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WORLD / Society
Feb 18, 2013

Americans face massive retirement funds shortfall

For the first time since the New Deal, a majority of Americans are headed toward a retirement in which they will be financially worse off than their parents, jeopardizing a long era of improved living standards for the nation's elderly, according to a growing consensus of new research.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Remarkably original debut thriller shines light on Glasgow's underworld

THE NECESSARY DEATH OF LEWIS WINTER, by Malcolm Mackay. Mantle, 2013, 256 pp., £14.99 (hardcover)
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WEEK 3
Feb 17, 2013

Fukushima radiation threatens to wreak woodland havoc

For Yuji Hoshino, mushrooms were a way of life. The 50-year-old farmer grew up watching his father raise shiitake mushrooms on their land at the foot of the mountains in Sano, southern Tochigi Prefecture.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 17, 2013

Bringing the love of short films to a local audience

If there was a birthday cake for the Brillia Short Shorts Theater, it would probably be an elegant, minimalist affair — no excessive decorations, nothing too calorific and five slim candles giving off a modest orange glow. One of just four movie theaters in and around Tokyo dedicated to short films,...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 16, 2013

Debate rages over effect of nursing on mother and child

Is breast-feeding far and away the best thing? Or have we done women a disservice by overstating its benefits?
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2013

Mr. Obama, did you or did you not kill Anwar al-Awlaki?

The big problem with U.S. drone policy is that it lets the government kill its citizens in secret and then refuse to acknowledge later that it has done so.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 15, 2013

British photographer documents lives outside the lines

Uchujin, aka Adrian Storey, a British photographer and filmmaker based in Tokyo, drolly explains his rather unusual business moniker: 'I'd rather be an alien than an outsider.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'Sado Tenpesuto'

Beginning with 2001's "Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu (Firefly Dreams)," a Yasujiro Ozu-esque drama about a friendship that develops between a rebellious teenage girl and an elderly former actress in the countryside, John Williams has been directing films in Japan with Japanese talent that do not proclaim...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

Bigelow, Chastain get real in 'Zero Dark Thirty'

Oscar can be fickle. At a ceremony in 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to take home the Academy Award for Best Director, for 2008's "The Hurt Locker." However, she was not nominated for the prize for this year's Oscars, which will be handed out next week in California.
LIFE / Digital
Feb 13, 2013

Streams of consciousness will kill off websites

The communications theorist Marshall McLuhan observed that "we look at the present through a rear-view mirror." And that "we march backwards into the future." Amen. Remember the horseless carriage? Not to mention the fact that we still measure the oomph of a Porsche 911 in, er, brake horsepower.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 11, 2013

Brazil dams Amazon to feed energy-hungry economy

When it is completed in 2015, the Jirau hydroelectric dam will span the Madeira River, feature more giant turbines than any other dam in the world and hold as much concrete as 47 towers the size of New York's Empire State Building.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Feb 8, 2013

Eradicating match-fixing no easy task

Just under three years ago I received a call from a contact who knew people in a side of life that is at best described as shady. "Fancy making a few quid?" he asked, and I knew his reply was not going to be legal.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 8, 2013

Theater groups play together

Fresh from a U.S. tour, "Zero Cost House," the first international collaboration work between Yokohama's Chelfitsch company and Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company (PITC), opens at Kanagawa Arts Theatre next week with its original U.S. cast.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 8, 2013

Android 'fragmentation' leaves smartphones vulnerable

In late October, researchers at North Carolina State University alerted Google to a security flaw that could let scam artists send phony text messages to Android phones — a practice called "smishing" that can ensnare consumers in fraud.
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 7, 2013

Stress levels may be passed down to next generation

For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm, possibly allowing the effect to be passed down to the next generation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 7, 2013

'Hikarical Scape: Photo Exhibition of Herbie Yamaguchi'

During the early 1970s Herbie Yamaguchi moved to London, where he lived for 10 years taking photos of the city's vibrant music scene, and it was his book titled "London" that put his photography in the spotlight.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 4, 2013

Somali, 18, denies being lead hijacker

An 18-year-old Somali accused of trying to hijack an oil tanker operated by a Japanese firm pleaded guilty Monday but denied playing a key role in the attack.
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2013

Questions about contamination

The Jan. 29 Kyodo article "Fukushima kids' thyroids said safe" indicates that radiation levels in the thyroids of 1-year-old kids living near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are "estimated to be less than 30 millisieverts in most cases," based on medical exams of 1,000 children. The story goes...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Feb 3, 2013

Hidetoshi Masunaga: making revolution through the Constitution

On Dec. 14, 2012, two days before the Lower House election in which the Democratic Party of Japan headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was eclipsed as the conservative Liberal Democratic Party swept back to power in a landslide, a one-page advert with a huge banner headline appeared in a vernacular...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 3, 2013

Citizens' lack of resolve leaves nuclear door wide open for next disaster

Second of two parts
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 1, 2013

Canadian uses sports as bridge to teaching, writing, understanding

Writer, teacher and sports fan Trevor Kew, 32, pedals and kicks his way through culture shock. He uses sports to help him adapt to unfamiliar cultures or new places when traveling, trusting his bike or a soccer ball to bridge the gap with locals.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jan 26, 2013

Mining gems in Okachimachi

On early maps of Edo, as Tokyo was known prior to 1868, Okachimachi is rendered as a town (machi) densely packed with the tiny dwellings of okachi — low-ranked, poorly paid samurai infantry.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 26, 2013

No room for subtleties when laying off workers

Thanks to a feature that appeared on the front page of the Dec. 31 issue of the Asahi Shimbun, oidashi beya is the first topical neologism of 2013 if you don't count "Abenomics." It's not clear if the term, which translates as "expulsion room," was coined by the newspaper, but since then the blogosphere...
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 25, 2013

Wherever the wily Ozawa goes, party soon to follow

Veteran lawmaker Ichiro Ozawa, who bolted from the Democratic Party of Japan dur- ing its recent rule, launches his sixth new party and formally becomes its president.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 25, 2013

Can the discovery of oil save Ecuador's rainforest?

American biologist Kelly Swing thwacks a bush with his butterfly net and a dozen or so bugs and insects drop in. One is a harvester, or daddy-long-legs, another a jumping spider that leaps onto a leaf where two beetles are mating.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo