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Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Sep 21, 2010

Long-distance relationship comes all the way to Tokyo

Natsuko Shibata, a Tokyo native, and Piyasena Perera, a Sri Lankan-American born in Los Angeles, met two decades ago in New York when they were both studying at Columbia University.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 12, 2010

Could public polls sway DPJ vote?

According to major media opinion polls, if the choice of who will lead the country was up to the populace, Prime Minister Naoto Kan would retain his position against fellow Democratic Party of Japan member Ichiro Ozawa's challenge to the party presidency and the premiership.
EDITORIALS
Sep 11, 2010

Rights of whistle-blowers

The Aomori District Court on Sept. 6 sentenced two Greenpeace Japan activists to a suspended one-year prison term, ruling that they broke into a cargo delivery depot in Aomori on April 16, 2008, and stole a 23-kg package of whale meat that a whaling ship crew member was mailing home to Hakodate, Hokkaido....
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2010

Rookies hold crucial DPJ votes

Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Katsuhito Yokokume gets at least 10 calls on his cell phone every day from the Naoto Kan and Ichiro Ozawa camps, asking for his support in Tuesday's party presidential election.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 27, 2010

Klaxons

Klaxons divide opinion like few others. Emerging in 2006 to a crescendo of hype, they were held up as leaders of the nu-rave movement even before their debut album "Myths of the Near Future" was busy thrilling and irritating in equal measure.
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2010

Flickers of hope for nuke abolitionists

HIROSHIMA — In Hiroshima, this place where a fearful age was born one fiery instant 65 years ago, the Flame of Peace still flickers on, awaiting the day when the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / ASIA SEMINARS
Aug 19, 2010

Strikes at Japanese affiliates show lack of understanding the Chinese

Japanese companies need to have a better understanding of the rapidly changing popular sentiments in China and improve communication with workers at their affiliated plants in the country, veteran journalists from local Chinese newspapers said at a recent seminar in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2010

Kosovo decision sets a disastrous precedent

BELGRADE — Serbia will never recognize this unilateral declaration of independence: We seek peaceful compromise.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 27, 2010

EU leaders must face a welfare state crisis

PARIS — In the Western part of Europe — the part that former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld maliciously labeled "Old Europe" — almost every government is in deep political trouble.
COMMENTARY
Jul 6, 2010

'A tall poppy is cut down'; Gillard could bloom awhile

Strange things happen to Australian prime ministers. One (Harold Holt, 1966-67) disappeared while swimming near a Melbourne beach; speculation says he may have been eaten by a shark.
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 3, 2010

Foreigner suffrage, separate surnames stir passions in poll runup

Whether to grant permanent foreign residents voting rights for local-level elections and allow married couples to keep their respective surnames have become contentious issues ahead of the July 11 Upper House election.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2010

Canberra's bloodless coup

SYDNEY — Women rule. Or so it seems in Australia where the first female prime minister has ousted a male colleague, where a woman is the governor general, still another runs the main state, New South Wales, and another presides over that state's capital city, Sydney. Topping all, an Australian woman...
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2010

Scrap death penalty, bereaved families say

SETSUKO KAMIYA Staff writer Bud Welch lost his only daughter, Julie, in the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed the lives of 168 people on April 19, 1995. His 23-year-old daughter was working as a Spanish translator at the Social Security Administration in the federal building targeted.
JAPAN / DECISION 2010
Jun 25, 2010

Kan wades deep into tax hike fray

Despite misgivings in his own party, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has pledged to raise the 5 percent consumption tax in a few years to fund snowballing social security costs and avoid a fiscal crisis like the one that engulfed Greece.
JAPAN / DECISION 2010
Jun 24, 2010

Parties focus on economy, taxes

With the campaign officially kicking off for the July 11 Upper House election, political parties are weighing in on rebuilding the economy and government finances, hoping their platforms will translate into votes.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jun 14, 2010

South Koreans show split over what sank their ship

Despite the confident and harsh manner in which President Lee Myung Bak condemned North Korea for attacking and sinking a South Korean naval vessel, his country is deeply split between the conservative anti-Pyongyang forces and the opposition forces favoring promotion of closer ties with the North.
JAPAN
Jun 12, 2010

Can Kan survive the leadership gauntlet?

Japan has gone through prime ministers at a dizzying rate — Naoto Kan is the sixth in the last four years, and 14th over the past two decades — the highest turnover among the major industrialized countries.
JAPAN
Jun 3, 2010

Voters mixed over sudden resignation

Voters interviewed Wednesday by The Japan Times on the streets of Tokyo and Osaka had mixed reactions about the resignation of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, speculating the ruling Democratic Party of Japan was growing deeply worried about next month's Upper House election.
JAPAN
May 27, 2010

SDP walks a tightrope as it flirts with leaving coalition

When Mizuho Fukushima was re-elected president of the Social Democratic Party in December, she promised to pull the SDP out of the ruling coalition if the Futenma air base was relocated within Okinawa, as called for in a 2006 agreement with the United States.
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2010

Australia's Rudd mining for taxes

SYDNEY — Voters know an election is in the air as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd does a Robin Hood, taking from the country's rich — in this case the mining industry — and giving to the poor, the recipients of Rudd's costly "reforms."
JAPAN
May 8, 2010

Island mayors rebuff Hatoyama

The mayors of the three towns on Tokunoshima in Kagoshima Prefecture told Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Friday they want no part of his proposal to move some U.S. Marine elements from Futenma in Okinawa to their island.
COMMENTARY / World
May 6, 2010

Brand, but don't ban, credit default swaps

CHICAGO — The lawsuit filed last month by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against Goldman Sachs for securities fraud, charging the bank with misrepresenting the way a collateralized debt obligations had been formed, has revived public disgust at credit default swaps (CDS), the instrument...
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2010

Fatah, Hamas watch, wait

GAZA CITY — With dueling authorities running Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian people find themselves in the middle of an experiment. In Gaza, where Hamas is in charge, the high price of armed resistance to Israel has discredited any attempts to revive the conflict. In the West Bank, under Fatah...
COMMENTARY
May 3, 2010

Untold ties of friendship exist between Okinawa and the U.S.

The baseball team from Konan High School, Okinawa, emerged from the dramatic final game as the winner of the annual National High School Baseball Championship for spring 2010. There is an untold story behind this victory.
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2010

U.K. searching for the center

When national elections are called, the major political parties — while of course emphasizing their differences through their propaganda — in practice all veer toward the center ground and claim it as their own. We are the ones, each leader proclaims, who can unite the nation.
COMMENTARY
Apr 11, 2010

Which way will the British go?

The United Kingdom will go to the polls on May 6, almost five years since the last general election. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has clung to power as long as he legally could. Now he must face the electorate. The electorate is fickle and the outcome is uncertain.
BUSINESS / U.K. JOURNALIST SYMPOSIUM
Mar 26, 2010

Voter behavior holds key to political system change

Six months have passed since the Democratic Party of Japan ousted the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party from power. But whether there will be a fundamental change to the nation's political system will depend not just on the lawmakers but on the behavior of voters.
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Mar 15, 2010

1000 Things About Japan/Japanese Snack Reviews

When Shari Custer arrived in Japan with her American husband, the original plan was to stay for "five years." That was 20 years ago. During her extended time in Japan, Custer wanted to chronicle some of the little things that many overlook, and her ongoing list comprises one of her blogs: 1000 Things...
OLYMPICS
Mar 9, 2010

Japan picks over bones of Vancouver medal tally

Was it success or under-achievement? The Japanese squad for the Vancouver Winter Olympics returned home with five medals and 26 top-eight finishes — both better feats than at the 2006 Turin Games.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 26, 2010

This acting lark is elementary for Downey Jr.

HOLLYWOOD — When one beholds the billboards touting the first movie in the new "Sherlock Holmes" franchise, one sees the slim, natty, Anglo-looking Jude Law and imagines he is Holmes and that the less buff, older and somewhat rumpled Robert Downey Jr. is his Dr. Watson. Wrong, of course, and despite...

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami