide between rural and urban China — and between its coastal and western regions as well — will only get worse as its spectacular economic growth continues, a Chinese scholar warned at a recent symposium in Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 7, 2007

Nahoko Yamazaki: Off-stage woman stars in men's theater world

Just as in the realm of politics, in the arts world — and here, particularly regarding the performing arts — different countries adopt different policies depending on their historical and economic circumstances.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2007

Stepping into the alternate world of Japan

JAPAN THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: Shaman to Shinto, by Alan Macfarlane. Profile Books Ltd., 2007, 256 pp., £16.99 (cloth) Reviewed by MARIKO KATO "In many ways I was like Alice, that very assured and middle-class English girl, when she walked through the looking glass."
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Oct 5, 2007

Veteran navy officer keeps an open mind

As the public still debates the Imperial navy's activities during the war, many veteran sailors say that at the time, at least, they saw their objective as liberating Asia from Western colonial rule.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 5, 2007

'The Good Shepherd'

Never date a spy, much less marry one. That's one of the important lessons (maybe the foremost) to be reaped from "The Good Shepherd," Robert De Niro's second film in the director's chair after his debut "A Bronx Tale" in 1993.
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2007

Coping with the doctor shortage

As pregnant women, children and rural residents in Japan face a crisis in getting medical treatment, the government has decided to increase the quota for medical schools. This is a welcome move. It is urgent that the government take well-thought-out measures to deal with specific problems responsible...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Oct 1, 2007

Fukuda and the 'Cabinet of the Walking Dead'

Atitle in the Financial Times' Lex Column caught my eye Wednesday. The item, "Japan's Zombies," turned out to be a very readable story about large Japanese electronics companies. But until I got down to actually reading the piece, I was totally convinced it was about Japan's latest Cabinet.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 27, 2007

Why do performing arts have a 'dead-end feeling' in Japan?

Tarahumara is a mysterious area deep in Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains. Dancer Hiroshi Koike chose the enigmatic name for the dance-drama company he founded in 1982 because he aimed to create beautiful performances that transcend genre.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 26, 2007

Turning waste into rich resources

Visit Calcutta, even briefly, and you soon learn the rules of the road — or rather that there aren't many, if any. You will also meet some of the planet's most resourceful people, from street children to scientists who are masters of making very little go a long way.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 26, 2007

Tokyo Game Show misses Nintendo

This year's Tokyo Game Show was supposed to be bigger, but that doesn't mean the industry event was better. It was expanded from three days (one press, two public days) to four days (two press, two public) as Sony, Microsoft and third-party video game publishers played host at this year's Tokyo Game...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Sep 25, 2007

Hakuho, and other foreign-born wrestlers, dominate the Autumn Basho

Of the 700 men active in professional sumo less than 10 percent are foreign-born. Of the six divisions in which they compete, only one went the way of a Japanese rikishi at this year's Autumn Basho. The remaining five divisions were dominated by men from afar.
SOCCER
Sep 24, 2007

Inamoto hoping to get career back on track in Frankfurt

FRANKFURT — It's fair to say that if Junichi Inamoto had begun his European adventure at Eintracht Frankfurt instead of Arsenal his star would probably be shining that much brighter now.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 24, 2007

The Self-Defense Forces: living with a lie

NEW YORK — Many commentators have invoked historical analogies for U.S. President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and its still unfolding aftermath, with some saying, correctly, that no exact historical analogies are possible for anything, the least of all this damnable war.
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Sep 22, 2007

Nemuro raid survivor longs for homeland

Shohei Yamamoto still has to choke back tears when he talks about the day he was expelled from his village of Shibetoro on Etorofu Island off northern Hokkaido, two years after Japan was defeated in World War II.
COMMENTARY
Sep 21, 2007

China revisits a contradiction

HONG KONG — More than 25 years ago, China's paramount ruler Deng Xiaoping criticized excessive concentration of power within the Communist Party as the cause of grave problems, including the precipitation of the Cultural Revolution.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 18, 2007

Typhoons more predictable but still deadly

Most years, the typhoon season peaks in September, as illustrated by the recent Typhoon No. 9, called Fitow, which killed two, and Typhoon No. 11, also known as Nari, which approached Okinawa last week.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 16, 2007

Intrigues on Japan's own Devil's Island

Island of Exiles. Penguin Books, New York, 2007, 398 pp., $14 (paper) In "Island of Exiles," Heian Period official Sugawara Akitada finds himself ordered to Sado Island, off the coast of Niigata, to investigate the death by poisoning of the exiled Prince Okisada.
JAPAN
Sep 15, 2007

Hope found in submarine legacy

and Katja Boonstra (left), who lost their fathers during World War II, visit William King, the former skipper of the British submarine HMS Telemachus, at Oranmore Castle in Ireland in May 2004. PHOTO COURTESY OF AKIRA TSURUKAME
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 15, 2007

The fading pitter-patter of little feet

The flip-side of Japan's ever-aging population is that there are increasingly fewer kids. Record-low statistics from 2005 put the birthrate at 1.26 children per woman, a count that somehow sounds painful — but the real hurt is the one being put on Japanese society.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’