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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 27, 2007

Prints rejected, scribe accepted

T he center of the little monitor — I'd guess about 20 cm from the looks of it — flashed the word "Yokoso" (welcome). Its colored border was festooned with a collage of images near and dear to visiting tourists' hearts: "torii" gates, the shinkansen, Zen gardens, Mount Fuji . . .
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Nov 27, 2007

Re-entry for PRs; rent-a-gran

New 'Yokoso' measures Robert inquires about the changes that started Nov. 20.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Nov 27, 2007

Politicians who took a stand

We often hear nowadays that politicians in Japan are "smaller" than they used to be. The reference, of course, is not to physique but rather to the capacity of today's politicians to demonstrate broad-mindedness and magnanimity as their predecessors did.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Nov 26, 2007

Plenty wrong with U.S. agricultural policy

NEW YORK — The U.S. farm bill — a blanket term for all measures related to agriculture, some barely so — appears doomed this year. The House version passed at the end of July, but the Senate version has been stalled in such a way that there's even talk that its enactment may not occur until after...
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2007

One (very) small step forward for ASEAN

HONOLULU — The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) has, in commemoration of its 40th anniversary, adopted its first formal charter, thus conferring "legal personality" upon this intergovernmental organization, complete with its own flag, emblem, anthem (to be written), and motto: One Vision,...
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2007

Messages that wreck self-esteem

Thank you for the Sept. 29 article "Putting the red light on human trafficking," which explores the pathways and precursors that force, or coerce, Japanese girls and women into the sex industry. As a schoolgirl, I remember vividly how the Japanese men I sat next to on the train would read their tabloids...
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2007

Readers hung out to dry

The Nov. 20 opinion piece "Starting today, 'gaijin' formally known as prints" (on the Community page) and The Japan Times' handling of it are completely unacceptable. In its original published form, a final statement indicating the fictitious nature of the e-mails and quotes cited in the article...
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2007

Foreigners overrate themselves

The sense of self-importance contained in the Nov. 20 Zeit Gist article "Watching them watching us" -- in which writer Michael Hassett complains about the capacity of the Japanese government to subject him to "physical abuse" by virtue of its ability to theoretically track him via security cameras from...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 23, 2007

It's Taiwan's referendum

For China, the launch of the Fukuda Cabinet in late September was good news, so it must expect many things from the new administration. What concerns me now in this respect is Taiwan's move to hold a national referendum on whether to seek U.N. membership in the name of "Taiwan."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 22, 2007

A taste for blood, arts and culture

One haunting image that lingers in the mind after seeing the exhibition "Legacy of the Tokugawa — The Glories and Treasures of the Last Samurai Dynasty" at the Tokyo National Museum is a carved-wood statue of Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first of the Tokugawa shoguns, now the deity of the Shiba Tosho-gu...
Reader Mail
Nov 22, 2007

The sadness in knowing their fate

Regarding the Nov. 18 article "Japan prepares to hunt humpbacks for first time since '63": I live in Hervey Bay, Queensland, which calls itself the "Whale Watching Capital." I am 71 years old and, with my older husband, recently assisted local artist Jorge Pujol and a great many others in arduously...
JAPAN
Nov 20, 2007

Dalai Lama hits East's consumer craze

The Dalai Lama indicated Monday in an interview that he had set a budding democratic process in motion in Tibet that was effectively doomed by China's invasion in the early 1950s.
Reader Mail
Nov 20, 2007

Balanced view of Chinese history

Regarding Gregory Clark's Nov. 15 article, "The fusillade against China": Bravo! At last, someone (Western) who is balanced in his opinions. Most Westerners don't remember or care to know about the Opium Wars, the war with eight foreign nations, the wars with Japan, Russia, etc.
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2007

Careful card-carrying 'gaijin'

Regarding the Nov. 13 Zeit Gist article, " 'Gaijin card' checks spread as police deputize the nation": The story should have mentioned the trouble any foreigner can get into by neglecting to report to the Ward Office any change in passport visa status.
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2007

Encounter with undercover police

I was very surprised at the timing of the "Gaijin card" article. I have been living here in Utsunomiya for nearly nine years and was carded on the street for the first time last weekend while walking home late at night. What surprised me most was that I was carded by undercover police officers. Has...
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2007

Intervention has killed 'design'

Regarding Julian Worrall's Nov. 6 article, "Design turns over a greener leaf": I generally agree with the idea that we should enter a design recession. As someone who has been practicing for the past 20 years in Europe, the United States, and extensively in Japan, my feeling is that due to media frenzy...
Reader Mail
Nov 18, 2007

Overweening pride that baffles

Bravo to Roger Pulvers for his Oct. 21 Counterpoint article, "The power of telling tales versus making apologies." The last paragraphs were expressed beautifully. I always think it's prejudiced of Americans to think that their democracy and system are the best in the world and, whenever they go to another...
COMMENTARY
Nov 15, 2007

The fusillade against China

In some ways China is not my favorite country. I once went to some trouble to learn its language. I have often had to court rightwing hostility for trying to explain its foreign policies in less than demonic terms. Back in 1971 I even organized, single-handedly and over Canberra's opposition, an Australian...
Reader Mail
Nov 13, 2007

Smart terrorists won't be stopped

Regarding the Nov. 8 article "Will entry checks cross the line?": Would 9/11 not have happened if all foreigners entering the United States had been fingerprinted? Is the list of 750,000 "terror suspects" compiled by the U.S. to be given credence? Does knowing someone who knows someone who may be a terrorist...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Nov 13, 2007

Murakami's Nobel leanings

The news that 88-year-old Doris Lessing received the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature was not greeted by the Japanese media with as much fanfare as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This perhaps was because Japanese literary circles were more interested in whether Haruki...
JAPAN
Nov 13, 2007

MSDF bill heads toward full vote in Lower House

Amid strong protests from opposition parties Monday, the ruling bloc rammed a special antiterrorism bill through a Lower House committee that would enable the Maritime Self-Defense Force to resume its refueling mission in the Indian Ocean.
Reader Mail
Nov 11, 2007

The 'British' know what they want

Regarding David Howell's Nov. 3 article, "End of the United Kingdom?": Howell's comment that "Scotland was never a lesser nation annexed unwillingly by the British (not English)" is just the sort of comment made by those who choose to be "English" or "British" when it suits them.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 11, 2007

Trapped between borders

Frontier Mosaic: Voices of Burma from the Lands In Between, by Richard Humphries. Orchid Press, 2007, 180 pp., $29.95 (paper) "A man on a motorbike comes by and we then follow him through the streets of Mae Sot." So begins one of the narrative vignettes from "Frontier Mosaic." Based on extensive travel...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 11, 2007

Kroon's agent pessimistic over BayStars contract negotiations

You read here a couple of days ago what the Yokohama BayStars have to say about contract negotiations with ace closer Marc Kroon. Now, here's a word from the other side: Kroon's agent, Tony Cabral, says it is not looking good for the fire-balling right-hander to remain with the Central League club.
Reader Mail
Nov 11, 2007

Why exempt Korean residents?

According to Jun Hongo's Nov. 8 article, "Will entry checks cross the line?," The new law requiring non-Japanese to submit to fingerprinting and photographing upon entering the country exempts "special permanent residents of Korean and Taiwanese descent" from this humiliating procedure.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 11, 2007

Why trust the self-serving United States anymore?

I began by asking myself the question linked inevitably to the survival of the United States as a trusted nation in the 21st century: Why can't America admit defeat?
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Nov 11, 2007

'Mad Max' loose on the streets of Tokyo

KITT, the talking Pontiac Trans Am in David Hasselhoff's "Knight Rider" TV series, doesn't get a mention. Steve McQueen's Mustang from the movie "Bullit" barely rates a response. And what about all those Aston Martins that James Bond drove? Not a whisper. Confessed car nut Yoshinao Hirata of Chofu, in...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 11, 2007

Boy band's effort to recharge battery in solar debate falls flat

In the fall of 2003, the boy band TOKIO embarked from Tokyo on a journey to cover the entire coastline of Japan in a 1997 Daihatsu Hijet minivan that they had refit themselves with a solar roof-panel and a battery-powered engine. Driving in shifts of two, the five members have, as of the most recent...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 10, 2007

Bowled over by one very, happy day

If National Toilet Day is not a happy day for you, perhaps you need a new toilet.

Longform

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